User:ViperSnake151/Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion (Human Readable Version)

As you know, the Criteria for speedy deletion specifies the limited cases where administrators may delete Wikipedia pages or media without discussion. But you may be wondering, what exactly does it all mean? Let me break down the common ones section by section and explain what it all means where explanation is needed. Note, when we say "speedy" we mean it as in, it's kinda like an express lane for getting inappropriate and unwanted content off Wikipedia without delving into slightly complex systems like WP:AFD.

General Criteria

This applies to pretty much all namespaces (in case you're wondering, a namespace is our term for a separate "section" of the Wiki, like templates, articles, talk pages, images, and the Wikipedia namespace for Wikipedia-related stuff, like this).

G1

Patent nonsense and gibberish, an unsalvageably incoherent page with no meaningful content. This does not include: poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, vandalism, fictional material, material not in English, badly translated material, implausible theories, or hoaxes of any sort; some of these, however, may be deleted as vandalism in blatant cases.

This, simply does what it says on the tin. If it weren't for this, we'd have articles consisting of only "ADSAAAAAAFGJAFJAFKAFJAFJFFFEWTWWSJASKKEW" all the time. It's completely obvious what it all means. We do have a place where this stuff is "encouraged" if you want practice somewhere where it's actually allowed.

G2

Test pages

Yet again, we have a place to do that. And you can even make one of your very own if you want.

G3

Pure vandalism

This is another obvious one, and I know some of you enjoy trying to mess with us, but we have our ways of defending against it too.

G4

Recreation of deleted material

Okay, this is where things get interesting. Say you made an article, it got speedy deleted, and then you recreated it with close to the exact same content. This, would qualify for G4. This also applies to things deleted through WP:AFD for instance, unless however you improve the article as suggested by the discussion, and it satisfies Wikipedia policies. It could get sent to AFD again, but at least you may expect more favourable results.

G5

Banned user

If you are banned, any edits you make to any article will be undone, and any page you create will be speedily deleted regardless of quality. Sorry, but we have to. You lost your rights to edit Wikipedia, and it's our responsibility to make sure you don't violate them.

G6

Housekeeping

Just typical stuff to merge histories, clean up after stuff and all that.

G7

Author requests deletion

If in good faith, you either give up on trying to make an article after realizing it may not be notable or whatever, you can simply blank it and replace it with the {{db-g7}} template and it will be deleted for you. You can also do this to your own user pages if you don't need them anymore and just wanna clean up your user page hierarchy.

G8

Talk pages whose corresponding article does not exist.

Unless it still contains useful information, it has to go. As mentioned in the criterion, "This excludes any talk page which is useful to the project, and in particular: deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere, user talk pages, talk pages for images on Wikimedia Commons, and talk subpages (such as archives) whose corresponding "top-level" page exists. This includes talk pages of pages which were deleted since the creation of the talk page."

G9

Office actions

I have never seen a speedy deletion under this criterion before, but they do reserve the right to do this.

G10

Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity

Per our Biographies of Living Persons policies, in order to protect our site from legal action, we must make sure we get everything right about a living person, and that we do not include libel on our page about living persons. If the page is purely created to make fun of or disparage its subject, and there is no neutral version, it has to be deleted ASAP. We sometimes call these attack pages because they only exist to make an attack at their subjects. This is a serious matter.

G11

Blatant advertising

If the product however is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article, it can be converted into an encyclopedic article (I saved Office 1 Superstore from this fate back in September 2007), but in most cases, most G11's will be poorly written cruft for some company or product I've never even heard of. Note, articles ABOUT products or services alone are not eligible for this criterion if they are written in a more encyclopedic manner. But if it's "COMPANY YYZ HAS MADE EXCELLENT TOTEBAGS FOR OVER 100 YEARS COME VIZT US AT 555 ASDF STREET", yes, most likely, this is your case.

If you work for or you are a manager or have other relations to what you are writing about, please pay close attention to our conflict of interest policies.

G12

Blatant copyright infringement

This one is obvious, and the given description is in-depth enough to make you understand what it means (which is supposed to be the point of this essay), so I'll just leave it at that.

Articles

A1

No context WP:CSD puts this well enough, A very short article with insufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car. He makes people laugh." Context is different from content.

A2

Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project

Note, this is the ENGLISH Wikipedia. If the article already exists on another Wikipedia in its language, it's speedyable. If it isn't, you can tag it with the {{notenglish}} template, and we'll help out translating it into words we can understand.

A3

No content

CSD yet again puts this quite well, Any article (other than disambiguation pages) 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, chat-like comments, and/or images.

But, this doesn't mean short articles are not allowed. Wikipedia was built on these things called stubs, short articles which DO have content in them. Consider reading up on them, you'll need it.

A4

There was something here a long while ago...but it got merged with A3 apparently.

A5

Transwikied articles

We have more projects other than Wikipedia here, we have Wiktionary, a Wiki-based dictionary, and Wikisource, a Wiki used for hosting free text files and passages. If an "article" here on Wikipedia is more suited to be there, it may be moved there using the Transwiki process. After it's moved to its new home, it can safely be deleted from Wikipedia.

A6

Got replaced by the G10 one...

A7

An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant.

Okay, this in my opinion, is a controversial CSD criterion. It's set to Real Person, Organization, or Web Content, because we believe that those are the most common categories for these articles for things which do not deserve articles on Wikipedia. However, it says that you have to indicate WHY the subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources, as in this way – it's kinda on a lower level. You just have to indicate WHY the person, organization, or content is important.

This means you can't make an article for a random game you found online, or about the garageband you just started UNLESS you also meet this and the notability guidelines for your field (like WP:MUSIC for instance)

Images

These apply to things in the Image namespace. Most of these deal with copyright issues.

I1

Redundant

If we have multiple copies of the same image without good reason, it doesn't make much sense.

I2

Corrupt or empty image

Of course, if the image is broken, it's pretty much useless.

I3

Improper license

The "freeness" of Wikipedia is defined by the Definition of Free Cultural Works, which says that in order to be considered truly free, you must be able to freely share, use, modify, and redistribute the product for any purpose. Unfortunately, if the image contains restrictions like Non-commercial use only, non-derivatives, or "for use on Wikipedia only", it is considered automatically to not be free and is bound to the rules and regulations of WP:NFCC. Unfortunately, most non-commercial only images will be in violation of the Non-free content criteria (especially in the category of "replaceable fair use"). All licenses "certified non-free" automatically redirect to {{noncommercial}}, so watch out!

I4

Lack of licensing information

If the image doesn't have source and licensing information, and it has been tagged with a special template noting this (those yellow ones with the red border) for a week and still lack this data, it is grounds for speedy deletion.

I5

Unused unfree images

Per the Non-free content criteria, if a non-free image is unused in any article for 7 days (again, marked using a special template), it is grounds for speedy deletion.

I6

Missing non-free use rationale

According to WP:NFCC policies, any image which is considered non-free REGARDLESS of its license must be only used on the English Wikipedia under the Fair use provisions of the United States copyright laws. We also require that all non-free images also explain why they are allowed under the non-free content policies. This is called a fair use rationale, and is a uniquely Wikipedia-based rule. To remain on the safe side, we purposely make our copyright policies stricter than that of the laws of the United States. Note, that a single tag (like {{Non-free logo}}) does NOT constitute a valid Use Rationale alone.

I7

Invalid fair-use claim.

In order to be used on Wikipedia, non-free media must comply with all the criteria listed on WP:NFCC. If in violation of them, the image must be deleted within 48 hours (again, counted down with a special template). This is also the criterion for using the wrong tag (like using {{Non-free logo}} on a picture of a Sculpture for instance).

I8

Images available as bit-for-bit identical copies on the Wikimedia Commons

If the image is free, and is good, there is a good chance that it's already on the Wikimedia Commons, our free media repository. This clause can also be used when transferring images from Wikipedia to their new home on the Commons.

I9

Blatant copyright infringement.

This, just pins the tail on the donkey perfectly. I do not feel the need to explain this when another page can better