Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 48

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G5

G5 says:

Creations by banned or blocked users. Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others. G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates.

It says nothing about when a particular editor was banned or blocked. Let's say User A created article X, then User B gets indef-blocked for vandalism (i.e. a vandalism-only account), then it is discovered that User A and User B are sockpuppets of the same user.

In my judgment this means article X can be deleted under G5, since the block of User A/User B is for being a vandalism-only account and therefore any edits made by User A or User B can be treated as vandalism.

Is my interpretation correct? --71.90.216.96 (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

The idea is to make it easy to delete copyright infringements or hoaxes. If article X was vandalism it could be deleted as G3, but if not there does not seem to be any reason to delete. Remember these rules are here to improve Wikipedia so if a potential G5 is deleting something good, then don't nominate it, decline it, or don't delete it. In your case user A would likely get a temporary block, and B permanent. Hopefully the person behind these accounts would go back to good behaviour. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:09, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

ok thanks. from past discussion on this page I was under the impression that WP:DENY was one of the things to be considered in that those who are banned or blocked are to be denied recognition for their edits and therefore G5 is to be applied to their created pages. I see that that was not the intent of the criterion and I suggest that it should be noted that the principle of WP:DENY does not apply to G5. See this discussion, where someone notes "G5 aims to deny banned users recognition, so [allowing the page to remain] will leave entries of their editing and thus some kind of recognition while deleting the [page] will not." --71.90.216.96 (talk) 06:16, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

In your example, it sounds as if User B was blocked after User A created the article. WP:CSD#G5 says that the page should have been created in violation of a block or ban. If User B was not yet blocked when User A created the article, then there was no block which could possibly be violated, so I don't think that G5 would apply. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:42, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I've had uncertainties about this category for some time. Copyvios and hoaxes already have CSD categories and templates, and are deletable no matter what the status of the author. For community banned editors, there is a case for deleting anything whether good or bad, as they are theoretically not allowed on site (although they can't practically be prevented from reading articles). But what about topic banned editors who create an article that falls within the scope of their topic ban? With blocked editors, what if the ban is a short one - say a 24 hour for 3RR? I've seen the tag applied to articles by 'suspected socks' - is this a correct use? In these cases, I'm here assuming articles that don't fall under a CSD category anyway. Peridon (talk) 14:49, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

That's the part that doesn't make sense to me - if an account is a "vandalism-only account" and was blocked for that, why do edits made before the block get to stay? Clearly they are not valid edits otherwise the account is not a "vandalism-only account". --71.90.216.96 (talk) 00:47, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

If they're straightforward vandalism, G3 allows their deletion anyhow. Wily D 09:15, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

My two cents - a sockpuppet, while a different user in the technical sense, is actually the same user. So, if user B is a sockpuppet of user A, then all blocks and bans that apply to A also apply to B. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:32, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. But some people don't - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most played rivalries in NCAA Division I FBS --71.90.216.96 (talk) 05:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Well sock operators get different treatment. Troublesome socks are blocked permanently, but the sockmaster may only get a temporary block. The idea is to improve Wikipedia remember. So if actual worthwhile articles are writen we can keep them. It is the stuff in the grey area, where another speedy delete criterion does not apply, but history shows that the article written by the banned user are rubbish, then G5 makes it easy to delete, avoiding AFD or prod time periods. I have seen someone write many fine articles, then get annoyed and nominate them all for deletion. Then they got blocked for disruption. ALl the articles were kept because they were good, and not deleted because the editor went berserk. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:03, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

It's the timeline that's important. Blocking and banning aren't retroactive. If someone creates a hundred articles and then gets banned, that's not a license to go delete all those articles. If someone gets banned, returns as a sock and creates new articles, all those new articles are fair game for G5.—Kww(talk) 17:32, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

There's a more basic problem in interpretation: Some interpret this guideline to mean that every article created by a banned or blocked user must be deleted; some interpret it to mean they can be deleted regardless of whether or not it is of acceptable or even excellent quality; others take the position you have just described, that it is essentially an aggravating factor that lets us speedily presume such articles are unacceptable in a borderline situation. I personally agree with that last interpretation, but some of the most respected people dealing with banned editors & sockpuppetry think the two more drastic interpretations are necessary for the sanction to be meaningful--their catch-phrase is "banned means banned." One of the reasons for interpreting this to mean "always" is that if we need to take quality into consideration, this requires a level of judgment that may make speedy inappropriate. DGG ( talk ) 20:06, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

G6, {{db-move}} and {{RMassist}}

I see that in November the words "Note that an administrator that deletes a page that is blocking a move must ensure that the move is completed after deleting it." were added to the description of {{db-move}}. While I wish that was the case, my experience is that some admins do not think it their job. I raised this at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves and didn't get much of an answer on the question I asked, but in the discussion there it transpired that {{RMassist}} is a better technique to use in the situation of "I need this redirect (with an edit history) to be deleted so that I can move that page to this title". As a long-standing wikignome who sorts a lot of stubs and sometimes uses {{db-move}} to get them to the right title, I'd never heard of {{RMassist}}, and I may not be alone in this!

I suggest that we amend the description of G6 to add a link to Technical move requests and {{RMassist}}, for use when a redirect with a page history is blocking a page move.

I also suggest that we need to clarify whether indeed it is part of the deleting admin's job to move the page after doing the deletion. I wish it was, but unless this is agreed, then we are misleading editors who use {{db-move}} by suggesting that they don't need to be on the alert to spot the deletion on their watchlist and move the appropriate page to the newly-vacated title but can expect it to be done by the deleting admin. There is a link provided in the template to facilitate the move, to help the closing admin if they choose to use it. PamD 09:41, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

This was added based on my proposal, seen at this archive. I proposed this first because an admin who disagrees with the move proposed obviously shouldn't delete the page in question, and second, because the user proposing might not know for hours or even days that the delete request was granted. I actually had such a case where I used this speedy delete template, the admin deleted the blocking page, but didn't move it, and a title that should have an article was redlinked for a day and a half. This addition was not opposed when I suggested it then and I see no reason to remove it. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
My experience was: my note on admin's talk page enquiring whether his not moving the page after doing a db-move delete was an oversight or standard practice, and his reply saying "It's my standard practice to just do the bit that actually needs an admin, i.e. the deletion, rather than the move as well. ...". I'll let him know about this discussion. PamD 17:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I've done it both ways. An admin is needed only to delete the redirect that's getting in the way of the move. On the other hand, it's useful to have that link to perform the move to do it in one fell swoop, and I've been doing that too. On the gripping hand, I would amend this proposal also to clarify that these G6 moves should be declined if there's even a small chance of being controversial. I'm finding myself declining these G6 proposals with alarming frequency. People shouldn't be using a G6 move nomination as a convenient way to circumvent the WP:RM process. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I can expand a little on what Pam reported about my views (above). If I see a request to delete and move on a project page, then I'll do the whole thing, which often involves minor changes to the text and infoboxes. However, I find most of the housekeeping deletion requests are at CSD, where there are almost always plenty of articles needing deletion for other reasons. Then I just do the delete, to save time, and in practice the move is always made by another person within a day or so. There was a complaint at ANI recently that the articles to be moved were having to wait up to a day for the target page to be deleted (not the worst backlog on Wikipedia), I think the response was on the lines of "we need more pay for a faster service" (: cheers, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Non-English language articles - reconsider their fortnight's free pass?

While stub-sorting, I've found ছাগু. I have no idea what it is about, as it is entirely written in a non-roman script: I gather it's in Bengali, but Google can't translate it. Two editors had already tagged it as "in need of translation" at Page Curation (though neither had actually added it to the appropriate list), but that gives it two weeks before it can be considered for deletion.

For all I know, this article (unsourced, unlinked, orphan) could be a personal attack, a political rant, a stream of obscenities. It may be about a non-notable person or entity. It may also, of course, be about a profoundly notable person or entity and capable of expansion into a featured article in time. But the rules say that it stays in the encyclopedia for two weeks, without any way for us to know any more about it.

I've asked the editor, on his/her talk page, to translate it. I've also dropped a note onto Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bangladesh to ask if someone could have a look at it.

I suggest that we need one of two things:

A change to say that if an article is entirely in a foreign language it should be speedily deleted (perhaps with a particularly helpful note left on the editor's page to explain why, perhaps even automatic userfication to allow them to work on a translation)
or, A special version of "New page curation" which will direct such articles to language specialists who can check the content, tag as appropriate, move to an English language title if necessary, and add a lead sentence in English. (In "Page Curation" this would need a button for "I can't understand this language", to direct articles into this stream.)

It worries me that content written in a non-English language is not subjected to the normal checks before appearing in our encyclopedia for at least two weeks. Any thoughts? PamD 09:11, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Google translates the page for me:

“

The word blog is a Bengali word which by no anaabidhanika zealot - fundamentalist group and is used to refer to the group of anti-war and pakistanapanthi. --Google

”

Stefan2 (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It isn't a two week free pass. I've tagged lots of articles as not English and listed them for translation, if it turns out that they merit speedy deletion per A7, G12 or G11 the service there is pretty quick. The ones that persist longer are presumably ones where the language isn't supported by our translators or someone does a rough translation and realises that it doesn't meet our speedy deletion criteria. I'd like to see a different way of handling these with "speedy migrate to the correct language wiki" but while the current system is not ideal it certainly doesn't automatically keep them all for a fortnight. If people aren't listing them for translation then that slows the process down, but the solution is to ask those people to list non-english articles for translation. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

From my occasional visits at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, my impression is that the vast majority of articles created (originally and in their entirety) in foreign languages are speedy deletion candidates. If somebody pastes non-English articles into the English Wikipedia, the reason almost invariably is that they are too lazy or lack the qualification to write stuff of their own – not merely in English, but in the other language too. So these texts are almost invariably copy-paste-jobs from somewhere. Seriously, when was the last time that process actually led to the creation of a viable, worthwhile article, based on the actual material that was originally posted in a non-English language but was otherwise legitimate, non-trivial textual content? My impression is these cases are vanishingly rare, next to non-existent. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:34, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

There's one that was posted in Romanian which I sorted out into decent English, and it's still up. Another article was sent to the Luanda Wikipedia as being more relevant there. That's just two I've been involved with. If people would actually list these things at WP:PNT instead of merely sticking 'notenglish' on them, it would help. The workers at PNT can identify most languages, and work out what the content is about to a greater or lesser extent by appearance and a bit of quick Googling, and things very often get speedied or prodded as appropriate almost on arrival. Otherwise, the two weeks is to allow for the 'language experts' having lives off wiki and taking time to catch up with PNT. As to the process of moving things to another Wikipedia, my experience of it was that it was horrendous. This isn't a speedy deletion matter, but there should be some way for administrators to be able to make contact with their counterparts, and for assessment to be made and the article transferred over if appropriate, in a much simpler way than seems to be the case at present. A possible answer to this and Pam's problem would be to move the article into a holding space out of article space (perhaps to somewhere prefixed PNT: and being a bit like AfC and/or the Incubator). Of course, I am suggesting inter-wiki co-operation and technical support here..... Peridon (talk) 12:07, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I proposed speedy transwikiing as part of the revision to New Page patrol, as I remember it the response was that it was technically doable but not within that release of the development - whether we get it into a future version is anyone's guess. But I would hope that most of the smaller wikis would welcome this. Perhaps it would be worth discussing it at Wikimania to get input from multiple languages. I'd agree that getting technical support for a community based request is notoriously difficult, but we may be able to do this by Bot and that is much more viable.

As for Future Perfect's suggsetion that people do this out of lazyness, I'm not convinced. My assumption has always been that there are a lot of people out there who don't understand our structure well enough to realise that there is a version of wikipedia in their language. One reason why I think that is that in my experience there are relatively few articles submitted in English in the languages where we have large Wikipedias Like German, Russian and Spanish. Most of the ones that I've seen are in languages where we have a small Wikipedia that I suspect the author may not be aware of. Ϣere SpielChequers 12:35, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

(ec) For me, the question is still, is it really worth the trouble, cost-benefit-wise? How many hours of work do editors spend browsing through the gutter in their search for the few useable shreds of content, and how many hours would it cost if we just flushed out the gutter immediately and wrote those few articles from scratch instead? How many of the newbie writers who pasted those non-English pages subsequently went on to become productive editors? (Peridon: it's great to hear there are such positive cases, but how often do they happen? Links to those articles might be instructive.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:46, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The Romanian one was about the Sibiu Film Festival, I think. Not brilliant stuff, but no-one's tried to get it deleted yet. (Probably means no-one's looked at it...) The Luanda one was, as I recall, a history of a tribe (or similar) and much more interesting in Uganda than anywhere else. (Just as a Scottish Clan history isn't going to be of much interest in Uganda or Laos.) We do get articles in European languages - the more Western ones are often attacks (where the attacker probably doesn't know of their own language version but has heard of Wikipedia) or kid-stuff. Sometimes they are translations into other languages of articles we already have - these are probably misplaced (I've seen author requests for deletion for this reason) and may have been reposted in the right place. I'll start taking more note of that. A lot of of the rest are CVs, religious tracts, and articles about villages. The last can be of interest if Dr Blofeld hasn't already posted about them... Oh, and spam too. I've tagged things in Indonesian and Russian for speedy as spam (just two languages out of quite a few). I don't speak all these languages, but I've always had an ability to put things into coherent English (which used to get teachers hopping mad when they wanted literal translations - I couldn't see the point...), and a wide range of general (and obscure) knowledge. Worse than articles in some dialect of Foreign are machine translations. I use Google Translate, but I can read between the lines of the two versions. Being presented with just the translation is like deciphering without the key word. Anyway, on the whole there are articles that emerge from PNT - but not a lot, and mostly comparatively obscure stuff. But that's part of what an encyclopaedia is about. Peridon (talk) 14:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, but the case of Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu really sort of proves my point: the original text was a copy-and-paste text dump from the company's marketing blurb ([1]). Maybe not necessarily a copyright violation, if we assume that the editor who pasted it represented the company (their username suggested they did), but still, it's the kind of stuff we routinely delete on sight if we find it in English. The editor never made any further edits either. And the article is still rather clearly promotional in tone, with zero independent sourcing, very thin on actual encyclopedic content, and close enough to the original text to still count as a copyright violation, if the original was one. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:32, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't dispute that a large proportion of these articles are going to wind up being deleted, but surely the point there as with any deletion is to do it in a fair and rational way. Remember we are trying to minimise the small proportion of people who react to this by badmouthing us or trying to get even, and maximise the proportion of people who react positively; Whether they do so by telling others how their garage band never made it out of the garage, except for briefly having a Wikipedia article before being deleted for failing our garage band criteria, or at best by coming back with an article that does meet our criteria. I'm hoping that people who've wound up in the wrong language version would respond better by simply being migrated to the right language version. If under the current system an editor never made any further edits that rather boosts my point that we should be trying to get them on the right wiki. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the problem is really not so much that a large proportion are deleted. The problem we just saw with these two examples is that they were not deleted, when they ought to have been. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:10, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

And the other example, lg:Esigalyakagolo, really shows the same pattern. Almost certainly a text dump from somewhere and entirely unsourced. The editor in question never made any talk page contribution here on en, but went on and continued pasting all sorts of copy-and-paste articles (in English) and copyvio images, which all got speedied; not a single edit of his survives. Over on the lg-wiki this article was never further developed either. 10 bucks says it's some copyright-violating personal essay and POV screed. Dumping this sort of thing on the other wikis through transwikiing without being able to check its quality is really not very fair either, since many of the small wiki communities simply don't have the resources to filter for such stuff. I'd say, if those are the first two positive examples that come to the mind of an experienced and enthusiastic contributor in this process, it doesn't fill me with optimism. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The standard procedure at WP:PNT is that if, during the two weeks, one editor determines that the article is a speedy deletion candidate (that is, the editor identifies the language and determines that, in that language, the article meets our speedy deletion criteria), the article gets tagged as such and eventually gets booted in a matter of minutes. We won't bother with the translation. That even applies if the article is determined to be a word salad that conveys no meaning in the language it's written in. It also applies to cases where it's clear that the article is written in someone's made-up-in-one-day language (yes, we've seen that too!)

As a matter of fact, roughly 66% of articles listed at WP:PNT end up being speedied before the end of the two-week grace period. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 16:34, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The pages that get listed include many that were not originally created fully in a foreign language, but just have some foreign content included. Does your 66% figure apply to all the listed pages, or to the entirely foreign pages? Because for the latter, I'd find it surprisingly low. My impression has been it's much higher (or ought to be higher, because some bad ones are still slipping through.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:40, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

66% is just the speedies... those I'm aware of. It's possible that an additional number escape my attention because they're dealt with before I see them. But 66% doesn't include prods over either topics ineligible for A7 or pages that never got translated in a timely matter. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 19:17, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

And yes, there's been at least one case of an article that had to go to AfD because nobody could identify the language it was written in. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 19:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all the interest in this. I'm glad to hear that most of the articles referred to PNT don't get anything like the fortnight's free pass I'd imagined. I've made a suggestion at Wikipedia_talk:Page_Curation#Page_curation_and_articles_needing_translation that it would be good if Page Curation threw up a popup or something when editors use {{Not English}} or {{Rough translation}} to alert editors to the fact that they've got another job to do, and someone has suggested that the listing onto PNT might be able to be made automatically from Page Curation and Twinkle. I don't know how many non-English articles don't get listed there, but was worried when I saw that the article this morning had been Page Curated not once, but twice, without it being done! PamD 17:10, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The pages that have just some foreign content don't get deleted quickly if they are just in need of that material being translated. They are not in the 'two week' section, and are considered not to be CSD or prod candidates. Of the ones in the short stay parking, I'd reckon at least 66% get booted before the two weeks are up. It's not a long stay parking like AfC where unreviewed things like Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Pennsylvanian Missile Deer stick around for over a year. (Currently at CSD as a hoax along with four more plus three just been deleted that I found in a quick trawl - picking them to look at simply for the titles.) It may be the case that some patrollers don't know about PNT even though it's mentioned on the template - but hey, who reads templates? Perhaps we ought to trawl through editors who have different languages on their CV and encourage them to look in at PNT. I enjoy looking at something, doing a bit of research, and finding that it's a small Indian language translation of St John's Gospel (think it was St John's - the language name began with M and was very short). But having people who actually speak the languages would speed the process of assessment up no end. Peridon (talk) 17:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

The reality is that Non-english articles are a very small issue on Wikipedia, there are currently 10 articles in Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, for half of of those the problem is untranslated quotes/headings etc as opposed to being entirely non-english, you could maybe double that figure to include some that may have slipped through the net, such as as when foreign content is added - in cases such as that when it is brought to the attention of WP:PNT the content is removed. As it always is, the real problem PNT has is with Category:Wikipedia articles needing cleanup after translation, a backlog that does little but get bigger

Just as an anecdotal data point, I've found at least one attack page in Spanish, which I marked for G10. So it does happen, although I agree that it must be a rare occurrence. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 21:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Unnecessary disambiguation

I proposed an idea at Template talk:Db-meta#db-disambig that disambiguation pages that only link one article should qualify for speedy deletion. Please comment there on that. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

A1 and A7

It's got something to do with the Icelandic Premier League in 1922 with only two small sections

Here: 1922_Úrvalsdeild — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cboy1998 (talk • contribs)

This page is for discussing the speedy deletion process, not the merits on whether any specific article should be speedy deleted. In the case of your article, the speedy has been declined because it has context and we generally consider seasons of the highest professional level of football in a country to be notable per WP:NFOOTY. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 09:34, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Expanding A9?

I've recently run into a quite a handful of cases in which someone has written a new article about some obscure book (recent example: Mastering windows 8 using javascript). In these cases, the creator has no article, and the article itself claims no significance. As such, I propose changing {{db-a9}} to

No indication of importance (musical recording or book).

An article about a ~~musical recording~~ musical recording or book that has no corresponding article about its creator and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met). This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, products, or any other types of articles.

Thoughts? —Theopolisme (talk) 03:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC) ^{Above was edited for clarity after Peridon's comments. —Theopolisme (talk) 15:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)}

I'm uneasy about this expansion proposal, especially if such a sweeping change is intended to capture just "a handful of cases" as you put it. I can think of best-seller books by authors who are not notable, but the books would be. There are also notable creative works (sculptures, perhaps) by anonymous or unknown creators.

A9 exists because Wikipedia had a significant problem (more than a handful of cases) involving non-notable bands writing articles about their non-notable works. I'd like to see some real evidence that there's a growing problem outside that narrow spectrum of creative works before changing what A9 covers. ~Amatulić (talk) 06:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Check the archives I could swear we just discussed this and rejected it again within the last six months. Jclemens (talk) 06:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
- yes, we did. Jclemens (talk) 06:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
  - Thanks, Jclemens. —Theopolisme (talk) 06:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I could see a case perhaps for new books. We get far more articles about new (self-published) books by redlinked authors than we do sculptures. The article about the author of the book published yesterday through lulu is easily dealt with. The article on the book gets six days on prod, and then a week at AfD. Peridon (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

That definitely makes sense;

Like. —Theopolisme (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable; let's say "about a musical recording or book". Nyttend (talk) 22:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

To go along with this perhaps we should put some effort into improving WP:NBOOKS so we know what's worthy of keeping as well as deleting. Just sayin'. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 23:04, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

For the same reasons as brought up in the previous discussion linked in the hatted section above (why was it hatted? Previous discussions are relevant), I cannot support this proposal. There are a great many notable books by non-notable authors, and an even greater number of notable books by notable authors we haven't yet got an article on than is the case with musical recordings. I might consider supporting a criterion restricted to self-published books only, as getting a book published by a selective third party is clearly an indication of significance. Even then tough, I would need to see evidence that it is a widespread problem that existing processes are unable to handle, and to date I have not seen such evidence. Thryduulf (talk) 17:07, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Thryduulf, for your analysis. I think the main issue is just the fact that (as Peridon/others can back me up on) we get quite a few articles about new (self-published) books. These new, stubby, unsourced, raw details only articles (sometimes with a pinch of advertising) are PROD'ed. The PROD is removed 6 days later. Then the article gets a week at AfD...and so it's been on Wikipedia for 13 days, enough time to be indexed, backlinked, etc. —Theopolisme (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

- - Then send them to AfD directly - there is no requirement to PROD first. "Quite a few" isn't nearly enough to justify speedy deletion - there needs to be lots (at least several per day most days) and they all need to be deleted without the need for significant weighing of arguments by closing admins. Thryduulf (talk) 23:42, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Thryduulf. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 17:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Thryduulf. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 17:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Thryduulf's sound analysis. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:01, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Attack page blanking - alternative option

I've raised a suggestion at Template talk:Db-meta#Proposal - keep attack pages visible to admins that would hide attack pages tagged with {{db-attack}} from ordinary users, but keep the text visible to administrators (to speed up the deletion process). Comments (from both admins and non-admins) would be welcome. An optimist on the run! 23:20, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry folks, I hadn't realised discussion was taking place here as this page isn't on my watchlist. Can you make comments at Template talk:Db-meta, to keep the discussion in one place. Thanks. An optimist on the run! 10:28, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sounds good to me if it's technically possible. Admins can at present click on history and select the appropriate version to look at. Two clicks. But so can anyone, so the blanking is merely cosmetic as it will only fool total newbies. Two clicks is not a lot, but it could be the time left before the victim is shown the attacker's masterpiece. On the other hand, I'm not sure how the software could be fixed to display a version earlier than the CSD tagger's version - and if the attacker edits after the tag is applied, there could be more complications. This is speculation, as I have little idea how the software here works on a coding level. Peridon (talk) 13:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

In my experience, true attack pages are normally deleted so very quickly that this is not necessary. But is there any evidence they've been there for more than a few minutes? Blanking can be done by anyone, and for extreme cases, many people do it. DGG ( talk ) 02:13, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Things usually do get blanked by the tagger - I think Optimist's idea was to see if there was a way of getting to the deletion quicker by leaving the page visible to admins while it would appear blanked to search engines and non-admins. This would save the two clicks needed to get at the content. It could be done, I suppose, by some sort of coding related to the 'pending changes' thing. Peridon (talk) 11:29, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

If there were (or already is) a Help:Parser function for user rights, you could simply alter the {{db-attack}} template to take the page contents as a parameter, and make the page content:

Current template content {{#ifeq: {{UserRight}} | {{SysopBit}} | {{{1|}}} |}} Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 23:15, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I know I saw somewhere there is an administrator who uses slightly different code. He's got a sandbox of sorts with text that basically says If you're not an administrator you can see this, and invisible text that says if you're an administrator you can see this. Does anyone know who/what I'm talking about? Ryan Vesey 01:57, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Uh, I can't really imagine a way this cwould work. It seems like this would basically give everyone a pseudo-revdel, which is probably not cool, right? I mean, if we restrict the tag to admins only, well, they should just be deleting the page rather than tagging it (and could just revdel it even if they don't want to delete it outright), but if we don't restrict it to admins, then what's to stop a malicious person from using it everywhere and basically preventing all non-admins from even reading Wikipedia? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

No, the idea is that the tag would automatically blank the content for any non-admins who come across the page, but admins would be able to see what was written, so that they could evaluate the tagging quickly and fairly. This is all about making it easy to actually execute the deletion. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 01:44, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, the entire page history would exist and everything would be visible in the source code. I think it's a great idea. Ryan Vesey 01:53, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

G3 clarification

There was recently a kerfuffle relating to a G3 deletion of a userpage that had the appearance of a FAKEARTICLE, but was clearly meant to be humorous, rather than misleading. Can we assume that the G3 "blatant hoax" criteria requires an attempt to mislead, and should not be applied to obvious (ETA: or even less obvious) satire in userspace? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I would agree with that view. We should be permitted to have a little bit of fun on our userpages without having them speedied. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 00:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Added a bit to the sentence above -- don't think it changes the meaning of Torchiest's response. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:13, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the specifics of the case you refer to, but from the sound of it I would say that at most such a page should be tagged with {{humour}} or {{Userpage Blue}} to insure it is not mistaken for an article. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

If it was meant to be humorous then no, of course G3 does not apply. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 03:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster (sorry OED fans) says that a hoax is "an act intended to trick or dupe". So, satire without an intent to deceive is not a hoax, and is thus not eligible for G3. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 06:05, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. The page I was referring to is User:The Duke of Waltham, and the deletion was discussed at User talk:AGK#User:The Duke of Waltham. I wanted to see what the opinions were in general, before I tied people down to specifics. :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 07:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

As I commented in that discussion, editors have traditionally been allowed a bit of whimsy/humor/satire in designing their userpages, and if policy can be clarified to reflect that, all the better. 28bytes (talk) 07:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Humor and satire aren't hoaxes. Anything which may be intended as such isn't a blatant hoax, and therefore not covered by the "hoax" clause in G3. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:29, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean that that should apply only to user pages, or to article space too? I believe that 'Is Grace's page is OK in user space, but that anything like that appearing in article space should count as hoax whether it's funny or not. Encyclopaedias don't have satirical articles. Peridon (talk) 20:18, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

If clearly intended as humorous, then it shouldn't be deleted, although if it's in the mainspace it should be userfied. If it's clearly intended as a hoax, it should be deleted. If it's unclear, then the namespace should be a consideration - as humor should usually be in the userspace. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:57, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Can/should anons be able to remove speedy deletion tags?

I recently had to nominate Morella Addams for deletion because an anonymous editor insisted on removing the tag. It was clearly an A7 candidate, and was speedy deleted right away anyways. Are anons allowed to remove tags, and should they be? Personally, I don't think they should be able to. They are free to contest the deletion on the talk page. The concerns with allowing them to remove the tags are that a) it can become difficult to separate a socking article creator from an anon and b) anons are often unfamiliar with our policies. Ryan Vesey 19:27, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the act of registering an account does not automatically grant a user with a better understanding of policy, and sockpuppets often use accounts. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
I think IPs should not be allowed to remove speedy tags, because people often logout to remove them from their own tagged articles, leaving us with no other option other than a days-long AFD. Speedy tags are almost universally applied to new articles, and IPs can't create new articles. The policy should read something like Only an editor with an account (not an IP) who is not the creator of a page may do so.. Of course some people would then create socks and whatnot, but that would be a relatively simple first-level fix for the issue. I have the same issue with PRODs - IPs should never be allowed to contest them. AFD is backed up as it is, and participation (as far as I can see) is very low. Allowing obvious crud to linger is counter productive and a waste of time for everyone. And if someone feels strongly enough about why we should keep something, they should be able to create an account to do it, or at the very least use one of the noticeboards to ask someone to do it for them. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 19:54, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

"they can create an account to do so" Yes, that is the excruciatingly obvious way that such a restriction could be sooooo easily gamed. It only takes a few seconds to create an account, the person is no smarter, o better informed, and no more acting in good faith than they were before they did so. While I understand the frustration at having a valid CSD tagging removed, it is hardly limited to IP users. (I don't like the use of the term "anon" as it is obviously incorrect, anyone with an account that is not using their real name is actually more anonymous than a user who reveals their IP address.) Beeblebrox (talk) 20:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it's easy to game. I do think it would cut down on the number of invalid contested CSDs, but still. How about going further then, and requiring anyone who contests a CSD (or PROD) to be autoconfirmed at least? §FreeRangeFrog^croak 20:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

The rules do not need to be changed IPs should be able to contest. Any one at all can contest a prod. For Speedy deletions the creator whether registered or not should not contest by removing the tag. Of course that gets hard to prove. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:33, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Complete non-starter. The only editors enjoined from removing a WP:SPEEDY tag is the creator of the content. So as long as the IP isn't the original editor WP:SOCKing, it is completely appropriate. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 23:56, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
Only admins may make the final decision about the speedy deletion request, but other users may remove blatantly inappropriate speedy tags. In borderline cases, I think that they should be left for admins. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:26, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
strongly and vehemently believe reject for speedy deletion by any editor, ip, admin, autoconfirmed, or editor apart from the creator should mean rejected. If this in some edge case turns out stupid, any editor is able to ignore the rules. Ignoring the rules stupidly should lead to trout slapping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 05:25, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree IP'S should not be removing the csd templates, Perhaps autoconfirmed and beyond is the people who should be allowed, unless they have a rationale in their edit summary with why it is not applicable. Too often it's the account creator logging out and removing it themselves. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 07:35, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me like the article referenced at the beginning of this thread was deleted within fifteen minutes anyway. I'd like to see some indication of a real, sustained problem in this are before considering yet another rule that would need to be enforced by admins. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cubana Bar Restaurant

Yesterday, I blocked the creator of this article as a spam only account and I nominated this AfC submission (blatant spam page) for deletion. My nomination has been declined, despite the fact that my recent nominations of this kind were deleted [2], [3]. Why do we preserve this stuff?

I admit that I'm not fully familiar with the AfC procedures, however, I find the AfC deletion nominations in the CAT:CSD a bit complicated to resolve, because often it is not apparent what is the reason for deletion and searching URLs of copyvios or clicking through an article's history is complicated and time consuming. Why don't we use standard CSD tags also for AfC deletion nominations? I apologize if this was discussed before or if I cause more confusion. Thanks for any answer, I posted this also at WT:AFC. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 09:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

You can use {{db-spam}}, an alias for {{db-g11}}, as a valid tag on AfC submissions, since the db-gxx category is applicable to any page on Wikipedia. I would ask Begonia Brandbygeana (talk · contribs), who undid the CSD tag, as to their reasons for removing it. They might not have been aware of your block. It certainly looks like a G11 candidate to me, as a quick search doesn't reveal anything obviously reliable out there, and even if it did, I would probably blow up this draft and start again. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:25, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
Does PROD apply to these pages? I won't retag as spam since it's been denied already, but a trip to MfD seems like a waste of time here. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
- I just deleted this as in my opinion it was a very clear G11. I can only assume the editor who removed the tag misunderstood the speedy delete criteria or something. I have left them a note. I will happily restore if they provide a reason why speedy was inappropriate in this case but there edit summary certainly suggests a misunderstanding rather than a real objection. Dpmuk (talk) 17:34, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

That must have been an off moment. I delete a lot of stuff that BB has tagged, and they're usually spot on. As to the restaurant, anything containing "boasts a refreshing selection of fine wines" is a definite spam candidate. Why the hell do people write like that anyway? Does it really bring in the customers? It puts me off straight away. Peridon (talk) 20:13, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

using speedy at AfC is an inherent problem, because AfC is supposed to be a way of dealign with inadequate articles, including those with promotionalism as well as lack of references to show notability or even containing some copyvio that can be rewritten. Its use should be very rare, and is in fact very rare, and is being used for only the most outrageous spam the sort of total copyvio which would better started over, and the occasional vandalism or abuse. . Looking at the article, this falls clearly in the class of the most outrageous spam--it is a pure advertisement with almost zero salvageable content. If the restaurant were notable & I wanted to write an article on it, the only words that are reusable are its name, date of founding, and proprietor. DGG ( talk ) 19:16, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Its use may be very rare at the moment, but it should be rather widespread. Random declined corporations articles include Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Acolyteprofs.com Business Consultant Helps To Establish Business In India, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/"chartered financial assistance", Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Aayuja, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/365Lax Inc., ... Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ Alex Folzi was declined in April 2010: what's the use of keeping such spam around for more than 2 years? Nice new project, going through old AfC submissions and speedying all spam from it... Fram (talk) 12:31, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I've gone through and tagged a small amount of utter rubbish, and there's another user winnowing through and tagging old attacks, hoaxes and other stuff that shouldn't need to be checked for now. I will say that there is quite a lot of that sort of thing getting tagged on arrival now, which doesn't seem to have been the case earlier. Peridon (talk) 20:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Unbundling_-_some_U1_and_G7s

I have made a proposal at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/2013_RfC/2#Unbundling_-_some_U1_and_G7s that editors who view this page might be interested in and may well be in a position to give informed comment. NB Please comment there rather than opening a duplicate thread here. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:13, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Should/does G11 pertain to redirects with promotional names?

I recently tagged a redirect for speedy deletion due to criterion G11: The best South Park episode. I did this while not 100% sure that this article would have qualified for it. The name of this redirect made it seem only to exist to promote the article in which it directed, and served no other purpose. I was wanting feedback to see if this was a valid article/redirect to tag with the {{db-g11}}; however, I never received the opportunity due to an administrator speedy deleting this article, but in the notes, performed the speedy deletion due to criterion R2 R3; however, this redirect was over a year old, and should not have qualified for that criterion. As an RfD, this discussion was listed here. I never received an answer to my question regarding the G11 criteria due to this being deleted for a CSD criterion I did not post. So, in a case like this, would this redirect qualify for G11? And if the consensus is "yes", should we add to the current description of the G11 criteria to specifically state that redirect names qualify for this criterion as well? Steel1943 (talk) 01:33, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, that's an interesting question. As a general rule, I would agree that redirects like that should definitely be deleted, and that in a commercial context, DB-g11 would be a good fit. For your specific situation, I think there is merit in actually going through an XfD for the redirect, because there could, theoretically, be good sourcing for redirects like "Best Star Wars movie" -> "The Empire Strikes Back#critical reception", and other promotional or subjective redirects. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 01:40, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it qualified for a G11, because the purpose of that criteria is by design applicable to articles only. CSD needs to be very narrow, and it would set a bad precedent to start applying it to stuff because it seems that it 'fits'. I would have used a {{db-custom}} with the explanation that the redirect was essentially violating WP:POVNAMING. As for the age, I wouldn't necessarily consider it more than the number of incoming links, and whether or not the impact of the deletion could be softened with a round of mass semi-automated AWB edits (which I've done before when working with disambiguation pages). No comment as to why the admin would use R2 though. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 01:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Oops, I meant R3. (I'll have to fix what I said so it makes sense.) Steel1943 (talk) 01:49, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd agree with keeping that "Best Star Wars movie" example, most "bests" are pretty subjective, and as any such general class of redirect is going to be a festival of promotional horse-hockey. Still, I wonder if there's enough of these that it's worth speedy'ing them, are there many? --j⚛e decker ^talk 01:45, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The speedy criteria are intended to save time by expediting handling of common, uncontroversial situations. They should not be expanded to cover rare or hypothetical situations. Those can be handled by the regular deletion mechanisms if they don't fit an existing category.--agr (talk) 01:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

The general CSD apply in general to all namespaces including redirects and I don't see neither a reason why G11 would be exempt nor a need to mention this specifically. If a redirect only serves as promoting something or if they are being spammed across the board, I'd delete them per CSD G11, an example being all brand names by a minor company being redirected to the respective general product. The south park example is more of the fan-cruft type would not fit that bill imo. --Tikiwont (talk) 11:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I would agree with keeping the "Best Star Wars movie" example, either. The problem is, I'm not entirely sure that I wouldn't agree with keeping it, either. I think that some of those subjective redirects could, theoretically, be properly sourced and survive an XfD. I'm not giving an over/under on it, but I think it's worth hearing what editors have to say, and I'd absolutely love to see the evidence they can bring to bear. It'd definitely be a fun XfD to watch unfold. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 11:31, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It is a complete misunderstanding to say that "the purpose of that criteria is by design applicable to articles only". If it were, it would have an A for "article" at the beginning, not a G for "general". User space pages, for example are very often deleted under criterion G11. in fact my guess is that the proportion of user page deletions that cite G11 is probably far higher than the proportion of article deletions. Absolutely any page of any sort can be deleted under CSD G11 if it is purely promotional, and while I cannot remember a case of a redirect being deleted because of a promotional title, there is absolutely no reason at all why that shouldn't happen in an appropriate case. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:47, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I regularly delete article talk pages, user pages, user talk pages and sandboxes under G11. I too can't recall using it on a redirect, but I can see no objection to it. As JBW says, it is a G class criterion and applicable to anywhere. (I've probably used the 'implausible' thing instead...) Peridon (talk) 12:55, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Just like Peridon, I use G11 applicable to promotional pages in other than article space (in addition to the examples he gives, I & others have been using it very selectively in WP Talk space for AfCs that are outrageously and hopelessly promotional, though it's necessary to be relatively tolerant there for articles that might get improved). But I also agree with those who said that a redirect like this should go to RfD, because people might reasonably disagree on it. DGG ( talk ) 23:27, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Should the redirect plausably serve any navigational purpose (such as a redirect from a somewhat well-known ad to the company/product it's for), then WP:RNEUTRAL should apply; if it clearly doesn't, it should be G11-ed; in borderline cases, go to RFD. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletions, adequate evaluation of candidates for deletion, and appeal process

My brand new stub article created less than 12 hours ago and with only one revision (the initial revision) has been deleted under this policy and under the wrong deletion criteria. I don't think the cache even cleared to include my rebuttal on the talk page before it was deleted. So a few things come of this: 1) This policy mentions, but does not appear to state any process for an editor like myself to appeal the deletion. 2) This policy should require this: "Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way." and nominators and administrators must be held accountable to it. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 04:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

WP:Deletion review? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:57, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

No, we don't use DR for speedy deletions. If you think a speedy deletion is made in error, you should contact the deleting administrator. If you want to simply retrieve the content of the deleted article you can post at WP:REFUND. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:07, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess I misread Deletion Review (DRV) is a forum designed primarily for disputed deletions and speedy deletions. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:28, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, the poster is right, this is confusing. DRV says that you can use it "if a speedy deletion was done outside of the criteria or is otherwise disputed", so I suppose it is the step to take after attempting to contact the deleting admin. This needs to be clarified in several places. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:01, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the template message left on the creating editor's page, in this case User_talk:Sborsody#Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_K-Arrow_Ranch, I see it takes several sentences to explain about what to do between the addition of the Speedy tag and the disappearance of the page (which may be from one minute upwards), and only one sentence, the last, on what to do after the page has been deleted. For a novice editor who probably doesn't spend a lot of time online, that last sentence should perhaps be made more prominent, at least by splitting it into a new paragraph. It should also include, perhaps "If you wish to challenge the grounds on which it was deleted ...", as this is not mentioned (it just says "If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here.") The above discussion shows that there can be uncertainty, even among experienced editors, about the correct procedure to follow. Bear in mind that a novice editor will not necessarily know how to find out which admin deleted the page - it's not obvious that clicking on the red link to the page will get you anywhere, as red links usually don't go anywhere. PamD 08:43, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Looking at WP:DRV, I note "Before listing a review request please attempt to discuss the matter with the admin who deleted the page as this could resolve the matter more quickly. ", so it's all the more important to make sure that the inexperienced editor is told where to find out who the admin was. PamD 09:15, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

the article has been userified by another admin; it is now at User:Sborsody/K-Arrow Ranch . I consider it not to have been a correct speedy deletion, but unless better references are added, it will never make it in mainspace. The problem of writing clear directions for notices that will be accurate without overwhelming the user has defeated everyone at WP. Perhaps we can think of some way of having the information actually be customized programatically--it should be easily possible to automatically send a notice to the user when an article is deleted, giving the name of the admin who did it. Sure, we admins would have to deal with a good many more appeals that way, but first of all we'd have a chance to explain and perhaps guide the user to a sustainable article--and it is even possible that some of the appeals might be correct. The need to give people time to finish has been in conflict with the need to delete the undobubtable utter junk quickly. I know I make errors, though I hope they're rare--but I can only fix the ones people tell me about. DGG ( talk ) 05:45, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Template:Bsr

Not sure where to discuss this, but {{Bsr}} could use some updating. Does this follow a policy or guideline about hotlinks/vague sources? What it currently link to was removed years ago. « Ryūkotsusei » 11:06, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a reasonably well-used template that tags an image about problems with its sourcing ... a quick perusal of "what links here" shows a good number of recent tags using it. (✉→BWilkins←✎) 10:25, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

No, he's talking about the link to Wikipedia:Citing sources#Images, which is not a valid section within that document, and contains exactly zero information pertinent to the BSR tag. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 10:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Soft redirects to foreign-language Wikipedias

Recently Concarril, a soft redirect to es:Bombardier Transportation México was nominated for speedy deletion under criterion WP:CSD#R2 (Cross-namespace redirects) by user:Steel1943 and deleted under that criterion by user:RHaworth.

There is a consensus that "Soft redirects to non-English language editions of Wikipedia should be avoided because they will generally be unhelpful to English-language readers." (from Wikipedia:Soft redirect), but other projects are not mentioned anywhere in the R2 criteria. Expanding R2 to explicitly include other projects, or the meaning of "cross-namespace", to include other projects would not be good because soft-redirects to other English-language (e.g Wiktionary) or multi-lingual (e.g. Commons) are well used and should not be deleted.

Accordingly if we want them to be speedy deletable then we should either explicitly add Soft redirects to non-English projects to R2 or as a new R4 criterion. I am not aware that they are a common issue, but equally I am not aware that any have ever been kept. Thryduulf (talk) 16:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

This began at Wikipedia talk:Redirect/Archive 2013#Question. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:24, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduulf's analysis. Redirects to non-English language editions of Wikipedia seem to fall logically under R2. This should be added explicitly. - ʈucoxn\^talk 01:10, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the transclusions of {{Interwiki redirect}} I can see that there is a actually an acceptable use of soft redirects to non-English wikis for user and user talk pages, so those namespaces should be excluded. Thus I think the wording should be something like

wikipedia:Soft redirects to non-English Wikis from any namespace except the User: and User talk: namespaces. This does not apply to soft redirects to multi-lingual wikis such as Meta or Commons.

Given this has different namespace restrictions to the existing parts of R2 and requires different clarification, I'm now thinking this would work better as R4. Thryduulf (talk) 10:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I think you're right. R2 seems to be a housekeeping criterion, while we're talking about a distinctly different reasoning, where redirects are removed due to language/intelligibility concerns. I, for one, would gladly support an R4 for redirects to a Wikimedia project in another language. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 11:00, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

It'd be good to do this. How about:

R4. Interlanguage redirects in article space.

Any redirects (including soft redirects) from the main namespace to a non-English edition of Wikipedia, or to another non-English wiki (for example, French Wikibooks). This criterion does not include pages in any other namespace, nor does it include redirects to any English-language projects (such as Wiktionary or Wikivoyage).

— This, that and the other (talk) 22:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

That's generally good, but I'd include all namespaces except user and user talk and explicitly exclude multi-lingual wikis:

R4. Interlanguage redirects.: Any redirects (including soft redirects) to a non-English edition of Wikipedia, or to another non-English wiki (for example, French Wikibooks). This criterion does not include pages in the User: or User talk: namespaces, nor does it include redirects to any English-language project (such as Wiktionary or Wikivoyage) or multilingual projects (such as Wikimedia Commons or Meta wiki).

I think the explicit exclusion of multi-lingual projects is vital, but I'm prepared to support restricting it to article space if others prefer that. Thryduulf (talk) 15:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why we can't allow interlanguage redirects in other namespaces, but then again, I can't think of a reason why we would ever need them in, say, project space. I just felt more comfortable covering article namespace only, since it is obvious that they are never wanted there.

I also think that if R4 only applies to mainspace, then redirects to the multilingual wikis should be disallowed, as they are akin to cross-namespace redirects (Meta is like projectspace, and there is no reason to redirect from mainspace to Commons). But if R4 applies to all namespaces, the multilingual wiki exception should stay, since soft redirects from projectspace to meta, etc. are very important. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there will be many cases where we use soft redirects from the main namespace to multilingual wikis, but as there might be some and the reason foreign language wikis aren't useful targets (not helpful to English speakers) doesn't apply they should be discussed on their merits not speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 00:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

True; I don't have a problem with that. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

R4 proposal

Well, we have a new CSD criteria proposed for inclusion... I think it would be a fairly uncontroversial inclusion, but obviously policy changes need consensus, and WP:SILENCE is weak... are there objections to this proposed text of R4? — This, that and the other (talk) 06:36, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

R4. Interlanguage redirects.: Any redirects (including soft redirects) pointing to a non-English edition of Wikipedia, or to another non-English wiki (for example, French Wikibooks).; This criterion does not include pages in the User: or User talk: namespaces, nor does it include redirects to any English-language project (such as Wiktionary or Wikivoyage) or multilingual projects (such as Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki).

Support as co-proposer. Thryduulf (talk) 17:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Note I've left notes about this proposal at Wikipedia talk:Redirects for discussion, Wikipedia talk:Redirect and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) to try and attract some input. Thryduulf (talk) 17:20, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose; shocking as it may seem, there are still some English speakers who can understand a foreign language or two. There shouldn't be automatic redirects to non-English pages (if that's even technically possible), but soft redirects ought to be left in place, on the grounds that something is better than nothing. (Obviously replacing them with a stub article is much better, but deleting them won't help that to happen.) Victor Yus (talk) 17:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Support though this situation doesn't arise very often (and I suspect it would be better included as a special case of one of the other criteria), it is suitable for speedy deletion. Our target audience is English speakers and all of our content is written on the assumption that the reader is an English speaker. Foreign language redirects are useless to the typical English speaker and discourage the creation of English articles at those titles. Wikipedia:Soft redirect discourages the creation of such redirects, and I can't think of any situation where one could be useful. Exactly what constitutes a redirect to a foreign language article is unambiguous. Hut 8.5 18:56, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Support as the editor who originally thought that these types of redirects fell under the CSD criterion R2. Articles belong on the version of Wikipedia that corresponds with the language of which it is written. If an editor has the desire to translate an article they find on a foreign language Wikipedia, go for it. The inclusion of redirects to foreign language Wikipedias would only serve the purpose to confuse readers. Steel1943 (talk) 19:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure where any of you lot are coming from. You may not know foreign languages, and they may be useless to the "typical" English speaker, but they are useful to some English speakers, and harmless to the others. Also such redirects may encourage the creation of an article - more so than a vacuum will, anyway. The soft redirect template could be worded so as not to be confusing, and indeed can include an encouragement to create an article, possibly based on the foreign-language one. Taking such links away and leaving nothing whatever in their place seems to me to be prima facie unhelpful and destructive. (That someone here "can't think of any situation where one could be useful" is bizarre - does it really not fit into your world view that someone reading English Wikipedia might also be able to read another language? Of course people could search the foreign-language Wikipedia directly, but not everyone has such detailed knowledge of the wikisphere to realize that such language versions exist, to know where to find them, or to appreciate that the articles are not in 1-1 correspondence - and anyway, why make it deliberately harder for them?) Victor Yus (talk) 06:24, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The argument that "they are useful to some English speakers and harmless to the others" would also apply if someone tried to insert foreign language text into one of our articles. Foreign language material is fundamentally inaccessible to the vast majority of our readers. (Even if one of our readers does speak a foreign language that information is useless unless they know the right foreign language for the material.) The community has already decided that these redirects aren't appropriate. Hut 8.5 08:27, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

But these are not text - these are links - and we DO insert links to foreign-language Wikipedias in our articles! It is bizarre and illogical to say that we can have such links when we have an article, but can't when we don't - it is the latter situation when the link in question is more likely to be useful (since there is nothing else for our reader to read). If "the community has decided" (i.e. two or three people possibly decided once) that these links aren't appropriate, then the community should think again, which is the purpose, I would have supposed, of the present discussion. (Well I agree they aren't really appropriate, since there "should" be at least a stub article - but they are decidedly better than nothing.) Victor Yus (talk) 08:46, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually they are worse than nothing, because a blue link disguises the fact that we are missing an article - see WP:REDLINK. The argument that a redirect to a foreign language is useful also breaks down when there is more than one non-English version available - although a German-language article is more likely to be understood by an English speaker than say an Armenian one and a featured Japanese article more useful than a stub Mandarin one, how do you decide which one of similar standard French, Spanish and Italian articles do you choose to redirect to? The possibility of including interlanguage sidebar links on non-existant pages is outside the scope of this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 12:17, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I understand the redlink argument, but don't think it can carry much weight - it would be an equally valid argument for deleting any redirect (except synonyms I suppose). But if there is more than one non-English version available, it is surely better to link to one of them than to none of them?!? The template could even be programmed to say that links to other language articles might be present on the one we're linkng to. Victor Yus (talk) 08:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Spend some time at RfD and you will see that the redlink point comes up very frequently - redlinks encourage the creation of articles we want, bluelinks discourage the creation of ones we don't (duplicate articles, synonyms, spelling differences (e.g. colour/color), information already covered in a section on an existing article, BLP1Es, things notable only in the context of a larger subject, etc). Having the information that is displayed when a page doesn't exist linking to existing articles in other languages is a good idea (it's a MediaWiki page rather than a template though), and Wikidata may make this possible (I don't know) but it is not relevant to this proposal as it would apply to every redlink and remain a redlink rather than being a (soft) redirect. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Support, if the creator of the redirect is sufficiently knowledgeable about the topic to define the English language title is equivalent to a non-English article; they are sufficiently knowledgeable to create a referenced stub about the subject in English, which can easily be populated with the inter-langauge link. If the creator is unable to create the stub then the person is presumably insufficiently versed in the subject to make an accurate redirect. Any other failure of a stub (WP:AfD, etc) is likewise sufficient reason to delete the redirect. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:37, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

But he might have just been too lazy or busy to create the stub. Deletion isn't for punishing creators; it's for getting rid of useless stuff, which this plainly isn't, as I've continually argued. Victor Yus (talk) 08:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

A redirect to a foreign language is useless for everyone who does not speak that specific foreign language - consensus has been clear on this point as long as I've been an editor (since December 2004). This is no more about punishing creators than any other criteria (go look at G2, G5, G11, G12, A1, A7, A9, A10, R3 and T3 for ones more likely seen to be "punishing" editors). Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

No it is not!! If consensus has been clear on this point in the past, then it is so no longer, because it is a plain ridiculous assertion. A redirect to Portuguese is not entirely useless to me, even though I don't speak Portuguese. To someone who does speak Portuguese, it is potentially extremely useful. It really doesn't help the discussion to keep repeating claims that we can all see are absurd. Victor Yus (talk) 10:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Support per all comments above. That said, we should have some way to point red links to similar articles in other languages. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:28, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Caveat Not having thought this through to the point of a definite opinion, the current proposal lacks any mention of edit history. If there is actual content underneath, the redirect shouldn't be deleted speedily unless the content itself is speedible. The other issue is lack of alternatives as a prerequsite, in lines of the A10 clause and the sense that there mustn't be an obvious target for a redirect here. --Tikiwont (talk) 17:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
- I agree fully with that, but does it need to be specified given it's just a standard application of WP:BEFORE? Thryduulf (talk) 23:38, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as a stand-alone rule. My only real objection here is that I think it fails on frequency. That is, it is not a common enough problem to merit yet another criterion. In nearly four years as an admin I don't believe I have ever encountered such a page or even heard of one existing until this very discussion.Beeblebrox (talk) 23:19, 26 February 2013 (UTC)
- If you read the discussions that resulted in this proposal it is discussed that it is indeed infrequent, but they are always deleted when they do appear, sometimes incorrectly shoehorned into a criterion, sometimes IAR deleted (something that should never be acceptable), and sometimes via RfD. It is proposed as a separate criterion rather than as part of another one as there isn't a suitable one - the only one that comes close is R2 but that is about redirects internal to en.wp, applies only to the main namespace only (this is everything except user and user talk) and excludes various namespaces (which this does not). Integration would therefore be cumbersome and decrease the clarity of both the existing and proposed criteria - particularly with something as potentially controversial as speedy deletion were the exact wording is important we need to strive for the greatest clarity we can. So unless you can come up with something we've missed, the options are either having this as a stand-alone rule or not having this rule. Thryduulf (talk) 23:38, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I get that, I really do, but the purpose of CSD is to reduce the workload of XFD discussions. If these are only created on a very infrequent basis I don't think it is worth it to have yet another rule. It may seem like rules are free and have no cost to the project but the more rules we have the less likely it is that they will all be followed, per WP:CREEP and deletion criteria are often used to try and trip up admin candidates, which I could easily see hapening with a rule as esoteric as this one. Rules are meant to solve problems, and I just don't think there is enough of a problem here to warrant a new one. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Usually I would be agreeing with almost everything you said (RfA is very broken, but as WereSpielChequers frequently points out, it is an open book exam, so there is no reason for anyone who knows the existence of the criteria page to get "tripped up", anyone who doesn't know the page exists or doesn't refer to it when they aren't intimately familiar with a criterion or situation is not ready to be an admin. The brokenness of RFA is irrelevant to whether this criterion is necessary or not though) but these redirects are being speedy deleted out of process as it is so the status quo is not working and needs fixing. Given that the consensus is always that these should be deleted then the best way to stop the out of process deletions is amend the process so that they are within it. If we don't enact this criterion then we need to add words to the effect that "this criterion does not apply to (soft) redirects to other wikis" to R2 to make it clear these need to be deleted at RfD. Thryduulf (talk) 01:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, this isn't a very popular opinion of late but I am comfortable with just going ahead and deleting them out of process. We used to have a thing called ignoring a rule if following it in a specific case was a detriment to the project, but your own remarks reflect the oft-expressed opinion that this is never ok when it comes to speedy deletion. This seems to me to be the crux of where we disagree about this. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The part of IAR that doesn't often get mentioned is that it is better to change a rule than to repeatedly ignore it. Policies are meant to be descriptive of consensus, so when they are not in agreement it is time to change the policy. CSD is especially important for this because of the way deletion works - there is consensus that admins may not delete anything without consensus, CSD is just a list of very the limited cases where it is agreed that consensus in a deletion discussion will always be to delete so it does not need to be explicitly affirmed each time. Deletion in any other circumstance is not in accordance with consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Oppose as written but I would support a more limited criteria: A hard-redirect to another-language Wikipedia may be deleted. The case of a soft-redirect with little or no explaination is arguably already covered under criteria A3: No content. Where there is a soft-redirect accompanied by some meaningful, encyclopedic test, the article should not be speedy deleted under either this proposed criteria or under A3. Instead, it should either be turned into a stub with an interwiki link, PRODded away, deleted under some other speedy-deletion category, or, preferably, improved into a "real" article. As with any SPEEDY criteria, the case of previous edits existing is already covered by the understanding that speedy-deletes that could be rolled back to a previous non-speedy-deletable version should be declined and as such should never be made in the first place. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidwr (talk • contribs) 01:54, 27 February 2013‎ (UTC)

A3, no content, only applies to articles, and a redirect is not an article, so it does not apply in this case. Ego White Tray (talk) 04:00, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I guess that depends on whether you consider a softredirect a redirect or an article for the purpose of speedy-deletion criteria. The answer may vary depending on if it has additional text or not, and if so, if that text is encyclopedic and on-topic. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

A page is a soft redirect if it contains a link to another page and no information about the subject, whether or not it explicitly calls itself a redirect or soft redirect. If it contains information about the subject, at all, then it is not a redirect but an article with a see-also link. As currently set up, hard redirects to other wikis do not work and are soft redirects, see user:Thryduulf/R to other wiki for example. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Support as with the others above, I can't imagine a single case where this would be useful. It would end up looking like a blue link, and as such set back the creation of the related article. I'd like to prohibit in-text linking to the foreign-language articles too, but that's for another venue. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:39, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I honestly can't imagine how any intelligent person could be unable to imagine how this would be useful. Am I living on another planet? Some people can read foreign languages, honestly. And even if they can't, they still might be able to glean some pertinent information from the target article - birth and death dates, for example. And using Google Translator, a lot more. And surely, by providing links to an existing WP article on the topic, they actually make it a lot easier for someone to create an article on the topic. It seems incredible to me that people can't see this, and just want to zap the useful links. Victor Yus (talk) 08:57, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

See above for where I have explained how foreign languages are not useful and how blue links disguising the absence of English content are harmful. For extracting birth and death dates and highlighting the existence of other language articles you have good ideas but you are arguing in the wrong place. You should be making a proposal to display this information automatically on non-existent pages by making use of Wikidata - it would seem to be a perfect fit and far more useful than necessarily manually finding and creating a redirect to another language version of Wikipedia which is guaranteed not be understandable by the majority of readers. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)\

See above where I've explained how foreign languages are useful, and how links to foreign language articles may well assist (rather than hamper) the creation of English articles. Victor Yus (talk) 10:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Everything you've said has been making a case for including links to other language articles on redlinks (and I agree with you that they would be useful), not why manually created redirects to one other non-English language are useful to readers of English - you might be able to extract birth and death dates from Portuguese biographies, but when was تخت سلیمان built? What club does Steve Tikolo play for? Why is Ludwik Natanson notable? How high are the Munții Lăpușului? Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

With either a little language knowledge (which many of our readers will have) or judicious use of Google Translate, I could answer all these questions. If in some cases I (or the reader in question) couldn't, then that's too bad - Wikipedia's not perfect. But you must surely see that in many cases a link to a foreign-language WP article on a subject will be useful (not only to readers, but also to editors planning to create an English-language article on the topic). In no case will it really harm anybody (except in making redlinks blue, but that happens on stub-creation too, and I believe the benefits in this case - a pointer to an existing (foreign) WP article and its references - well outweigh any harm to article creation). So there isn't really any purpose to be served by deleting such a "redirect", unless the deleter plans to replace it with something better. Victor Yus (talk) 17:09, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Again you are missing the point - a list of links to content on other wikis for people who can read that language are probably useful but they are not redirects. See the discussion at the village pump where adding these is being discussed. What this proposal addresses is redirects and soft redirects that (a) disguise the fact we don't have any English-language content and (b) dump readers expecting English content onto a page that is either in a different language (violating the principle of least surprise) or appears broken. Also remember that we should absolutely never require people to use external websites or tools to view our content as they are not available in all places or on all devices. Thryduulf (talk) 20:00, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I've already said I don't support hard redirects to foreign-language wikis (I don't even think they're technically possible, but if they are they should be converted to soft ones). A soft redirect is essentially the "list of links" that you say is probably useful, in a situation where the list only contains one item. There are several things that might be done in a given situation to make such objects serve people better, but thoughtlessly deleting them (which is what this proposal would encourage) simply cuts the link and makes it harder for everyone in the future to gain any of the potential benefits provided by the existing foreign article. Your argument about "external websites" is not really pertinent - again, no-one's saying that this content (or any other content) will be useful to everybody, but it will be useful to a significant number of people, since a significant number can understand something of the foreign language, and a very significant number more (nearly all) have translation tools tools available. The others click the "Back" button, as they would on clicking a redlink (not everyone knows Wikipedia color-coding) or a link to a mini-stub. Assuming there are even any links to the title in question; it might serve merely as a potential term to enter in the search box. Victor Yus (talk) 07:42, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment. I have a bit of an addition to make to my previously metioned oppose. If this new CSD criterion gets passed, there should be a section in the description that recommends and suggests to editors to create at least a stub-class article (instead of creating the cross-language WikiPedia redirect) if there are no articles that currently exist on the English Wikipedia that contain enough information for the term to be reasonably directed towards. In this scenario, editors will have an article to add onto, and readers will have something to read that is in English. This could serve a greater purpose than having a reader/editor being redirected towards an article that is not in their native language (or, for that matter, a language that they can understand at all), or not being able to find any information about their topic due to the article not existing/being a red link. Steel1943 (talk) 04:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
- Absolutely creating a stub or retargetting to an English article/page should be preferred, but is that not just standard WP:BEFORE and WP:ATD? Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I would say "Yes"; however, since I was once a novice editor, once upon a time and while trying to become familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, I made some careless bold edits and decisions. Lucky for me, there was/is an established Wikipedia community who was able to help me figure out how to find the resources on here to make wise and helpful edits. With that being said, what I'm suggesting is that if/when Template:Db-r4 and Template:Db-r4/doc are created, due to the nature of this criteria, I'm recommending that a note be placed on both suggesting that the article be attempted to be "stubified" first... Actually, that just gave me an idea about verbiage that should be added to the redirect text ... my recommended change will be in BOLD and placed below DGG's current comment. Steel1943 (talk) 05:50, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
But if you make speedy deletion the norm in such cases, then there will be no time to consider "alternatives" to deletion - Admin Zap will just come along with his ray gun and blast away. Victor Yus (talk) 10:51, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

When evaluating a speedy deletion nomination an admin is supposed to consider whether it is valid or whether other alternatives exist. If the admin isn't doing this then the admin is at fault not the criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Welcome to the Victor and Thryduulf show, contrary to what appears to be your belief, this is not about the personal beliefs either of you hold. Your constant commentary on every opinion is neither desired nor helpful. Why don't you two pick one or the others talk page to discuss this relatively minor discussion in full detail. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:29, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
Support in concept but not wording because it doesn't go nearly far enough. It should simply say that any redirects going to *anywhere* other than English version of Wikipedia should be deleted. DreamGuy (talk) 03:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
- That would also cover things like soft redirects to the English Wiktionary (e.g from Building site and per annum), Commons and from project space to Meta (e.g. Wikipedia:The Wrong Version). I personally couldn't support speedy deletion of them. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: This needs to be thought out further Where we do not yet provide information on our WP, we should if possible provide links to it on other WP projects. But we need to do this with judgement. It is not reasonable to make an ordinary redirect, which takes English-speaking readers without warning to a page in a language they may not read. At the least, it must indicate the language, and this would require a special redirect function of some sort to be used. Perhaps the simplest would be a link to an intermediate landing page--I think a template could deal with the necessary function. But in any case each case may be different, and it is not somethingthat should be done for any one are direct without community consultation. Some will be obviously wrong, but it will require a knowledge of both the subject and the target knowledge, and that issomething which we do not require of admins. A speedy criterion shouldbe one which any admin can apply and get it right, not one that requires such qualifications. DGG ( talk ) 04:24, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
- Something very like this is being proposed regarding incorporating interwiki links on non-existent pages, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 108#Redlinks that still point to other languages and d:Project chat:Interwiki links for non-existent articles. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Recommended change to verbiage on criterion. I gave this a bit of thought, and I was thinking the criterion could read something more like this to avoid unnecessary deletion of redirects:

R4. Interlanguage redirects.:Any redirects (including soft redirects) pointing to a non-English edition of Wikipedia, or to another non-English wiki (for example, French Wikibooks) that cannot be reasonably redirected towards any existing article on the English Wikipedia.: This criterion does not include pages in the User: or User talk: namespaces, nor does it include redirects to any English-language project (such as Wiktionary or Wikivoyage) or multilingual projects (such as Wikimedia Commons or Meta-Wiki).

~~...any thoughts on this possible addition to the criterion? Would the additions possibly change some "Oppose" votes to "Support"?~~ Steel1943 (talk) 05:50, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

If such wording were added to R4, it should by analogy be added to all the A* criteria. I really don't see the point of adding it here and I find the objections based on this rather bizarre. It's standard due diligence (not specific to this proposed criterion) to check if a page should be redirected before CSD-tagging or deleting it. And in the end it hardly matters: if the page is deleted, then a redirect can always be created in its place later on. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:18, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't object to it per se, but given that it is implied by almost every criterion (basically everything except G5, G7, G9, G12, F8, C1, C2A and U1 - see WP:BEFORE and WP:ATD) it would seem to weaken the requirement for doing so on the other criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. However, I'm starting to agree with a few of the editors who are either "Unsure" or "Oppose" regarding the fact that the wording for the criterion needs to be changed in one way or another. After reviewing the wording, it honestly does seem like blanket removing all redirects towards foreign language Wikipedias might be a bit too much ... unless something can be done that involves Wikidata to solve this issue, as mentioned below. Steel1943 (talk) 02:16, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

This discussion has been going on for more than a week now, and the replies have started to die down. Have we reached a verdict? Steel1943 (talk) 04:54, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Verdict at this point is no consensus. The current proposal would not seem likely to gain consensus as written. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 11:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that what this discussion has shown clearly is that there is a desire to link non-existent articles here with extant equivalents in other languages. There isn't a consensus for how best to do this, but I suspect that interwikis/wikidata is the way forward most likely to get somewhere. My feeling on this proposal is that it's a no consensus now but should be reconsidered when the interwiki issue is resolved one way or another. Accordingly I strongly encourage those interested to take part in the linked discussions at the village pump and at Wikidata. Thryduulf (talk) 23:22, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Redlinks that point to other languages

I just started a thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 108#Redlinks that still point to other languages asking if having redlinks point to other languages is possible. If this could be implemented, I would assume any objections to making the redirects would be gone. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:33, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't there once a feature that made links to stubs (or articles below a certain length) show up a different color? That would be useful here, since the situation of a short English stub is very similar to the situation of an existing foreign article - there is some information potentially available (so we don't want to imply to readers that there's no point clicking the link), but because the information is not good quality (it's in the wrong language, or there isn't enough of it) we want a way of flagging that editorial work is badly needed. Victor Yus (talk) 17:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I have that turned on, but I added it so long ago I don't remember where I got it. It's some sort of user script that makes shorter articles show up as as a sort of purple of very dark red when linked to. I imagine you could find it at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:21, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Anomie's linkclassifier is what I use for that. It colors stubs purple, and does a bunch of other things, too (articles considered for deletion are pink, dab pages are highlighted in yellow, redirects are green, etc.). It's handy, and I like the pretty colors. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:35, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

In this case, the {{Link-interwiki}} template should be used. The equivalent template is used liberally on frwiki to indicate a good translation source. Example: {{Link-interwiki|lang=fr|lang_title=Centrale du Rapide-Blanc|en=Rapide-Blanc Generating Station}} would render like Rapide-Blanc Generating Station [fr]. - Bouchecl (talk) 06:26, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

There might be some way to integrate such information into Wikidata, since that seems to be where all of the foreign language links are headed towards now. This question might be directed more towards someone who has actually used Wikidata (since I have not): is there a way, or allowed, for Wikidata to have information stating that, let's say, a article on the French Wikipedia would reasonably exist on the English Wikipedia as a certain name, even if it is a redlink? Then, if that article exists on a foreign language Wikipedia, but not on the English Wikipedia, it could have a note like the one in Bouchecl's comment above? I'm thinking a resolution might be able to come out of answers to these questions. Steel1943 (talk) 05:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 108#Redlinks that still point to other languages and d:Wikidata:Project chat#Interwiki links for non-existent articles. Thryduulf (talk) 09:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

user:Train2104

Train2104 (talk · contribs) is doing drive-by-tagging with {{di-no source}} on many images with sources, and on images which are {{PD-simple}} or {{PD-text}}, therefore not needing sources to be kept anyways. It seems like a high degree of lack of attention, not bothering to read the actual file description page. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:47, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

This issue was brought up to the user almost an hour after this post was left here; the user responded to it there. Unless the user continues after the date of these posts, there is no need for any further action anywhere. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

CSD G5

Hi,

I've looked at criterion G5, which says that pages created by banned or blocked users should be deleted. Shouldn't it be just pages created by banned users should be deleted? I mean, it seems slightly redundant to say that pages created by blocked users should be deleted as blocked users cannot create pages.^King Jakob _C2 15:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It means that if someone is blocked, evades the block with a sockpuppet and creates a new page, then the page can be deleted under G5. Hut 8.5 15:02, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Then shouldn't it say pages created by sockpuppets of banned or blocked users?^King Jakob _C2 15:06, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Short and sweet is best.—Kww(talk) 15:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that the user has to be a sockpuppet. If the editor is allowed to edit, but a WP:TBAN prevents the editor to create certain articles, then G5 probably applies if such articles are created anyway. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:14, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2)There are types of bans that do not involve blocks. In some situations an editor can be banned from editing any articles about a certain topic. If an editor were to create an article about that topic then it could be deleted under G5, even though the editor wasn't using a sockpuppet. Hut 8.5 15:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 2) I agree. Although, it's funny, I was just thinking of suggesting that we include "SPI ^confirmed _suspected" links after the name of the user in question on the G5 template. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 15:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't say that "pages created by banned or blocked users should be deleted"; the actual text of the entry is "Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others. G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates." Notice the boldface wording: it already covers the situations under discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

PinkAmpersand: SPI is not required, and would be a substantial burden on the handful of administrators that focus on sockpuppeting. SPI is a way for editors to gain administrative attention and for administrators to gain checkuser attention. It is not, and has never been, a mandatory component of dealing with sockpuppetry.—Kww(talk) 16:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I'm aware. But since G5 is possibly the speedy tag it takes the longest for an administrator to review, I think SPI links could be useful if they exist. Something like

({{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/{{{1|}}}|[[Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/{{{1|}}}|SPI]]}} {{#ifexist:Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1|}}}|[[:Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1|}}}|confirmed]]}} {{#ifexist:Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1|}}}|[[:Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1|}}}|suspected]]}})

after the link to the sockpuppeteer's username in the deletion tag could do the trick rather nicely, I think. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 16:19, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I've got no objection to the template expansion giving a handy pointer to a reviewing admin.—Kww(talk) 17:15, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Since {{Db-g5}} is only semi'ed, I went ahead and boldly added the SPI links. WP:BRD is of course welcome, as are any improvements to the syntax I used. Oh, and I also threw in a {{gender:}} parser, since "his or her ban or block" is a pretty awkward phrasing. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 09:40, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

2nd related proposal

The criterion G5 could just deal with pages created by "accounts not permitted to edit", which would apply to both sockpuppets and banned users. How does that sound?^King Jakob _C2 21:58, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally I think that's less clear than the current wording. Hut 8.5 22:55, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

But also less confusing in another way; "pages created by...blocked users" makes it sound like blocked users can edit/create pages.^King Jakob _C2 23:51, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

But it's clear what "blocked users" is referring to. Putting "accounts not permitted to edit" isn't going to be a very good explanation to anyone who isn't familiar with our banning and blocking policies, unless you go on to explain that the phrase means banned and blocked users (but if we do that there's little point in changing it). Hut 8.5 09:31, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment I've steered clear of this criterion in practice so far. I am uncertain about it and its application. Does 'banned' apply to site bans only or to topic bans as well? Can a site banned editor edit other than by use of a sockpuppet? (Yes, I have just reread the policy...) Would it be possible for the tagger to share their knowledge of this sockpuppetry by identifying the puppetmaster? I sometimes see cases where this tag is used, but there's no indication on the author's page that they are a sockpuppet, or even are suspected as a sock. Peridon (talk) 11:04, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. There is a grey zone between legitimate use of alternative accounts and illegitimate sockpuppetry. Worse, accounts playing in this grey zone often create worthwhile content and interweave with others. Speedy deletion of such pages could be very clumsy. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

If someone is banned, does that not apply to their alternative accounts too? From what I read in the policy, site ban is site ban, no matter what the quality of the editing. The site banned user is cast out of the community to wander in the wilderness and is not allowed to return even to weed the cabbage patch. (But things they planted before the ban was enacted are not to be trashed out of hand.) Illegitimate sock accounts get indef blocked, but the master may only get a temporary block. Anything done during the block period that they are responsible for is presumably a block evasion and to be dealt with appropriately. Someone with an active legitimate alternative account is not, to my mind, truly banned. Peridon (talk) 12:34, 19 February 2013 (UTC)Inserted list format for clarity.^King Jakob _C2 12:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

In response to User:SmokeyJoe, we could consider half-legit-half-sock accounts on a case-by-case basis. And if an article genuinely improves Wikipedia, then it should, of course, be kept (I consider G5 to be more to do with articles that are less wonderful; if we delete an FA by a banned user, that just seems a bit punative).^King Jakob _C2 12:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The 2nd proposal refers to sockpuppets without specifying that the person behind the account was blocked or banned. Also, I don't see the problem with the current wording. Block & Ban evaders are already subject to G5, which allows immediate deletion on the judgment of a single admin. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
If a user is topic banned, than he isn't covered by "accounts not permitted to edit"; if he creates an article on the topic in question, it should be G5-able. This point was made in this edit. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:00, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Comment. I never liked G5. I rarely delete anything on the basis of G5. In fact, I have declined numerous G5 nominations because the article content was worth keeping. Good content is good content regardless of who created it. The times I recall deleting anything with a G5 tag, I deleted for other reasons (obvious hoax, vandalism, non-notable subject, promotion, insignificant content, etc.). I don't see G5 as a valid deletion rationale. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:24, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Then please don't interfere with its application. If you don't like a CSD category, ignore the requests instead of declining them. Bans apply to all edits, good and bad.—Kww(talk) 21:38, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
I often do ignore them. However, a slavish adherence to the letter of a deletion criterion to the point where it is misapplied, does not benefit this project. When I see what appears to be G5 being abused to remove perfectly good content as some sort of "punishment", you're damned right I will "interfere" with its application. Abuse of speedy deletion criteria requires that we "interfere" with their application. The content of an article should determine whether or not it is kept, not the author. People also abuse G6 to circumvent the WP:RM process; and I "interfere" with that application of G6 on a regular basis. Similarly I will continue to decline any G5 nominations that give the appearance of being doled out as punishment. ~Amatulić (talk) 15:05, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
G5 is intended to get rid of the contributions of banned editors. The content of an article created by a banned editor is completely and absolutely irrelevant. It's not wrong to apply the criteria as intended.—Kww(talk) 15:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
No, the identity of the author of quality content is completely and absolutely irrelevant to a decision about keeping that content. Wikipedia does not foster (last I heard) a culture of punishment. As Ego White Tray says below, just because you can delete something doesn't mean you should. I agree that g5 is useful for deleting borderline stuff that may otherwise waste the community's time with the AFD process, and I do delete those, but far too often I see G5 nominations that obviously constitute slavish adherence to a deletion criterion that wasn't intended to be abused in that fashion. Heck, I've even had to decline G5 nominations on articles that were created before the author ever got blocked. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no real agreement on how to handle blocked and banned editors--basically because we have not found anything effective. we do need a way to quickly get rid of the worst problems without lengthy discussion, and therefore G5 is necessary. But I have always regarded it as subject to discretion--except that an editor who declines a G5 does in some sense take responsibility for saying that hey do not consider the content harmful. Almost always I agree with Kww, and either delete or leave it for someone else. But sometimes when I feel confident it is an asset to the encyclopedia, then I will decline. AfD always remains available if someone disagrees. ` DGG ( talk ) 06:07, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Clarification As I understand it, the criteria is that it can be deleted if it was created in violation of the block/ban. So if the creation of the page violates their block or ban, it qualifies. So if an editor creates an article, and he has a topic ban against on the topic of that article, it qualifies. That said, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Ego White Tray (talk) 13:22, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The existing wording is clear enough. —Psychonaut (talk) 13:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

CSD wholly unsourced articles

WITHDRAWN

Proposal struck by Aunva6..for the reasons it's been rejected time and time again. —Theopolisme (talk) 02:36, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that articles, in mainspace, excluding lists, which contain absolutely no references, be speedey deletable. there may be a few cases where articles undergoing a rewrite may be unsourced, however, that is where WP:common sense and the contesting link come in, or include a restriction to articles with less than 50-100 edits. it will streamline the process of removal of such article that are currently removed via prod. perhaps include wording that encourages the use of AfC and userspace drafts. Aunva6 (talk) 17:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

This has been proposed numerous times and has been rejected each time (see this discussion, for instance). That an article is unsourced is not a valid reason to delete it, through PROD or any other process. That an article cannot be referenced is a valid reason for deleting it, but the judgement required to determine this means it would be unsuitable for the speedy deletion process. I should point out that you're proposing the immediate deletion of 230,000 articles (by contrast we only deleted about 160,000 in the whole of 2012). The vast majority of those articles are perfectly encyclopedic and sourceable. Hut 8.5 17:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

No. Immense possibilities for abuse and disruption of a legitimate content, which could otherwise be merged or dabified, for no gain. There are tens of thousands totally unreferenced, but perfectly encylopedic articles, and it would be unwise to require sysops to become experts in all areas which cover these poor stubs. Also, experienced Wikipedians know that redirecting is a possible option in many cases. I dabified and redirected several tens of such pages without any discussion, and it is a good thing because edit histories were invariably retained. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose See WP:PEREN#Deletion. Here's an exerpt of my comments from the discussion on this same topic just over a year ago: "Look at the top of this page, point #2 for new CSD proposals: "it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion." Many unreferenced articles get improved during the course of an AFD and are kept, so there is no such precedent that would justify overturning the fundamental purpose of speedy deletion, which is to quickly remove hopeless articles. The other processes for more marginal or debatable cases deliberately take longer so that articles are given a fair chance at being improved up to WP minimum standards. " Beeblebrox (talk) 22:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

yeah... it was a bad idea.... I really wasn't aware of the sheer number of articles lacking sources... and I should have though this through more before posting.... Aunva6 (talk) 04:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I've added unsourced articles to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Common requests Ego White Tray (talk) 03:34, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Old IP talk pages (repealed)

I recall that a criterion U4 for "old IP talk pages" was briefly active and then quietly repealed. I think this was in the summer of 2010 or 2011, but I haven't succeeded in finding a specific revision or talk archive. Does anyone else know where I can find a reference to this criterion?

As for how this is actionable, my understanding is it should be mentioned in the "Deprecated criteria" section so that users will know to number new userspace proposals as U5. Does this sound about right? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 20:39, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:OLDIP was written into WP:User pages until I removed it, saying that speedy deletion authorisations belong here only. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:46, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
- Well ... I'm aware of WP:Criteria for speedy deletion/Old IP talk pages, but what I'm referring to was that one implementation of such a criterion (not necessarily WP:Criteria for speedy deletion/Old IP talk pages in particular) was briefly numbered as U4 on this page before it was repealed. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 21:55, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
  - I believe that's incorrect, OLDIP was never written into WP:CSD. It was debated, maybe a few times, I think even with decent support, but was opposed strongly enough to prevent it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:31, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
    - Back in 2007 or so, speedying old IP talk pages was widely accepted, and generally done so under G6. It was never formally written into CSD. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
      - All I really had in mind was the technicality of which U# numbers have been used, so I suppose I may have been making too big a deal out of this. It appears that {{db-u4}} does have a deletion log though, so I should probably start looking there. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 18:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that helped ... it turns out I was incorrect about the date only. The U4 I'm referring to was added in March 2009 and repealed within the month (though there are multiple reverts to sort through). (The other U4 from October 2010 was an unrelated addition by a disruptive user and seems to have had even less consensus than OLDIP.) --SoledadKabocha (talk) 18:38, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

It was completely removed within 5 days, much less than a month. And its additional was a bold contribution that was never agreed to before it was added. Thus, it was never policy. We don't need to list it as deprecated or skip to U5. Ego White Tray (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I meant only "within the month" in a technical sense, not that it took a majority of the month. I don't see any reason not to be comprehensive with the deprecated criteria section, especially given that this was a good-faith addition as opposed to the later U4, and there were likely some pages deleted under this criterion. ~~However, I will gladly revert myself if someone can give me a strong argument in favor of doing so.~~ --SoledadKabocha (talk) 20:05, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

I am trying to track down

a recently (I think, recent) deleted image, File:ChicagoIndian.jpg, and perhaps apply for readmission or something. How do I discover who deleted it (not the admin who deleted the talk page, I've discovered)? Also, I wish to open a discussion with the folks who decide on deletion criteria, in particular deletion of American sculpture created pre 1978. Is there a way to do this? Thanks, Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The page was deleted by admin Diannaa (talk · contribs). The problem is that no matter who took the photograph, a photograph of a sculpture in the United States is covered by the sculptor's copyright. In other words, you do not have a freedom of panorama in the United States, if your panorama includes artwork. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, guy, I know about the Freedom of Panorama stuff, but there is no evidence that the work was ever copyrighted. The Smithsonian Archives of American Art is the best that we have for that sort of information, or that I know of, and no copyright is mentioned. I can get the link if you like. The work was created in Yugoslavia, by a Yugoslav. Shipping it to America does not, that I am aware of, confer any copyright privileges to anyone, at least not in 1928. You are asking me to prove that something (copyright) did not happen. That is always considered to be pretty much impossible in any field. I am ready to start to challenge to wikicopyright folks to show where a sculpture IS copyrighted before removing it. So, what do you have? Carptrash (talk) 23:15, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

You have brought me into some details of copyright law that I have no familiarity with. The first step will be to talk to Diannaa. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

The lack of copyright notice means that the statue likely is in the public domain. You can specify {{PD-US-no notice}} for the sculpture and your own license for the photo. I suggest requesting undeletion at WP:UNDELETE. - Eureka Lott 23:26, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Carptrash notified me of this discussion. The file was deleted in error, because if the statue was created in 1928 without a copyright notice, it's now in the public domain. Commons:Public art and copyrights in the US is a good place to go for more information on this topic. I have cleaned up the file and added more info and the correct license. Sorry for the mistake.-- Dianna (talk) 23:42, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

You wrote that this statue was made in Yugoslavia... Was it also erected (published) somewhere in Yugoslavia before being shipped to the United States? If it was first erected (published) in Yugoslavia, and not erected (published) in the United States within 30 days after it was erected (published) in Yugoslavia, then URAA may be a problem. --Stefan2 (talk) 02:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well what I find right off the bat is, Mestrovic still in Yugoslavia , ".... and such outside commissions as the Chicago Indians " so it is pretty clearly not published in Yugoslavia. "^[1]Carptrash (talk) 02:21, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

^ Schmeckebier, Laurence, ‘’Ivan Mestrovic: sculptor and patriot’’ Stracuse University Press, 1959 p.30

Another book, this one by a Yugoslav, has Mestrovic, hangng out with Nikola Tesla in America, where "he received a commission to make the American Indians in Chicago." ^[1] And thre is a bit more about them, but I think I'll add that to the article about the statues. Carptrash (talk) 02:32, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

This was one of a series of statues of American Indians created by this sculptor. I think it's highly unlikely that these cast metal statues were poured in Yugoslavia and shipped over the Atlantic. Creating the molds and other preliminary work could have been undertaken anywhere, and the statues were most likely cast in the United States to save on shipping costs. -- Dianna (talk) 15:19, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Dianna, you wrote "I think it's highly unlikely that these cast metal statues were poured in Yugoslavia and shipped over the Atlantic. Creating the molds and other preliminary work could have been undertaken anywhere, and the statues were most likely cast in the United States to save on shipping costs."
Does not the fact that I happen to have two books about Mestrovic at home (see references above, and I think I actually have 4) suggest that I might know what I am taking about? You have made several assumptions about the making of large monuments that don't really hold up. The things that you mention could not have been made anywhere, they needed to be made in his studio in Zagreb, I believe. it takes a year or more to create something like these fellows. Anyway, forget what you said, forget what I said, Let's see what the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (known as SIRIS) has to say. ". The pieces were cast in Yugoslavia in 1927. " ^[2] Good enough? Perhaps you, as an administrator, should be a little more cautions about posting what you find to be "highly unlikely"? Carptrash (talk) 19:11, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the direct quote; that clears up where the statue was created and first erected. I guess I misinterpreted your remarks to mean that the statue was cast in the United States, and I apologise. Next would be to respond to what Stephan said, which is "If it was first erected (published) in Yugoslavia, and not erected (published) in the United States within 30 days after it was erected (published) in Yugoslavia, then URAA may be a problem." In other words, if the statue was not transported and re-erected within the United States within thirty days of its completion in Yugoslavia, according to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act the statue is not yet in the public domain in the United States, and will not be public domain until 95 years after its erection (that is, in 2023). If the statue was re-erected within 30 days, US copyright rule would apply, and the statue would be PD. Correct me if I'm wrong, Stefan2. -- Dianna (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's how I believe that it works. Was the statue published in Yugoslavia in the first place, though? Publication means that anyone could view the statue and that there was no restriction preventing photography. If it was only kept in a private home or workshop, then it was not published. Not sure if it counts as publication if you could get a glimpse of the statue at the harbour when it was being shipped to the United States. Maybe ask User:Clindberg about the specifics of the definition of publication? --Stefan2 (talk) 19:56, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Malvina Hoffman would like to add this to the discussion. "I took a trip to North Africa and Italy to study monumental sculpture, and then went to Zagrib to study with Mestrovic in preparation for work on the Four Horsemen. Mestrovic himself at that moment was working on horses since he was still on his lakefront Chicago commission and was at the stage of making twenty-six foot models." ^[3] He was making the statues for a commission in Chicago. They would not have been erected in Zagreb outside his studio. They would have been sent off ASAP after completion. 30 days? Gee how long did it take to get from Zagreb to the USA in 1927? Is that the issue now? I am finding the direction that this discussion is taking to be . . . . . . ... amazing. As far as being glimpsed at the harbour goes, (and if this was a joke then Ha ha, but I am going to treat it as a serious remark), these huge works were not just tossed in the back of a pickup truck and then flung on the deck of a ship. They would have been very carefully packed in massive crates at the studio before being sent off. But do you folks really believe that someone is going to come crawling out of the woodwork, claiming that this photo is a violation of the Uruguay agreement? I find that to be "highly unlikely." Carptrash (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it is not Wikipedia that is being strange and Byzantine here, that is American copyright law at work. We're just trying to understand it. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well. "we" are trying to implement it, and in doing so are digging deep into the bowels of the thing, and taking to its far reaches in a manner that (opinion) adds credibility to the "death of common sense" theory. Carptrash (talk) 22:02, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is too long for this page and that it should be moved to the file talk page if it gets any longer.

There are three possible scenarios:

The statue was published in Zagreb before being shipped to Chicago. When it was later published in Chicago, more than 30 days had passed since its publication in Zagreb.
The statue was published in Zagreb before being shipped to Chicago. When it was later published in Chicago, less than 30 days had passed since its publication in Zagreb.
The statue was not published in Zagreb. It was first published when it reached the United States.

In case 1, USA copyright law says that the source country is Yugoslavia. The statue is protected by copyright in the United States because it was still protected by copyright in Yugoslavia in 1996.

In cases 2 and 3, USA copyright law says that the source country is the United States. The statue is not protected by copyright in the United States because the statue was published without a copyright notice or without a copyright renewal.

I don't know how long it took to ship something from Zagreb to Chicago in the 1920s. Neither city is a coastal city, so there was no ship running all the way from Zagreb to Chicago.

The statue was published if it was possible for the general public to look at the statue and take photos of it. If it was shipped to Chicago "as soon as possible" after it was done, then I would assume that the general public wasn't given any time to look at the statue or take photos of it and that the statue wasn't published in Zagreb. In that case, we have case 3, meaning that the statue is in the public domain in the United States, because the first publication was in Chicago. That's at least my interpretation of the situation – but copyright law is confusing.

The above is what I believe is the correct application of Commons:Commons:Public art and copyrights in the US and Commons:Commons:URAA to this statue. US law is very messy and it can easily get confusing sometimes. There is a simplification at Commons:Commons:HIRTLE but it misses some unusual situations. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:59, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Sort of odd, this thread was supposed to be a quickie. I am quite sure that your scenario #3 is what should be used. Beyond a 99Reasonable douby]]. Was there ever a picture published in the Daily Zagreb Gazette? Who knows, but it's a long shot. Carptrash (talk) 00:13, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

F11 OTRS backlog time

F11 permits deletion of files that have been tagged with OTRS pending for more than 30 days. Currently, the OTRS backlog is 75 days. Any objection with altering the text to read "more than the greater of the current OTRS backlog time or 30 days"? --B (talk) 15:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it is better to use whichever is longer of the current OTRS backlog time and 30 days. {{OTRS pending}} automatically moves files to a different category if not edited for 30 days. On Commons, it would be possible to fix this by using {{#ifexpr: {{Commons:OTRS/backlog}} > 30 | {{Commons:OTRS/backlog}} | 30}} in the {{OTRS pending}} template, but since the backlog page is on Commons, I'm not sure if it is possible to do the same thing on English Wikipedia somehow. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

If the change is approved, a bot could update a template here to be kept in sync with the Commons template. --B (talk) 15:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I support the change (it's logical after all). I'm not sure about the wording "more than the greater of" though. How about simply adding "If the ORTS backlog time at the time of tagging was greater than 30 days, this time applies instead"? It's a bit longer but it clarifies imho that the backlog time is only relevant if processing via OTRS takes longer than 30 days. Regards So Why 17:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I take it that this OTRS pending thing doesn't prevent deletion for other reasons such as spam? Quite a large number of copyvios are distinctly promotional both in appearance and intent... Peridon (talk) 10:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

That's only for file now. If G11 fits, a file can be deleted even if permission was granted but the point of the {{OTRS pending}} template is that copyvios are exempt from F11- and G12-deletions as long as it takes for OTRS volunteers to assess whether valid permission for the use has indeed been granted. Since OTRS now takes more than 30 days to process such emails, B correctly points out that currently files where permission was granted might still be deleted under F11 because the permission was not processed in time; so it makes sense to exempt files tagged with the aforementioned template for more than 30 days when OTRS takes longer than 30 days to process emails. Regards So Why 11:24, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

{{OTRS pending}} implies that someone has sent copyright information to OTRS. Thus, files with {{OTRS pending}} are typically not deleted for copyright reasons (F9, F11 & G12 and possibly also F3, F4, F5, F6 and F7 as the OTRS e-mail might contain a different source/licence than currently indicated) until someone has been able to verify the information sent to OTRS. If it meets some other deletion criterion, it can of course be deleted for that reason at any point. For example, if the image obviously is useless, it can be nominated for deletion at WP:FFD, and if the sole purpose of the image is to harass someone, then it can obviously be immediately deleted per WP:CSD#G10. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:11, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Navboxes with no articles

Recently at templates for discussion, we've had a lot of navbox templates where most of its articles have been deleted. These pretty much always end the same. I would suggest a possible new criterion below:

T4: Navigation box templates with links to one or zero current articles may be deleted after seven days. This includes templates where every link is a redirect to the same article.

Thoughts? Ego White Tray (talk) 04:45, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I would think that something patterned on DB-C1 would work: a navigation template not transcluded in more than one article for at least four days. I don't know if admins have access to historic tranclusion stats, though, so it might not even be possible to implement. A navbox in a single article could realistically have been made along with the first in a series of related articles, or even in preparation for those articles; so I think you need to give a reasonable amount of time for those articles to be created and the navbox implemented therein when devising a CSD criteria. If it is not technically feasible to check transclusion history, and give editors time to write content appropriate for the navbox, then I don't think a CSD is appropriate. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:29, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The comments above may look similar, but are actually two quite different proposals.

Ego White Tray's proposal is based on the content of the navbox
Vanisaac's proposal is based on the usage of the template

These are both forms of pointless navbox, but while the two sets may overlap to some degree, they are separate issues.

Vanisaac's proposal seems to me to be superfluous. If a navbox is not transcluded anywhere, then it will usually be superfluous ... but since it is not cluttering any articles, I don't see any need to speedy it. It's just another form unused template, and I don't see any need to make navboxes a special case of unused template. (BTW, I am an admin, and AFAIK there are no admin tools to check transclusion history. There may be some such external tools on the toolserver, but I haven't checked.)

However, EWT's proposal seems straightforward: speedy delete a "navbox-to-nowhere". That sort of navbox is just pointless clutter on articles, and unless sufficient content is created within 7 days, there is no point in keeping it. If it is speedy deleted, then it can be restored as a userspace draft if the creator wants it, and/or restored in mainspace if and when the actual content is created. But if the rest of the linked content is not actually being created, then the navbox is at best premature. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:58, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, mine was based on a complete misreading of EWT's proposal. I don't actually have a concrete perspective on the actual proposal, so please continue while I sit in the corner trying not to be noticed. In my defense, I've been implementing an infobox for the last few days, so my mind is full of transclusions. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 17:22, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

And they just got G8ed

Ok, an interesting twist - three of the TfD discussions that prompted this (all here) just got deleted as G8 (page dependent on deleted of non-existant page). Based on comment above, I seriously doubt that there is agreement to use that criteria this way, but maybe it would be simpler to add red-linking nav box templates there? Ego White Tray (talk) 12:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I was the admin who deleted those templates. I have no objection to creating a more specific criterion for this situation, but in the meantime when deletion of pages turns a viable navbox into a navbox-to-nowhere, then WP:CSD#G8 seems to me to be a perfect fit. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:41, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks OK to me - the template is dependent on its listed articles for its whole point in life, and if they've all gone, so should it. G8 does say 'page' not 'pages', but there must have been a point when it was dependent on only one. Others may object to G8 being used this way, but I don't. Peridon (talk) 09:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

G6 would equally apply.—Kww(talk) 16:49, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

G6 never applies if there for any content-based deletion. "Housekeeping" means what it says. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:56, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

A navigation template that doesn't navigate anywhere is a matter of housekeeping.—Kww(talk) 20:16, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

G6 is not a "catch all" and is already abused for things that should not be speedily deleted or which fit under other criteria. An empty navbox template is a page that depends on deleted or non-existent pages so it fits under G8, meaning there is no need to shoehorn yet another thing into G6. Thryduulf (talk) 00:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

However, I'm going to have to say no to G8ing empty navboxes. We need to give editors a reasonable chance to create articles, add links, or userfy, so immediate deletion is not OK, That leads back to the T4 proposal above that would give seven days. Ego White Tray (talk) 02:25, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

The templates can always be restored if needed. Besides, the workflow is generally that articles are created first, and then navboxes follow once there are enough articles to warrant a navbox. The existence of a navbox before there are any articles to navigate to... just doesn't make sense. ‑Scottywong | soliloquize _ 15:39, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Applicability of G10

Does G10 extend to pages like Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Caccrop, where the recipient of a vandalism warning has lashed out at the person that warned him? Or does this have to go through MFD?—Kww(talk) 19:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

It should apply. There's no evidence of "long-term abuse" (2 days is not long term abuse, nor is using one account), the account is not blocked, and Josve05a needs a warning for a false "unexplained blanking of content" edit applied to Caccrop's talk page, beyond this. Caccrop probably needs blocking as well as Jaa, but that's a topic for ANI (haven't looked to see if it's been taken there yet). Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:48, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

And indeed it did, as I tagged it and it went very quickly afterwards. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:57, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't agree at all. It was not an attack page, but rather a good-faith attempt to deal with a disruptive editor, by an editor who doesn't know Wikipedia's ways, and unfortunately chose the wrong method. Certainly the page was inappropriate, but accusing the editor of creating an "attack page" was inaccurate and unhelpful, amounting to biting a newcomer. As for Caccrop needing blocking, that is obvious, and certainly doesn't need anything as cumbersome as ~~Wikipedia:People who have nothing better to do with their time than indulge in interminable pointless arguments noticeboard/Incidents~~ - oops - I mean Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I have blocked the editor for 24 hours. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, if an admin agreed with me that it was an attack page, and thus deleted it, then... It was an attack page, whether it was a deliberate attack page is perhaps another matter. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:20, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

If one admin agrees with me then I must be right, even when another admin disagrees with me? JamesBWatson (talk) 14:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

I smell a redirect. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 20:10, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The spirit of G10 is to prevent harm to the subject, not to accuse the creator of the page of any wrongdoing. I would argue that the existence of the LTA page causes damage to the reputation of Caccrop and clearly does not belong on Wikipedia, so it is G10-able. Whether something is an "attack page" or not should be viewed from the perspective of the potential subject of the "attack" and not the potential "attacker." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:35, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Question regarding CSD F1

Quick question regarding WP:CSD F1, could it apply for an unused image of .png format which was converted to a .svg format (which is used). Also, sidenote, both files have shadows on commons. Thanks in advance, — -dainomite 05:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

If the PNG is not used, it is an unused duplicate of lower quality, even if it is another format than the SVG. Sounds like a perfect F1 candidate to me. Try it out and see if an admin agrees. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 07:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank ya, the only reason I didn't was because it says "...having the same file format..." so I wasn't sure.

— -dainomite 09:01, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I've had a look at these. The commons images represent the same concept as the local images but in a layout that is less logically laid out, so I would not consider them as direct equivalents. The local images are not the same as each other either - File:Graph with all three-colourings.png is in error because all those where the 3-node is green are duplicated, whilst it has none where the 3-node is blue. In these respects File:Graph with all three-colourings.svg is correct. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:33, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

WP:CSD#F1 and WP:CSD#F8 are clear: they only apply to files in the same format. Also, don't ask the same question at multiple places! --Stefan2 (talk) 15:42, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, it says that it applies to an unused duplicate OR a lower quality image in the same format, I think this met 1 1/2 of the 2 possible criteria. But in the end, it is up to the reviewing admin, so I think as long as it's in good faith, it doesn't really matter. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 10:54, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

No, it doesn't apply, because PNG and SVG are nowhere near being the same format as each other. The point of the criterion is not <"unused duplicate" OR "lower quality in same format"> — it's <"unused duplicate OR lower quality" AND "same format">. Nyttend (talk) 04:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

G10 and redirects

Butcher of the Balkans, a redirect to Slobodan Milošević is currently being discussed at WP:RFD. It's deletion log [4] shows that it was twice speedily deleted under criterion G10, despite the term being present in article and supported by reliable sources. This is not the first time that non-neutral but clearly plausible redirects have been deleted under G10, despite their failing the "and serve no other purpose" clause of the criterion.

What I propose is to add something like "Redirects from plausible search terms, for example terms used on the target page, are not eligible under this criterion - see WP:RNEUTRAL." to the description of G10. Thryduulf (talk) 03:10, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Great idea. May I suggest "This does not apply to redirects if the term is cited in the target article."? Ego White Tray (talk) 03:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer "used" rather than "cited". Terms that are citable but not yet cited are still good redirects, and this should encourage borderline cases to be dealt with at RfD rather than speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 11:42, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

That is much too broad. There are many cases where a word is mentioned in an article, but is not a suitable redirect. The expression "British-brokered" occurs in the article Adolf Hitler, but it would be absurd to make British-brokered into a redirect to that article. An exaggerated example? Perhaps, but once we have categorical statements like "a redirect should not be deleted under this criteria if the term is mentioned in the target article" in policies, it is not long before someone or other uses them unreasonably. My own preference is not to have any instruction-creep here at all. Most often, an administrator is capable of using common sense, and I see no reason to think that the exceptions are any less common than the unhelpful uses of such a clause would be if it were included in the policy, quite apart from the general preference to keep policies as short and simple as possible. If, however, there is to be a change to the wording, it has to be much less categorical, and allow much more room for common sense. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Which is why my initial suggestion used the phrase "plausible search terms" and linked to WP:RNEUTRAL. This is not instruction creep, just extending the guidance around the existing policy regarding how the "and serve no other purpose" part of the criteria interacts with redirects as it is too often being interpreted incorrectly at present. "British-brokered" as a redirect to Adolf Hitler is a complete irrelevance here as it would not be subject to G10 under any conceivable interpretation - it would still be subject to speedy deletion under R3. Thryduulf (talk) 11:23, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I was objecting to the proposed "This does not apply to redirects if the term is used in the target article", not to your original proposal, which is better, though I still think it is too categorical, as it could be read as meaning that any "terms used on the target page" are ineligible. You are right that the Hitler example was not totally relevant: I was just trying to illustrate the idea that a term used in an article might be unsuitable as a redirect. However, the point I was trying to make is still valid, and here is an example that could be considered under G10: The expression "fascist dictators" occurs in the article Winston Churchill, but fascist dictators would not be a suitable redirect to it. As for instruction creep, yes it is: every time a policy or guideline has one more little bit added to it, on top of the last little bit that was added, on top of the one before that, that is instruction creep: whether this particular piece of instruction creep is justified or not is another question. I agree with your point that G10 is sometimes used for valid redirects, but no matter how the policy is worded, it will sometimes be used in ways that you and I think are wrong, and I still think that it would be best to leave things as they are. However, if the wording is to be changed, I prefer something more like your original suggestion than the later versions, but phrased to avoid the possibility of its being read too broadly. Maybe "Redirects from plausible search terms are not eligible under this criterion. For example, a term used on the target page to refer to its subject is often a plausible redirect. - see WP:RNEUTRAL." (And yes, I do know that is longer than any other version, apparently going against my opposition to instruction creep. However, if we are to add clarification then we need to do it in a way that minimises risk of the clarification being misused.) JamesBWatson (talk) 19:38, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, an editor went ahead and changed the wording, citing "per talk page" as justification in the edit summary, and the wording used was "Note that a redirect should not be deleted under this criteria if the term is mentioned in the target article." That is even more categorical than the suggestions above, and I can't see any way of reading it that doesn't mean that any "terms used on the target page" are ineligible. JamesBWatson (talk) 19:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Well for redirects to be speedy deleted under criterion G10 they need to be both (offensive/disparaging/threatening/intimidating/harrassing) and (serve no other purpose). Very few terms that appear in an article will meet both these requirements, but as you point out some will do (fascist dictators as an implausible redirect to any single person, fascist dictator on the other hand pointing to someone who was not a fascist dictator would very much be G10 territory). I take your point therefore about categoricalness, and that the addition made to the policy page was both wrong and premature. With the very pedantic exception of the full stop before the hyphen (there should be at most one punctuation mark here but any of full stop, comma or dash are fine) I'm happy with your suggested wording. Thryduulf (talk) 21:50, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

If there are no further comments in the next day or so I will add the following to the supporting text of criterion G10: Redirects from plausible search terms are not eligible under this criterion. For example, a term used on the target page to refer to its subject is often a plausible redirect.. Thryduulf (talk) 09:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Done. Thryduulf (talk) 15:05, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

A10 and AfC

There are frequent submissions at Articles for Creation that inferior or exact duplicates of existing articles in mainspace. There's obvious no point in having these sit around indefinitely once they are identified,and deletion of these should be as uncontroversial as any A10. But A10 cannot currently be used; because AfC is in WT space, only the General criteria apply. I encounter several of them a week just by accident, and I am sure there are many more if we had a way of looking for them. I can see some solutions:

The current way, which is to speedy delete them as G6, uncontroversial maintenance , which is a nonspecific catch all that many AfC reviewers wont recognize.
moving A10 to a general criteria,allowing for removal of duplications of content anywhere in WP -- I don't think this would work, because many pages of instructions and the like in WP space are duplicative -- deliberating different ways of giving the same advice.
moving A10 to the general category, and but specifying that it is for duplications anywhere in WP of content in WP articles.
making a special rule, as a G rule, applying only to AfCs. (and possibly, user space)
I think it might not be a bad idea to make special rules for AfCs, as they pose distinctive problems, but this is opening a very wide range of possibilities best discussed elsewhere. (That they're in WT space in the first place is pretty weird -- it's an artifact of how the system was constructed, and we should really think of something better--but that's for elsewhere also.)

I ask for opinions. DGG ( talk ) 04:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Option 3 would prevent people from copying article content to their user space to work on it, which isn't a very good idea. Hut 8.5 10:10, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Can it be restricted to non-userspace areas? I mean, like A7 is restricted with regard to educational establishments with a note on the template? Peridon (talk) 10:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Support allowing A10 to apply to AfC submissions as if they were in mainspace. Prefer to keep A10 in A. As a G criterion, it could be misusd, and I think it would have infrequent use outside mainspace and AfC. Using G6 is a misuse of G6. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Do something. In order of decreasing preference...

Where A10 applies to an AfC were it in mainspace, immediately redirect to the existing article. This will benefit the author, even an IP, should he ever return to look. The useless content in history behind the redirect will never hurt anyone, most likely be never again accessed. Redirects are cheap. Checking this criterion applies required someone to just now identify the exiting article. Advantage: any editor can do it right now.
Screw the convention that A only applies to articles, with an exception that A10 also applies to AfC.
Expland further G6 as the catchallelse criterion.
Screw the convention that G applies anywhere, by converting A10 to G, advising that it probably only should be used for articles and AfC. I fear its misuse in generalising its principle to newly created categories, bypassing CfD speedy processes, for example. Also fear speedy deletion of a new essay because it is too similar to another.
Do nothing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I hope that DGG will not take it amiss if I say that when he suggests widening deletion criteria, it's likely to be a good idea, as he certainly doesn't believe in deletion except when it is really justified. SmokeyJoe's edit summary says "support something", and I think that is right: something should be done. My own preference is to simply add a mention of this in the list of examples of situations covered by G6. That is, in my opinion, better than any of the other methods suggested, all of which which are involve making the categorisation into A, G, etc more complex. In fact, they all involve one or other of the following: (1) introducing a so-called G criterion which does not actually apply generally, so that there is increase in complexity, introducing restrictive rules as to how it can be used, or (2) making a so-called A criterion apply to pages other than articles, adding an exception to what "A" means, adding complexity and risk of confusion, or (3) making a new category of criteria, alongside G, A, etc, which would again be increasing the complexity of the policy. I believe that one of the worst things that has happened to Wikipedia over the years is the gradual increase in complexity of policies and guidelines, making Wikpedia more and more perplexing to newcomers. Adding a simple note to the existing G6 criterion, without changing any of the rules of scope of the various categories, is the simplest method, and I really don't see any problem with doing so. However, the main thing is "do something". JamesBWatson (talk) 17:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Apply A10 to AFC - That said, I'm not going to say that all article criteria should apply to Articles for Creation, but A10 definitely should. Ego White Tray (talk) 23:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)
Create a new criteria set It seems a bit of a bad precedent to expand A10 to the project namespace. G are established already. I'd say just create a new category (maybe 'W'?) and set that precedent instead, which could be later used as the basis for discussion for other applications. Whatever it is though, it has to be as narrow as possible. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 00:24, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

We have a lot of complaints that we have too many criteria as it is. Having two criteria for two slightly different types of pages that are otherwise identical doesn't help this. The is why broken redirects was merged into dependent on non-existant pages and why blatant copyvios went from article to general. Just apply A10 to AfC, and we can later decide how many of the other article criteria can apply. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:19, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that if the proposed criterion ends up as a G criterion, it would apply to userspace drafts, too. Do we want to open the door to deletion of stale or inferior copies of content in userspace as well? I could see there being some benefit to doing so, but others may want to avoid this. One thought that crossed my mind is a general statement that since all AFC drafts are intended to eventually be moved to article space, that we could make an explicit declaration that A criteria apply to them too. —Scott5114 ↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I would oppose applicability to userspace. See the similar recent discussion on a proposed U4 above at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Proposed_new_criterion:_abandoned_article_drafts. Managing someone elses userspace can come across as rude. Deleting their userpages is worse. I've not seen any claim that there is a large obvious problem with drafts in userspace anything like AfC. A particular problem is that a large proportion AfC content was created by IPs or soon-abandoned new accounts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:30, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

- Of everything suggest I like best the one I had not thought of at all, -SmokeyJoe's preferred suggestion, of a redirect. Of course it will be sometimes used wrongly, but it is the easiest reversed of all of them. DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I would like to add that this text has explain all my quires about them deleting my pages so thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anty4444 (talk • contribs) 15:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

F9. Unambiguous copyright infringement

I'm not a regular here, so forgive me if I'm walking a well-trodden path. Obviously non-free images (or other media files) seems too open a door. I recently came across an image tagged as F9 (without a url) that looked professional quality and had no metadata, and had been tagged on that basis. I couldn't find the image on Google or Tineye, so I removed the tag, and the uploader later stated that he/she used an on-line editor which left no metadata. Now, I can't be sure that the image wasn't copyright, but I don't think that suspicion alone is a ground for tagging. Should a url or other evidence (watermark or similar) be obligatory? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

You were correct and I think the rule is already clear on that - "Non-blatant copyright infringements should be discussed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files." Requiring a URL is a bit on the instruction creepy side - sometimes things can be unambiguous copyright infringements even if there isn't a URL you can point to (e.g. an obvious screenshot from a TV show). --B (talk) 12:34, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Anty4444's pages

I would like to say thanks but I don't know why people keep deleting my pages and right now I'm eager to know if one of my newest pages 'Statement (Grammar)' is going to be deleted as I have put something up in talk but honestly I don't know if they will look at it. well I hope if you are reading this you will go to one of my pages and help convince people not to delete some of my pages on interesting facts that I would of found helpful when I was doing my SATS revision 1000 years ago (just kidding) but seriously I just don't understand as I'm just trying to help kids do their homework! If you come across one of my pages remember to always think about why it should not be deleted and why I'm doing it to help not pacifically you but other people too. Many thanks Anty4444

It looks like Statement (Grammar), a page was deleted as a duplicate of Sentence (linguistics). Not knowing what was on the page, I can't tell if this was a correct call. I would suggest improving our existing articles, and that will give you a good idea of what new articles we need. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:33, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed new criterion: abandoned article drafts

I would like to propose a new criterion: article drafts abandoned for over a year. Article drafts, such as declined WP:AFC submissions, potentially contain unsourced statements and are completely unmonitored. The archives have hoards of them. Virtually all of them would be quickly speedied or prodded if they were in article space, but they sit peacefully undisturbed forever in the archives. --B (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

A related discussion has already taken place at Wikipedia talk:Articles for Creation#Procedure_for_abandoned_failed_submissions. I proposed a new CSD criteria "G13 : Abandoned drafts A page not in article space that is clearly a draft, but violates any article related speedy deletion criteria, and does not appear to be actively worked on". Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 18:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Better idea - when introducing article criteria, we say "the following criteria apply to any article, or any draft that has not been edited in over a year" No reason to create a new deletion criteria. Ego White Tray (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really keen on having quantifiable time periods, like a year, six months, three and a half weeks etc, and would prefer to leave it to general discretion and common sense about when to apply a certain criteria. Also, a proposed G13 would deal with userspace sandbox articles for people who have left Wikipedia and forgotten about them. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 18:56, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

These are two different problems. Yes, something speedyable as an article should be speedyable as an AFC submission. I don't think it needs a separate number, but just a statement at the top of the articles section that article standards apply to articles in whatever namespace they reside, with the understanding that accommodations are made for in-use article drafts. No time limit for those is needed - and if you're just making an AFC submission about your kid who placed first in the spelling bee, there's no reason to wait any time at all. But while that's a very useful thing, that's not what my proposal is about - my proposal is is for things that ARE NOT OTHERWISE SPEEDYABLE. Meaning, it's a bio piece where an assertion of significance sufficient to not qualify for A7 has been made. But just because it's not speedyable doesn't mean it needs to exist. All or substantially all abandoned submissions, if they were in article space, would be quickly disposed of with either {{prod}} or {{blp-prod}} tags. The fact that they are sitting in AFC space keeps them from being prodded. That is the problem I am trying to solve. --B (talk) 19:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

To explain what I'm talking about, I picked a few arbitrary samples from the archives:

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/NVIATWAS - I have no idea what the hell this is, but it isn't a person, animal, organization, web content, or event. It would be nice to be able to delete it without having to jump through a lot of hoops.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Sara Marwari High School and College - high schools are explicitly excluded from A7, but this one has no g-hits other than Facebook, Google+, and Wikipedia. So while it's not speedyable, it would be prodded very quickly if it were in article space.
Wikipedia:Articles for creation/The Truth (doctrine) - This submission proclaims The Truth (tm) of Jesus Christ. Though we prefer to discuss religion in a neutral manner, religious exhortations are not speedyable.

Now, I did find a gracious plenty more articles that are speedyable, including one attack page that I just took care of. But the existence of speedyable articles shouldn't stop us from also coming up with a rule for other abandoned articles. --B (talk) 20:01, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I lean towards agreeing. I think this was last discussed as Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_46#Can_an_Article_for_creation_submission_be_speedied_under_an_A_criteria.3F (September 2012). I commented there in favour, subject to strict time factors.
I think an AfC submission could be speediable if (1) It was reviewed and unambiguously failed; and (2) it is old, old both since creation date and since last meaningful edit; and (3) the author has been offered the option to userfy and is informed of the option of requesting their deleted content emailed (this calls for a templated message).
As some people sometimes forget, it should be reminded that just because something *can* be speedy deleted, it doesn't mean that it *must* be deleted. Speedy deletion authorises an admin to make a unilateral decision on their own judgement and act on it.
On the other hand, nearly everything useless could just be blanked. Put it behind a template explaining that this is old content, submitted and rejected, unlikely to be of any use to the project. Leaving this cleanup to blanking means that any editor can do it, any other editor can review it, and undo it, and the process doesn't need CSD policy-level rules. Disputes (very rare in practice) can be resolved at MfD. Actually offensive material is covered by the G criteria. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't object to this proposal if it were restricted to AFC submissions. I can see problems if it applies to userspace drafts, though. Some userspace drafts serve as convenient references for someone (I have one of these myself that I haven't edited in over a year) and while they would not survive main article space, should probably be kept in their respective user spaces. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I also disagree to this applying to userspace. I more so disagree with it applying to an once productive editor, and extremely so for an active editor. Maybe ambiguous about users that were briefly active long ago and never made a lasting productive edit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

For user-space drafts, if the editor is even semi-active, the logical and polite action is to send a note to the editor saying something like: "I that User:Example/PageName in your user space hasn't been edited since May 2009. Are you still working on it, or is it time to delete it?" Summarily tagging other people's user pages for speedy deletion is not polite -- and, therefore, not a real smart idea. --Orlady (talk) 01:51, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

How about only allowing user-space drafts to be speedied only if the user has not edited in over a year, the page is unambiguously intended as a draft article (in other words, we're not using this as an excuse to clean out userspaces), and the page would be subject to speedy deletion if it were in article space? So I'm proposing these two rules, which I think meet both needs:

U4. Userspace drafts of inappropriate articles.

Pages in userspace that are unambiguously intended as article drafts, where the user has not edited in over a year, and where the page would be subject to speedy deletion if it were in article space.

G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions.

Rejected Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year, provided that if the user is still active, they have been notified at least one week prior to deletion. Note that failed submissions that meet a general criterion for speedy deletion, such as spam or violations of the biographies of living persons policy should be deleted immediately without waiting one year. If an article submission is written on an otherwise appropriate topic, but was rejected for lack of sources or a similar concern, consider improving it rather than deleting it.

Comments? Yeas and Nays? Changes? --B (talk) 04:40, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how a G13 would be a speedy if you have to give a week's notice - isn't that a form of prod? Otherwise, U4 and G13 look good. If someone hasn't edited for a year, they're not likely to suddenly take things up and turn the 'abandoned' draft into an FA. If the thing IS showing a good potential, it should be rescued if possible. There should be some way of notifying willing rescuers of the existence of candidates for completion. Peridon (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

A delayed-action speedy isn't unprecedented; see WP:CSD#C1, WP:CSD#T3 and most of the F criteria. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Just for clarification, my suggested notification on G13 was only if the user is active. If the user hasn't edited recently, I completely agree - no need for the bureaucratic step - just delete it. I'd be perfectly okay with phrasing it as a courtesy rather than a requirement. --B (talk) 19:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm concerned about this. I don't think abandoned draft should be covered by speedy deletion in most cases. It's not uncommon for an abandoned draft brought to miscellany for deletion to end with a "move to article space" - some of these drafts are good enough to be presented as articles, and I don't want to see any speedy deleted. So, U4 should not include A7 " no significance" and A9 "bands". G13 has massive concerns for me, but since it's more of a wikispace than a user space, I would be a little more amenable to speedy deletions there. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:48, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

A9 isn't 'bands'. A9 is non-notable recordings by non-articled artistes. Non-notable musicians are in A7. What I see this proposal's intention as is to eliminate the crap and actually get the good drafts finished. I could see active editors agreeing to deletion if they really aren't going to finish a draft, or to agree to someone else finishing it (as with an user space draft article Bragod that I started and Nikthestunned found a year later and dug up the references for). (I've no objections to anyone adding to my Ailish Tynan start-up too...) Where there's stuff that's by editors that were SPAs, or who have now jumped ship, leaving unfinished material, it needs triage. Admins that work in CSD are mostly quite good at deciding if something is unredeemable crap or has potential. There are editors who enjoy rescuing things - I pass stuff over to two or three now. One even turned a piece that appeared to be pure spam into a sound article following a very polite request for help from a desperate beginner. (Unusual, that - would-be advertisers mostly try to tell us the rules and how they don't apply...) I'd like to see the good stuff rescued - and the crap dumped. It could be possible to get a Rescue Project (or just a Category) going where things could be listed for the rescuers to get going on. Sort of the opposite of Speedy Deletion - Speedy Rescue. Think about it. Peridon (talk) 11:08, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll get working on that category. Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 11:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

There is the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron and its Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list (it formerly had a template that I believe placed articles in a category, but due to canvassing concerns, it was replaced by the list). isaacl (talk) 14:05, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh. I already started a village pump thread. Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 17:33, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Or you could have a standalone PROD template for badly written abandoned drafts (like {{BLP prod}}) Cobalion. Setting Justice everywhere.active 11:26, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose U4. I don't think that enough old userspace drafts are uncontestable and frequent enough to justify a CSD criterion. To my memory, of the number of userpages nominated at MfD, a large proportion is contested, and never has the number been so terribly great. I excluding some cases of mass nominations from the userspace of particular users, but I note that this U4 criteria could easily be misused to attempt to avoid difficult discussions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

weak support G13. On G13, there are indeed a great many old and failed AfC submissions, so many that they would overwhelm MfD, and when cases have been nominated, the failed content has been typically unimpressive. Not always completely worthless though, and so anyone applying G13 would have to practice some discernment. Ideally, I think, an admin preparing a mass exercise of G13 should send some test cases though MfD just to be sure. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Require mandatory notification of the deletion on the talk page of the AfC author, to ensure a minimum record of AfC submissions by the user (for non admins to find). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Alternate idea I think deleting obviously abandonded AFC submissions that haven't been touched in a year could easily be incorporated under the umbrella of "housekeeping". That is exactly what it is, after all, just taking out the trash. Or, a bot could simply run a script that detects all declined AFC sub,missions that have not been editied in six months and it could PROD them. If the creator is still around and still cares they can remove the PROD. In the much more likely event that they are not around and do not care it will be deleted a week later with a minimum of fuss, so essentially the same thing could be accomplished withput adding a new criterion here. Don't get me wrong, this is a real issue, I just think there may be existing processes that can dal with it with just some minor tweaks. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose encouraging such a broadening of G6. Using G6 would make it so much harder to track such deletions, we may as well do away with logs. If there is no consensus for this G13, then to bypass this consensus-finding discussion is wrong. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

That would cut out any chance of rescue unless you've got a very discriminating bot. I'm quite happy with prod, because there is a lot of utter rubbish there despite what the retentionists think. And there's probably still some attack stuff, BLP violation and other such in there too - although a couple of editors have been winnowing out quite a bit of chaff that was unredeemable and should have been tagged when it was first seen. I'm not so sure about using G6 unless it has been established as a matter of policy that abandoned for over one year AfC stuff is sweepable up as housekeeping and deleting it is not vandalism. There are a number of editors who seem to regard AfC contributions as sacrosanct and to be preserved for all time against the return of the author. One year is to me a sign that they're not coming back. They might have been in hospital or jail - OK, someone can undelete if that's the case. They're more likely to be worrying about other things... Peridon (talk) 19:44, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

This is not housekeeping, period. Housekeeping is about cleaning up problems, and never about deleting content (unless you forgot after a deletion discussion) Ego White Tray (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose U4. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thine Antique Pen (talk • contribs) 18:44, 10 March 2013
Support G13 without the notification of the editor(s). No objection against people voluntarily giving such notification, but to make this a requirement makes the process too cumbersome and slow. We are dealing with articles that have been proposed, have been rejected, and haven't been touched for a year or longer. No reason to let these linger around any longer (we have thousands of these, older day by day cats list on average about 40 to 45 articles). Fram (talk) 13:41, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Support G13 - I think a year is a long time in AFC. I'd say after 6 months we should approach the submitter, and either userfy the draft or delete it. On the other hand, I would oppose U4. A year isn't that long for an established editor - some people take extended Wikibreaks and still return. And things can languish as drafts for a long time and still be turned into articles - I just took adraft I hadn't touched in two years and turned it into an article. MFD is always an option for userspace drafts. I'd be hesitant to allow speedy deletion of something that's otherwise acceptable after just one year of inactivity. Guettarda (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Oppose both No, a speedy criterion is not the right way to handle either problem. While it may offend some people that drafts are hither and yon, it's not actually a problem. Jclemens (talk) 06:07, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- If this is not the right way, then what is? Many of the 20,000 or so really old AfC drafts are spam, a significant portion are copyright violations; we can spend a lot of time checking them one by one, or we can make it easier and simply delete the older ones. What is the problem with doing this? What valuable contributions are being lost by these deletions, and do they outweigh the benefit of getting rid of lots of problematic content? Fram (talk) 14:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- Any unmonitored space is somewhere that libel or other controversial content could be hiding. Yes, something with libel can already be deleted right now today, but if whoever reviews the submission misses it, then it stays there forever. We have a vested interest in keeping unmonitored spaces as few as possible and there's no upside to keeping clearly inappropriate article drafts around. --B (talk) 13:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Comment With reference to the remark about 'established' editors - how many established editors use AfC? I would think the vast majority of the users there are new accounts (and probably SPAs) or IPs. I concede that established editors may have stuff in their cupboards for a long time and just a polite message might revive their interest in something - or result in a U1... Peridon (talk) 10:14, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- I would venture to say that zero established editors use AFC. Maybe one or two created their first article that way, but that's the rarest of rare exceptions. I picked out ten random articles from Category:Declined AfC submissions. One was created by a named SPA. The other nine were created by IP users. --B (talk) 13:34, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  - That was (sort of) the point of my comment: if, after six months, we can track down someone who made an AFC submission, then it's worth seeing if they're interested in doing anything with the draft. If we can't, and no one else has shown interest, then we shouldn't feel badly about deleting the draft (IOW, it should be speedy-able). I suppose tagging them, and putting them in a prod-like category, might also be a useful idea...that way, people who were interested could monitor the category and turn them into articles, if they saw something that really interested them. Guettarda (talk) 18:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
    - I can't imagine for the life of me why anyone thinks we need to keep the 381 pages in Category:AfC submissions declined as BLP violations‎. That's insane. Ditto for the 985 pages in Category:AfC submissions declined as jokes‎. We can talk about having some kind of reasonable review process for articles that are conceivably on an appropriate topic but only lacking in sources ... but there's 87,956 declined AFC submissions and the overwhelming majority of them are utter junk. It's unmaintained and unmaintainable. --B (talk) 20:31, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Support G13 there are an awful lot of declined AfC submissions, they have very little value (it certainly isn't worth sorting through them one by one), they could contain problematic content, and nobody is maintaining them. Hut 8.5 20:42, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- As an added note here, if it would allay the concerns of those who don't want some sort of mass deletion, we could have an orderly process where we slowly creep up the deletion date. So the ultimate target is to delete year-old AFCs, but we start out deleting ones from 3 years ago, then 2 years 11 months, 2 years 10 months, etc, so that there is opportunity for those who wish to to review them. We could also hit the obvious ones first that should have been speedied to begin with (like the jokes and obvious BLP violations, which are speediable now anyway) and use a PROD-like process for anything that is a less obvious case. --B (talk) 20:47, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I see three problems with ancient AfC submissions:

Lots of AfC submissions are copyright violations, but these are hard to spot after a long time has passed and people have started copying the page from Wikipedia.
WP:N: You can get an article about anything, but the non-notable ones end up in the Wikipedia talk namespace.
WP:NOTHOST: Since no one is deleting these pages, you can store basically any contents in the Wikipedia talk namespace.

For these reasons, I think that we need to delete old pages somehow. A delayed G13 speedy for pages not edited for a year sounds like a good idea. Also, in case someone wants to pick up the page again, we could permit undeletion at WP:REFUND and removal of the deletion template, thereby allowing the page to be around for another year. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:32, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose U4. Some user pages that look like drafts may actually be kept around as examples of various editing techniques, such as markup for special symbols, citation markup, and the like. The user may be referring to these examples, without changing them, when editing articles. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose The existence of lots of drafts is a natural consequence of the scale of Wikipedia. We do not have a deadline because this is a volunteer effort and arbitrary time limits should not be imposed, per WP:CREEP. Deletion doesn't actually delete the material; it just restricts visibility to admins. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why only admins should be allowed to view such drafts. Warden (talk) 09:27, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternative Proposal #1: Apply PROD to all drafts

Some people above have touched on this idea, but I think the real solution here is to apply PROD to article drafts. As many people above have notices, speedy deletions generally shouldn't apply to article drafts, since they're not done it. Obviously there are exceptions, such as copyright violations and attack pages. There is no harm in PRODing it for seven days to see if anyone objects. It also would automatically give a place for the rescue squad to look for drafts with potential. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:42, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure PROD scales up to tagging tens of thousands of drafts, which (iirc) is what the actual figure of abandoned ones is. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:56, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
PROD on unwatched pages is just a CSD under another name. The word "Proposed" implies that someone will read/review it. As no one would review thousands of unwatched AfC failures, the word "proposed" is inappropriate. PROD is inappropriate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Well, one word of caution here ... don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good enough". Yes, right now, there's a backlog, but once that backlog is worked though, PROD would easily handle it going forward. And while yes, SmokeyJoe, you're right that nobody is going to have these articles watchlisted, is that really any different than most articles getting PRODded now? Besides, a PROD guarantees that at least two people review it (the nominator plus the admin) and that creates an opportunity for one of them to decide that the article is worth moving into article space. Under the current system, nobody EVER is going to review the articles and they will sit there completely unmonitored, potentially containing libel or unsourced claims, until the end of time. I think allowing them to be prodded is the perfect compromise solution. I would propose, though, that we still maintain the time requirement - that it only be allowed for article drafts abandoned for some time - for the sake of not biting new contributors (ie, you make an article draft and five minutes later someone slaps a tag on it). --B (talk) 13:28, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

There's a false pretense about PROD in this case that I find wrong. No one will review them, and/or prodding will damage the existing article PROD system. Pretending that there will be a PROD review means that prodders may not feel they need to act with full responsibility. The CSD G13 path is more honest. With CSD criteria, we can demand that the admin is sure the requirements are met, requirements that I think should be: the draft is long untouched; the original author is long inactive, a note is made on the original authors usertalkpage (if registered). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:20, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

If you can prod a mainspace article then it seems reasonable to be able to prod a draft too. This is a better way to dealing with stuff that nobody cares about and if they turn up later, it should be easy to get a refund. Warden (talk) 09:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternative Proposal #2: An orderly process

I'd like to propose alternative proposal #2: an orderly process. This should allay the concerns of those who don't want to risk useful content being lost in a mass effort.

Remind reviewers that general criteria apply to AFC submissions and that unsourced BLPs with a negative tone, jokes, and similar wholly inappropriate content should be deleted on the spot, not blanked and left in place for years.
Gradually start G13 out at 3 years, then slowly tick it up to 1 year. This keeps CSD from being overwhelmed and allows for articles to be reviewed before deletion.
Allow only "clearly and indisputably unencyclopedic topics" to be speedied under G13 - everything else has to be PRODed. This will allow for things that might be usable to be reviewed prior to deletion.

Submitted, --B (talk) 20:57, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I recommend a mass MfD nomination of a narrow time range of very old declined AfC submissions, or even from a worse subcategory, to demonstrate (test) an overwhelming consensus that on a case by case basis the community approves their deletion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
87,956? Ye gods! That's way worse than I thought It would be. OK, I'll go with AP2 G13 and prod. I presume there'll be some provision for anything that's potentially usable after a bit of work? A sort of open access incubator for fostering rescuers. While we're at it - how about unreviewed submissions? The stuff people started while bored and forgot about after something more entertaining came along? Are there many of them that are obviously dead ducks? Peridon (talk) 23:19, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
- I think if we use the dated categories, those would catch both the unreviewed submissions and the failed ones. If there are any unreviewed submissions (and I think they would be few and far between), they could be handled more carefully and promoted to articles if of sufficient quality. --B (talk) 23:59, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
  - I looked at those categories, specifically Category:AfC submissions by date/December 2005, and noticed two article talk pages there. So, are articles chosen by AfC supposed to stay in these categories forever? If so, it doesn't seem that the dated categories would be very helpful. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:42, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

No, anything that IS a free standing article now would not be liable to G13 (although it might be liable to something else...). It's the non-accepted and unreviewed stuff we're after. The stuff that's currently going nowhere, and hasn't been going anywhere for quite some time. The stuff that needs to either be put where rescuers know about it, or binned. Peridon (talk) 13:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

So, then, I should remove those two article talk pages (and any else I find) from the category? Ego White Tray (talk) 12:44, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

If we decided that we wanted to use the dated categories for this, a bot could easily be called upon to split the rejected submissions out from the accepted ones or the pre-2009 pages where we didn't have a separate page for each article. (September 2008 is the first month where each submission gets its own page.) That part of it isn't a problem. --B (talk) 15:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Question: Does the 87,956 number include the Talk pages that are in the Category:AfC submissions by date? Am I correct in believing that the Talk pages are being retained in the category as a record of AfC activity? If so, should this be changed to a hidden category?
SBaker43 (talk) 14:56, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The 87K is only the ones that are in the declined AFC submissions category. There is a separate undated category for all declined submissions. The dated categories are for all submissions (declined, approved, or otherwise). If we were to approve G13, we could easily have a bot create dated categories for declined submissions just like we have for prods, orphaned images, etc. --B (talk) 15:12, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Note that we don't have to policy-in point 2: the process by which we do something is bound to policy, but doesn't have to do so immediately. If we have a criterion on which we may delete them, it doesn't mean we have to tag and delete them all right away. I could see the case of the tagging being done by bot, which checks if the CSD cat isn't overflowing (for example, only tag if there are less than 30 pages in the cat, starting with the oldest untouched). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:46, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

G13

Just a procedural point, do we have consensus to add G13 to WP:CSD, or does it need to go to an RfC first? We certainly need to check the precise wording of such as a criteria very carefully. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 10:16, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I would think the greater community would require an RfC for something like this. Many people in the community are not aware this discussion is taking place. 64.40.54.205 (talk) 11:00, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Have you been paying any attention? Clearly there is a lot of opposition to the idea. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

That's why I said "do we have consensus to add G13?" Clearly your answer is "No" in this instance. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:47, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we would have consensus if we modified the G13 proposal to the wording of U4, that the article would be subject to speedy deletion under the other A criteria if in article space. Presumably, the usual one would be A7. DGG ( talk ) 06:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that is that it doesn't actually solve any problem. The problem is that right now, we have an unmaintainable space where libel and copyright violations reign free. Nobody is going to randomly patrol AFC submissions, so if the problem wasn't caught immediately upon submission, it will sit there forever. If we are empowered to delete ALL old submissions, then those will be processed in dated categories just like orphaned fair use images, PRODs, etc. But if we aren't deleting all of them, then nobody will have any way of knowing what articles have or have not been reviewed for deletability and so none of them will get reviewed. The libel and copyright violations that we desire to find will sit there forever. --B (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Rather than saying G13 pages can be deleted if subject to deletion as an article, why not just expand the "A" criteria to cover drafts? I'm just thinking of the deletion logs here - seeing "no significance" is much more informative than "draft subject to speedy delete", which tells you squat. Ego White Tray (talk) 12:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

No, we don't want to do that - someone might start on an article draft without having enough information to prove the person's importance. We don't need to get all bitey by deleting their article while they're in the middle of working on it. --B (talk) 14:14, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

At present, the AfC people are tagging quite a lot of junk as it appears. How much is getting by still, I don't know, but in the earlier days it would seem that a lot was missed or was even preserved. Peridon (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

No, there is no consensus. Warden (talk) 09:34, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Complete oppose

This is the exact reason that I created Wikiproject Abandoned Drafts. Now, if we're talking about drafts on non-notable subjects or drafts that are attack pages, then fine. But everything else should not be deleted just because it's "old". Move it to the Wikiproject. Silver seren^C 20:59, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

From my experience, the vast majority of abandoned drafts are self promoted vanispamcrufvertisments, just not sufficiently blatant to fall foul of G11. If they somehow got moved to mainspace tomorrow, I suspect we'd see a couple of thousand CSD A7s appear very quickly. Seriously, spend some time on the AFC Help desk and see how many times you have to explain WP:V, WP:N and WP:RS to people - if you don't get a sense of satisfaction from improving someone's clue, you'll go mad. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 23:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Then it's fine to delete those, but just making a blanket "delete all drafts older than a year" isn't helping anything. I've found plenty of abandoned article drafts on notable topics that were practically completed already with only a few formatting changes needed before moving it into mainspace. Silver seren^C 00:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

A separation of declined AfC submissions into material with possible potential and material of no possible potential (to be deleted) would be desirable, I think. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, please. Silver seren^C 00:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes it certainly would. There are so many possibilities that I can think of no way of doing it except by MfD. Perhaps rather than discuss how to find an algorithm for how to do it by speedy, we should simply get started. MfD can be just as simple as Prod. The only question is, how are we to identify these items? I see no convenient category or list of rejected or unsubmitted items, but perhaps I have missed it in the confusion of the AfC project's pages and procedures. DGG ( talk ) 00:52, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

SilverSeren, at first glance I see 6 articles that your wikiproject has so far gotten into the mainspace, in over a year time. Perhaps there is a much longer list somewhere, but I don't see it. How do you propose to deal with the 80,000 old AfC submissions? Feel free to move any you really feel are salvageable to your project, but why keep all the others around indefinitely? Why keep thousands of copyright violations and the like around for the few potential gems between them? Fram (talk) 10:00, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with deleting the copyright violations or the attack pages, I just oppose outright deletion of all the articles without looking at them at all. I don't agree with bulk deletions. We've already had enough stuff lost in the past because of bulk deletions. Silver seren^C 02:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Outright copyright violations and attack pages can already be speedy deleted right now today. The problem is that nobody is ever going to patrol for them because it would be purely a random process. You have no way of knowing if someone else has already reviewed a particular AFC submission so any effort at weeding them out would be duplicative at best. And if we're going to have some kind of orderly process to find copyright violations and attack pages, we might as well use that same orderly process to delete anything that has no hope of ever becoming an article. --B (talk) 17:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect to the good folks at WikiProject Abandonned Drafts - where the hell have you people been?!?! Why is this the first time folks who deal with hundreds of drafts every day at AFC are even hearing about the existence of the project? If the Project doesn't have the capacity to deal with around fifty drafts per day, then there's really not much point in the project even existing. Using a teaspoon to empty a pond while it's being filled from a fire hose is pointless. Your energy would be better spent doing AfC reviews. Roger (talk) 07:30, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Update

Just thought I should post an update that MadmanBot (talk · contribs) is now checking AfC submissions for copyright violations. Also, several people are working on bots for checking AfC space for copyvios (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Reviewers: Please check for copyright violations!). Anybody that wants to check individual articles can use the Copyvio Detector at tools:~earwig/copyvios and G12 the problem articles. I'll also note that attack pages, BLP vios, etc. can/already are being G10'ed and don't need a new criteria in case people weren't sure. So many of the issues raised above are actively being worked on by the community at this time. Just figured people might like an update on the situation. Cheers. 64.40.54.32 (talk) 11:49, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but it will take much more time and effort to check all these old failed article submissions for these problems than the proposed G13 crterion, and all that extra effort will have very little benefit (in the form of articles). It is a serious improvement that all new entries will be checked for copyvio obviously, so that in the future they don't remain for a year or more, but I don't think they are a viable alternative for the speedy deletion of all old entries. I have spent some time individually checking and deleting old spam (G11) articles, and it takes way too much time. Fram (talk) 09:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I probably ought to point out that all our text copyright processes are seriously undermanned and frequently get backlogged. Increasing the workload isn't going to do any good. Hut 8.5 12:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Archive Request

At Wikipedia_talk:Database_download#dump_of_Articles_for_Creation_requested I've asked for an archive of the contents of Articles for Creation before it gets nuked. —rybec 04:13, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to have a bot automatically submit articles in the Wikipedia:Articles for creation namespace

Moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 6#An added proposal in relation to the new G13 criterion, as this is not in the scope of speedy deletion Ego White Tray (talk) 12:58, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Clarification edits by Steel1943 (talk) 19:32, 12 April 2013 (UTC).

What purpose does G2 serve

I'm wondering: is there any reason why we have G2? I don't see much point in deleting test pages, if we can simply userfy it to a sandbox. This doesn't go for IP editors, but they can't create mainspace pages anyway. Am I missing something? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 23:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Inexperienced editors may put tests in the article or template namespaces, and these junk articles and templates are deleted under G2. It goes right along with G1 and G3 as the basic classifications of articles that get maliciously or erroneously created and need no discussion to be wiped. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 23:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) What about an article containing the content

'''Bold text'''''''Italic text''--~~~~''

What about a template containing

{{

and nothing else? What about a page with the content

can i really edit this?

That's what G2 is for. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:44, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

How can I search the deletion log for deletion summaries citing G2 (or anything else)? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Um, go to Special:Log/delete, display 500 results at a time, and do a text search in your browser? That's all I can think of. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

When I search the deletion log in this way using ctrl+f I manually change the url to whatever number I'd like, usually 5000 by adding a zero in the URL. It takes a while to load but is much more useful size. Sidenote: G2 is the most misused criterion. People use it all the time for IAR deletions without naming them as such.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:22, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Hm, I thought 5000 was only available to admins! Turns out I was wrong. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there anything against userfying that? If a user wants to practice with bold and italic text, we shouldn't stop them. We wouldn't delete it in a user sandbox either. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:17, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Among the things I was most wrong about when I was a wee young editor was tagging G2 when it wasn't. Speedily deleting stuff out of process is fine. Disguising it as G2 is not. Even if you disagree that out of process speedy is fine, disguising it as G2 is still a bad idea. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:38, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

(1) What about IP editors? Granted, they can't create articles, but they can create talk pages on which they might experiment. (2) Most testing users are presumably not going to care about what happens to their little test after they see it appear "live". I seem to remember that in the past some of the user warning templates for tests included the cute little phrase "Your test worked", which would probably be enough for most users. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:42, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

1. They won't have created a test page in main on account of them not being able to create pages in main. 2. presumably not. But maybe they do. I'm ok with a "click here to mark the page for deletion" template on their usertalk on userfying, which would tag the test page in their own userspace db-self. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:06, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

"This doesn't go for IP editors, but they can't create mainspace pages anyway" - but they were able to do it. (and by AfC, but I really hope that never a G2 get accepted through AfC! mabdul 14:46, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't particularly mind grandfathering that in, and change G2 to "A page created to test editing or other Wikipedia functions by an editor who is not logged in to an account". (or something less awkward with the same meaning), but that seems bureaucracy for bureaucracies sake. If such a change would be acceptable but scrapping it altogether isn't, I would be mildly amazed, mildly annoyed with the bureaucracy, but still welcome the change. If there are still testpages created by IPs out there and they would be found, I wouldn't object to G6'ing them. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I most strenuously would object to deleting test pages under G6 as that is not what G6 is for. G6 is for technical and administrative deletions only, G2 is for test pages and there is no need to restrict that based on whether the creator was using an account or not. If things are getting G2ed that should be userfied then we need to either change the wording of G2 to more strongly encourage userfication (perhaps "this does not apply to any page that would be useful as a user page or personal sandbox" or something like that) and/or educate the people who are incorrectly tagging/deleting the pages. Thryduulf (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that the usecase you are talking about here is testpages created by IP's before we changed to requiring accounts for new pages, which is roughly since forever? 2005? I don't think there is any such page in main, and if there is, we certainly don't need a separate criterion for it. I still haven't seen any example of a page that couldn't just as well be userfied. I'm cool with deleting them out off process too, though it really *is* housekeeping. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:21, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Prod for IP pages in mainspace would work just as well I suppose by the way. The IP issue is really a non-issue. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:24, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

This isn't just about the main namespace though, so the ip issue is a distraction - either all test pages not suitable for userfication should be speedily deletable or none should be. The key question is therefore which is it? If they should be deletable there is nothing that needs doing except perhaps some stronger language about userfication; if none should be then G2 needs repealing. Thryduulf (talk) 23:16, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The point is I assert that all testpages are suitable for userfication. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 08:50, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Certainly not. People make tests to check on syntax, or similar. People make tests to see if they can actually make an article, without any intention to make one. People make pages containing what they know will not make an article, knowing it will soon be removed, just for the fun of it. For all of these, this is the most rational criterion. DGG ( talk ) 04:31, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Two points I disagree with: First, that we don't know if anyone makes something just for the fun of it, or are genuinely testing how something works. The latter can and should be userfied as a personal testing sandbox in case they want to refer to it again, or want to continue testing, and we can't objectively distinguish the two. The second is that deleting stuff like that discourages participation, while keeping it, even in a personal sandbox conveys more of a "cool that you're testing stuff, go right ahead!" which we should strive for. Stuff intended for testing is not valuable for new articles directly, but that's not the point of userfying these kinds of pages at all. Test pages are valuable for our editors, be they present wikidians, or new ones who just want a personal sandbox to muck about with wikisyntax. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 07:32, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose we need some examples. Here's one from AfC: subject of my article is... smegg References: me I suppose that would also fall under no context, except that the article has the name of a person as a title. I just deleted it as a test p, fwiw. There was an article just nominated as no context, with the text being "Hi". But again, there was a personal name and a city. I deleted it as a test p. also. DGG ( talk ) 04:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

all the recent G2's I can find are AfC G2's (which generally also could have gone G13), quite often they would have been no content or no context had they been in article space (thus not applying to AfC space). This makes me re-appreciate the (your?) idea of making AfCs that haven't been touched for over a year eligible for A criteria. But I'd rather see AfC reformed completely, i'm just not completely sure how yet. Anyway, if it is indeed used generally as some sort of 'catch all' for no content or no context like blurbs in non-articlespace, I would think that is more of a reason to retire it, rather than less of one. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

G13?

What is the point of G13? It's not like abandoned AfCs take up any room.--Laun chba ller 15:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The same thing can be said of articles that fail to meet notability guidelines, but that's beside the point. Because AfCs are not generally reviewed until submitted, and are not linked from other articles or the random page link, but can still be found on search engines, stale AfCs can end up hosting BLP violations. But mostly, they just need to be cleaned out, and right now, we don't have a process for doing that. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 16:33, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Copyright as well, and to a lesser extent hoax material. And no hands to clean the problems out individually, copyright investigation is already backlogged before this proposal, and it's not a fast thing to do. I think the BLP issues are probably the biggest factor, though. --j⚛e decker ^talk 18:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I think the most sensible way to go about this is to just have a bot mark them all individually as being a year old, stick them in another category and then we can work from there. Deleting all of them indiscriminately is not the answer.--Laun chba ller 18:54, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but leaving the copyrights, BLP issues and so forth there ad infinitum is a no go as far as I'm concerned. I will be willing to reconsider if you can construct a plausible case that the articles will all be examined. All 90,000 of them, plus another 30-40 per day. --j⚛e decker ^talk 19:21, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but a category with almost a hundred thousand articles, that may or may not have BLP, copyright, or any number of other issues, and may or may not even be cogent articles in and of themselves is not even on the same continent as a coherent approach to this problem. Maybe, just maybe, if we had a wikiproject with a couple dozen active members, that exists solely to review abandoned AfCs, then we might be able to make a dent after a couple years, but it's pretty ridiculous to think that's going to happen. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 19:38, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I have proposed a possible solution at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/2013 6#An added proposal in relation to the new G13 criterion. In regards to my suggestion, I think that all AfC entries that have never been submitted be automatically submitted in an effort to better determine what is an encyclopediac article, and what can be rejected and made eventually eligible for tagging with {{db-g13}}. The G13 criterion is useful to have, but only if applied properly. Steel1943 (talk) 19:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, your solution is to drop a hundred thousand submissions into AfC's lap? Did April Fool's day come around again without my noticing? Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:09, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

First off, that was some super and almost unnecessarily thick sarcasm. Secondly, no, not "all at once," like you were so implying. Someone on that discussion brought up the idea of programming the bot with a set maximum amount of submissions that can be done a day, which I fully agree with. Adding that much at once would be ridiculous. However, the point is to get the stale drafts noticed in one way or another so they can be properly deleted per criteria created by consensus, and this is one option: to give the old, unsubmitted drafts a set of eyes before they go under the chopping block. Steel1943 (talk) 23:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It was not my intention to imply anything. You are suggesting a herculean task, whether done all at once or in bits - spreading it out over two years requires reviewing over a hundred stale submissions per day, and that's just taking care of the backlog. It would require almost two hundred per day to take on the backlog and the AfCs that turn stale in that time, not to mention however many are actually submitted through the current process. Trust me, April Fools' was by far the most collegial thought that came to mind. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:02, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. :) Steel1943 (talk) 01:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

No, it didn't. As I've said, the best solution would be to drop a note on the talk pages of those responsible for creating individual AfCs, with IPs and blocked users being dealt with by something else, a job I have volunteered for. The only thing which should be blanket-deleted is copyright violations, which I'm sure the relevant bot can deal with. Steel1943, I have never heard a more ridiculous proposal, and Vanisaac, may I WP:TROUT him?--Laun chba ller 21:29, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

In this case, if I get a trout, I'll grill it and eat it. Read the proposal I linked on this discussion on the corresponding WikiProject; there has already been input on how to add to the idea, as it seems to be going in the right direction. Steel1943 (talk) 23:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

As the only admin apparently using the G13 criteria, I would say that almost everything I have read while deleting these stale pages doesn't meet our criteria at all if they were in article space. A large majority of them are spam, serious BLP violations, copyvios and the likes that was either reviewed rather lazy or when standards weren't as strict as it is today. There was several that had to be oversighted because it was pure libel and harassment (including one entry in question that involved a child) and I'm astonished how many of these survived so long. Considering adminstrators always been rather effy in deleting anything not in namespace, this criteria is way overdue. We can't have many of these postings in our search engines, Launchballer you have our interception of our guidelines completely wrong. Secret ^account 01:16, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I decided to stay away from G13 for now as I'm officially involved by reverting Launchballer and there is some consensus being discussed by categorizing the violations, but I'm going to continue under other criteria. Well the first article I clicked on random, was an negative unsourced BLP about a "porn star" no hits, that is borderline oversight, the second one was spam about a small hotel, the third one was probably mergeable if it is in namespace, (wife of a cricket player) so I left it alone, the fourth one was a copyvio promotion of a non-notable product. I can't believe people are opposing this still considering all the problematic submissions out there. Secret ^account 02:01, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Secret, you are apparently doing these deletions singlehanded? I think single handed speedies wrong in almost all instances, though I will do it in the worst and most obvious copyvio, vandalism, and BLP abuse, and i admit to recently doing it for some extreme examples of advertising -- in all these cases, to AfCs as well as articles. But in a case like this, where everyone agrees the precise parameters have not yet been defined, doing this by one single administrator without the chance fror another person to check is I think uncalled for. Whatever we decide on the exact final policy, it should explicitly prohibit the single handed use of G13. It is very possible that I would agree that almost all the AfCs you deleted are indeed worthless -- despite approaching deletions of all sorts very differently we agree on individual cases the great majority of the time. But I still think doing this is really over-pushing. I understand wanting to get things started. But let another person check. I assume even experienced admins, are at most 95% right when they want to delete something--I really doubt anyone who claims higher accuracy. If there's 50,000 articles to deal with, that's 125 articles lost instead of 2,500. I think that's an important difference.

fwiw, I remain convinced that the policy that we do this without regard to the potential merit of the article is totally wrong. I think I could convince people in a more general discussion, rather than the repeated rounds here with the few of us who specialize in this, and I think how we deal with even the apparently non-productive newcomers is a matter of general interest. I even think I could convince enough people here, given enough time and effort. If anyone else, such as ColW, wants to start such a discussion, I will gladly join in. But I'm not going to insist myself on starting one -- I've learned not to push too hard against apparent odds. Rather I will do what I have always done here, work on rescuing individual articles. I've already marked for rescue everything I could quickly find in my primary field, and I'm going to keep searching & expanding on this as rapidly as I can. (I'm using the same limitations I do in patrolling prod --I don't touch fields I have too little skill with, like athletes and popular entertainers. And my new personal practice: if it's borderline notable & promotional, it isn't worth the work. DGG ( talk ) 04:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I only realized I was the only administrator working with this criteria after looking at some of the logs yesterday, deciding the fate of 50,000 pieces of content single-handed I agree it is rather absurd. I was focusing on deletions on AFC for the longest time as an administrator, and studied the debate carefully, but didn't realize it was in multiple project pages with some of the strangest consensus for anything I've seen proposed in CSD. There is conflicting consensus on the template itself, with a clear consensus on the wording on G13 and its use, but no or little consensus on how to approach deleting those articles in question, whether to categorizing them, use a bot, and so forth.

I'll admit I was deleting up to borderline rejection material at first mainly because of the refund policy attached to the deletion rationale, but I started to narrow down on BLPs, four year old rejections (as by that point it is clearly abandoned), and obvious promotional/essay material, those that had little to no chance of having an article in the project or needed massive WP:TNT. I did delete material that was candidates to be moved to namespace but already had articles, usually by the same person who originally started in AFC and nothing mergeable. Of course everyone deletion criteria is a bit different, especially when it comes to speedy deletion. Like I tend to speedy delete those that is borderline A7 (or any other criteria) BLPs and very conservative in deleting anything else, ignoring or rejecting them unless its clear-cut. We do need to figure out something on how to deal with those drafts that doesn't meet any of the speedy deletion criteria including notability or those that we know won't survive prod or AFD like student essays. Secret ^account 05:30, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it helps to have some common understanding about the priority in what ought to be deleted. My own ideas here are very close to what you say above.. I completely agree about removing material that is already in mainspace--which I think should be speediable even if less than a year old--whether it's something that has been moved from AfC to mainspace, or what would otherwise be an A10. I agree about priority to BLPs and very old material. I agree about A7s. G11 is already a policy, and, as everywhere else, I am now very willing to delete a borderline notable article that is also borderline promotional though not quite G11. We do need something to deal with essays, and other unencyclopedic material, and that's why I suggest letting prod apply to old AfCs. I hope you agree with me about the desirability of make redirects out of anything that could be a useful redirect. (We can of course delete and then make a redirect, but if there is any content possibly useful it is better to do it by moving and redirecting.)

The basic criterion for all of this is keeping what is not copyvio and (1) what the original contributor may be able to build on. and (2) what someone else may be able to build on. Something with no potential should be deleted, The difficulty is in making guidelines that give as much guidance as possible to individual judgment. And another thing to bear in mind is that if the ed. is still around, they should be reminded, and asked if they want to do it by the equivalent of A7.

Secret, how are you proceeding? oldest first, and then alphabetical? I've been going by subcategories of specified reasons, quickly skimming with popups for what can be improved on the one hand, or deleted on the other. My next project will probably be as rescan of "non notable academic", then promotional. I hope you will use Speedy nominations, not direct deletions & I plan to do the same--one person may miss seeing something. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Just to chime in, I have nominated a few myself, poking around AfCs from January/February 2010 using the date categories. I've also improved and mainspaced three borderline notables and one better-than-borderline case, made a few redirects, and so forth. The big classes of one's that got nominated were "more or less empty", "already exists", "hoax", "unsalvagably promotional/G11", "wildly non-notable/A7". A category I haven't seen many of, but that I also believe to be disproportionately important to address, are BLP issues that are short of a narrow CSD definition of attack pages.

Having now seen this discussion, I will hold or at least greatly slow for a bit while the questions being discussed here work toward consensus, and of course, yes, I'll stick to nominations, not direct deletions. I agree with the idea that it's sensible to speedy AfC's that duplicate topics already in mainspace even more promptly.

In terms of the worst problems, yes, oldest articles first makes sense. But to the extent that recovery efforts are expended, please consider newest articles first, as a matter of triage. AfC is constantly backlogged. That is an editor retention problem, which leads to fewer experienced editors, which makes this AfC problem worse. A creating-editor-centric view of this backlog might be just as valuable as a topic-centric one. And emergency room care is often a lot more expensive, and often less effective, than preventative medicine.--j⚛e decker ^talk 17:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions

– There is unanimous support for implementing this change, but no consensus for changing it to 3 or 6 months, or an expansion into userspace drafts, so the original proposal shall stand. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
– I've unclosed this. I whole-heartedly agree with the shenanigans discussion below. If we are going to authorize admins to delete pages with minimal review (which is what speedy deletion is), then we need to do this right. Ego White Tray (talk) 22:14, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
– Restoring close. It has become evident after further discussion that a similar proposal on WP:VPR has a few major differences which would make it far more overreaching, and the reason for all the opposition on a similar proposal on WP:VPR is that it proposed to delete all old AfC submissions (not just declined ones), and the indiscriminate nature of mass deletion. As the current proposal has not gained significant opposition in the meantime, we can close it now. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
– Discussion boldly reopened by Colonel Warden at 09:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC). Steel1943 (talk) 02:20, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
– Reclosing this discussion. The original proposal to add this criterion seems to have been approved by consensus per WP:SNOW; however, the exact details in the wording and the time frame stated in the criterion are currently being discussed in sections below. Please feel free to add on to those discussions prior to their closure. Steel1943 (talk) 02:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

In the above discussion, Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposed new criterion: abandoned article drafts, a suggestion for a new speedy criterion G13 was made. This had some support, but the (correct) remark that a simple talk page discussion can't decide was made. So I propose the following for this RfC:

G13: Rejected Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year Fram (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Support as proposer. I wouldn't mind doing this after 3 or 6 months instead of a year, but I can live with a year. There are currently more than 90,000 declined AfC submissions in Category:Declined AfC submissions, including thousands of advertisements, hundreds of BLP and detected copyright violations, and many thousands of articles that don't fit a current speedy criterion but don't have any chance of ever becoming an article. We could start to ProD or MfD the lot, but that would put unnecessary strains on those processes for little to no actual gain. Making them speedy deletable would keep this process lightweight and easy. Pages that have been deleted for this reason can always be resurrected or userfied if necessary, but this will be the exception, most are well and truly abandoned. Fram (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that this would, at a very rough count, affect initially some 50,000 pages, and then about 100 new ones per day. This indicates why adding them to the existing structures like MfD or ProD may cause problems. Fram (talk) 13:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support provided that the 50,000 pages are dealt with in such a way that the deletion log is not overwhelmed. Ideally also this criterion should be mentioned when submissions are declined. Thryduulf (talk) 13:54, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - Its extremely rare but for once I actually agree with Fram. I think a year is generous personally and would think 6 months is more than enough. Kumioko (talk) 13:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support these pages have little encyclopedic value, aren't being maintained, and could contain all kinds of problematic material. 50,000 pages would completely overwhelm PROD. I would be happy to support a shorter time period. Hut 8.5 14:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support although I'd also support a shorter time, 6 months at the most. Dougweller (talk) 14:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - No brainer. Would also support shorter time frames, 6 months seems more than reasonable. If this passes, I'd be happy to create a bot task to take care of the deletions. Just contact me. ‑Scottywong | spill the beans _ 15:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support with the expectation that we should be particularly liberal in granting refund requests on these deletions. Monty ₈₄₅ 15:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support As I indicated above, this is not my first choice, but I will go with it as consensus is against my preferred option. However, I don't like the year time limit. In fact, of the eight supports so far, six of us have stated that we would be happy with less so consensus seems to be against a year. In fact all six of us have indicated that we would be happy with less than six months ("I wouldn't mind doing this after 3 or 6 months instead of a year", "3 or 6 months", "6 months is more than enough", "6 months at the most", "6 months seems more than reasonable" + myself), so how about three months? A page that has not been edited in that much time is probably not going to be, and exceptional cases can, of course, be restored on request. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support at 3, 6 or 12 months, with very little difference in preference in that range. As Monty845 suggests. In most cases, I'd support liberal REFUND-by-request, I'd imagine that most of the other cases would qualify for other CSD. --j⚛e decker ^talk 16:58, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Suppor 6 or 12 month, (3 months is to short), Recreate on request. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 17:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support with preference for the 6 month term. Mangoe (talk) 19:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - suggest 6 months, 12 months is almost as good (3 months is too short a time frame IMO) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 19:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. There's a lot of copyvio, libel, nonsense, etc. in these that can only bring trouble. I assume this proposal also applies to the old-style AfCs by date like Wikipedia:Articles for creation/2006-05-03. Kilopi (talk) 19:45, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I'd go for the 12 month time - there could be a change later to 6 if things are building up too much - and there are few returnees. I would think that three could be workable if clearly pointed out in the start-up page - it might make people concentrate more. I am increasingly getting the impression that people out there think they only need to post a title and a name or a single sentence, and magically a team of wiki brownies will fill out all the rest. 12 months for now and see how it goes. Copyvio can be got rid of already, as can attack, but this will cut the amount that needs checking. Peridon (talk) 19:56, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

General Sherman

Cone and seed

~~Comment~~Oppose, shouldn't the real question be whether the subject is actually notable or not? I am OK with stubs, although fully realized articles are of course preferred.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:19, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
- Who exactly is going to bother to sort through 90,000 articles to find the handful that might be notable? Hut 8.5 21:08, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:NOTCLEANUP is relevant here. The question is whether those subjects are notable or not, if they are not notable, then no article for creation should have been started in the first place; if they are notable, stubs are just as worthy as a starting point for content regarding the notable subject as anything else. Of course we want to work on those articles to get them to become quality content, but some of the greatest things, can start out small.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:NOTCLEANUP is relevant only to articles that already exist in mainspace and have been sent to AFD, not drafts that nobody is ever going to finish - remember that the whole point here is that the person who created the draft has not touched it in over a year. Roger (talk) 06:40, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Support. Do we have any stats on how often these old AFC submissions are revisited? I would prefer 12 months just to be on the safe side, but 6 months is also fine, I guess. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. Prefer 12 months. 6 months is OK. Uneasy about 3 months. Note that while G13 applies after a long wait, all other G criteria may be applied nearly immediately.
I still recommend that if A10 (duplicates an existing article) would apply, that the page should be redirected to the existing article immediately. This is for the benefit of the author. If the AfC becomes old enough for G13, that's OK.
I would still like it to be mandatory to notify the talk page of the AfC creator on deletion by G13, if the AfC creator was a registered user account. Scottywong, would that be a problem? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:27, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose any expansion into userspace. Abandoned IP AfC submissions are VERY different to a registered user's user space. The recently proposed U4 was rejected, alongside support for this G13. Old abandoned userspace stuff should be replaced with Template:Inactive userpage blanked. MfD nominations for others' user subpage drafts have a very poor track record. If people don't understand that this proposal is for old AfCs and not userspace, then should we write that in big? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Support common sense. --Rs chen 7754 06:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support but Note: Cleaning these up automatically is entirely fine. I would also point out that copyright violations sometimes manage to slip trough, yet after a decline no one may ever look at the page again (Thus leaving a page with legal problems). However, i would point out that editors sometimes revisit their declined article's months after the decline. In part this is due to the backlog being 3 ish weeks right now (Thus people may cease checking often) - but regardless of the reason resubmissions of old pages are quite common under 6 months of age; and only a few days ago i received a question regarding a page i declined 8 months ago. As for savable old pages - the current setup makes this near impossible due to the sheer amount of garbage submitted; searching trough the refuse pile for a gem simply isn't cost effective. I suppose it might be feasible if the AFCH were extended with an "May be decent" checkbox that flags pages as possibly decent. Such an article may still end up in the refuse pile, but at least anyone searching for things to improve would have some means of finding a possible gem. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, and expand to include all abandoned userspace drafts, including userfied deleted articles. Sandstein 15:48, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, seems reasonable, logical, and sensible. — Cirt (talk) 17:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, if after 12 months someone wants to write about the same topic, more often than not it's another editor starting from scratch anyway. There may be 20% viable article topics among the drafts we'll delete, but how often is such an abandoned draft actually turned into a valid article? That's far less than 1%, I'll wager. Huon (talk) 18:02, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support at any 3 months or + time frame. KTC (talk) 19:40, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support without reservations, AfC is drowning in crap, clearing the "overburden" would be a huge relief. Roger (talk) 21:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support for >1 year. The way to do it, to alleviate the very valid concerns DGG has presented below, would be to set up a system where, for example, every submission made in January 2013 would be placed on a list in January 2014 saying they would be up for consideration February 1, 2014. That would give each round a month of time for interested Wikipedians to take a look and salvage what can be salvaged. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:22, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Actually, is there any reason why this has to be a CSD criterion instead of just WikiProject policy? If there's community-wide consensus for the action in general, it seems a lot simpler to have it done in-house than to invent a new speedy category that doesn't apply elsewhere. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:25, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
The reason is that WP:AfC is not owned by the WikiProject, and AfC submitters are not WikiProject members. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Support. We really need to get rid of our myriad abandoned drafts, and a year time limit reduces to virtually nothing the chance that we'll delete something anyone remembers or cares about. We can always undelete something upon request. I do agree, however, with Amory — we really don't need to do this as a G13. Let's make this an approved kind of G6 deletion. Nyttend (talk) 23:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support and expand to include userspace drafts and userfied content as well. MER-C 02:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support for AFC submissions and userspace drafts. However... could we maybe do this like with the 7-day delay feature seen with some of the F-series criteria? That way if someone really wants to rescue a long-forgotten submission, they have a week to add a few paragraphs and save it; if the user doesn't care, they could always just G7 it. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 03:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- I agree with the 7-day delay; if the speedy deletion process is going to be run by a bot anyway, this would create minimal extra work with a net benefit. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support It will definitely help cleanup AfC. The Anonymouse (talk | contribs) 04:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support I see no problem with this. AFC is in dire need of cleanup. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 05:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, yet I would really like this to be postponed for a month if possible: I would like to see AfC reformed completely, and a first step for me would be gathering statistics on drafts - which will be far harder if they are deleted. (i'm specifically looking for the %resubmitted after decline n, and the %accepted after resubmit n, and if I want to get fancy, find a way to correlate to time it took to review - if this data is somewhere, cool bananas, I want in!) Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support and suggest that six months is more than enough. It is a totally arbitrary that an article submitted straight to mainspace can be speedily deleted for lack of notability but if it gets submitted via AfC it currently remains there indefinitely. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 13:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Support as a long time helper and script developer for the project. mabdul 14:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose making this a speedy process. I'd like them deleted. I don't think that there's any good reason to do it under CSD, which is the "any admin can delete instantly on sight" process. Since there's no urgency here, I think it would actually be best to have a bot tag them for PROD in batches (maybe 100 a day, which will take more than one year to clear out the many-years-old backlog, but which is just as sustainable as doing the same thing with the bot adding a CSD tag), after giving the original editors notice that they've got a week to get it fixed up, or it's game over. This isn't about admin time (because I estimate that an admin going to CAT:CSD and clicking the delete button a hundred times takes exactly as long as an admin going to the expired PROD cat and clicking that same delete button); this is about not biting the newbies and not having to waste time explaining to them why they received zero notice of the problem. It would also have the small advantage of not burying hoaxes and attack pages and other serious CSDs in a pile of unimportant AFCs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:06, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

That's simply unworkable. The PROD system is often overloaded as it is: many of the declined things would automatically fit the CSD criteria that exist already, and the backlog would increase far quicker than it would decrease, even if you increased your 100 number to something much bigger (which really would then overload the PROD system.) WP:BITE is completely irrelevant, because if the draft has been stale for a year, the chances of that user being active are VERY small (and if they are, they're no longer a new user...) - and if you're worried about it, then you can make this bot send warnings to the account that say "if you don't edit this in the next month, it will be deleted". In addition to this, giving an extra week to an article that has sat untouched for a year is incredibly pointless. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:16, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with User:Lukeno94, shifting the overload around is not a solution at all. The pile of abandoned drafts needs to be deleted - that's not disputed by anyone (yet!) - so anything other than getting on with it as efficiently as possible, is pointless "moving the deck chairs while the ship is sinking". Roger (talk) 08:48, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The difference between PROD and speedy deletion is that PROD allows time for review by other editors. The more articles we tag for PROD the less review each one will get and the less effective the process will be. PROD (and BLP PROD) was responsible for deleting about 20,000 articles last year. If we tag 100 rejected AfC submissions a day then the number of articles being deleted by PROD would roughly triple. And even tripling it would not be able to cope with the problem here, as at that rate it would take about two and a half years just to clear the existing backlog. Hut 8.5 12:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Tossing one's yard trash over the fence into the neighbour's yard does not make the trash vanish. Shifting this overload from AFC to PROD solves absolutely nothing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you guys are getting it: Pushing the 'delete' button after a seven-day PROD does not take longer than pushing the same 'delete' button after finding it in the CSD cats. It's the same button. Sure: PROD will have a much higher volume. But the total number of times that an admin has to push the delete button will be the same. In terms of admin time, "Look, it's an abandoned AFC in the CSD category: I delete it!" and "Look, it's an abandoned AFC in the PROD category: I delete it!" take exactly the same amount of time. If you need a human to push the button 50,000 times, then you need a human to push the button 50,000 times. Calling it "speedy" does not make the human capable of pressing the button any faster. The only thing that CSD does is eliminate the possibility of notifying authors in advance—authors who might want to improve, reactivate, or copy their original work, without having to ask someone for a REFUND later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you're getting it. As I said above, the workload associated with PROD is not simply a matter of pushing Delete buttons. PROD is supposed to be a way of allowing other editors to review the proposed deletion and contest it if they think the nomination is invalid or the article can be fixed. The reason we send things through PROD rather than speedy deletion is because the deletion reason is considered too subjective for the judgement to be made by one editor. The more articles we tag for PROD the harder it will get to give all articles the desired review.
Furthermore I don't think you're appreciating the kinds of users who use AfC. A large fraction (perhaps even most) of the people who submit articles are unregistered editors. Because of the way the software is configured AfC is the only way that have of creating new articles. It is essentially impossible to get in contact with an unregistered editor about something that happened more than a year ago. If a message left for such a user is read by anyone at all it will probably be someone the IP address has been reassigned to. Even in the case of pages created by registered users it will be unlikely that the account is still editing. Hut 8.5 10:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - It would eliminate abandoned copyvios and potential BLP violations. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:44, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Support - as the original proposer. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
Support Will help with the backlog. Rcsprinter (talk) @ 11:02, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support, would also like to see it expanded to userfied pages, though. Lectonar (talk) 11:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
Support of course as original nominator. --B (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments added after 2nd closing

Oppose The existence of lots of drafts is a natural consequence of the scale of Wikipedia. We do not have a deadline because this is a volunteer effort and arbitrary time limits should not be imposed, per WP:CREEP. Deletion doesn't actually delete the material; it just restricts visibility to admins. There doesn't seem to be a good reason why only admins should be allowed to view such drafts. Warden (talk) 09:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

From the top of my hat i can think of three reasons. First, if someone uses the AFC process to create a page using a title that already exists it will append the page to the existing draft (Which is rather messy and confuses users). This is not a daily issue but a larger amount of old pages creates a higher change of this occurring. Second issue is that there are plenty of BLP / Copyright violations that are not correctly flagged as such. Since no-one rechecks old drafts these pages will stay around. A third reason is that most of these pages aren't worth while to keep around; If they had been posted directly in the main article space they would have definitely been removed under one of the CSD criteria by now. Are these reasons enough to remove the pages? Debatable of course but i believe they are. Whether or not you agree is entirely up to you of course

Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 13:13, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Support - Deletion after a year of abandonment is unlikely to cause a problem - I could live with a longer or shorter time-scale, although I wouldn't support anything less than six months. In any case, this issue has got to be managed as the number of abandoned submissions is only going to get larger. The upsides of dealing with potential copyvios, BLP violations, and other policy issues as well as clearing the way for future articles are counter-weighted by few real downsides. CT Cooper · talk 13:39, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong Oppose- WP:NOTCLEANUP, WP:DEADLINE. This is a volunteer effort. Some people might continue writing some drafts. Others might want to continue someone else's abandoned draft. It is unnecessary to delete them all. They are not bothering anyone. I don't understand the mass support for this proposal. Feedback ^☎ 02:03, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
- I can understand your opposition, but please consider to look at Fram's sample below and see if you really think they are worth keeping... — This, that and the other (talk) 07:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose: TLDR: counter to WP:OWN, WP:PRESERVE and WP:NTEMP; reviews can be wrong; if a bad article falls in the AfC does it make a sound?

AfC drafts can be edited by anyone who is able to edit Wikipedia, including IP editors. Declining a draft is nothing more than editing it. While I haven't noticed any declinations that looked mischievous, I have seen some that were clearly incorrect. Authors of AfC drafts are typically inexperienced, and may not recognize a wrong declination. Normally when a draft is declined, the helper script posts a message to the author's talk page; as far as I know that is the only place besides the draft itself where the declination is ordinarily recorded. As far as I know, there is no summary page listing recent declinations, so they may be readily patrolled. A reviewer not using the helper script could decline a draft without notifying the author. Many reviewers, on finding a draft on a suitable topic requires work to meet Wikipedia standards, will decline it. For these reasons, the fact that a draft has been declined does not reliably indicate that the draft doesn't "have any chance of ever becoming an article."

The proposal says there is a possibility of harm from advertisements, copyright infringements, and BLP violations and other text in these drafts. Any of these can be grounds for declination, and the most serious ones (as the proposer acknowledged) can be speedily deleted already. If unwanted text is not promptly deleted, it still has little potential for harm: if it goes unread, it does no harm; if someone reads it and considers it harmful, its deletion can be requested then. So long as the site remains in the USA, there's a safe harbor provision under the DMCA for user-contributed media that infringe copyright. There's at least one bot scanning AfC for copyright infringement. I suspect that many of the so-called copyright infringements and BLP violations are by contributors who are trying to promote themselves or a company they work for with text they wrote themselves: these advertisements reach an audience of few to none.

The problem of name-space collisions can be avoided by appending a numeral to the name of the draft. This could be automated.

Having the Article Wizard search for existing drafts when an author uses that would increase the likelihood that an abandoned draft would be completed by a future author.

WP:NTEMP suggests to me that, with the passage of time, the notability of any topic is more likely to increase than to decrease. The fundamental assumption behind this proposal is that an AfC draft is WP:OWNed by a single author, so that if that author abandons the draft, there will be no further improvement. The proposed expiration date would actively discourage collaborative editing by sweeping away abandoned drafts before a second author comes along. In this way, it is anti-wiki. —rybec 06:48, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Not sure you understood the proposal, it's for drafts that haven't been edited by anyone for a year, not just the original author. If it's been idle for a year, it's stale, and is highly unlikely to be worked on. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 10:28, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

When I wrote
Normally when a draft is declined, the helper script posts a message to the author's talk page; as far as I know that is the only place besides the draft itself where the declination is ordinarily recorded.
and
Having the Article Wizard search for existing drafts when an author uses that would increase the likelihood that an abandoned draft would be completed by a future author.
I was referring to ways in which the AfC process as it exists leads to articles that have a single author. Another factor is that drafts are kept under Wikipedia_talk. To search for an AfC draft with the search feature, someone must first find the advanced search, then check off Wikipedia_talk; any results will be mixed in with results from actual talk pages. Wikipedia_talk is not distributed as a data dump, so AfC drafts can't readily be mirrored by other sites. The robots.txt file specifically discorages search engines from indexing these drafts with the line Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/. This intentional lack of visibility makes it unlikely that anyone but the original author will work on a draft; the G13 proposal would further hide these drafts so that only Wikipedia administrators and WMF employees can see them. It would amount to throwing away people's work.

Articles in the main space are much more visible than those in AfC, yet there are many which haven't been updated in a year. To have a script come along and automatically delete them as "stale" would be silly, if this site is still supposed to resemble an encyclopedia. For these draft articles that have been deliberately hidden, the "edited by anyone for a year" criterion is even less valid. —rybec 22:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The difference between a mainspace article that hasn't been edited in a year and a rejected AfC submission that hasn't been edited in a year is that the former meets our minimum expected standards of encyclopedia articles, whereas the latter doesn't (assuming it was properly rejected) and probably never will, since the creator is unlikely to come back and finish the job and it is unlikely anyone else will bother. Hiding a page from search results is not sufficient to fulfill our obligations to remove BLP violations and copyright infringements. Pages which are copyright infringements are deleted or blanked, not merely hidden from Google. The fact that the DMCA prevents Wikipedia itself from being sued over copyright violations is irrelevant. If that was considered to be an excuse for not tackling copyright infringements we wouldn't have any policies or processes for dealing with copyright at all. Deleting any page constitutes "throwing away people's work" and hiding pages so only administrators can see them. (As a minor point, it is not true that no Wikipedia talk pages are included in database dumps.) Hut 8.5 08:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Bot task

If approved I recommend seeing if someone like Anomie would setup a bot task to automate the deletion of these. Perhaps an initial one time sweep of the ones over a year and then see what that leaves us for submission to CSD. Also, I would ask someone like MZMcbride with toolserver/Sql access to the database to create a report for these. Kumioko (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Are there any existing deletion criteria where the actual deletion is performed by a bot? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:28, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

User:7SeriesBOT deletes pages under U1 and G7. Ryan Vesey 20:34, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Probably would be best to only have the bot tag the articles, but leave the actual deletion to a reviewing admin. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:11, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree, for at least the initial bot run it should do the deletion too, manually reviewing the ~90,000 drafts that are currently deletable under G13 is simply not managable (that number grows by 40-50 every single day). Any deletion can be reversed on request in the highly unlikely event that the author of a draft abandoned a year ago suddenly returns from the dead. Once the 90,000 "overburden" has been cleared the 40-50 daily deletions can be done manually (after the bot has tagged them). Roger (talk) 22:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I concur with Roger. Its likely a small number will need to be undeleted but there are just too many to review every one. Kumioko (talk) 03:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to see the 40-50 articles per day deleted by the bot as well. To go through each article and check the history takes time, and if this task can be reliably performed by a bot I don't see the need to bother humans with it. Admin eyes at CAT:CSD would be better reserved for cases that require human judgement, like A7 and G11. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 19:25, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see a bot tag about 10 articles per hour during those times CAT:CSD isn't heavily backlogged (say, don't tag if there are more than 50 items in the cat), until the backlog is empty. If we decide to make them eligible for deletion, it doesn't have to mean we have to tag and delete them right now. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:55, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I like this idea. One of the original concerns was that something worthwhile might be missed. By having a human pull the trigger on deletion, we at least prevent this. Having a bot tag the old articles in an orderly, predictable fashion (oldest to newest) over a couple of months would reduce that concern. At least there would be a chance that something with potential gets saved. --B (talk) 12:28, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

While it is true that some worthwhile pages might be present in the decline pile i don't think that rechecking each page manually is worth the effort. AFC is backlogged as is, and requiring an administrator to check every page before removing it effectively increases that backlog by another 90k pages. After all, how can you judge if something should be removed without reading it? I would also mention that these pages were originally declined for a reason and while there may be some gems in the junkyard the vast majority will be garbage.

If anything i would suggest creating a "Promising new article's" page or something similar. An AFC reviewer could use the WP:AFCH script to mark a page as "Promising" after which it would be added to that list. If the draft would ever be abandoned it would still be present on the list, so it would be easy to find (And perhaps that list could be excluded from automatic removal). That won't save the already present article's but is it really worth the time to sift trough 100 declined article's in order to find one that could be saved with some major effort? I don't think it is. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:56, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

data and a substitute proposal

I've unhatted this sub-section per comments by DGG (talk · contribs) below. Please note I'm the same 64.40.5*.*** that has commented in the rest of this page, so everybody is free to revert if they think this was impropoer. 64.40.54.108 (talk) 07:47, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I seem to be in the position of opposing my own proposal, but what I suggested was much more nuanced than this. I have now made an analysis of 170 declined articles taken equally from continuous sections at three parts of the alphabet. 84 of these were more than one year old. Of these 84, 21 of them were possible articles, including 6 needing only minor editing and 6 that could immediately be merged or turned into redirects; the other 9 would need more substantial editing but would then make adequate articles. (for comparison, within the year, there were 25 probably acceptable in some manner out of the 86, a very similar proportion.) This would support a 6 month period instead of a 12 (contrary to what I would have predicted).

This means, that if we speedy-delete all such articles, we will have at 25% error rate, This is too high. A speedy deletion criterion should ideally have a 5% positive error rate, though in practice we accept 10%. It certain rules out using a bot. It also rules out doing more than, say 50 a day so that they actually could be looked at.

What I propose instead as a substitute is , a speedy deletion criterion for 'All AfCs that have not been edited in six months, and would be speedy deletable if they were articles, and those that have not been edited for six months and do not meet a speedy criterion be proddable. That would give more of a chance to rescue those that could be rescued .

DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Support, this sounds good. Thryduulf (talk) 02:03, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support agreed. AutomaticStrikeout (T • C • Sign AAPT) 02:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Support with rephrasing - the stuff about Wikipedia:Proposed deletion is currently confusingly written. Also, let's make sure that admins cite both this new criteria and the article criteria it qualified for. So:

"Articles for creation that have not been edited in six months and would be speedy deletable if they were articles. Administrators deleting such articles should list both this criteria and the relevant article deletion criteria in their deletion summaries. If such a page has seen no edits in six months but does not qualify for speedy deletion, it may be deleted through the Proposed Deletion process instead." Ego White Tray (talk) 04:19, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose, way too complicated for very little benefit. And AfC submissions that could be turned into redirects are hardly useful, what's the point of having an old AfC redirect to a mainspace article? DGG, can you list the 15 pages out of the 84 older than a year that could with some effort be turned into articles? That would give us a better idea of what could be lost by automatic deletion. Oh, and ruling out doing more than 50 a day would be really problematic, as that would only increase the backlog; more than 50 submissions are declined and abandoned every day. Fram (talk) 06:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

As an example, I have taken Category:AfC submissions by date/10 March 2012, which would under the original proposal be ready for emptying (well, deletion of the abandoned ones at least, not deletion of the accepted ones of course).

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/(spool / reel / thread) box: could with a lot of effort perhaps be turned into an article of borderline notability
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/2012 Dallas Tennis Classic exists as 2012 Dallas Tennis Classic, no need to keep it
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/2012 Jalisco Open exists as 2012 Jalisco Open
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Taxi 24/7- A Voice Based Social Network is speedy deletable as an ad
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Ade Babtunde, Triple Jump doesn't seem to meet WP:NSPORTS (a triple jumper with a PB of 15.56 as of 2011 is still some way removed from the top of his field)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alberto Adarve is speedy deletable A7
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Alvin klein Santos is speedy deletable A7
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Arizona Nurse Amanda Trujillo would never be a viable article (soapboxing)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Aujla Dhak; unverifiable, and when stripping out the POV, hardly anything worth saving would remain anyway
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Australian Business For Sale seems unlikely to survive an AfD
Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Benoit Michel is hard to judge, may be or not be notable
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bigfoot Monster of the Ice wouldn't survive an AfD
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/C.S.I. Bain Matriculation Higher Secondary School seems to be a copyvio from [5]
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Canadia is a hoax
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Capism wouldn't survive an AfD (and is probably a copyvio, haven't checked)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cassandra (Cass) Courtney wouldn't survive an AfD
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Charik Crew should be speedy deleted as a G10
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Chevecki is a speedy G11 candidate
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Community Bible Study may perhaps be a viable article candidate
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Computer networ Technology program at Renton Technical college wouldn't survive an AfD
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Darren K Hawkins may be a viable article candidate
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dj Paurik The Splendid Djs is a speedy G11 candidate
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dominic Scott has already been A7 speedy deleted in a live incarnation of this article
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Dr. Abdul Ruff is a copyvio from his own biography on wordpress
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/enke: Make Your Mark is a G11 candidate
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/erratica would never survive an AfD
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Faisal Alanbaei is an A7
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Federal Hotel, Melbourne is borderline whether it would survive an AfD (a building considered for protection, but deemed not interesting enough and then demolished)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Find My Recycler wouldn't survive an AfD (probably A7 candidate)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Forevermore (OPM Album) exists as Forevermore (David Archuleta album)
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Fullbridge Program seems doubtful that it would survive an AfD, would need a complete rewrite anyway
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Furlough Fridays (band) wouldn't survive an AfD

So that means that of these 32 articles, 6 may, perhaps, with luck and loads of work, be an article (although for most of them this seems doubtful, none are on obviously notable subjects); I have bolded these above for your convenience. On the other hand, we have some pages that should have been deleted ages ago (copyvios, G10 attack pages). To go through these articles in this manner is a lot of work, something which no one seems to be prepared to do (or at least no one has been doing until now). To put this burden on people as a requirement for deletion is counterproductive to say the least. In the original proposal, everyone who wants to has six months or a year to go through these pages and rescue whatever warrants rescuing; after that, no more effort is wasted on them and they are summarily deleted (with no objection to undeletion if anyone wants to work on them anyway afterwards). In the second proposal, every page would need to be checked contentwise. Who is going to make that effort? This proposal would in reality mean that these pages would stay around forever, just like now, without anyone actually trying to salvage anything from them anyway. Fram (talk) 08:16, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - 6 months is more than enough on its own for anyone who wants to do this rescue work (let alone 12). Adding this clause in may as well defeat the whole point of this speedy deletion idea. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:41, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose as too time-consuming and unworkable. This proposal would require reviewers to examine articles individually and decide whether they meet any speedy deletion criteria. Even for obvious things like copyright violations this would be time-consuming. For articles which don't obviously qualify for the article speedy deletion criteria the reviewer would have to do things like checking for potential sources, which is even more time-consuming. It doesn't seem as though anyone is willing to do all this work, and even if there are their efforts could be better used elsewhere.
Then there are the logistics of the proposal. A rate of 50 articles a day is simply unrealistic. There are 90,000 declined AfC submissions at the moment, and at that rate it would take 5 years even to process the existing backlog, never mind all the submissions added in the meantime. Counting up the articles in Category:Declined AfC submissions which were declined for a reason that isn't handled through CSD (plot summary, dictionary definitions, essays, unsourced articles, neologisms, news reports, foreign languages, "not suitable for Wikipedia", non-neutral and the various varieties of non-notable) produces about 75,000. Many of those will qualify for A7, but sorting through these would certainly swamp the PROD process, which deleted about 20,000 articles in the whole of last year (including BLP PROD). Any contested PRODs will have to be handled through WP:MFD, which isn't equipped to for anything like this. Hut 8.5 11:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

oppose I can see making some provision for someone who comes along and lays claim to one which is salvageable, though in practice if anyone cared about rescuing these, they would have been promoted already, n'est pas? Even if the material could be made into a serviceable article, I don't see keeping the text around in the hopes that someone, some day might come along and finish starting it. The benefits of reducing the clutter far outweighs the loss of article text whose potential is thus far unrealized and whose history shows that it is almost certain to remain in that state. Mangoe (talk) 12:29, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose with regret. There's no interest in reviving even a tiny fraction of the best of those drafts, WP:Abandoned Drafts is for all intents and purposes dead, the articles in Fram's list above which were recreated were likely recreated without the new author knowing about the previous draft. These AfCs are not visible to searching, and so they are, for any practical purpose already deleted. Leaving them in limbo is a problem, copyright and attack problems are too frequent.

Which is not to say that there shouldn't be some efforts at salvage. But since salvaging all of these is (practically speaking) impossible, wouldn't it make sense to start with the newest ones? That is, the fresh AfC submissions for which the authors might still be around? Maybe focus on retaining those new editors and their efforts, rather than those who are long gone from the project? --j⚛e decker ^talk 19:39, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose - I have no problem with generous refund instead. This proposal is complexity without real benefit. KTC (talk) 19:42, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

reopening

I don't think this has been given adequate consideration. People challenged my numbers. For the survey, I just recorded the numbers. But in addition, I've worked also on those in my own field, Academic people and things, where I looked at every single item in the category. This may be a category where there are more wrongfully non-accepted articles than the others, probably because people tried to judge using only the GNG, and not the alternative WP:PROF and WP:Author. I found 120 out of the 377 that can be rescued. About 2/3 of the 120 older than one year; again, this may be a higher percentage than usual because it contain a good many really carelessly reviewed ones from the earlier years, I'm going to list a dozen or so below to indicate the extent to which we are likely to throw away decent articles if we do not look at them carefully. This is not a selected list of highlights; I'm going thru my alphabetic list from the top & selecting those older than a year sicne the last edit (alphabetically the way they were listed, without the sort key that would be applied to articles)

You might ask, since I had identified them, why didn't I move them to mainspace? The reason is that they first have to be checked for copyvio; I've slipped up once or twice here in the past and I do not want to do it again. I'll have to check one or two a day. Fortunately, even if they get deleted, I can still check them--that, after all, is why I asked for the mop in the first place, and you can check back to see the vote. I could proceed differently, which is accept first and then go back to fix if challenged, but I do not work that way. It makes work for other people, work that in this field I can do relatively well and quickly.

(I'm going to do another sample in another field I work in tomorrow or Tuesday) I will also tomorrow try to answer every one of the objections above---or , more likely most of them. It's of course obvious that some groups of the drafts can be disposed of very quickly, and I tried to make the distinction. Look at my deletion log to see what I've been doing by G11 the last week or so.

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/A. Thomas Kraabel There are enough books listed already--just needs a check that the bio is not copyvio--if it is, I'll rewrite it.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Abbas Amanat 23 books authored--the article obviously has to be expanded. Full prof. at Yale
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Andreas Lixl also many books, tho it's hard finding reviews for older German books; it's sometimes necessary to check print indexes.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Andreas Lixl not an academic, but there's a nyt reference and an honorary degree.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bruce Kirkcaldy Fellow, British Psychological Society.May need rewriting for copyvio or paraphrase.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/David Yesner Another one that will need to be rewritten.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cássio van den Berg Taxonomist who has described dozens of species. All such have been considered notable in repeated AfDs. Refs need to be rewritten so they cite his work, not WP.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Prof. Chitra Weddikkara Notable under WP:CREATIUVE (work at MOMA). It needs rewriting--I suspect the reviewer didnWikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Prof. Chitra Weddikkara actually notice the key content.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Edward Stabler Full prof. UCLA ; probably notable , but needs citation figures
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Domingo Fernandez Agis Some of it still needs translation, but the books should meet the requirements, tho its a difficult field to find reviews. The reviewer ignored WP:PROF.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Grant S. Nelson Named professorship. Reviewer mentioned WP:PROf but may not have know what it said.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Gilbert Ling This one will be interesting, because he is fringe--but he was ed. of major journal. No indication WP:PROF was noticed.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/József Böröcz Member of his national academy. Otherwise I'd be a little doubtful.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Julia Bell (author) notable as author, and the reviews were in the article. Might need revision for possible copyvio.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Juan Carlos Mejuto This will be tricky. Negative BLP, but well sourced.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Liesbet Hooghe Named professorship at major research university.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Leonardo Vittorio Arena Apparently a major Italian scholar--again, book reviews are hard to document for nonEnglish books.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tarkan Maner Main notability is CEO of Wyse, sources present.
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Wallace E. Oates Distinguished Professorship at Maryland. Multiple books. This will be the easiest of the lot.

I'm less than halfway through; I could go on, but I'm getting sleepy.

I will just comment that Fram found 6 of her 24 potentially article-worthy and not yet written. That's the same figure as I found. T=Fram interprets it as only 25 , therefore insignificant, I interpret it exactly the opposite. 24% yield + a similar number already written is as good as we get of really worthwhile articles no matter how they're submitted. That too is what I found. The older ones are no worse than the newer.

And finding a useful redirect for something less than notable is worth doing. Redirects for creation is an important and valid part of the overall AfC project. DGG ( talk ) 04:57, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

"I will just comment that Fram found 6 of her 24 potentially article-worthy and not yet written." No, I found 6 out of 32, not 24, to be not immediately nukable; I doubt that all 6 topics would be notable in the end, and most of these needed so much work that starting from scratch would be just as easy. And I don't get your "redirects" comment, what is the purpose of having a redirect from an AfC to an already existing topic, probably created between the AfC submission and now? If people haven't found the article before starting the AfC, what is the chance that they will find the AfC redirect instead? Fram (talk) 08:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

The main problem with this approach is the question of who is going to do all the work. Obviously it took some effort to find these articles from the categories. If they are going to be moved to mainspace they will need somebody to search for additional references, rewrite parts of the article, perform copyvio checks, and so on. There is no significant body of people willing to do this work, and closing this discussion with a result of "cleanup the articles and move them to mainspace" would effectively be a resolution to do nothing. On the other hand even the possibly salvageable articles in this list have potential copyright and BLP problems. (Incidentally I don't think academics are going to be representative of all declined AfC submissions.) Hut 8.5 10:31, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not even certain that there's enough hands to tread water on that backlog, nevermind cut into it. And if I'm right that that is the case, I strongly urge people willing to help rescue articles from that backlog to consider starting from the newest end, not the latest--the articles aren't going to be any better or worse, or at least not significantly, but the editors who wrote them might still be around. Working from the new end instead of the old saves just as many articles, *and* helps editor retention in a way that working from the oldest does not. --j⚛e decker ^talk 17:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

We cleared up the unsourced blps, which were much harder problems. A few people can clear up the easier half of the backlog in a year I can easily delete 20 a day while doing other things, say 100 a week=5,000/yr/person. 7 people=1/2 the backlog This half, whether 12 months old or 6 months old, or for that matter 1 week old, are really extremely easy to decide on and determine to be hopeless. The other half need some thought; what I am proposing is to delete the obvious, and not delete the others--not to immediately move all the potential ones into mainspace. That would indeed take more than a year . I imagine that will be done as people work on their subjects. In about 6 months, I expect to do all the academics I found--not necessarily make the articles, but make the 2/3 of them that I think are worth making. (there are other academics, scattered throughout the categories, which I have not yet identified)
1. Looking at the discussion below, the dilemma is, that we can either do nothing and keep all the junk, or do everything without thought, and throw out the 10 or 15 or 20 % of potential articles. But this is a false dilemma, there's a middle way: to find a rough way of sorting the many likely deletes from the smaller number of possibles.
2. I see us giving in to despair as we look at backlogs--these, and all the other ones of even more importance, such as the million WP articles that need updating, & the probably 100 or 200 thousand that are overly promotional. The principle of crowd sourcing will work to improve them ass it works to create them. We're a lot better than we were when I came here 6 years ago, and it's due to patient work. It takes work, which we know how to do, but it also takes being patient about it, which is a little harder around here.
Fram, I think I wasn't clear what I meant about redirects. I mean the AfC, tho not conceivably an article, can be edited into a redirect and saved as such. This is the same as deleting it and making a redirect from the title, but it preserves the content if anyone ever wants to develop it. . But even if we decide that saving the content behind the redirect isn't worth the trouble, the occasion should betaken for making a redirect.
Looking at all these in various categories, the real problem is the past and ongoing incompetent patrolling. Too many people have been rejecting articles without clearly indicating the critical problems--confusing the categories for screening, and much worse, discouraging users because they receive unclear and contradictory messages. Again, the analogy is unsourced BLPs. We did two things: we cleared up the old backlog manually, despite the great work involved,, and we took effective steps to prevent a new backlog accumulating by the adoption of BLP Prod. I wasn't all that happy with BLP Prod initially, but it does work, without too many errors--thanks to the relatively few people who patrol PROD and sort out the sourceable that are worth sourcing. There was a proposal at the time to immediately delete all the old unsourced BlPs. It didn't pass, fortunately. Does anyone involve have numbers for how many of them were kept/deleted/ redirected/merged? Even we saved 20%, that was worth it. that project was a good example. DGG ( talk ) 06:15, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The unsourced BLPs project was a major undertaking. The issue was discussed on our highest profile noticeboards and we were able to use watchlist notices to get people interested when the cleanup rate slowed. We had a number of people working on it, and even once the easy articles had been removed the effort still fixed about 50 articles a day. (The most highly active editors put in an awful lot of work.) The early cleanup effort benefited from the fact that many of the "unsourced" BLPs did in fact cite references, and it was easy to identify these through automated processes. Of the initial 50,000 unsourced BLPs about 16,000 fell into this category. Even with all of these advantages it took the better part of two years to get the backlog cleared. I don't have any actual figures for the number of articles that were preserved, but I do have a list of articles in the category, and it's obvious that the vast majority are still blue links.
As for articles for creation, which has a larger backlog, it seems you're the only editor volunteering to do this work, it would be harder to get editors involved in the project as the issue isn't so high profile, and some of the advantages unsourced BLPs enjoyed are not there. Furthermore it doesn't seem as though most of the pages would be salvageable, and the cleanup effort could be better used elsewhere. You note above that you would like someone to check these pages for copyright problems. As our text copyright processes are all heavily backlogged this wouldn't be a good use of resources. There are over 200,000 existing articles tagged as having no references, and sourcing efforts could best be deployed there. Hut 8.5 11:10, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

It's not that nobody besides me is willing to do it, but that nobody besides me who has joined in theis discussion has offered to do it. There's a few tens of thousands of other WPedians. As for me, yes, I am prepared to do it for those articles in fields I most work in. I've done it for all those easy to identify. From checking a few other categories, I see that (1)we could delete about 10,000 AfCs immediately under existing speedy provisions, mainly G11 and G2 if we still have it, and G6 for duplicates. (2) about half of the ones over 12 months (or 6 for that matter) are really obviously useless. (3) quite a few are misclassified--not too much trust in screening can be used for the reason someone rejected it. (4) A few are clearly notable and can be accepted and improved or improved and accepted--either order would do, as long as there is a reference. (5). That leaves about half which are probably not viable unless someone really wants to do a good deal of work on them. The main thing that I think is undecided, is which direction to go with these. I'm as eager to get rid of the junk as anyone, and would accept less careful checking that I would think best, but not no checking at all. (6) There are also a large number--at least 5000 duplicate submissions and errors. I think we should simply use G6 on them as we see them, old or new. (7) I do not think we are decided what to do with ones that can be made into viable redirects to existing articles. I would simply want to find some quick way of doing them & getting them out of the way. That's another 5 thousand (8) Similarly, what are we doing about the ones that have already been made into articles? A

My current preferred method is a simplification of what I said earlier, and would require no new speedy criterion at all. Simply for the purposes of speedy and prod treat all AfCs that have not been worked on for 12 months as articles --with perhaps a throttle of 100 a day for each so we don't get overwhelmed. that will deal with all of them in half a year or so, and then we can change it to over 6 months. and get rid of the rest in another half year and keep up ever after. These have been here for years, and there's no more emergency now than there was a month ao. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

But this will require a lot more work, with little benefit, and will probably have as result that those pages don't get deleted but don't get promoted either (i.e. the current situation). I have been going through old rejected submissions on a case-by-case basis earlier this year, basically doing what you said here, look what existing speedy criteria fit them; this takes a lot of time, while the now accepted G13 is swift and easy. G11, G12, ... already apply to AfC, but are not used: why would people suddenly start checking for A7, A3, ... in the submissions, with the added bonus that some rejected AfC submissions won't fit any of the existing speedies anyway (e.g. neutral articles about non notable books)? These are just a huge dumping ground of mostly poor or problematic pages, with a few potential gems between them. No one was interested in picking up the gems, but still those are the basis to reject the swift removal of the problems. Fram (talk) 08:48, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Clarification

Apologies for the confusion, but it has been brought to my attention that several details still need to be worked out. In particular:

Should a new G13 criterion be created, or should this be added as an approved use of G6?

and

Should a 7-day delay be used, so that the page is first tagged (and the creator notified), and after 7 days of no action the page is deleted?

King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:12, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I strongly support the 7-day delay. It is unfair to destroy what are in most cases good-faith creations, and doing so may raise the ire of active contributors who have old, rejected submissions lying around. Even if the deleted submissions are available via REFUND, it would still be polite to give users a chance to salvage their work, or even start improving it. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:51, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

May I also suggest that the deletion summary used for these deletions provides a clear link to REFUND (or perhaps to a specialised instructions page), to help users retrieve their deleted submissions should they ever wish to. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Support the 7-day delay, it does no harm and is good for maintaining editor relations per This that and the other. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Very strong oppose making this part of G6. That criterion is already overloaded with things it wasn't intended to cover so adding all these too it will make abuses and misuses of it much harder to track. Additionally, the very specific content this covers and the 7-day delay (if it passes) are not something that applies (or should apply) to any other G6 deletion so it would make a poor fit anyway. Better to have two simple criteria than one complicated one. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Support 7-day delay per TTO and my comment in the above thread. Oppose merging into G6 per Thryduulf. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 11:05, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment I might be missing something, but putting a 7 day delay on it takes it out of CSD and puts it into PROD. Speedy usually means instant for certain things, or a short term delay by admins who think something might get somewhere if the author gets past the first sentence. A mandatory 7 day delay isn't 'SPEEDY'. It's a Proposed Deletion, possibly a new form as PROD-BLP is - maybe PROD-AFC. Peridon (talk) 11:46, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd add that this category of deletion isn't going to affect editor relations. It's for clearing away the stuff that people who flitted in one window and out the other have left behind. (Like the little bird in the lighted hall...) These editors have tried something; it didn't work, so they've gone to play elsewhere (or been jailed, run over, unexpectedly married or spontaneously combusted). If they haven't touched it in 12 months, and they DO get released, divorced or repaired in hospital, and want to try again, we can restore. No problems. Peridon (talk) 16:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose both. This should not be an operator overload of the already bloated G6, and it most certainly does not need a waiting period. As long as a REFUND link is displayed in the deletion summary, there is absolutely no reason to beleive that an AfC that has sat untouched for over a year somehow needs to be given more of a chance. See also, Peridon's comments, above. I would, however, support a {{subst:G13-notice}} template with REFUND instructions for the user page of AfC contributors. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 12:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- see {{db-afc-notice}}, please improve it. In particular I think we need a subpage of WP:REFUND with specific instructions on what to do for people who want their AFC submissions restored... the normal REFUND page is just too confusing for this purpose. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
  - So I made a special version of template:refund/G13, and then put the code in the notice template. I then changed the link to make a new section where the template code can simply be pasted and saved without any modification. If a user can select, copy, paste, and click a link, they can get a userfied REFUND. That look good to you? PS, you definitely want to go in and do the "safesubst:" stuff before rollout, because I've never figured out how that works or what it does. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 01:50, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose both, as said above, if you make it a seven day delay, then it is just a ProD. The idea is that this is a very lightweight, fast process, not something that needs a lot of extra hurdles. Fram (talk) 12:37, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- I object to this logic. Look, for example, at {{di-no source}}. It is a speedy deletion template (F4, if memory serves me correctly), but it operates with a delay of several days. Same goes for {{db-t3}}. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Looking at those, I can't see why they're in speedy. They're proposed deletions. The only difference is that the author isn't allowed to remove them without having rectified the problem. They should be prods like prod-BLP - no-one not allowed to remove tag if not sorted. Speedy is speedy. Can happen any moment, depending. Most of us that work CSD leave some things for a while to see if anything more happens, but take out other things on sight of the tag. Peridon (talk) 09:28, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose both don't see any particular need for a delay, as AfC is predominantly used by unregistered or very new editors who won't be monitoring old rejected submissions. The number submitted by active editors will be very small. G6 doesn't need to be made more complicated. Hut 8.5 12:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
oppose nesting G13 inside G6. Deleting someone's submission is not "routine maintenance". On the seven day delay... This sound like giving a seven day notice on every page that it is about to be deleted per G13, which means that there have been no edits for a year. No firm opinion on this. A 7 day pause may be a good idea on first use of this G13, but I wouldn't expect anyone to notice. I would rather see the first G13 deletion summaries invite editors to report problems here, at WT:CSD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose both - a 7-day notice on an article that hasn't been edited in a year? What's the point of that? That would turn this into a PROD-like method, which consensus is already against, and would overload the system with more pointless red-tape/delays. And there's absolutely no need for G13 to be incorporated into anything else. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:57, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment: the 7-day period is good, and we must ensure that there's a notification placed on the user's talk page. Even if someone has had other things to do than edit Wikipedia lately, they may have email notification that their user talk page has been modified (is that a default, or an option?), and an email to alert them to a message that their draft is up for deletion may trigger them into going back to it. A message to say it has already been deleted will be less likely to bring them back, even if it does explain a way to get it undeleted. PamD 09:53, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose the overloading of G6, it's not a huge deal, but I think it's cleaner, and leads to better tracking, to use a separate criteria. I also weakly oppose the 7-day waiting period, I think it will provide little gain and for a significant increase in process overhead. One commenter above has talked about this being better thought of as a sort of PROD, and well, sure, maybe, but the PROD/BLPPROD process is already layered with errata (the March 18, 2010 cutoff, the difference in lengths of times, the difference in whether they can be removed or not, just to name three) and the tools don't support those differences very well. --j⚛e decker ^talk 23:35, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Implimentation

OK so here we have a proper procedurally correct decision to create a new Speedy criterion "G13" - who, when, how, will it be done? A bot also needs to be tasked to do the actual work. Roger (talk) 13:32, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Already added to WP:CSD by King of Hearts; [6] [7] by me. -- KTC (talk) 20:18, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Can I suggest that the deletion summary for all G13 deletions links to WP:REFUND/G13? — This, that and the other (talk) 03:26, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Roger (talk) 07:40, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Is there a template for notifying users about G13 deletions? There should probably be one, especially if they can request undeletion at WP:REFUND. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- {{db-afc-notice}}. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Shenanigans

WTF? You can't start a 30 day RfC and close it 28 days early—over the weekend—and call it good when you like/dislike the result at that point. And listing an RfC on WP:CENT for 2 days is no way to gather consensus. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, which is policy.

Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community.

Many people have not even seen this discussion yet. How are they supposed to participate when the discussion is already hatted? I call shenanigans. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 15:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The count at closing was 29 support, and one oppose who was opposing extending into userspace. I think someone decided that WP:SNOW was in the air. Peridon (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Just looked at the instructions - 30 days is default is because the bot removes the template then. It's a max not a set time. (Discussions can be prolonged by fiddling the datestamp.) There doesn't appear to be a fixed timescale, and this closed discussion was a spinoff from earlier talks. Peridon (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

When the consensus is so unanimous, a SNOW close is perfectly valid. There's no rule saying that a RFC has to last for 30 days - it can go beyond or below that timeframe. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 16:59, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

2 days ≠ consensus I know it's tempting to wikilaywer the issue, but the OP clearly indicated that the limited discussion was not consensus—which is true—and started this RfC to gain consensus. Listen folks, I'm all for getting rid of the problematic AfC submissions, but let's do this the right Way. Shutting out the rest of the community after 2 days is not the right way. We need actual consensus. OK? 64.40.54.202 (talk) 17:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- There is no requirement that discussions remain open for some length of time purely for the sake of remaining open for a certain length of time. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. The discussion received numerous comments during the time it was open, and not one person opposed it. You're not opposing it either. There's no need to reopen the discussion. Hut 8.5 20:38, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Protip: If you're going to try and pose as another person, at least make sure your IP has changed first. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the IP is trying to pretend to be a different person. "The OP" in their post is presumably Fram. Hut 8.5 21:36, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Correct. That's my fault for not being more specific. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC) Adding for the record, everything that is 64.40.5*.*** in the discussions above and pretty much everywhere else on the project is me. I figured the regulars here would know that, as IPs with WP:CLUE don't usually join policy discussions. My contribs are here for anybody that is interested. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I unclosed the discussion. Speedy deletion is a big enough deal that we need to do things right. Ego White Tray (talk) 22:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:37, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

For example, see this section at VPP, which essentially proposed the same thing (just not institutionalized under a new CSD criterion) and looks like snow-no. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:45, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I proposed that and the early returns are no, but a couple weeks from now it may be yes. So I'd like to see where it goes. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 22:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

That proposal had one major difference from this one: Under it, all AfC older than a year would be deleted, not just rejected ones. Marechal Ney (talk) 04:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Back to the initial objection — LOCALCONSENSUS doesn't apply here. It refers to situations such as a group of AFC people deciding at AFC that these submissions should be subject to speedy. Here at WT:CSD is where speedy deletion criteria are decided; decisions made here are meant to affect everything else. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Given that the Village Pump discussion had a radically different view, I think it would be a good idea to keep this open for more than two days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Given that all the "Oppose" !votes at the Village Pump proposal were posted before the proposal wording was ammended to included the word "declined" (at 23:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)) the proposal was in effect a substantially different one. I would have opposed that proposal (if it had remained open long enough!) but I fully support this one. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:25, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this proposal should be given the full 30 days of consideration. The folk who hang around CSD do not represent the general community and so should not try to WP:STEAM this. Warden (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

- This was posted at the VPP, in CENT, and at the relevant project (and of course as a policy RfC), more notification of this would be overkill (for a bunch of pages that barely anyone cares about anyway). At the time of your re-opening of the RfC after an uninvolved admin closed it (after more than a week had passed), it had 37 supports versus 2 opposes, yet your edit summary on reopening it was no consensus[8]. That's a bit of a stretch... Fram (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
  - My edit reverted an edit which had taken place only 8 hours previously. The discussion still seems quite fresh and I'm not seeing any reason for haste as the pages in question have been around for some time. Like User:Ego White Tray says, "we need to do things right.". Warden (talk) 13:06, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
    - Which is hardly an answer to the above of course... "No consensus" is quite different from "too soon to close", and there doesn't seem to be a good reason why this wasn't done "right" apart from the fact that you didn't agree with the result of the RfC. Fram (talk) 13:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
      - A consensus achieved by edit warring is not actually a consensus - see WP:NOTAVOTE. The latest faux close says "the exact details in the wording ... are currently being discussed". So the claim is now a supposed consensus for something of which the details are not clear. Shenanigans describes the process well. Warden (talk) 10:39, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Bots

What about bot edits before tagging? Basically, the current proposal says that a bot should tag AFCs for deletion if they've not been edited for a year. Imagine that a bot made an edit yesterday to an AFC that was last touched by a human in 2010; do we want this page to be deletable, or do we have to wait for a year from yesterday? In my opinion, the criterion should exclude pages that were last edited by a non-bot in the past year. I can't see how the tagging bot would distinguish between bot edits and human edits, but we could tag the bot-edited pages manually. Nyttend (talk) 17:28, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Do bots edit AfC rejections? If they do, they should definitely be excluded from the reckoning. Last touch of a human hand only. Peridon (talk) 19:09, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I would say that any maintenance edits can be safely excluded, but if a bot is going to automatically be tagging and deleting, then I think you need to be quite conservative, and would recommend only that bot edits be excluded. However, if we're talking about a human being tagging the article, then I would be much more liberal with excluding bots, automated tools (eg AWB), and other maintenance edits (eg categories, stub tags). Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 19:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Agree with both of you; I have no clue whether bots edit AFC rejections, and my final sentence is meant to say "bots shouldn't attempt to distinguish between previous bot edits and human edits" while suggesting that we permit humans to tag pages last edited by bots. Nyttend (talk) 21:45, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a flag for bot edits. Is that available to bots? Even if it is, the follow up would require analyzing the edit history. I'm not sure that the programming involved would be trivial. But if someone takes that on, it would be a standard call available to all bots. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:46, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Also, the addition of a {{db-g13}} tag is obviously an edit to the page. That edit must obviously be exempt from the criterion that the page hasn't been edited for a year (so that we don't have to wait for a year until a page tagged with {{db-g13}} can be deleted). --Stefan2 (talk) 22:50, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

If pages are tagged by a human, then you also need to allow for editing errors - {{G13}} is not a speedy deletion template for example, and people may use something like {{db-multiple}}. In these situations (which shouldn't be numerous) it might just be best to flag them for human review. Also flagged for human review should be any page (or associated talk page) that was edited after the tag was placed. Thryduulf (talk) 23:25, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I didn't know if bots would be able to see whether previous editors had bot flags; and what would we do if the sequence was (1) Bot edits page, (2) Bot is de-flagged, (3) AFC deletion bot checks and sees that the previous editor doesn't currently have a bot flag? Much better for the AFC deletion bot to ignore bot-edited pages and allow them to remain until humans can look at them. We really can't have any false positives as long as the bot ignores all pages that have been modified since the deadline started; my whole reason for starting this thread was to ask whether humans should be able to tag the bot-edited pages. Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

It shouldn't be difficult at all for a bot to see which previous editors were bots. That said, bots sometimes do edit declined AFC pages. In the histories you can sometimes see bots going around getting rid of things that don't belong outside of mainspace, for instance. Theoretically there shouldn't be any bot activities that hits a submission over a year after its last edit, but it wouldn't surprise me. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

There are always new bot ideas and new tasks and thus getting regularly edits in also very old submissions. But this is only a matter of time when/if the drafts are getting deleted. mabdul 05:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Abandoned unsubmitted articles

This speedy deletion criterion is for nominating rejected AfC pages. However, there are probably also some which were abandoned but never submitted for review. Those are presumably neither accepted nor rejected, but they may nevertheless be many years old. What do we do with those? In my opinion, those should be submitted for review in their present shape so that useful articles aren't overlooked. If rejected, they would then be subject to speedy deletion as G13 in 2014. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:32, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you have any idea how many there are? If there is only a handful then normal processes should be able to handle them. If there are hundreds that would overload review processes unless carefully managed. Thryduulf (talk) 00:32, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea. If all are submitted for review at the same time, and if there are hundreds or thousands of then, this would probably disrupt the review processes. In that case, it would be better to set up a bot which submits a few of them for review whenever the review backlog isn't too big. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:36, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, let's have a bot submit them gradually; even the worst page shouldn't be deleted until at least one human has checked it. Nyttend (talk) 00:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

"whenever the review backlog isn't too big" The backlog of submissions wasn't "cleared" since ages - at the moment there are ~1700 submission in the quee. Feel free us to help us! mabdul 05:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: mass deletion of all articles at WP:AfC

Moved from Wikipedia:VPR § Proposal: mass deletion of all articles at WP:AfC

– 64.40.54.241 (talk) 03:10, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

WP:NAC, I hope you don't think it's too audacious, but this really doesn't need to be open anymore. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

This proposal was put forward at WP:VPR while the G13 RFC was already underway here. Although some early !votes here seem to outright reject the idea of deleting old AFC drafts, this view has not materialised to any great degree at the G13 RFC above. This suggests that the community believes that G13 offers a better "deal" than this proposal, perhaps because this proposal lacks the necessary safeguards (enshrinement in CSD policy, no-questions-asked undeletion, etc). On top of that, there are variety of other reasons for opposition to this proposal. In any case, since G13 has been broadly accepted by the community while this proposal has no chance of success, there is no longer a need to discuss here. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:52, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: All declined articles at Articles for creation that are over 1 year old—some 90,000 articles—should be mass deleted without further review. 64.40.54.111 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2013 (UTC) added "declined" per comment below. 64.40.54.202 (talk) 23:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. No reason to do so. Diego (talk) 07:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Aye, what would be the benefit of doing that? If it's just to try to make things tidier, I can say with some amount of certainty the old submissions pile will likely be a mess either way, so the extra effort required and the added complications of the subsequently non-visible content wouldn't really be warranted. -— Isarra ? 09:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. Why? How are they hurting Wikipedia, you, anybody, or anything else? Kiltpin (talk) 10:35, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The consensus at Wikipedia talk:CSD#G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions is that only the declined submissions should be deleted. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Any submission not declined should be in article space... ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Not necessarily. The page might never have been submitted. People only review submitted proposals. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:53, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment. Is this a serious proposal? 64.40.54.111 has been on Wikipedia for less than 24 hours. Kiltpin (talk) 12:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Not defending the proposal here, and at the risk of sounding condescending... it's an IP address. Contributors' IPs can change frequently, either due to their Internet Service Providers or simply because they've changed locations. An IP with "one edit" could actually be an experienced Wikipedian with thousands of edits who, for whatever reason, prefers to work anonymously. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:51, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. I have many thousands of edits myself, and I occasionally edit anonymously as an interesting cultural experiment. I'm often surprised (maybe I shouldn't be) to observe more disrespect for my anonymous contributions and comments, compared to what I experience when logged in. The lesson I learned from this exercise is that it's best to WP:AGF equally to everyone, and don't automatically assume someone is ignorant because they don't log in. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment: Even the deletion of all declined submissions is a bad idea. It would possibly have been fine if every reviewer had done a competent job, but that isn't always the case. --Hegvald (talk) 13:06, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Conditional support for deletion of old AfC topics about only popular culture and other non-academic subjects. Please read the proposal text itself, it speaks of only AfC submissions over one year old. Wer900 • talk 16:28, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
- Who, exactly, will define what is and is not an "academic subject"?--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose-Frankly, I just don't see the payoff. How would such action improve Wikipedia?--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:54, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
How does this proposal differ at all from what is already implemented as CSD G13? Is it that this is to delete articles regardless of current work? Why? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 00:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
CSD G13 requires significant manual labor. Someone must tag, and someone else must delete. As a counterpoint to your question, if all such articles qualify for G13 anyway, why not just have a bot clean them up? (It's rhetorical, don't bother answering, I don't support this proposal either). ~Amatulić (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose - completely pointless!, Davey2010 Talk 03:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
No. We've got people working on how to go about implementing a G13 criteria to meet this exact problem. This is a jailhouse shiv where a scalpel is being crafted. Van Isaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 03:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. The hoard of declined submissions does not present a problem so great that a strategic nuclear option is required. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:08, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Yesterday/Today the project (so davidwr (talk · contribs) and me) updated the Template:AFC submission. Guess what: it takes a half day to update all pages to add a new category. Moreover this template isn't fully protected and thus we getting on a really rare basis a "confused" and autoconfirmed user adding his submission there - Protection is of course a solution, but it is simply a too big workload. mabdul 05:29, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
I have protected the template. Hope that helps a bit. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:42, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Strong oppose - Consensus is clearly in favour of the G13 proposal, and was already against this one before it was moved here. This is not a good idea in the slightest, as drafts may well be being worked on and still be deleted in this proposal. I can give you a clear example of one: a young football whom has made several professional appearances, and when the author is satisfied that they pass GNG, the article is moved into mainspace, maybe two years down the line. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 08:09, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Firstly, this seems like a good candidate for a Prod - there is no particular urgency to force it to be a speed deletion. Secondly, I feel that this is too specific, tied up with the particular details of how the article was created, edit etc, and has nothing to do with the actual article contents Bluap (talk) 15:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose I hate to think what it would do to the system while it was happening. We're better to get rid in smaller batches and see what happens. We might discover a rush to make silk purses out of sows' ears. There again, pigs might fly... Peridon (talk) 20:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose and note that the proposal has changed since most of the commenters have read this. The G13 proposal has additional and, in my view, important protections that this lacks. --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:30, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

What problem is this trying to solve

I thought wiping out AfC and starting clean was the heart of the original proposal. I thought it would be fine to start clean, but everybody else thought starting clean was a bad idea and I accept that. So I started at square one and re-read the original proposal and this RfC. If it's not about wiping out AfC, what is it about? I guess I'm just not getting it. It's not about BLP vios, those are covered by G10. It's not about copyvios, those are covered by G12. In fact it's not about any "G" criteria because "G" covers every namespace. Some people mentioned artilces that would be speediable in mainspace. That would infer the "A" criteria. Some mentioned articles that would be PROD'able and others mentioned a hybrid between speedy and PROD. Could somebody please explain what problem this is trying to solve? A problem that is not already covered by the existing policies. What problem is there at AfC that requires a "delete on sight" solution? 64.40.57.76 (talk) 07:12, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Many submissions are also placed in User-space (and maybe also user talk space). mabdul 08:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It's about the ~90,000 drafts that were rejected long ago and then abandonned. G13 will get rid of all the rejected drafts that have not been touched for over a year. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:11, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

It would be possible to remove the BLP violations (or most of them, anyway) by having editors go through the submissions one by one and check them. Ditto copyright violations. On the other hand there's 90,000 of these submissions and that's an awful lot of work. Who's going to go through those submissions and check them? Is it worth them spending their time doing this, given that the very low value of the remaining pages? (Incidentally neither the A criteria nor PROD apply to AfC submissions. Both apply only to mainspace articles.) Hut 8.5 10:07, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

A bot could also get rid of rejected AFC drafts that haven't been touched in over a year. All it takes is community consensus that a bot can do this work, and then thousands of person-hours needlessly wasted in manually tagging and deleting 90,000 drafts would be preserved to focus on more productive endeavors.

In other words, I don't see the point of this proposal. Why bother with all the tagging and deleting if the objective is a clean wipe? The only effect it will have is to waste time. ~Amatulić (talk) 10:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Such a bot would be breaking policy, because at the moment there's no policy allowing for the deletion of old AfC submissions. There's no requirement that speedy deletion criteria be enforced by people, and there is some discussion above of using a bot to enforce G13. Hut 8.5 10:24, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The argument "there's no policy to allow it, therefore we can't do it" is just silly. Wikipedia would never have grown into what it is now with that sort of attitude.

What policy currently prohibits a bot from deleting old AfC submissions? As far as I know, there is none. Wikipedia:Bot policy doesn't even mention deletion of anything. All it requires is that mass actions like mass creations (or deletions) be approved by the community on a case by case basis at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval. I mean, we already have an approved 7SeriesBOT that deletes G7 and U1 pages. I see no policy-based reason that would prevent a bot from deleting abandoned AFC drafts. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:13, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

But the community endorsed the deletion of G7 and U1 pages, without restriction on which admins were allowed to carry out those deletions, bot or otherwise. The community has never endorsed the blanket deletion of AFC drafts, and WT:CSD seems like the best place to get that endorsement. I certainly wouldn't want BAG to take it upon itself to endorse out-of-process deletions on the scale of >90,000 pages. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:43, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Doing a bot to mass delete 90,000 pages is a terrible idea as well, as there is some, valid forgotten nominations that could be moved. This needs to be case by case, with the more obvious (attack/vandalism/copyvio/spam) to be deleted under another general speedy criteria. The use is only for subjects that won't survive our criteria for articles in the project and it is likely to be deleted under prod/AFD/A7, notability, essays, and so forth. Secret ^account 03:37, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a number of comments above prove my point. G13 actually IS about mass deleting AfC and starting clean. So I don't understand why everybody opposed my mass deletion proposal above. Confused!?! 64.40.54.180 (talk) 00:39, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternate proposal - combine G13 and Article criteria

Never mind this section. The other discussions should get priority. Nothing to see here. Steel1943 (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

After reading some of the concerns with the new G13 criterion, I saw a few responses that had to do with the fact that there are some stale drafts in the Wikipedia/Articles for creation space that could qualify for speedy deletion under an Article criterion. Unforunately, those entries are not technically articles, so they could not qualify for those criterion. In a nutshell, I propose that the G13 criterion be expanded to look something like this:

G13. Abandoned< Rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation submissions.: Rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation submissions that have not been edited in over a year, as well as meet one of the following criterion:

A0. Abandoned submissions. Submissions that have not been edited in over a year. {{db-g13-a0}}, {{db-afc-a0}}

A1. No context. Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." This applies only to very short articles. Context is different from content, treated in A3, below. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles. {{db-g13-a1}}, {{db-afc-a1}}

A2. Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project. Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project. If the article is not the same as an article on another project, use the template {{Not English}} instead, and list the page at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for review and possible translation. {{db-g13-a2}}, {{db-afc-a2}}

A3. No content.

Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images. This also applies to articles consisting entirely of the framework of the Article wizard with no additional content beyond the above. However, a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion. Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria. Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles.
{{db-g13-a3}}, {{db-afc-a3}}

Consensus has developed that in most cases articles should not be tagged for deletion under this criterion moments after creation as the creator may be actively working on the content; though there is no set time requirement, a ten-minute delay before tagging under this criterion is suggested as good practice. Please do not mark the page as patrolled prior to that suitable delay passing, so that the wait does not result in the article escaping review at a later time.

A5. Transwikied articles. Any article that consists only of a dictionary definition that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wiktionary), a primary source that has already been transwikied (e.g., to Wikisource), or an article on any subject that has been discussed at articles for deletion with an outcome to move it to another wiki, after it has been properly moved and the author information recorded. {{db-g13-a5}}, {{db-afc-a5}}

A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events).

An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant, with the exception of educational institutions.^[4] This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. This criterion does not apply to species of animals, only to individual animal(s). The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.
{{db-g13-a7}}, {{db-afc-a7}}

It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion.

A9. No indication of importance (musical recordings).

An article about a musical recording that has no corresponding article about its recording artist and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met). This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, products, or any other types of articles.
{{db-g13-a9}}, {{db-afc-a9}}

(A10 cannot apply to this.)

...Or, even simpler, convert the "Articles" section of the speedy deletion criterion into a section that can also be used for Wikipedia:Articles for creation stale drafts, as defined in the new G13 criterion. Just a thought. Steel1943 (talk) 06:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Which of these criterions would you use to delete e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Aquarius daily horoscope for sunday july 25, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/arithmetic - first three squares, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/association football career goal scoring percentage, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Attraction 2012, ...? Fram (talk) 09:40, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I changed the verbiage around a little in the proposal. What this will allow is Article criteria to extend to the Articles for creation space, but still retain the original G13 qualities. The way it is organized might need to be rearranged, but I believe my point is a bit clearer. I added "A0" to retain the original G13 verbiage. (In these cases, if it has been more than a year since they were last edited, "A0".) Steel1943 (talk) 20:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

The wording of this proposal actually restricts G13 to only those drafts that would be deletable if they were articles. The "as well as" needs to be changed to "or" if you want to extend G13 to also delete drafts that have not yet qualified as "abandoned" when they would be deletable under the existing terms of G13 anyway. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - This pretty much defeats the entire point of G13. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 20:22, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose this would actually get in the way of someone trying to write a decent draft. If your first version doesn't include an assertion of significance, for instance, the article could be deleted under A7 while you're still writing it. Hut 8.5 21:53, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

^ Keckemet, Dusko. ‘’Ivan Mestrovic’’, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1976 p. no page numbers. That sucks
^ http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=13A354S8M3445.3571&menu=search&aspect=Keyword&npp=50&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=ariall&ri=&term=indians&index=.GW&x=0&y=0&aspect=Keyword&term=mestrovic&index=.AW&term=&index=.TW&term=&index=.SW&term=&index=.FW&term=&index=.OW&term=&index=.NW
^ Hoffman, Malvina, ‘’Yesterday is Tomorrow: A Personal History’’, Crown Publishers, Inc. NY, NY, 1965 p. 253
^ Past discussions leading to schools being exempt from A7.

[1] Schmeckebier, Laurence, ‘’Ivan Mestrovic: sculptor and patriot’’ Stracuse University Press, 1959 p.30

[2] Keckemet, Dusko. ‘’Ivan Mestrovic’’, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1976 p. no page numbers. That sucks

[3] ttp://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=13A354S8M3445.3571&menu=search&aspect=Keyword&npp=50&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=ariall&ri=&term=indians&index=.GW&x=0&y=0&aspect=Keyword&term=mestrovic&index=.AW&term=&index=.TW&term=&index=.SW&term=&index=.FW&term=&index=.OW&term=&index=.NW

[4] Hoffman, Malvina, ‘’Yesterday is Tomorrow: A Personal History’’, Crown Publishers, Inc. NY, NY, 1965 p. 253

[Past_discussions_leading_to_schools_being_exempt_from_A7-5] Past discussions leading to schools being exempt from A7.

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