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A3 and Template:Wi

I created Basoexia today as a soft redirect to Wiktionary, using the {{wi}} template. Basoexia is sexual arousal from kissing; I'm not convinced that an article would ever rise above a dicdef, and it is likely to attract vandals. However, it's been on the medicine/sexuality list of requested articles since January 2005.

There are hundreds of similar articles: see Category:Redirects to Wiktionary. The template to facilitate this was created in 2004. This is a long-standing practice.

But A3 makes no provision for this, no matter how sensible or appropriate this is in some cases. A3 demands that all soft-redirects be deleted.

Pretty much, I think we need to either delete all of these soft redirects, plus the template that's used to create them, or we need to update A3 to prevent this problem in the future. I think the best option is to change A3.

I would be happy to hear other editors's views. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we don't need to change A3 at all. The speedy you described was wrong. We've got CSD specifically for redirects already, since they aren't actually articles. And none of them allow the deletion of soft redirects. You should have the deleting admin restore it, and put a message on the talk page of the editor who tagged it. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 01:49, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
And you don't think it would be useful to change "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, template tags and/or images" to read, "Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft-redirects)..."? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The CSD language under redirects says, "Redirects which do not work due to software limitations, such as redirects to special pages or to pages on other wikis, may be converted to soft redirects if they have a non-trivial history or other valid uses."' I don't think this qualifies under this language, and therefore feel that A3 applies. This, in my opinion, is true for any use of a soft redirect in the case of a mere dicdef. (As far as the original request for article goes, it could have been satisfied by a hard redirect to a list of paraphilias which includes this one.) --Orange Mike | Talk 02:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
It has a valid use: it directs the reader to the relevant Wiktionary entry. An example of a (soft) redirect without any valid use would be, say, Kfgjftdfmmjhadkj redirecting to Commons:Main Page. Most if not all such useless redirects should already match one of the R or G series criteria; this one would be G2/R3 as well as, if it was a hard redirect, R1. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
CSD criterion A3 does not and never has applied to soft-redirects. It's not an article so none of the "A" series of criteria apply. Look down in the "R" series (where you will not find any special mention of soft-redirects because they are not speedy-deletable though the other criteria such as implausibility might apply). Rossami (talk) 12:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it might be worth adding the suggested clarification, though, simply because it may not be obvious to everyone whether "soft redirects" actually qualify as redirects for the purposes of CSD. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:31, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd think simply adding that redirects don't fall under A3 should be enough, since WP:SRD already suggests that soft redirects are only different from hard ones for technical reasons. Perhaps making this explicit in WP:CSD#Redirects would help, but I don't think it needs to be added to any of the criteria themselves. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 13:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Nevermind, it's been done]. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 13:35, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced biography of a living person

I'd like to propose that we make completely unsourced biographies of living persons summarily deletable. The wording would be something like:

An article substantially about an identified living person that contains nothing pertaining to them except unsourced statements.

The rationale for this proposal is that we're now mature enough to be much more demanding of those who propose articles that may become a substantial burden and liability to us and cause damage to their living subjects. As a minimum, to demand that one reliable source should be provided is reasonable. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 06:57, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Since WP:BLP already allows admins to nuke those on sight, I don't think we really need a special CSD for them. Simply building a tag for them would probably be enough. For now using {{db-reason}} or {{PROD}} ought to work. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 13:57, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
BLP allows for nuking unsourced contentious material on sight, i.e. G10s. Tony wants us to speedy anything unsourced. —Cryptic 14:30, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
It also allows for any editor to remove all unsourced material, whether positive or negative, from BLPs. If all the information is unsourced, this amounts to deletion anyway. And at least a few admins do nuke positive but unsourced BLPs on sight already. That was the basis for my statement. Really, I don't support changing a thing here. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Read the quote in full: Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately. The policy doesn't say that any any unsourced material can be removed, merely that contentious unsourced material should be removed. This proposal - which applies to a huge number of articles - would allow the deletion of articles that comply with WP:BLP, citing WP:BLP as a justification. If the article consists of material that could harm the subject and that can't be fixed by reverting then the article can already be deleted under G10. --Hut 8.5 20:06, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The is has been proposed in the past and has failed to get consensus. I supported the idea then, and I still support it now. I think it is reckless to allow biographies on living persons without any references, and I think at least one reference supporting the text is the bare minimum we should accept for BLP articles. 1 != 2 14:33, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
All articles should have "at least one reference supporting the text". I would support this with the following modification:
An article substantially about an identified living person that contains nothing pertaining to them except unsourced statements.
— CharlotteWebb 14:38, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
(ecx2) Cryptic is interpreting Tony the same way that I am. I'm not convinced that Tony's idea is good; obvious drawbacks are the potential for biting new editors and deleting articles that are still works in progress. Experienced en.wikipedia editors will know better than to create a new unsourced article, but newbies won't know this, so are the most likely to be affected by this. The issue of deleting article that are works in progress can be addressed by a delay factor, but I don't see how to address the concern about biting new editors.
The proposed criteria is both objective and nonredundant, the first and fourth of the guidelines for new criteria. I don't know whether the article meets the second and third criteria; does anyone have any evidence to offer that 1) there is an existing general consensus at AFD that any unsourced BLP should be deleted and 2) the issue arises frequently. GRBerry 14:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
I can tell you that if sources do not show up in the course of the AfD they are almost always deleted. However, sometimes an unsourced BLP article can be easily sourced. 1 != 2 14:43, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

1) There is a general consensus that sources should be added if possible but the article should be deleted otherwise. This applies to all articles—living people are not special in this regard. 2) Unfortunately, yes. — CharlotteWebb 14:49, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Most likely they would all get taken down at AfD after someone chimes in about BLP, but I don't see the issue all that often that isn't already covered by A7. Most of the unreferenced biographies created these days are vanity pages or about people that aren't important at all.
As for how often it shows up, of the two current candidates that would meet the proposed criteria, we have one G11 and one A7 (note, that only makes 'cuz the two "refs" are blacklisted). Of a random sample of new pages, Hermann Köhl, Walter Howard Frere, Mathias Clemens, Major General Md. Ismail Faruque Chowdhury, Rachid Bell, and Léon Level could make the proposed criteria. Rachid Bell is already tagged for A7; Hermann Köhl, Mathias Clemens, and Léon Level just need inline citations; Major General Md. Ismail Faruque Chowdhury probably has references out there, if anyone cares to look; and only Walter Howard Frere should probably actually be deleted under it. And a case for A7 might be able to be made there.
It seems to me that a slightly slower process is called for in cases where the material isn't completely negative. If it isn't hurting the subject, we can afford to take the time to look for sources before removing the material or deleting. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

See Doug Bell, an resume (not an article) that has been through 2 AFDs and still the only sources are articles he wrote about himself. The system doesn't work when the living person is somebody we happen to like. --Rividian (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

This proposal would do nothing about that article or other similar ones. It has at least one source, thus is exempt from this criteria. GRBerry 16:30, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
The passion people have for protecting that resume is amazing... --Rividian (talk) 16:35, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
It has references and a claim to notability. The notability is debatable at the regular deletion venues, but it can't be speedily deleted for "No assertion of notability", because it has references that do that. Celarnor Talk to me 19:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
G10 only applies if the article is written in a manner to disperse the subject. But if any unsourced biography need to be deleted, then a new criteria will be needed. It is a good idea. I support creation of a separate criteria for this where the only reason for CSD is "unreferenced biography". Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 19:49, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I cannot support this speedy criteria. I think there are too many articles which would be speedy deleted under this criteria which would otherwise be kept at AFD. I checked two days of AFD logs and found 3 BLPs which entered the AFD without any references or external links at all and which were not deleted. (Rupert Hoogewerf, Zdzisław Kaczmarczyk and Brad Chalk). Thus I think this fails the second of the guidelines for new criteria - that it is uncontestable - as there are significant numbers of article that consensus would keep if they went through AFD otherwise. I also think this would be too bitey to newcomers who create otherwise ok articles without sources but can be helped to add sources to the article but if the article is speedied may be discouraged from contributing. Davewild (talk) 20:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely not. BLP permits the deletion of unsourced contentious material, but virtually any article regarding a person will contain material that is usually not contentious, such as their name, place of birth, and profession. If deleting all contentious material makes it an A1, by all means go ahead and delete it - otherwise, don't. There's no need for a new rule. I also think new biography contributors should have an opportunity to present sources - as long as the article still exists, they can respond, but they cannot if it is removed. Dcoetzee 21:51, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I'm glad I started this discussion. The reason I didn't want to include the word "contentious" in the criterion is that the term needs rather more judgement than is normal for a criterion--if the material is clearly derogatory or pejorative, and the article can't be stubbed down, then G10 applies in any case.

There was some unfortunate ambiguity about the term "reference", and looking at random at one of the articles listed by User:Lifebaka, Hermann Köhl, it looks to me as if the very first revisions of the new article are perfectly well referenced, with a newpaper article and two books, but the term "reference" is vague enough that he has perhaps interpreted it to mean "inline reference with a ref tag" or some other, more strict formal requirement. This is a serious weakness in the wording of the proposed criterion as it stands at present. If we went ahead with this criterion, I would want to make it more clear what is meant by a reference. The name of a book that can be verified to exist by checking catalogs, information identifying an article in a newspaper or other periodical, or the presence of an external link that is live, should be taken as a reference for this purpose. Where the reliability of the source is in doubt, PROD or AFD should be used instead of this criterion.

Looking at the article creation edit box, I note that it presently contains the following instructions:

As you create the article, provide references to reliable published sources. Without references, the article may be deleted.

There is also an instruction to read Wikipedia:Your first article.

So whilst I think GRBerry's point about biting newbies is a good one, it isn't as if the new editor has not been warned.

Moreover, the article can always be recreated at a later date, with references. Since the deletion log entry (which is visible in the new article page in such cases) will contain a reference to the article's deficit in references, I think the new editor is being given ample information about the reason for the deletion.

I think the primary utility of this proposed deletion criterion will be to make it easier to identify articles that pose a problem owing to the absence of means by which their statements about living people may be verified. It continues in the vein of existing trends towards strengthening our verifiability policy. It is intended to improve the reliability of our article content by, for the first time, giving that policy teeth that can be applied across a large range of articles where previous failure to enforce has resulted in real harm. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:14, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

That note on the article creation page is one of the white lies we tell to new editors in an effort to reduce the number of new pages we need to delete. Experienced editors know perfectly well that references are not actually required, even per WP:V, except for quotes and statements that are disputed or likely to be disputed. I know of no trend towards strengthening WP:V in this regard. It's discussed quite often and there is no movement towards consensus that every article has to have references.
Going the other way, suppose we did require that every new page had to have a reference. Then we would need to come to agreement over what counts as a reference – I am very reluctant to accept some of the "sources" that people routinely use for BLP articles. We don't want to make a change that looks for the presence of sources while ignoring the quality of those sources. But we can't expect a CSD criterion to include qualitative judgments about reference quality. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:36, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I do agree, by the way, that unsourced BLPs in particular are an issue that needs to be addressed. I just don't think that CSD is the right way to do it. Instead, we need to build agreement to change our culture regarding BLPs. Arbcom is making progress in this direction already. Unfortunately, there is a long way to go. The idea that NPOV means simply including everything, without applying any editorial judgment, is an underlying problem that we have been able to ignore for too long. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:43, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that qualitative judgements are not for CSD, and this proposed criterion only concerns the presence or absence of a reference, in the broadest sense. If under this criterion as I propose it we fail to speedy delete an article because the editor has made some attempt to source his statements, that doesn't mean that we regard his effort as worthy of Wikipedia or improvable to the point where it will be. If the matter of deletion hinges on the validity of the sources then I'm happy to leave that decision to our other community-based article deletion processes.
I disagree with the proposal that we regard the assertion of our verifiability policy on the article creation page as a white lie. As far as living people are concerned, we are (or should be) heading in the direction of fulfilling the promise that we won't do harm. There's no suggestion that every article must have references, but certainly an article that statements about living people should be sourced. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 11:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

G13

Per the ArbCom ruling, administrators can now do anything they can do to keep BLP's in order (including deletion). I'd like to propose a new speedy category, G13:

Content in violation of the Biographies of living persons policy in accordance with the special enforcement provisions of the Arbitration Committee ruling

Sorry I can't think of better wording than this (feel free to tweak), but if we're going to suddenly start deleting BLP's for no reason, it better be explainable. ViperSnake151 22:55, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

We aren't. We've had enough problems with hastily implemented CSDs we don't need any more.Geni 23:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
While I'd love for nothing more than to provide real tools other than "Any and all means" (such as "Unsourced biography of a living person" above), this kind of goes in the wrong direction, encouraging hasty usage of an already extremely broad and dangerous tool. We should be focusing on ways to make that particular ruling unnecessary by improving other, more regulated and precise tools and guidelines for particular types of problems. Celarnor Talk to me 00:20, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
WP:CSD#G10 is the established and consensus supported criteria that is relevant to BLP speedy deletions. The guidelines for a proposal to be accepted as a new criteria are at the top of this page. This one clearly fails all four of them, and is thus not worthy of consideration. We've seen BLP deletions under the old rules overturned at WP:DRV before, this hypothetical broadening would be non-objective, very contestable, should be infrequent, and to the extent there would be any consensus for it also redundant to WP:CSD#G10. GRBerry 01:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Thirteen is an unlucky number. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
The deletion should be clearly flagged in the deletion summary so we don't need a csd for this. Spartaz Humbug! 09:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

G10 is for "attack pages", only pages disparaging their subject with no neutral version to revert to is G10 eligible. The Special Enforcement can delete ANY BLP in violation of the BLP policy as they see fit. In addition, if we do this - in order to prevent it from being used by non-admins, it will not have a matching template. ViperSnake151 11:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

As Spartaz said, they should just cite the special enforcement itself in the deletion summary, so a new CSD isn't actually needed. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 13:26, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
There are plenty of uncontroversial unsourced BLPs and they're just fine. Plus, it's a very controversial arbcom ruling that is in my guess unlikely to stand if it's applied liberally. We're not obliged to implement arbcom rulings as policy, it's the other way around. Arbcom rules based on policy, it does not pronounce policy. Wikidemo (talk) 14:40, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Like I said, I don't think encouraging the liberal use of that particular ruling is a good idea. It's already controversial enough; we don't need to further justify it by giving it it's own special CSD category. If ever used, then the deleting admin should have to explain why they did what they did in the edit summary; encouraging speedy deletions that don't require anything other than "CSD G13" isn't where we should be headed, in my opinion. Celarnor Talk to me 04:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't have a strong opinion at first but Celarnor makes a very compelling argument here. If the issue is serious to justify the new override, it should justify an in-depth explanation in the edit summary, not merely a reference to a CSD code. Deliberately leaving it off the list would encourage (force?) admins to explain their reasoning more fully. Rossami (talk) 05:25, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Anybody supporting this proposal is probably smoking G-13. — CharlotteWebb 17:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I also disagree with a new CSD for reasons explained above. I initially favored a CSD, by the general principle that speedy deletions that are happening ought to be codified, but I think the inevitable misuse of the ruling is more likely to lead to its downfall if it hasn't been added here. Dcoetzee 06:10, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
My suggestion was to only have G13 mentioned on the CSD page and require that if an administrator uses this clause to delete a page, he must also provide a rationale for deletion. This is why I said that if we do use it, G13 would only be usable by admins, and there would be no template for it. It will just be used to brand rationales for their deletions. ViperSnake151 12:44, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

G4: Proposed change

  1. Recreation of deleted material. A copy, by any title, of a page that has been:
    This does not apply to content that has been undeleted via deletion review, deleted via proposed deletion, or to conventional speedy deletions (although in that case, the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply). Also, content moved to user space for explicit improvement is excluded, although material moved or copied to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy is not.

Both additions are no-brainers, but the argument that the non-existence of a previous AFD precludes G4 (even if they've been salted or BLPdeleted) has been made. Sceptre (talk) 22:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

  • I don't think I understand the proposal because this seems to me to be instruction creep. If the page was BLP-deleted before, the recreated content will still be BLP-deletable. (If a non-BLP-violating version has been drafted, G4 wouldn't apply anyway.) If the page was salted, I'm not sure how the case would ever come up (unless you're talking about an admin inappropriately creating the page) but even if it did, the original reason for deletion and salting would justify re-deletion. I don't see a scenario where we would ever need to invoke this expanded G4. Rossami (talk) 22:24, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
  • This summary judgement amounts to a new decreed CSD. As much as I disagree with it, if we're going to be doing deletions based on this ruling, it ought to be codified in this policy. Dcoetzee 22:42, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
    • "protected" I disagree with listing it separately--if the content should by some chance actually address the issue when it is recreated under a different title, then it should not be summarily deleted. Obviously any administrator will take the previous protection into careful consideration in deciding what to do with the new article DGG (talk) 23:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
  • A bad idea. G4 is for items deleted as the result of a community consensus decision, not merely for things previously speedily deleted before. If the article is indeed a recreation of something that was legitimately speedily deleted before, it can legitimately be speedy deleted again under the same criteria originally deleted. This proposed expansion is thus fully redundant to existing criteria, and fails the established standards for new criteria. If you can't justify the original speedy deletion criteria any more, it is time for an XfD. GRBerry 01:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

A7 exclusions

The current policy states:

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. ... A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. Other article types are not eligible for deletion by this criterion. (emphasis added)

Why are books, albums, etc. excluded? Why do some administrators see the need to blatantly ignore this provision (e.g. Window Washer log - Window Washer is a software product - my message to one of the admins involved)? Brian Jason Drake 10:34, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I think at the time A7 was added, real persons, organizations (band, club, company, etc.), and web content were the most common "unnotable" things that pages were made of. ViperSnake151 12:52, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Books, albums, software and other non-web based content are not included because it is difficult to impossible for any one admin to have broad enough knowledge base to judge whether or not the deletion would be completely untroversial. There have been many attempts to such content to A7, but none has gained consensus. An admin who ignores this provision is acting against policy. Sometimes it may be justified, but usually it is not. In this specific case, the article was tagged for speedy as a violation of G11, blatent advertising, which was a defensible call. If you feel that the deletion was out of process, you can take it to Deltion Review. Dsmdgold (talk) 13:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
A7 is frequently abused by users who apply it not only to topics not listed among its eligible topic areas, but also to articles that make clear or implicit claims of notability. This is partly a result of its subjective nature, permitting broad interpretation, partly vindication borne of precedent, and partly an attempt to evade the scrutiny that would normally accompany such out-of-process actions. I continue to support its repeal, in favour of a more thorough process. Dcoetzee 23:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
but this will just lead to deleting the ones in this category as G11, which is even more dubious--there is really no firm criterion there and it is totally a matter of impression. At least the assertion that X is a pizza stand in Duluth with no more said is clearly unsuitable under A7, as are all the facebook-style pages. some of them are particular problems, because many of the people placing them will game the system by removing prods, and clogging up afd with the snow deletes. What is necessary is to get after those admins who ignore the categories. This can be done by bringing every instance to deletion review (if the article is really lousy, though, there is not at present much point in going to deletion review) Alternatively or additionally, complaining about it on their talk page will build up a record. Frankly, the deliberate and persistent refusal to follow policy especially in a matter that affect the retention of new editors is in my opinion grounds for desysop--not that this will be easy, for some of them are very well established in Wikipedia.
That said, it would in my opinion be advisable to find some way of giving a criterion for which the facebook style stuff could be eliminated by speedy other than A7--for one thing, it would permit a more appropriate notice. If you still doubt there is a need for speedy in such case, try a spell of patrolling at New Pages. DGG (talk) 08:09, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
If the admins just dismiss it as "same idea, really", why would anyone else bother to contradict them, particularly when they agree that the topic really is non-notable? Perhaps taking each case to Deletion Review is the best way to build up a record, as all cases will then be listed in a single location. Brian Jason Drake 08:48, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that G11 is vague - see below. Brian Jason Drake 09:00, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change to I8

I know I8 is complicated enough as it is, but I'd like to add the proviso that a local copy is eligible for deletion if it is a lower-resolution version of the Commons image (rather than just pixel-for-pixel identical), similar to I1. This most frequently comes up with Flickr-sourced images - local uploaders frequently upload a lower-resolution version (or thumbnail) from Flickr, while the Commons Flickr bots always grab the highest-res version available. Kelly hi! 15:44, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

G11 vagueness

G11 is vague. I have seen an article that described the history of a company in chronological order. The company no longer exists. There's no way, at least in my opinion, that this could possibly be construed as advertising, yet it was still tagged with {{db-spam}}. Brian Jason Drake 09:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that anything needs to be done to G11, really. It's mostly for articles that say "Buy my product please!" and nothing else. More what needs to be done is make new page patrollers know that not every article about a company is advertising. Another example I ran into recently was this, shown is the tagged version. Another, here, looks pretty bad but could be fixed with just a little effort. It seems that, while G11 is a bit vague, more of what needs to be done is educating patrollers on what to look for so they don't mistag things. A discussion over at WT:NPP should help with that. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 12:24, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
" the Firm has won the confidence of numerous Fortune 500 clients and is the partner of choice for their advisory services. The respect and reverence that the Firm commands is evident"? How much more spammy do you want to tolerate? --Orange Mike | Talk 14:50, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Take a look at the current version. All it took to get it there was the removal of a whole ton of the cruty and spamy parts of the it (and the addition of the Awards section, which I didn't do). Pretty much anyone can do that in a few minutes, so a G11 speedy is way off base. G11 says it only applies to articles that "would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic", which this didn't. If it can be fixed, it shouldn't be G11'd. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
They were just off a number... it's G12, this a copyvio of [1]. --Rividian (talk) 13:34, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
incidentally, wording it as advertising is too narrow, it is really articles where the purpose is just publicity, rather than information--it applies to non-commercial enterprises also. The problem remains how to narrow it down a little more specifically. The obvious cases are after all pretty obvious. DGG (talk) 03:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Empty talk pages and speedy deletion

I nominated at about 50 talk pages for speedy deletion under {{db-blanktalk}}. The were talk pages of redirects with trivial edit history (only the addition of a project banner which doesn't apply since the main article is a redirect). See for example here.

Anthony.bradbury, an administrator, reverted all the tags and moreover, it started removing all the removal of the project tags. See here.

The same user claims in my talk page that "blank article talkpage is not, repeat not subject to deletion". Who is right in this case? Me or Anthony.bradbury? Can I tag empty talk pages of redirects with trivial edit history for deletion or not? Can I remove the project banners from redirects or not?

According to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard "depends on your definition of "article". If a redirect is not considered an article, then G8 applies". -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:25, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess theoretically if a Wikiproject keeps a watchlist of all tagged pages, then redirects should have a Wikiproject tag, so vigilant project members will notice if something goes awry with a redirect somewhere. I'm not sure how much this really comes up but it's the only practical reason I can think of to keep redirects tagged with project tags. --Rividian (talk) 15:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
To make it easier to find it, the AN thread is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Empty talk pages and speedy deletion. Certainly the talk pages aren't really that useful, but we've recently had a bit of trouble about deleting talk pages of redirects which are themselves redirects. I think the best solution would be to just redirect the talk pages to match the redirect of the article, to make sure that people get sent to the proper place in case they somehow manage to stumble onto the talk page without hitting the article first. There may be links to the talk page, and a redirect to where discussion should actually happen would be helpful. Hope this helps. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 15:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
  1. I find no reason to have a project tag in a redirect talk page. The tag is used in order to evaluate an article and set a priority for it for improving it. That's why they are categories in the project tags (A class, B class, stub class, template and no "redirect class")
  2. I think since the project tags are not necessary that we then have to deal with empty talk pages that are difficult accessible to the user and moreover... useless, unless they preserve significant edit history.

As a conclusion I think G6 applies fine in these cases (G8 could apply as well if you don't consider redirect as an article). -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:46, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with G6 being applicable in this case. As long as the talk page doesn't contain any meaninful history required for GFDL purposes, it really is just a housekeeping act to delete them. Resolute 16:03, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I disagree: if we're interpreting G6 that broadly, what do we really need any of the other criteria for? (See also recent discussion about the meaning of G6.) That said, I have nothing against speedily deleting such useless talk pages, but they should have their own criterion. How about: "G13: Empty talk pages. Any talk page with no meaningful content and no old revisions worth preserving."? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
I think just redirecting these to the same targets as the articles should do fine. There may be links to them from other talk pages, they may contain history, etc. Not to mention that redirects are cheap. If they're deleted through an XfD (like below) that's fine, but we don't need to be adding another CSD when there are easily other ways to deal with the issue at hand. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 17:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
What about a G13: Empty orphaned talk pages without meaningfull edit history. then? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
The only truly orphaned talk page would not have an article which it'd be for, and it'd be G8-able. The only situation I can think of where this could happen otherwise is redirects, and then simply redirecting the talk page as well is simpler, doesn't take the tools, keeps any possible history information at the talk page, and takes people to the proper place to make comments on the content. I'd also like to ask how many talk pages there are that don't have any meaningful edit history. Talk pages for actual articles with only an Wikiproject box and a header should stay, and for redirects I've already said a few times that redirecting the talk as well is the way to go, so what else is there? --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 17:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

:::::Wait, did you mean to have that say "with meaningful edit history"? I hope not, because I don't think there's any way I can support the speedy deletion of anything with a non-speedy-able edit history, and to create one would be a very Bad Idea. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 17:59, 24 June 2008 (UTC) comment I meant without. Mistake caused by copy-paste. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:34, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Some admins already have deleted some articles under G6 and/or under "Orphaned redirect talk page". Moreover, I nominated many articles in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Empty talk pages of redirects. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:11, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

"Orphaned redirect talk page" caused a lot of uproar, and they won't be happening again (at least not as speedy deletions). -- Ned Scott 09:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:DIGI keeps the project banner on the talk page of all of their redirected articles. This is for discussion tracking via Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:WikiProject Digimon articles, since often users will leave comments on the talk page of a redirected page. -- Ned Scott 09:19, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

If they are comments, the talk pages should not be deleted. Project banners are in order to improve an article. A redirect cannot be further improved. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:16, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Project banners serve many functions, like the one I just described. Some project banners even have specific redirect classes, to keep track of how many redirects are under their project scope. -- Ned Scott 10:28, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Clearly there can be no argument about talk pages of deleted articles, which qualify automatically for {{speedy}} under G8. I have taken the view that deletion of an empty talk page which still relates to an undeleted (and un-nominated) page does not qualify unles its article page does as well. But it is not of fundamental importance and I am happy to take opinions on the subject. And to take no further action until adequate opnion is forthcoming. --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 17:58, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I still believe that G6 can apply as a cleanup process. If not, I suggest we really consider creating "G13: Empty orphaned talk pages without meaningfull edit history" as above. Should I make a more formal suggestions for that? -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I was around when these 50 talk pages clogged the speedy deletion queue. While they can be distinguished from articles, there are certain talk pages that actually need to be deleted. CSD tags calling for admin intervention are mostly for stuff that needs to be deleted. Also G6 isn't about keeping wikipedia nice and clean, but mostly about technically necessary deletions. And even if we considered such trivial talk pages eligible, tagging and deleting would be rather unproductive. The idea has previously come mostly to script operators, as they can check the edit history, apply some other criteria and delete in one step, but was still not well received. Just redirecting them can be done by any editor and is preferable.--Tikiwont (talk) 11:49, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Why would you bother deleting these Talk pages for the redirects? First, I'm going to assume good faith and believe that the person who added the project tag to the redirect's Talk page did so in good faith and thought that the tag was useful. That utility is not obvious to me but that's acceptable under Wikipedia policy. As long as someone finds it useful and it's not actively harmful, we allow such pages. Second, there is no utility or advantage to the project by deleting these Talk pages. They do not remove server load or change the reader's experience. On the contrary, the act of deletion adds a number of additional records to the database. So, they do no harm and deletion costs more than merely ignoring them - I don't even agree that these should always be regular-deleted. No, G6 can not apply. Rossami (talk) 04:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

A7 - schools

I know this is far from the first time anyone has suggested this, but there's a strong case to be made for speedying primary and junior schools under certain clear criteria based on WP:SCH.

WP:SCH states that "In general, tertiary degree-awarding institutions and senior secondary schools are considered notable", and this includes High Schools or their equivalent but excludes "middle schools and schools that do not educate to at least grade 9/age15".

My proposed extension to A7 is:

"An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), school (other than a High School or equivalent) or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability; to avoid speedy deletion an article does not have to prove that its subject is notable, just give a reasonable indication of why it might be notable. A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. In the case of schools it only applies to junior or middle schools that do not educate beyond grade 9/age15. Other article types are not eligible for deletion by this criterion. If controversial , as with schools, list the article at Articles for deletion instead."

This is a relatively minor alteration that will have a significant impact on cleaning up trivial entries. At the moment an article about a primary school which simply states its location and the name of the head teacher and doesn't even have any references is considered to be prima facie about a notable institution until it has been prodded or afd'd, whereas an article about a small local business in the same town will be speedied straight away. Yet the criteria in WP:SCH are very clear - primary and junior schools are not usually notable.

andy (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Standard practice as I understand it with non-notable schools is to redirect them to the community or school district article. I'm not sure that deletion is necessary as long as that option exists. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
In a lot of cases, probably because they're written by kids, it's not possible to determine the district. In some cases not even the country. andy (talk) 22:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
In those cases, wouldn't WP:CSD#A1 apply? If one can't figure out even that much, then certainly nothing additional could be added. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
It's usually not nonsense. E.g. "XXX school is a first school in Sometown. The principal is Mr Smith." Meaningful, not sensense, but not notable and lacking context. It could easily be improved by the author so you have to prod it. But even if it was improved there's still nothing of encyclopedic value. andy (talk) 22:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
A1 is context, not nonsense. If you read the article and still have no idea where the school is, it's probably an A1...Someguy1221 (talk) 22:55, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, I don't think we should have a non-assertion clause for a subject with no accepted notability guideline. Indeed, the very reason schools have been so iffy when it comes to deletion is the lack of a consensus on what assures the notability of a school. I think it may be far easier to incorporate this into the policy once WP:SCHOOL becomes a guideline, if it does. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
Uh, it's actually an example of where the redirect (which is going to happen anyway) would have avoided the need for deletion altogether. --Rividian (talk) 12:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It looks to me like a good example of a school article that could have been redirected, as several of the responders to that AfD (and now one more :)) have noted--whether it's an {{R from subtopic without possibilities}} or an {{R with possibilities}} might depend on what happens with that school proposal. Whether you would have had subsequent problems with that particular editor, who has shown signs of being tendentious, I don't know. But it looks like a perfectly valid redirect. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)
I feel as if this is something that should go to Afd. In most cases I believe junior and primary school generally aren't notable enough for inclusion, but in some cases they may be, so it should go to Afd, thus I oppose this proposal. Thanks for suggesting it though:-)--SJP (talk) 11:56, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
The AFDs always result in a redirect decision though, apparently, so AFD is not going to result in a deletion. Is including a redirect really so bad anyway? --Rividian (talk) 13:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Self-created image

I uploaded this music file for a Reference Desk post, but now I don't need it. It's of such low quality that it won't be useful to anyone else. What tag should I insert? --zenohockey (talk) 01:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

nm. Answered on my talk page. --zenohockey (talk) 02:06, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Image:HenryMoskowitz.jpg

This image is a copyright from another site. Speedy Delete please. 116.71.41.150 (talk) 06:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You need to tag the image if that is the case; also, the image can be used as long as a fair use rationale provided (and if it makes sense to use it because of said rationale.) Gary King (talk) 07:16, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed addition to G4

When a subject has been deemed insufficiently notable for its own page a good solution is to create a redirect to relevant content elsewhere. I am proposing to add to the section: "The creation of a redirect is excluded and such redirect should be taken to WP:RFD if concerned". TerriersFan (talk) 18:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Huh? That "sentence" is still missing a word or two in order to be coherent. I don't understand quite what you mean to say. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I think what s/he means is that redirects should not be speediable under WP:CSD#G4. As I read it, redirects should already not be speediable under G4, unless the thing deleted by discussion was a redirect page or unless consensus at the AfD was that a redirect page is inappropriate. G4 is for pages that are "substantially identical to the deleted version and that any changes in the recreated page do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted." Most of the concerns I see raised at AfD do not apply to redirects, but only stand-alone articles. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to OrangeMike - I think I've fixed the wording (I'm a he BTW :-)). TerriersFan (talk) 20:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I think moonriddengirl is right... no change needed. If an article on some minor candidate who got 500 votes in an election is deleted, a redirect to the article on that election already is not substantially identicle, and would need to go to RFD (where it would be kept with good cause). The current wording prevents legitimate redirects-replacing-deleted-articles from being deleted, yet allows abusive redirects already deleted at RFD to be deleted without further red tape. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem... are there really a lot of redirects being deleted under G4? I know it happens with very controversial articles... but people are going to delete that stuff regardless of what policy says, since G4 isn't even meant to apply to controversial decisions in the first place. --Rividian (talk) 20:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

db-nocontext being misused?

I recently spotted two articles that were deleted as {{db-nocontext}}, and I'm uncomfortable with the way the articles were handled. See Woodburning stove and Quinton Catheter. The former was hacked down to a dict-def back in November 2007, with a claim of spam that I'm not sure was correct. Eight months later it got speedied as "no context". Quinton Catheter (originally created as quinton catheter) was a very short one-liner, but there was enough there for me at least to realise that this was something real, and something that there should be information on somewhere (ie. a redirect at least). See Category:Catheters and Category:Fireplaces. Actually, scrub that. We have Wood burning stove. So quite why Woodburning stove got deleted instead of redirected, I don't know. sigh. The Quinton catheter thing still needs sorting. Could others opine about how well db-nocontext works in practice? Carcharoth (talk) 18:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Yes, I think you're spot on with this. I know that when I began tagging, I misused db-nocontext a couple of times. I used it on articles that lacked notability, instead of articles that lacked context. It's an easy mistake to make, and one that -- since I realized my mistake -- I've noticed many editors make the same mistake. More disturbingly, I've seen admins delete articles via nocontext where that tag doesn't actually apply. It certainly speaks to the need to be careful in both the tagging and speedy deleting of articles. S. Dean Jameson 18:23, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
For right or for wrong, I'd like to note that Quinton Catheter may have been tagged as WP:CSD#A1, but it was actually deleted as WP:CSD#A3. I tend to wonder if woodburning stove was some intentional variance on WP:IAR, as it certainly doesn't seem to lack context. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:29, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't think A1 is being used much, meaning that the community lacks familiarity with the right way to use it. It is still useful for the cases that fit it, but in many situations will have been superceded by A7 "Derewa is a band" or G3 - the example in A1. It is useful for things like "Aedrewa is a village." that lack any other data, categorization, incoming links, et cetera. GRBerry 20:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

b-g12/test hide copyvio

A discussion has been ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems as well as being posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) and at both {{Db-g12}} and {{copyvio}} to include a function to automatically hide suspected copyvio text when posting either of these templates. It has been implemented for {{copyvio}}, and it was suggested that before implementing it for {{Db-g12}} it should be brought here as well. The test version {{Db-g12/test}} is built and demonstrated on User:Jeepday/Testing Copyvio Template With full blank and partial blank (Live in history only for obvious reasons). Please come to the central discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Db-g12/test hide copyvio if you would like to comment. Jeepday (talk) 19:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

User pages and CSD#G7

There are several thousand user pages that have been created and subsequently blanked by the original author, while no one else has contributed. On the technical merits, these pages would qualify for CSD#G7 (author blanks page, indicating deletion). A sample of such pages can be found below. My question is, are there any objections to the deletion of such pages?

--MZMcBride (talk) 05:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I see few concerns based on the ones that I spot-checked but I don't see any reason why you'd want to bother either. It does not help the database to delete them (on the contrary, deleting a page adds several records to the database). And since they are both blanked and in the userspace, there is no possibility that they could be confused for articlespace content.
If you do proceed, I'd recommend leaving a customized note on the user's Talk page that you are assuming that the user wants the page cleaned up in accordance with G7 and that he/she should contact you to have the page restored if that was not the user's intent.
Thinking more, I would exclude the monobook.js pages. I blank and restore my monobook page as the easiest way to turn off that code temporarily. Rossami (talk) 06:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, the same reason we delete everything else under G7 I suppose.... I considered deleting only subpages or only deleting pages that haven't been edited in a long time, a year or two. But having blue links that point to nothing is a bit silly (in my mind, at least). --MZMcBride (talk) 06:41, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
In the article-space, we delete user-test pages because we don't want readers tripping over blank pages (which could happen either by following a link or through the Random Article feature). We also generally want the title to be redlinked as a more visible statement that we don't yet have an article by that title and to tacitly encourage someone to write it. Likewise, we clean out user-test Templates, Categories and Wikipedia pages because we don't want our experienced editors being similarly misled. However, those justifications would not seem to apply to a page in the user-space. Assuming that the user sub-pages are properly orphaned (since any link to it would be a violation of CSD:R2), I don't see how a user could ever trip over these. None of the ones I spotchecked from your sample list above had any inbound bluelinks. Rossami (talk) 07:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
The points you make are certainly valid, though I do want to mention a few things. I think one of the primary reasons we have CSD#G7 is that a very large number of people believe that blanking a page is the equivalent to deleting it. We see this frequently with vandals who are so proud they've 'haxored' Wikipedia. ; - ) Beyond that large subset of people, there is also a certain fraction of users who actually blank pages with a deletion summary like "delete please" or something similar. These people are aware of G7 and figure that at some point, an admin will be along to cleanup the blanked pages. The reason I'm bringing this up here is partially because the criterion is very vague at the moment. Technically, every page I listed above could be deleted "per policy" as they are all 0 bytes and have one author. So, here's what I am thinking. Any page that is 0 bytes (currently), has only one author, and hasn't been edited for 18 months is deleted. Does that sound reasonable? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
You should check whether a corresponding talk page exists as well. See, for example, User talk:Storm05/Sandbox29. If you had deleted User:Storm05/Sandbox29, would someone else have later deleted the talk page as a talk page without an associated page? That would be the wrong result in both cases, I think. Carcharoth (talk) 22:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

This thread has sent me checking my userspace, as I tend to blank material to page history that I don't want search engines to pick up - userfied articles in very poor condition, for example, and sandboxes and the like. I usually try to remember to actually leave something on the page like "blanked to page history", rather than blanking completely, but I suspect there will be a significant number of these blank pages that some people want to keep. If you can't distinguish between them, then you might be stuck. You could put the pages into a category for further investigation, or leave a note for the authors, but that would take more effort that is really necessary. MZMcBride, how many pages fit the criteria you have proposed (0 bytes, one author, no editing for 18 months), and what percentage are they of the "several thousand"? Carcharoth (talk) 22:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Some examples are: User:Carcharoth/Sandbox1 and User:Carcharoth/World Cup table/template - I would leave any page with "sandbox" in the name alone. Sure, they can be recreated, but people do tend to blank sandboxes, while maybe still wanting to keep the history (some might not want the history at all). I did find one page that I would have wanted to keep that was blank: User talk:Carcharoth/Sandbox (I've now added a note there to prevent that page being deleted). Carcharoth (talk) 22:37, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
The number of pages that have one author, are in the User: space, are 0 bytes, and don't contain 'sandbox' is about 18,000. I did a sample of the first 212 pages (they're alpha-sorted currently). Out of 212 pages, 70 have not been edited in the last eighteen months. That's about one-third of the pages. If I exclude pages that contain ".js" or ".css", it's 52 / 185 pages that would be deleted (approximately 28%). Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Don't delete; there have been several reasons given for keeping and none for deleting. (Yes, I realize that that sounds a lot like an AFD comment :/) --NE2 00:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm pointing this situation out because per this policy, I could delete all of them. And, I do think that pages that have been around for 18 months without any edits and have been blanked and have only one contributor can probably be safely deleted. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
And the talk page situation I pointed out above? Carcharoth (talk) 02:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
CSD is not "you must delete anything that meets this" but "if deleting something that meets this would be helpful, you can do it". --NE2 03:04, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, at least three of the editors have recently been active. Common courtesy would suggest you contact them. User:Storm05, User:Storm Horizon, and User:Stormwyrm. I know I would be very annoyed if a bot came along and deleted any of my user pages like this. Carcharoth (talk) 03:02, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as would I. I'm going to limit it to people who haven't been active for 18 months as well. As for the talk page question you asked above, I'm not sure I understand it. Generally speaking, we can never do G8 cleanup in User_talk: as thousands upon thousands of pages are intentionally 'orphaned' talk pages (usually talk archives, etc.). --MZMcBride (talk) 03:15, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Why are you doing it at all? It seems like you have fun deleting stuff, but there has to be another reason. --NE2 03:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Have you read the discussion above? I explained blue links vs. red links, blanking intent, and misconceptions about page blanking... --MZMcBride (talk) 03:32, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I read the discussion above, and the only reason I can see is that people might intend deletion when they blank. So go through and see how many have an edit summary on the blanking, and find stuff like "delete please". Still, I can't see why one would find deleting these to be important. --NE2 03:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
If it's my time and energy, does it make a difference? : - ) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, if there's no benefit but a cost (the chance of something going wrong). --NE2 03:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems some of the deletions are taking place anyway. I don't see strong support for this, but it is (again) a matter of whether people can really be bothered to contest deletions that no-one else bothers to do, about pages that no-one really bothers about. Sorry, MZMcBride, but I think this "low level of interest" applies to a fair number of your deletions. Is there a way to identify the deletions you do that everyone agrees with, and would you consider organising the vacuuming of the underbelly of Wikipedia in a more organised manner with pages laying out the arguments for and against? For areas of low-interest like this, the only way any consensus is going to be reached is if there are long-running debates where people can slowly add their opinions over a timescale of months. Carcharoth (talk) 22:38, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there some technical reason we're clearing out these types of pages? Have the devs complained about an impending lack of disk space (and actually, deleting them wouldn't accomplish that anyways; they're simply stored in another table/database so they can be "undeleted" as necessary)? I think keeping them is the wiser choice as sometimes (not always, but sometimes) there's interesting history in user pages/subpages that may be worth keeping. I know I've certainly gone spelunking into userspace on more than one occasion when I come across an editor I find interesting. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:20, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any concrete reason not to clean up unused userspace pages, apart from speculation that they might be useful someday. Our mission is to produce articles, not to permanently archive every edit made in user space, so if we lose history in these I don't see it as much of an issue. If the editor copied the text into article space, that will remain in the history of the article itself. Since MZMcbride seems to be limiting this to editors who have been inactive for a long time, it seems fine to me to let him spend his energy as he likes. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
But what is gained by deleting them? As for "permanently archive every edit made in user space", the only effect of deletion is to permanently archive one more action, the deletion itself — the other edits remain in the database, they are merely made inaccessable to most users. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:22, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a second effect of deletion: the server admins have the prerogative to permanently erase deleted content if they ever have a reason to do so. But that isn't the benefit of deleting the pages. The main disagreement is between editors who prefer things to be "orderly", and editors who don't mind the accumulation of cruft over time. I don't think anyone is arguing that these long-abandoned, blank pages by long-inactive editors are actively promoting the mission of writing an encyclopedia. My personality leans towards regular deletion of such pages, and I would support enlarging the deletion policy in that respect. But as long as the deletion policy already permits these particular deletions, I can't see any reason to stop MZMcBride from doing them just because some people are more tolerant of cruft than he is. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm certain if there's ever an issue with disk space the "server admins" will let us know. Just as the devs let us know when something is breaking MediaWiki. I believe the onus is on those wishing to delete this content to justify it and not on those thinking it should be kept for historical purposes. FYI: I've already given my personal reason for believing these pages should be kept in my prior reply. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
"the server admins have the prerogative to permanently erase deleted content if they ever have a reason to do so" - and that is precisely why we should be careful about what we delete. It is precisely because it might one day not be possible to undelete certain classes of deleted content that we should err on the side of caution, or be absolutely sure (not just 90% sure) that we won't need it again. Carcharoth (talk) 08:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Re Locke Cole: as these already qualify as deletion candidates under G7, it's quite simple for the anyone deleting them to justify the deletion. It seems to me that the position requiring justification is the position that admins should avoid deleting these, as the fundamental principle is that any page meeting CSD criteria can be deleted on sight.
Re Carcharoth, the chance we will need these is much less than 10%. We're talking about work that has been abandoned in user space by editors who are no longer active. Moreover, the content of these pages is stored in the database dumps, so it won't actually be lost if deleted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I think you're still missing the point. Even assuming that the value is small (I won't dispute the >10% guess), any percentage is still greater than zero. But the value to the project from deleting the page is slightly less than zero (because the deletion creates a few extra records in the database). If there is even 1/10th of 1% chance that these might be useful, why do you want to delete them? What does the project gain? Rossami (talk) 04:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
What does the project gain by deleting most pages, rather than just blanking all pages that we no longer use? The reason for deleting the pages is that we no longer use them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
That is absolutely not the reason for deleting article pages. We delete things to deliberately hide the pagehistory, to preempt further abuse, to restore a link to red as a clearer indicator that we don't have an article at the title, to reduce or eliminate potential confusion, etc. There are many good reasons why blanking a page may not be sufficient. The question, again, is which reason applies here? I don't dispute your assessment that very few of these pages will have value. But no matter how small that number is, it's still greater than zero. There should be some benefit to the project before we pay even that trivial cost. What is it? What do we gain by deleting these pages instead of simply ignoring them? Rossami (talk) 21:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I blank some of my own user pages for various reasons, but still want their histories. On WP:MfD, blanking is sometimes used instead of deletion. There's no reason to do these deletions, and we can already come up with a few situations where the deletion would be problematic. -- Ned Scott 04:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Reading above again, I haven't seen anyone give compelling reasons not to delete these pages. Carcharoth pointed at a couple of his pages - but we are talking about pages of users who have been inactive 18 months. Moreover, the history of the pages Carcharoth linked to is quite minimal: [2] [3] Other people seem to just say they don't think it's necessary to delete them - but that isn't a reason to stop someone else from doing it, just a reason not to spend their own time deleting the pages.
Could you recap the strong reasons given not to delete these pages, or give a concrete example of such a page that is would obviously be a mistake to delete? I think the number of such examples is vanishingly small. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
User:Someguy1221/Sandbox. I've referred to a specific version of its history in a content dispute, as references (referred to by number) were significant to the dispute. Considering this page needn't have the word "sandbox" in it, I consider that one concrete example to not add tens of thousands of entries to the deletion log. (You might notice that I only just blanked the page, but I swear I intended to do that months ago ;-) (I could also have moved it to make an even bigger point, but that's not something I do...)) Someguy1221 (talk) 00:22, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
We're only talking about users who have been inactive for 18 months; your userspace wouldn't be included. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:45, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread; thought you were referring to user pages that have been inactive for 18 months. In any event, I maintain that the history of my sandbox will retain a definite, if small, value long after I hypothetically retire, and given that I still don't see what value there is in deleting a page that itself has no value....Someguy1221 (talk) 01:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen anyone give compelling reasons to delete these pages, and without that, this is a no-go. -- Ned Scott 07:14, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention users that might not always be active on en.wikipedia, but are still active on other Foundation projects. On MfD we've had some users come back to say they were not inactive, but simply did not notice they had accidentally logged out. -- Ned Scott 07:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Since they are already speedy deletion candidates, I don't follow the "no-go" argument; any admin can delete the pages at any time. But the reason to delete the pages is because they aren't used any more. By analogy, think of the person who never throws anything out because everything "might be useful again one day". The result isn't that things get re-used; they just accumulate and accumulate. At some point we need to accept that old pages almost certainly will never be used again, and keeping them just results in cruft. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:16, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
But it's cruft that's impossible to find unless you were looking for it to begin with. If my closet were infinitely large, I could assure you I would never throw anything out that had even the most miniscule possibility of being used one day. And the fact that they're candidates shouldn't lead to their deletion in the absence of any forseeable good coming from it; no policy should ever be enforced purely for the sake of itself. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Carl, they are not speedy deletion candidates per CSD G7. Please re-read G7 and explain to me where the author is requesting deletion by simply being inactive for 18 months. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Erm... I think you missed something. We've been discussing pages that are currently 0 bytes in length and have only one author. That, of course, guarantees that it was the author who blanked the page. The wording of CSD G7 is: "Author requests deletion, if requested in good faith, and provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request." It clearly says that page blanking indicates the author would like the page to be deleted. As G7 is under the general criteria, it applies to all pages, not just specific namespaces (unlike the Us or the Cs or the Ts, etc.). So, as Carl said, an admin would be perfectly well within policy to delete the pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Erm... Some people blank pages because they want to blank the page, not because they want it deleted. This is a common technique used to remove stuff from search engines or put something on the back burner. It is technically using the page history as a storage space, but that is no different to using userspace as a storage space. In cases of people using Wikipedia as a storage space, is the content that matters, not whether the page is blanked or not. If you are persisting with the generalisation of "blanking = please delete this for me", I will have to completely oppose this. If you could reliably find pages where the edit summary was "delete", I might suport, but even then I would only support if you left a talk page message at the same time. And by that stage, the amount of resources being used exceed the benefits. I hadn't really realised before the G7 said "If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request." What if the edit summary says "blanking page, please do not delete"? There is no warning when blanking a page that this will lead to deletion. I would go further and say that that particular wording of G7 was only meant to apply to articles, despite being in the general bit. A new author blanking an article they recently started can be seen as a deletion request, I agree, but extending that to user space doesn't seem right to me. People see user space as somewhere they can do blankings and moving and tidying up without people following them around asking or assuming "did you want that blanked page deleted?" Carcharoth (talk) 05:58, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Having said the above, though, I think what you are trying to do is tidy up inactive page. I suggest you attempt to get the community to agree that all pages associated with an inactive account (say, 2 or 3 years old) can be deleted. If people object to that, as I think they would, then I think they would object to this as well. I repeat, a blank page is not always a candidate for deletion. I will make a proposal to change the wording in G7 due to concerns raised here that it is being used inappropriately. Carcharoth (talk) 06:02, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal is here. I will advertise on the Village Pump and notify those who have taken part in this disucssion. Carcharoth (talk) 06:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

New section needed - Non-Free Images of Living People

There are just too many questions that keep comming up when non-Free Images of Living People and more specificly non-free promotional images are used merely show what they look like. These images frequently contain valid fair use rationale, that is legally valid, but fail to meet Wikipedia's stricter requirement that these images are " unsuitable for the project" These image are frequently deleted with a log entry similar to the following:

00:24, July 2, 2008 Melesse (Talk | contribs) deleted "Image:Datpol.jpg" ‎ (Speedy deleted per (CSD I7), was an image with an invalid fair use rationale and the uploader was notified more than 48 hours ago. using TW

CSD#17 does not even mention the subject of images of living people. This then forces users who have made use of dispute tags to post additional questions on the administrators talk page as to why they deleted the image since the log entry does not state the real reason the image was deleted, but only a generalized statement that was being challenged in the first place and never responded to. It should also be noted that administrators are not expected to respond to dispute tags, see the following discussions 1 and 2

I suggest we add one more section on the line of the follow text

Replaceable non-free images
  1. Images of Living People or Groups used merely show what they look like.
    These images are generally considered replaceable and are therefor unsuitable for Wikipedia see Wikipedia:Non-free content for the official policy
  2. Images of buildings still standing
    These images are generally considered replaceable and are therefor unsuitable for Wikipedia see Wikipedia:Non-free content for the official policy
Special note: However, for some retired or disbanded groups, or retired individuals whose notability rests in large part on their earlier visual appearance, a new picture may not serve the same purpose as an image taken during their career, in which case the use would be acceptable and should not be deleted.


See also the following pages that also reflect this policy

Dbiel (Talk) 20:16, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

They're already deleteable under I7 as they fail NFCC#1. Sceptre (talk) 20:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
(inserted due to edit conflict)I agree that NFCC#1 covers the subject in a general way, but the problem is that many users do not consider these images as being replaceable. This new section deals with this very specific group of images making it clear that they are considered replaceable and therefor deletable. Additionally, they are generally not being deleted under NFCC#1 but rather under CSD I7 which just adds to the confusion. To repeat, this is not a new policy, but I feel that it is needed to better address all of the questions being posted as to why promotional images with valid fair use rationale are being deleted. Dbiel (Talk) 20:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Sceptre, no need to make this more complicated. The uploaders of the images in question are notified about which specific portion of the NFCC the image fails. Kelly hi! 20:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Your statement about notification is false, see the previous example where the uploader was notified the the image would be deleted due to an invalid fair use rationale and a separate (different) user who posted a dispute tag and added a valid fair use rationale after the original notice was posted on the uploaders talk page received no reply or notice at all. Do you need to see an extensive list of users questions as to why these these deletions are being questioned. Dbiel (Talk) 20:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Sample comments:
  • You yourself put the deletion tag on the image when you uploaded it, that's why you didn't get any notification. You should have read the warning dialog that appeared in the "license" section. The buildings in the pictures seem to be still existing, so it's reasonable for someone to go and take a photo of them and release them under a free license
  • Regarding the automatically deleted Image:Rose Cover.jpg, which stated that the uploader (me) was notified at least 48 hours by you before deletion, I can't find any such notification. There were no warning tags posted to the image and nothing mentioned in the article where the image was used or on my talk page. Hope to clarify this so as to avoid future similar upload problems.

A7 question....

Why is A7 restrictive? Shouldn't any article on any subject that doesn't assert notability be speediable? — MusicMaker5376 18:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

History, for starters. I believe prior to mid-2005, 4 years of WP history, there was no policy for deleting articles due to a lack of assertion of importance, and only with a great ammount of resistance was A7 created to apply just to articles about a single person. It was gradually expanded to include groups and bands, as a logical extension, then businesses and websites in (I think) late 2006 as a part of the war on spam advocated by Wikipedia's legal counsel at the time. So A7 has gradually expanded to include more and more specific sorts of articles, but there has never been a consensus or top-down decree to include everything.
If you want a logical reason, the best I've heard is that while a layman can more or less assess whether a claim of importance exists when it comes to people, businesses and bands, it would be problematic (and thus controversial) to let laymen make those same calls on technical subjects with minimal oversight. Granted, an article about a person or a band could potentially a very nuanced claim of importance, but in practice, such articles are vastly less likely to make confusing, but legitimate, claims than articles on very complicated topics. I.e. when deciding if there's a claim of importance, most band articles will be obvious calls, but very few articles on amino acids will be. So it's practical in one case to make deletion simple, but not practical in the other.
Hope that was helpful. --Rividian (talk) 20:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's a lot easier to identify an assertion of significance for a band than with, say, a mathematical concept. We also have clearly defined specialised notability criteria for articles that are deleted under A7 (WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:BAND, WP:WEB). In addition, there are plenty of types of article that don't need to assert notability to be deemed acceptable for inclusion - places, battles etc. A7 is just meant to get filter out the obviously non-notable articles so that others can be evaluated through PROD and AFD without overloading those processes, rather than serve as a complete system of deletion. Hut 8.5 20:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I can see why one may not want scientific concepts included in A7. The reason I ask this question stems from the fact that I tried to speedy Robin Hood (musical). It claims one performance at a music festival in Germany 13 years ago, which, arguably, is not an assertion of notability. It's an assertion of existance. I would think that the same criteria used for bands in deciding their notability could be used for any performance art. I've, in fact, speedied articles on musicals using A7 before; sometimes they go through, sometimes not. It seems to me that any article on WP should assert notability. Where it doesn't require specialized knowledge to determine whether or not something asserts notability, it should qualify under A7. (Which, I realize, is a proposal -- one that I'm not yet making.) — MusicMaker5376 21:11, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I would argue that musical theater does in fact require specialist knowledge. A musical by Stephen Sondheim would be notable, even if it had never been performed. A muscical by me would never be notable. Where is the line between Sondheim and me and which side of that line do the people who created this muscial fall? That would be a subjective judgement which is not suited to speedy deletion. 70.184.31.2 (talk) 15:24, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Db-blanktalk

Template:Db-blanktalk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- Ned Scott 06:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change to CSD I8

One of the criteria of I8 (Commons dupes) states: "The image is not protected, and the image description page does not contain a request not to move it to Commons." I propose eliminating this provision, because I don't understand its relevancy. This just creates more work for everyone, for no apparent good reason I can see. Images and their descriptions evolve and improve over time just like articles. The images are cleaned up, cropped, renamed, replaced with better versions, etc. The descriptions are improved, sources are updated, licenses refined. The images are occasionally challenged and have to be deleted. Centralizing all of this in one place prevents having to repeat these actions in more than one place. I understand there were previously some watchlist concerns from uploaders who did not have Commons accounts. With the advent of SUL, a Commons account can be automatically created with a single mouse click, in most cases. And Commons still has the option to update preferences so that a user can receive an e-mail if an image on their watchlist is edited. I would argue that the benefits of centralization, and the work saved by preventing duplicate actions on multiple wikis, outweighs any claimed benefits of local copies. (I understand exceptions in the temporary cases of Commons images on the en Wikipedia Main Page, and similar situations.) I guess this post also proposes the deletion or obsoleting of the templates {{KeepLocal}} and {{NoCommons}}. Kelly hi! 23:07, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Seemingly no objections, so I made the change. Kelly hi! 18:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
I thought the main benefit of local copies was where Commons would delete but the local wiki would keep. Commons aims to respect the copyright laws of all the countries involved with an image, whereas en-Wikipedia, for example, often only goes by US copyright laws. A SUL account won't help if an image is moved and deleted here, and then later deleted on Commons - it would only work if Commons people were willing to always (within reason) move a copy back to the local wiki when the history shows that is was a "moved" image, rather than one directly uploaded to Commons. Carcharoth (talk) 22:17, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
In what cases (other than obvious ones like {{PD-US-1923-abroad}}) would an image be free here and not free on Commons? Those situations are already pretty much covered by other provisions of CSD I8 - The image's license and source status is beyond reasonable doubt, and the license is undoubtedly accepted at Commons.' Images aren't just deleted at Commons for random reasons, at least not so far as I've ever seen. Generally, if it's a copyright violation at Commons, it's a copyright violation here as well. Kelly hi! 23:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Please, ask some people at Commons about this. Ask them if things have changed recently with respect to this. Also, I think people sometimes take "the license is undoubtedly accepted at Commons" with a grain of salt. What is accepted on Commons one year can change the next year. I do agree about the centralisation bits, and it would be nice if people could transclude the description page, while still have a copy of the picture underneath. That doesn't address image file updates though. Carcharoth (talk) 08:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Sure, I don't mind asking about anything at Commons (I'm a regular contributor there), but I'm not really sure what the question is...do you have an example of a Commons content policy that changed from one year to the next? The only situation like this I'm aware of is when countries change their copyright law (like the Russians did earlier this year), but that's pretty rare and normally affects the English Wikipedia as much as the Commons. Kelly hi! 13:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I object, the benefits of a local watchlist exceed the benefits of centralization for high profile images that encourage vandalism and Image talk discussions. On that point, I really don't have much more to offer than to say I disagree. I don't consider SUL to make any meaningful difference in the calculation (though the advent of a global watchlist would). Beyond that, you also assume that Commons and Wikipedia have the same goals in managing image decriptions. We want generally our image descriptions to be in English and encyclopedic, whereas Commons wants to be multi-lingual (in some cases painfully so) and some Commons-editors actively strip out details not directly connected with the photo. For example, if we have an image of a battleship and the description includes notes about the ship's history, some Commons editors actively remove those types of details. Hence, in my opinion, it is not a good idea to assume that the interests of Commons will always and absolutely be the same as ours (even though they often are).
Personally though, the bottom line is that we are talking about criteria for speedy deletion. If an editor in good faith left a note asking that the image not be removed, the least we should do is be willing to have a conversation with them about their concerns.
In the spirit of WP:BRD, I am going to revert you. Dragons flight (talk) 20:36, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Can you provide any examples of the behavior above that you have claimed? Kelly hi! 20:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
[4] There is an example of User:Bastique (who certainly is no newbie) deleting everything from an image description except the copyright material. That's the example I can grab most quickly, though certainly not the only example in existence. I'm afraid I need to go offline for a while, but I would like to add that a consensus of "Kelly" does not a consensus make. (Also, please use more descriptive discussion headings. If the heading had explained what portion you were concerned with I might have noticed and commented sooner.) Dragons flight (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Looks like that provision has always been part of I8 since that criteria was added, apparently based on this proposal, which had minimal discussion, and no reason given for its addition. I will gladly research your other claims. I'd also ask that you please keep the conversation civil and collegial, thank you. By the way, I've asked Cary why he did that, it's a little mystifying to me, too. Do you have any other examples? Kelly hi! 21:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
FYI, Cary's reply. Looks like that change had nothing to do with the image being on Commons. Kelly hi! 16:35, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
If you are inclined to search the archives there are also several previous discussions about removing the "user request" clause (including ones with higher involvement than the archive you linked about its being added), and yet it remained there (which I suspect means that the previous proposals lacked consensus, though I don't have the time to find the archives right now). But this is really my very last edit for a while. Cheers. Dragons flight (talk) 21:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It is current standard practice to temporarily copy images from commons to Wikipedia and protect them here, whenever they get placed onto the Wikipedia main page, to prevent problems of vandals replacing the image with something obscene. We can't easily protect images directly on commons because admins here are often not admins there and vice versa. That is why the clause about page protection is there. So unless some other means of achieving the same protection is possible, I would object to the removal of the "unless the page is protected" clause of I8. I don't so much care about user requests to keep it on Wikipedia directly, as I doubt that happens so regularly. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:27, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm searching the archives now, but I think your concern above is covered by the {{c-uploaded}} clause in I8, which seems designed to cover the situation you describe. Kelly hi! 21:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've laboriously searched all the archives, and the only debate I can find that remotely addresses uploader requests to keep local copies is this one, which had nothing close to consensus. I still haven't seen anything that justifies making duplicate work to improve images/descriptions. Kelly hi! 22:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

  • Sorry, but I am restoring the "The image is not protected" clause. The reason I lobbied for that rule (I cannot remember where it is archived at the moment, it was later on then after the time CSD#I8 first was implemented) was that I had seen too many admins here who, in clearing out Category:Images on Wikimedia Commons, were deleting images tagged as {{mprotected}} without paying attention (and yes, an image here on enwiki can be tagged as both {{NowCommons}} and {{mprotected}}) – leaving these main page images wide open to be vandalised. Or the vandalism/edit wars of a just-deleted NowCommons image spilled over onto the Commons page (newly registered accounts and anon IPs can still edit the image description pages on Commons, you know, after they can easily discover via the MediaWiki:Sharedupload system message that it is now coming from our less publicized sister web site). It may be obvious for you, but this clause helps ensure that admins do check for that extra step. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 07:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Overzealous I5 deletions

I just wanted to ask admins to please take more care when deleting images under CSD I5. In the past few days alone, two images on my watchlist with the {{Vector version available}} template on them were tagged by bots as unused fair use images and subsequently speedied. It may take a moment longer when clearing out a backlog, but I think it's worth a little extra effort to avoid this sort of mistake. - Eureka Lott 14:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Image:Cleveland Browns Dawg.png is certainly a non-free logo. If it really was orphaned for 5 days, I don't see why deletion was incorrect. We don't need an "attribution path" (see {{vector version available}}) for non-free images; we just need to image we actually use to state its own source and the copyright holder in its use rationale — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed new CSD criterion

OK, OK, I know the ratio of proposals for new criteria to acceptance is vanishingly small, but what the hell!

I have noticed, over a period of time, not a flood, but a steady trickle of articles which actually consist of somebody putting the text of their unpublished (or more frequently unpublishable) novel up onto Wikipedia.

These attempts meet a variety of fates; AfD, PROD, or sometimes slightly tenuous CSD under G1 (nonsense), G3 (Vandalism) or A1 (no context), or G12 (Copyvio).

However, the simple truth is that Wikipedia doesn't want these articles in mainspace (users might want them in userspace). They are unambiguously identifiable as novels or segments thereof and are universally non-notable.

So;

A9 - Novels or segments of novels An article, which is substantially the text (or a segment of the text) of a novel or other work of fiction, whether published or unpublished.

Thoughts?

Mayalld (talk) 14:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

A few problems with this. If the novel has been published and is appropriately licensed then it should be moved to Wikisource rather than deleted. If it clearly isn't appropriately licensed then it can be speedy deleted as a blatant copyright violation. I don't think there are very many cases of people adding novels (I can't recall deleting any) so a new CSD criterion isn't really necessary. Hut 8.5 14:57, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
From time to time people do depospit all manner of unencyclopedic writings (almost always copy and pasted and written for some other purpose). Novels are quite rare, more often it's an essay about some cause or theory. But they are rare and the possibility for salvage is high enough (under 10%, but it's still considerable)... WP:PROD just works better for these. Or a transwiki if it's something Wikisource would want. No real need to speedy delete here. --Rividian (talk) 17:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
There are instances of naive users trying to write original fiction or poetry in wikipedia. there's not more than a few a week, and they are easily handled by prod. we dont need to complicate the speedy criteria here. DGG (talk) 22:12, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

New article criteria

To bypass wastes of time like this I propose another CSD A criteria.

9. An article about a creative work such a song, painting or book created by a sole individual or group, who by the processes of AfD or DRV, were deemed unnotable (deleted), provided that the article contains no other assertions of notability.

The wording could use some work but I think that the premise is sound. -IcĕwedgЁ (ťalķ) 08:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Redundant to G4. Sceptre (talk) 10:36, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
No, it's not redundant. G4 requires that the reposted content be "substantially identical to the deleted version". If AfD deletes a page about a band, their personal lives and touring schedule, that is different content from a page about an album, the songlists and sales figures. I still want to think more about whether this proposal will be good for the project but it is not redundant to any existing criterion that I see. Rossami (talk) 14:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
This proposal, or something close to it, gets brought up periodically but I haven't followed the discussion. I'm leery of saying we should speedily delete article B simply because article A was deleted. Articles get deleted on notability grounds all the time for lack of sourcing because nobody made the effort. That doesn't automatically mean that a child article suffers the same problem. The spirit of G4 is that every article, and every nomination, stands on its own - does this particular article, in this form, meet the notability criteria? We don't delete for purely process reasons. The other question is whether it is possible to have a notable work by a non-notable artist. Wikidemo (talk) 14:47, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
It requires that it be substantially identical to the deleted version and that any changes in the recreated page do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted. If the article was found non-notable at AfD and the new version doesn't address that, I should think G4 would cover it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:02, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
What I am talking about (look at the RfA I liked too) is the common situation where an article on a band will be deleted but there are also half a dozen articles on songs by that band, instead of having to go through an AfD for each song they could be speedily deleted with this criterion. -IcĕwedgЁ (ťalķ) 16:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I could see circumstances where we decided at AFD that all the coverage in reliable sources was about the book or the painting rather than the person, this makes me very reluctant to support this wording due to the difficulty in assessing an assertion of importance. If this is going to be supported however the ending should be changed to "contains no other indication of importance or significance". This would bring it inline with A7 and the current wording could be interpreted as 'no sources so cannot be notable so delete even though it says it sold a billion copies'. Also 'assertions' could be interpreted as more than one required. I also don't see the need for DRV to be on the wording - has that situation ever happened? Davewild (talk) 17:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
That's already under discussion, several sections above this one, Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Proposal:__Albums_and_CSD_A7_when_the_corresponding_band_article_has_been_speedied_under_CSD_A7.. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I sorta' support this, but I'm not sure we need it so general immediately. I think people only really want this for albums, not all creative works, so we should start it slow. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 04:27, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Though it would have some benefits, I don't think this is a good idea. Some creative works are more notable than their authors. This would (presumably) have the desired effect in most cases, but would be very problematic in a handful of cases. — xDanielx T/C\R 19:10, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm certainly not usually happy about expanding speedy categories, but I really can not see the actual harm in this. Can someone suggest what problems it would cause. Perhaps we could use it for a trial period--if people misuse it to remove articles where the band etc. articles were deleted via speedy or PROD or never existed or were never deleted at all, we can revoke it. DGG (talk) 01:53, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
If DGG is in support of more deletions, then it must be right :-D Stifle (talk) 14:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't see how the misuse of a criterion would mean we shouldn't have it. I'd think that's more of an education issue, probably better handled at WT:NPP or individually with those who don't get it. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 17:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I think if it were explicitly limited to songs, paintings, and books, it would be fine. But what about, say, programming language design? I'd venture to say that less than half of the designers of notable languages are notable (even if we only look at languages that were designed by an individual).
The clause "provided that the article contains no other assertions of notability" should theoretically resolve this, but if it is taken seriously, it would essentially just turn this into A7. A7 already requires that notability be asserted, and "this is the work of a person who isn't notable enough for an article" isn't really an assertion of notability, so it should come down to those "other assertions" with or without this new addition. — xDanielx T/C\R 16:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
The current A7 doesn't apply at all to songs, books, etc. The consensus of the community has been that criteria for songs, books, etc, should make it harder to speedy-delete these things than biographies or web sites. Making the criteria similar would be a substantial change. I would not support making it easier. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:01, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I'd suggest changing to "no other assertion or evidence" of notability. Because anonymous authors are a bigger possibility for books etc., suggest applying to albums (and perhaps videos) only for the time being. CSD is strong medicine, better to start by biting off too little than too much. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 21:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Oppose; agree with User:XDanielx. Frequently topics deserving deletion are closely connected to topics that don't, e.g. family members. There's an endless stream of one-hit wonder bands whose one popular work is much more notable than the band itself. Ref also Wikipedia:Arguments_to_avoid_in_deletion_discussions#Notability_is_inherited. Dcoetzee 02:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: Albums and CSD A7 when the corresponding band article has been speedied under CSD A7.

I have a proposal to make, that's sort of a fresh (not thought through) idea, but based on this AfD. What if CSD A7 were expanded to allow deletion of articles for albums under CSD A7 when the band that released the album's article was removed under CSD A7 and there is no claim of notability for the album itself in the article. As it stands now, when a band makes a vanity article, and also makes vanity articles for their albums, their band article can be deleted, but the albums (usually less notable than the band) have to go through AfD. Any thoughts?? ⇔ ∫ÆS dt @ 02:31, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

First, Albums don't have to go to AfD, in my experience PROD works. Second, if the band article states that the band has released an album, then the band article itself is not a valid A7. Releasing music is an assertion of notability. Whether or not that assertion rises to a level to meet the Notability guidelines is not a matter for speedy deletion. Dsmdgold (talk) 09:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
First wanted to note that you're not alone with this thought, AES. It's come up several times before. :) But I'd like to question if you're thinking about all the levels of "album" that could be mentioned, Dsmdgold. I would not consider a self-produced cd distributed when the band plays nightclubs as an exclusion from A7. A professionally produced album, I'd agree. Suggestions in the past have included deleting album articles where there is no independent showing of notability and where the corresponding article for the band has already been speedily deleted. Though PROD can work, I can see some value in this, as sometimes article creators don't gracefully accept that their articles don't qualify. I'm not sure if it comes up enough, however, to warrant the complication of including albums under A7, since A7 tends to be too broadly applied anyway. I wonder how others feel about that? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
I would agree that if the article labels an album as a "demo" or otherwise indicates that the album was self-produced. But a statement that the album was released by XYZ label, would rise to the level of an assertion of notability. If subsequent investigation detrmines that the "label" is single band label, then that evidence certainly be used to PROD the band article, or at AfD. A7 should not be expanded to include albums because the fact that an albums is by a certain band can be an assertion of notability in and of itself. THere is no way that any one editor or admin can possibly know in every case whether or not a band fits this description. Dsmdgold (talk) 16:33, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

<outdent> Band vanity articles have been known to place {{hangon}} tages and also to contest prods. If the band article doesn't assert notability, and has been deleted as a result, and the notability for a band would come from their released albums, or coverage of thge band in the news, then is there a realistic situation an alubum is notable when the band isn't? (What about a single-artist album, excluding multiple artist releases, bnecause I could see that exception?) Wikipedia:NMG#Albums says if a band is notable, then all of their albums are (paraphrase), including their demos. Is it true that if a band is nonnotable, that any single-artist albums they have released are also nonnotable? I'm almost thinking of a tie-in criteria, rather than a stand-alone article criteria for the album. It would rely on the band article being CSD A7 deleted. After all, a claim on the band article (or the album article) of having music released by XYZ label would protect the band just as much from CSD A7 as it would protect an album article that could only be speedy deleted deleted because the band article already has been. What about limiting it to when the album article is created at the same time as the band article (say within a few days by the same author)? What if it clearly says it's a self-release, or a myspace or youtube release, and again the band has not claimed notability? Maybe that starts to get too complicated for a realistic CSD, but I suspect a rule could be made uncontraverisal and a faster way to achieve deletes that ought to WP:SNOW in favor of deletion but can't because there's no CSD for them could be made. After all, speedy deletion is basically WP:SNOW deletion, because snowballing an AfD in the delete direction (but not under a CSD) would be nearly unheard of, and for good reason. (I hope these aren't the thoughts that always come up when A7 and albums are mentioned.) ⇔ ∫ÆS dt @ 17:30, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe you may have misread WP:MUSIC. :) It says "officially released albums" may be notable. It also says "Demos, mixtapes, bootlegs, promo-only, and unreleased albums are in general not notable." (Emphasis added.) Personally, I would be fine with adding unofficially released albums by A7ed bands to A7 if a version could be crafted to meet consensus, but my prior observation suggests this is a tough battle. The people who've proposed this before have seemed to lose the will to debate it before the people uncomfortable with the change reached agreement. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:41, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
*cough* Housekeeping - CSD G something? *cough* Spartaz Humbug! 17:44, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
G6? The WP:IAR speedy? Is that used often for things like this? (In real world practice?) ⇔ ∫ÆS dt @ 17:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
(to Moonriddengirl) That's what I get for paraphrasing. (I was thinking of huge big bands, with independently covered demos, when I wrote that, not of less covered but still notable bands that didn't have notable demos.) Of course, your correctly paraphrased version only strengthens my position. ;) I think I'll try to write something simple but wikilawyery clear enough, assuming my approach is novel enough. I like Sisyphean tasks. Have folks tried the associated-band-article-deletion approach before? (I figure asking will give me a decent human perspective on prior efforts, and searching wouldn't give me that perspective nearly so quickly.) ⇔ ∫ÆS dt @ 17:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
I've been monitoring this talk page for a long time now, and things blur. A quick search of archives suggests that it may been brought up in conjunction with larger, related issues. Here, in October of last year, there were several proposals that revolved around various wordings like "Articles which are subtopics of an article speedily deleted by criterion A7, and that have no indication of importance/significance beyond that which could have been asserted by that article." This was subsequently refined to "An article about a subtopic of an article that is eligible for speedy deletion or has been deleted under criterion A7, and whose subject is a real song, record album, product, or motion picture, that gives no indication of the subject's independent importance or significance." (That conversation stagnated. Coren promised to come back; I don't remember if he did. :D) But it's a start, anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:15, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I've read over the discussion a couple of times. It seems that "A9. An article about a subtopic of an article that is eligible for speedy deletion or has been deleted under criterion A7, and whose subject is a real song, record album, product, or motion picture, that gives no indication of the subject's independent importance or significance." was the last and closest to working version to be proposed, but it still had various issues, not the least of which was the question of how one could make a connection between a "subtopic" and a deleted master topic, and what exactly constituted a "subtopic." I'm still meditating on this. It is a complex little bugger, this problem. ⇔ ∫ÆS dt @ 21:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I disagree with the basic principle of having any automatic association rules in CSD. Notability is individual. There are always exceptions. If the albums meet CSD criteria they meet CSD criteria. But this should not be automatically inferred from their association with something else. To have any automatic deletion rules at all is to take a plunge down a very slippery slope. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 15:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
    • The "subtopic" and "master topic" concepts assume a clear, well-defined hierarchy. But there is no such thing in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's structure involves a loose and unordered network of many-to-many associations between topics. Imposing a particular hierarchy involves opinion, and there are often multiple plausible hierarchies for any given topic network, depending on the imposer's priorities. Because associations between topics are loose, fuzzy, and involve judgment, I disagree with the fundamental principle of having deletion rules which delete articles automatically because an associated article is deleted. Each article should have its deletion decided on its individual merits. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 15:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • This drives me batty when dealing with obvious speedies of bands; if I got three guys together with a digital recorder and somehow managed to create a recording that was then copied to a CD and called an album, then wrote articles about our "band" and the album, the band would be gone immediately, but the album would be stuck there for the PROD period or until an AFD is complete. That's silly. If the artist is not notable, the album is not notable adn we should reflect that in our criteria. Fully endorse this idea. Tony Fox (arf!) 16:31, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Fully endorse - for the reasons so cogently laid out by Tony Fox. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Endorse. I do a lot of work in new page patrol and constantly see the situation described by Tony Fox above; someone decides to create a page for their non-notable band AND a page for each of their self-produced, self-released non-notable CDs. The band article lasts an hour, but the pages for the CDs must be shepherded through a week-long process before they meet the same predestined fate. I find User:Shirahadasha's argument is very worthwhile -- I have some difficulty with any but the most obvious of automatic deletion criteria -- but since I've seen the same situation many times, I have to agree that "If the artist is not notable then the album is not notable" seems like a good rule of thumb and warrants a shortcut simply to save the time and energy of those of us who spend a lot of time dealing with this precise situation. I already think there will be times when one of those albums should go to AfD for a more thorough assessment, but I'm on the side of making the bulk of those deletions more routine. Accounting4Taste:talk 20:00, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I also agree, and it seems like now someone needs to try to work on writting something for it. I hesitate to exactly expanding A7, just because the suggestion doesn't work exactly the way A7 currently does, so how about this:

    A9: An article about an album in which the artist has recently been deleted under CSD A7, or through WP:PROD or WP:AFD for the reason that it lacks notability, and does not assert its importance.

    It's not great, and I deliberately included PRODed or AfDed bands where the nom didn't include the albums. I'm not sure if we really want that part, but I thought I'd just throw it out there as a possibility. Another possibility is including things like software, books, and other products in this, since first the author/company/etc. would need to be deleted for lacking notability/importance, which is pretty much the same situation as bands and albums. It's probably a bit extreme to include them off the bat, so it's just a thought. Cheers, everyone. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
    • I support the speedy deletion of albums where the band was deleted through AfD or PROD more than the A7 deletion. At least with PROD and AfD, you know the article wasn't deleted within 3 minutes of creation, before anyone (especially a newbie) had a chance to put together a coherent argument for notability.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I'd support it probably if it was worded along the lines of "Creative works of persons or groups whose articles have been deleted under deletion policy, where the articles on the works do not assert any importance." Probably too broad to ever consensus, but restricting it just to albums seems like instruction creep since it's so narrow a rule. --Rividian (talk) 00:07, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
We should take it slow. A7 started out for only people, and was later expanded to include groups and web content. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 04:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I would renew and support this deletion criterion. In practice they are probably deleted anyway, but it is ludicrous that we can delete people's garage bands but not the album that they burned three copies of on their laptop and sold for 25¢ at a car boot sale. Stifle (talk) 09:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I've been openly "for" the idea in the past, and I remain for it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Until I see some demonstration that these types of articles are clogging AfD or PROD, I will have to opose this idea. Every time I have looked, these types of articles do not seem to be common at AfD. I also think that this will lead to the deletion of article on albums by notable bands, merely because the reviewing admin is not familiar with the band. An article that read "Horse with a Heart is an album by the Irish band Altan" has an assertion of notability, but you would only know that if you are familiar with Irish traditional music. An article that read "Along O"Ryan Road is an album by the Irish band Mick Malone String Band." does not have an assertion of notability. Dsmdgold (talk) 13:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Can't argue with it not being needed, though I do see at least a few every day at PROD, but would you be able to support it if it required both a lack of assertion of notability and the band article has already been deleted and is currently deleted? The one I wrote above does require that, though I'm tempted to go with Fabrictramp and limit it exclusively to bands deleted through AfD or PROD, if nothing else simply to catch albums that fall through the cracks. I'd imagine such a small step would be uncontroversial. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 04:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I would oppose this, as described in the duplicate section below - each deletion deserves its own hearing. We shouldn't have any automatic procedural deletions, because we may end up deleting perfectly notable articles that way. If this ever happens it's a failure of nomination process. Anyone nominating a band for deletion ought to search around and nominate all the albums if they're non-notable. And if they are notable they should fix the band article instead of nominating it (assuming that having made a notable album generates notability for the artist). Wikidemo (talk) 17:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
  • The current CSD criterion A7 forbids using CSD to delete albums which do not assert notability. This proposal automatically permits speedy-deleting of an album if a band was speedy-deleted, no matter what the article may say about the album's notability (and no matter how many reliable sources it has to back it). Why not consider the obvious compromise? Permit speedy-deleting album articles if the band was deleted and if, in addition, they also meet all other regular A7 criteria including no assertion or evidence of importance. Requiring the articles to be non-notable on their own in addition to the band's being non-notable gets rid of the cascading effect objection. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I've always found it ridiculous that CSDA7 is limited by arbitrary constraints. I personally think it's time to extend the criterion to "An article about any subject with no indication regarding the subject's encyclopedic importance or significance." There's no reason why IAR should need to be invoked to speedy an obviously unencyclopedic article about albums, books, soup recipes, someone's pet, a made-up word, and all the other crap out there that can't be readily shoehorned into "a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content". The current criterion is unnecessarily bureaucratic in its requirement for prod or AfD for these types of articles. — Scientizzle 15:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
While I do agree with the theory there, in practice A7 is the most often misunderstood and most often misused CSD. I'd be very, very careful expanding it, unless it's clear we really need to. And I haven't seen many things we'd really need to. --lifebaka (talk - contribs) 16:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
I had initially written a larger statement that addressed some of the issues you allude to, but pared it down to what's seen just above for the sake of brevity. In similar interests, I'll try to keep it short...I think much of the reason A7 is often misunderstood and misused is precisely because it has the arbitrary constraints. If the whole point of the CSD criterion is to act as a high pass filter for content, it makes no sense to limit its role in that construct. Confusion is natural (in especially new users) when there's no apparent good reason one type of crap can be speedily deleted, but another type must go through the motions. I also think that broadening the criterion can serve to reduce the misuse: it would narrow the subjective interpretation of the criterion from

does this article (which is often difficult to categorize cleanly) fit into "real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content" and assert importance or significance?

to simply

does this article assert importance or significance?

Perhaps, if anyone has further input this should be moved to a separate section...perhaps it's RfC-worthy? — Scientizzle 18:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Undiscussed change to I7

This change [5], exempting NFCC failures based on WP:NFCC #8 ("significant contribution") from speediability, was made today by User:Sceptre without any previous discussion. While I don't deny he may have a point regarding the "subjectiveness" of NFCC#8, I think making such a substantial change to policy would need some previous consideration. Note that some other parts of the NFCC (e.g. "respect for commercial opportunities" and "minimality of use") can be quite as "subjective" as #8 - just as G10 and G11 among the non-NFCC related criteria. If you want to remove all criteria that require the admin to make a judgment call based on content rather than act on a clearcut checklist of formal conditions, that would be a very profound change of policy indeed.

On the other hand, it's true that with the waiting times and all that, taking an image to IfD instead of the speedy queue is often actually less work and "speedier". But then again, IfD encourages people to comment based on the false idea that it's a democratic decision process where votes not based in policy can be brought forward and claim equal validity, which leads to predictable disappointment when things get deleted nevertheless. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

While there are cases where anyone can agree it fails NFCC#8, they normally overlap with failing other criteria. I also disagree that 1-3 are as subjective as 8: there's a much narrower scope of opinions there. Criteria such as A7 try objectivity (as in the article is not "unimportant", it doesn't "assert it's importance"); I'm saying: if an uninvolved, neutral editor would agree with the deletion, it would be okay as a speedy criteria. Sceptre (talk) 09:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Anything involving subjective judgment cannot be classed as a speedy. You have to be able to clearly demonstrate that it fails one or other or more of the NFCC, not just say "in my opinion, it fails this criterion". What I7 should be saying is that if anyone contests a speedy under I7, it should be undeleted and discussed. Effectively, I7 should be the image equivalent of WP:PROD. Carcharoth (talk) 20:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
You just got me thinking, why can't we just implement WP:PROD for images too? ViperSnake151 21:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
1 and 8, and maybe 5, are rather subjective. The rest are pretty much clear cut (especially 7, 9, and 10, which can be checked by a bot). Sceptre (talk) 23:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Redirect}}?

I'm not sure if this technically applies, but since there's a redirect to here... TREKphiler hit me ♠ 12:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused, what are you asking? --lifebaka (talk - contribs) 13:06, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Are you talking about Wikipedia:WikiProject Redirect? Gary King (talk) 21:08, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Deleting "new" templates, which are no longer needed.

Re templates such as Template:db-a1/new (note that it's a redirect) with names ending in "/new": These were being used during the discussion archived here (1) and here (2), but are no longer needed as far as I know. See Template talk:Db-blankcsd/new, where I've set up convenient links to easily delete them (I think). Would someone please delete them? Thanks. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

They appear to have significant history. If they were used during the debate (for example, to develop content which was later kept in the project), we might have to keep them in order to comply with the attribution requirements of GFDL. Alternately, if they were linked to as examples or discussion documents during debates which are now in our archives, we might need them in order to reestablish the context of those debates. You should probably discuss this via TfD. At first blush, these don't look like good speedy-deletion candidates to me. Rossami (talk) 01:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Redirect 'em all, then? That's fix the issue both ways, I'm pretty sure. --lifebaka (talk - contribs) 01:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't think GFDL compliance is an issue, because there was a round of null edits to the current templates, listing in the edit summaries the contributors to the new versions (though someone pointed out (archive) that I had worded it badly: the new versions are very much based on the old versions, so the authors of those still also deserve credit.) They're already in the form of redirects, I believe. Deletion or merging of page histories had been discussed at link (2) above. I was reminded of this when someone recently put a speedy-delete tag on one of those draft templates: Template:Db-blankcsd/new. It's now been deleted, though its talk page is still there. I might do a TfD at a later date. Coppertwig (talk) 02:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

R4

For some time now, MediaWiki has had a built-in feature to be case-insensitive for pages with homogenous initial capitalisation. This doesn't affect only Search, but also Go, i.e. it automatically redirects according to the rules described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Case sensitivity and searching. Thus, many existing capitalisation redirects are not needed, and are subject to speedy deletion rather than longwinded RfDs. Since none of the redirect CSDs R1-3 covers this particular case, I'd like to propose a new category R4: Unnecessary capitalization redirects. Examples include e.g. personal names, where there is often an unnecessary redirect with the last name in lowercase. To be sure: A wikilink would no longer work with the wrong capitalization, but this category doesn't cover cases of legitimate alternative capitalisation e.g. for organisations etc. user:Everyme 09:21, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a benefit to deleting these? I'm not very technologically inclined, but from what I've gathered through observing conversations here, deleting them would cost more resources (in terms of memory) to the project. So I guess I'd wonder if they're doing any harm. (The answer may be a resounding yes, but knowing that would help.:)) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:57, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
There's not much benefit to deleting these, and in fact it's potentially harmful, though the potential harm is likely small. MediaWiki folds case in some "search" and "go" actions - not all because casing can be significant - but that isn't necessarily the way people are finding particular pages - they might come through an external link, that external link might use capitalization different that what we consider to be the "official" way, and if it works (because the alternate capitalization exists as a redirect) the website maintainer who made the external link isn't likely to consider it broken or spend their time checking whether Wikipedia changed its working links. Furthermore, while Google ignores case, we can't assume that every search engine (or offline search tool) ignores case to the extent that we would like. It would be bad if an external link broke or a search didn't work because we decided that capitalization variants were harmful. Consequently, these sort of redirects are nearly always kept at Redirects for discussion; a speedy criterion that directly contradicts the existing practice there would be a bad idea. — Gavia immer (talk) 13:32, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Gavia and Moonriddengirl's comments are right on point. Not only are these not appropriate speedy-deletion candidates, they're not even regular-deletion candidates. Rossami (talk) 14:02, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Take a look at my deleted contribs. Three or four admins apparently agreed that these redirects are unnecessary. Following Gavia immer's logic in a strict sense, we should have a bot autocreate redirects for alternative capitalisations. Would you agree with that also? user:Everyme 14:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
That doesn't address my core question: is there a benefit to deleting these, a reason to justify expending the additional resources from the project? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:34, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Actually, my question entails both your and Gavia immer's points. Either there is a use to those redirects (in which case they should indeed be autocreated by bot), or there isn't, in which case they can occasionally be deleted whenever someone gets around to do it (don't have to, at any rate, if that was your question). Regarding expending the additional resources: What are those costs? Hopefully short discussion here, possibly putting in the new category (or expanding e.g. R3), then occasionally people will tag such redirects, and an admin just hits delete. It requires fairly easy judgement, and we eliminate what in essence is a double redirect. user:Everyme 15:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry I wasn't clear. The cost is not in human resources, but in technological resources. Again, this isn't my area. But from watching this page, I understand that it takes more data to delete a page than it does to retain it. Deleted pages are still maintained on the servers, but in addition to however much code it takes to create a redirect, there is now additional code "hiding" it from Wikipedia's regular users, while also recording the data of when it was hidden and why. If the redirects are not compromising the actual integrity of the project—as, say, articles do that do not meet our inclusion guidelines—then I'm not sure the value of adding an additional burden in terms of data storage. If they aren't necessary, but do no harm, then there is neither reason to create more or to delete what already exists. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I did not know that. Nevermind then. (I thought deletion was merely flipping a bit.) user:Everyme 23:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I would have thought so, too. And, mind you, it still might be. :) This is just what I've gathered from hanging out listening to people who do stuff. As I said, technology is not my area. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:32, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Your intuition is right, Moonriddengirl. :-) Deletion cannot just flip a bit, because the deletion event itself needs to be logged (page, user, reason) and because a page may be deleted multiple times, and each one needs to be retained. This affects at least three different tables. Don't fret too much about server resources though - before or after deletion, the cost per redirect is minimal. Dcoetzee 07:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining. :) People who do stuff™ operate in a strange and mysterious world to me. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
If some search engines in the world are case sensitive, I think we should be creating these, not deleting them. We want to improve the possible access to our articles. DGG (talk) 14:40, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Where something causes little gain and little harm, the prudent action is probably to leave it well alone. In rigorous terms, one might say that the transaction costs (in admin/editor time and server load) of either creating or deleting such redirects may exceed any possible net gain from either action. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:22, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I for one hate inconsistency. If there is indeed a net benefit to those redirects, we should have a bot create them routinely. user:Everyme 15:28, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
You are creating a false dichotomy here. Lack of a reason to delete is not a reason to preemptively create. Wikipedia is inconsistent. (By the way, we used to have an essay on the topic of inconsistency. Does anybody still have a link to it?) Rossami (talk) 21:14, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Gavin immer argued above that such redirects are useful. user:Everyme 23:19, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

P3

While I think it's logical, and probably already "allowed" per G6 (with G8 being a similar situation), I think it would be nice to have an actual criterion listed concerning subpages of a portal where the portal page was deleted.

Portal:Marvel (and its sub-pages) is the example I just came across.

Any thoughts or concerns? - jc37 01:07, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

We already devote two criteria to Portals. Adding another seems excessive and unnecessary. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand. Why should the "quantity" of criteria have anything to do with adding one? While I udnerstand trying to keep the lists short, if there is a "need", we should add it, if it's felt to be appropriate? (That and even if so, there are 3 or more criteria under quite a few namespaces...) - jc37 22:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I've always found the Portal: namespace, in general, to be very goofy and awkward. But that's beyond the point. : - ) Quantity matters as part of the guidelines listed far above. The situation doesn't "frequently arise" and I would say it's redundant to G6 and possibly G8. I don't see a need for a separate criterion when G6 or a custom deletion summary will surely suffice. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:44, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying your opinion. - jc37 06:47, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Clarifying "web content" under A7

I'm posting here after noticing that someone tried to nominate Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for speedy deletion under A7 about a month before the episodes came out. The problem is that we're probably going to be seeing more professionally-produced content being released direct-to-web which some people may think falls under this criterion while if it were produced for TV or theater it wouldn't. Where's the line between a professional web movie and joe blow's youtube videos? I'm not sure exactly how this should be distinguished, but I think there should be some distinction. PenguiN42 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the line should be drawn at WP:WEB, so as to keep A7's absurdly simple no assertion thereof. But looking at that example, I'm not sure what I would do; I'd hate to support any kind of inheritance-of-notability system, as I don't want to see a situation whereby everything "Famous director John Smith" posts on his blog suddenly gets an article. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:54, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
If someone were a famous director with a WP article, then probably a speedy would in fact be out of place. But I share your concern in how to word things more precisely, for I can think of no really helpful formulation. DGG (talk) 09:24, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I'd agree that claiming a blog represents a famous director is an assertion of importance sufficient to avoid speedy-delete. I agree web vs. book is only a proxy. Perhaps we should be able to speedy books published by known vanity presses. But because it's so much easier to vanity-publish a web page than a book, and because which presses are vanity presses isn't always general knowledge or easy to discover, the ratio of obvious vanity to possibly notable web publications is still much higher than for books, so the distinction, as most useful ones are, is a reasonable practical one even though not perfect. --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with your distinctions, and that is exactly why I do not now favor changing the wording, for I do not immediate see how we can find something better. If anyone cleverer than I can accomplish it, though, suggestions are welcome. DGG (talk) 07:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

non-notable place

The tag {{db-a7|non-notable place}} exists, and is being used for towns. As there is no such provision in WP:CSD, and as it is a firmly established convention that all inhabited places --and many other places too, everything short of non-notable neighborhoods, etc. -- are notable--and even such deletions usually end up disputed at AfD-- perhaps the tag is misleading and should be removed. DGG (talk) 07:25, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Isn't that just a comment for db-a7? Is there a template out there that does this? I could not find one. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:31, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
You are aware you can add anything to the comment and it will appear on the tag, right? E.g. {{db-a7|tastes like chicken}}. --Rividian (talk) 12:23, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Now I realise why I could not find the template. Oops. DGG (talk) 17:44, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

"consider notifying the page's creator", redux

I've brought this up before, but just wanted to see what the current climate is regards to this rather weakly worded suggestion. I believed and still believe that taggers should notify the page's creators. It takes less than a minute to copy the handily provided template that appears on the db tag when published on the article and copy-paste it to the creator's talk page. There may be common sense exceptions--no need to notify the creator of a vandalism-only article that a page is being deleted if s/he has already been indef-blocked for creating vandalism pages--but in the vast majority of cases, notice is appropriate. It is not only civil to explain why an article is being/has been deleted and to allow the creator time to contest that (if he or she can and sees the notice in time), but it also serves the Wikipedia by discouraging creation of new (or recreation of same) articles because contributors don't understand why the first was deleted. I would like to alter "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator." to read "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and notify the page's creator." Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I think notification is a good idea and even installed one of those silly scripts to automate the notification process... so I'm not entirely opposed to the change. But a problem with this change is that theoretically a deletion tag could be removed because the page creator wasn't notified... which just seems tremendously bureaucratic... what do you say about that? --Rividian (talk) 13:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
If not for the problem with instruction creep, I'd say it would be a simple matter to footnote both that there are common sense exceptions to notification and that failure to notify does not necessarily invalidate speedy. However, instruction creep may be a real concern. In terms of admin over-zealousness, that could be addressed with a tweak to the "Procedure for administrators" section. Where it currently says, "Make sure to specify the deletion reason in the deletion summary. Also, in some cases the article's creator should be notified" we could add something along the lines of "Notification is only mandatory in cases of copyright concern." (So far as I remember the only indication to admins that there is special handling of these is in Category:Copyright violations for speedy deletion, the text of which differs from all of the other category instruction pages. Presumably this special handling is required by the legal complications of hosting copyrighted works and the need to formally advise contributors that they must not do so and may face sanctions if they continue.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Notification is always a good thing, and I support any changes that make it seem less optional, as long as it isn't explicitly required from a process standpoint. I think you may make more headway at WT:NPP, however, or at least should put up a ping there that this discussion is happening here. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 19:58, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Good idea. Done. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that notification should be required rather than recommended except in cases of blatant vandalism and that editors who create articles that simply don't meet inclusion criteria should be treated differently from vandals. Doubtless some enterprising editor will soon come up with a bot that places the necessary notice along with the tag. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:28, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
Actually, we've already got User:CSDWarnBot. However, given the speed of some speedies, it doesn't get all of them. Cheers. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 22:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
While I am all for increased courtesy and civility in our discussions and processes, I continue to disagree a firm requirement primarily because it reinforces false senses of ownership of the article. To a lesser extent, I have reservations because of the administrative complexity in determining the "creator" when a page has been edited by more than one or two people. Rossami (talk) 22:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you're interpreting this as a firm requirement; I don't see it that way. It is encoded in AfD process, in the line "While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion." Perhaps altering the language of CSD in that line would alleviate "firm requirement" concerns--"Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets. While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion." While I can see that notifications might increase an air of "ownership," I think we kind of have to acknowledge that people who create articles are likely to be interested in the fate of them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This conversation has gone stale. The only objection here is to a "firm requirement." There's no proposal for that. Hence, lacking further conversation, I will start the WP:BRD cycle later today by changing "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator" → "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and notify the page's creator". (I'm using italics here to make the text easier to see; it is not italicized in the actual page and would to be.) I will also change "Also, in some cases the article's creator should be notified." to "Also, in some cases the article's creator should be notified. Notification is not mandatory, though copyright violators should be warned." (The note on copyright violators is based on administrator steps at Category:Copyright violations for speedy deletion. I had earlier proposed indicating that notification was mandatory for G12, but I think in practice it's probably not--if an editor has three articles deleted at once for G12, three templated warnings won't be any more instructive than one.) So, further conversation, anybody? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Done, although at the last minute I tossed in a "when appropriate". --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:05, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to jump in here late, but I have a rather strong objection to the change, which in my opinion is a bad case of instruction creep. There's really no need to notify a page's creator that the page has been tagged. If he's paying attention he'll notice. If he isn't paying attention and the page is deletable, it will be gone before he notices. --Jenny 13:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm a little puzzled as to how "consider notifying the page's creator" becoming "when appropriate, notify the page's creator" can be bad instruction creep, since in neither case is notification mandatory and the guideline already recommended consideration of notification. :) In the event that the creator finds the notice too late, it serves to let him know what happened and why. Many creators have a hard time figuring that out, as I discovered during my days of active service at WP:HD and which I've continued to observe since I've started focusing more extensively on doing deletions myself. Not only do the notices explain why, but links to relevant policies with the specific templates (which were, after all, created for a purpose) can help to prevent future creation of inappropriate articles, since they draw strong and specific attention to what the creators have done wrong. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
"Consider notifying the page's creator" is appropriate, I think. It implies that this is a courtesy, and doesn't carry too much baggage implying that one might normally want to do this.
"When appropriate, notify the page's creator" doesn't mean the same (else you wouldn't have proposed it) but suggests that there are circumstances in which doing so is highly desirable rather than simply a courtesy.
If an editor goes to edit a page that has been deleted, he'll see the deletion log message which shows who deleted, with a brief explanation of why it was deleted, so there's no need to worry about the newcomer being puzzled. Either he understands the message, or he doesn't understand it and goes to the deleting user's talk page to query it.
For instance here is the notice from the recently deleted article "Lewis Clay":
Notice: You are re-creating a page that was deleted.
You should consider whether it is appropriate to continue editing this page. Information is available on what to do if a page you created is deleted. The deletion log for this page is provided here for convenience:
  • 01:31, 6 July 2008 Rjd0060 (talk · contribs) deleted "Lewis Clay" ‎ (Deleted because expired WP:PROD; Reason given: biased viewpoint.)
Although the above article was deleted by a different process, the principle is the same. The links to contact the deleting admin are the same. Working out whether to notify an article creator of a tagged speedy is just one more task to do in an operation that is intentionally lightweight. --Jenny 02:02, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

←No, I don't think it's the same. I think it's a strengthening of what's already there, but not a changing of what's already there. I don't read "Consider notifying the page's creator" to indicate that one might not normally want to do this. And there are some cases where doing so is highly desirable--indeed, at WP:CSD#G12, it's required. I understand what people should see when they go to deleted pages, but I also know from their appearances at the help desk that they don't always understand what they do see. And, again, the specific instructions on what they've done wrong reinforce what they evidently missed already in Wikipedia:Your first article.

I'm not sure what you mean by "intentionally" lightweight. Those tagging articles for speedy are already supposed to consider first whether the article could be improved, stubbed, merged, redirected or handle in any way other than deletion. They're also encouraged to consider the article's state of development and to "try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete". (All from the intro, of course. :)) This suggests some pretty weighty deliberation to me. Considering that the db tag itself provides the template, including signature tildes and article title, you're talking about one more task that should take a matter of seconds to complete. I believe its net benefit to the project—in courtesy to creators and in educating contributors—is worth it. In many cases, I can't see any good reason to eliminate it. It's equally inconvenient having to warn editors about vandalism before reporting them to AIV and blocking them, but we do it anyway because we want to give contributors a fair chance to contribute constructively. Alerting them to article deletions, and educating them about why those articles were improper, is no more problematic than that. (And, in fact, it can have the same benefit as leaving vandalism warnings, since there have been cases where a long line of CSD notices have alerted me to disruptive editing and led me to block a contributor for repeatedly creating nonsense articles.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

While I think that notification may be at times a nice thing to do, it shouldn't be required. For example, a deleter should be able to use their judgment regarding the page deleted. Posting a well-meant notice may just be a draw for non-well-meant trolling from the notified editor. For another example, editors are typically notified through the posting of a template on a page that the page is under discussion (such as at XfD). We presume that the template is enough. Why? Because we presume that those who care, will watch the page. Same goes for speedy deletion. And watched page deletions now show up on watchlists. Then of course, there's the WP:OWN issues, etc.

So yes, while in general it sounds nice to notify every editor who contributed to a deleted page, it's not necessarily good practice. - jc37 02:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

First, your revision is a little linguistically problematic: "when appropriate, should consider notifying the page's creator." This suggests that there may be cases where it's inappropriate to think about this. I've restored the original for the moment, as I find "should consider, when appropriate, notifying" to be a bit of an awkward construction, but it may serve.
In terms of XfD, I believe you may be mistaken. So far as I read it, we don't presume that the XfD template is generally enough. The WP:AfD page says, explicitly, "While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion." This suggests that it is WP:Wikiquette to notify, not to just leave the template for them to notice or not as the case may be. The AfD template itself says in its encoded instructions, "Please consider notifying the author(s) by placing {{subst:adw|Afd}} ~~~~ on their talk page(s)." This suggests to me that it may not be "generally presumed" that the template is enough.
The same or similar language addressing the courtesy of notification is found at WP:MfD, WP:RfD and WP:TfD. WP:IfD, on the other hand, says, "You must inform the uploader by adding a message to their talk page as well as notify the discussion pages of articles using that image using {{subst:idw|Image:Image_name.ext}}".
Especially at WP:IfD, but also in the other XfD processes I've referenced, there doesn't seem to be concern that acknowledging that somebody contributed something might lead them to the false idea that they WP:OWN it. I don't see anything at that policy that warns against acknowledging contributions. :) In fact, it says, "...it is still important to respect the work of your fellow contributors. When making large scale removals of content, particularly content contributed by one editor, it is important to consider whether a desirable result could be obtained by working with the editor, instead of against him or her—regardless of whether or not he or she "owns" the article." Deletion is large scale removal, to be sure. The templated warning tells them how to place {{hangon}}, if they read it in time. It gives them specific pointers to the policies and guidelines their articles may not meet.
WP:OWN, of course, is meant to discourage tendentious editing. It's not meant to suggest that contributors are completely unconnected to their work on Wikipedia. (And, in fact, they actually do "own" it, in a very real and legal sense, though that's neither here nor there.) We have all kinds of processes in place that are meant to recognize and reward contributors for their work on articles. I have displayed on my page a couple of templates to indicate articles that I've created or contributed to that have reached DYK or GA. I see you have a section on a contribution of your own. Presumably we and the others like us who take understandable pride in our hard work don't make the mistake of thinking this gives us special rights over those contributions. It seems in the spirit of WP:AGF to presume that article creators have similar capacity. (And, likewise, not to hesitate from informing simply from the fear that some few creators might become trolls. I've had far more problem with trolls from vandalism warnings than page deletions—to the extent that I've had plenty of problems with the former but can't personally remember ever having had an issue with the latter—but I keep leaving vandalism warnings anyway. It comes with the job of vandalism patrol.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:45, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
First, I have no problem with discussing the grammar/text of the sentence (it looked a bit wordy to me as well).
Second, as we discovered (again) when standardising the mbox templates for inclusion of the various deletion messages, IfD is quite different than the rest. And honestly, perhaps that should be clarified more in the text here. While NFC media (such as images) may be uploaded, it's rare (outside of quotations) to see text which is NFC.
In addition, uploading is a singlular act. Even if the upload is a modification of something that someone else uploaded, that image was uploaded by a single person. (Though in the latter case, contacting each, may be appropriate, depending on the situation.)
As such, there is a difference between contacting a single uploader, and contacting editors.
And those pages you quote "wikiquette" are argued, and have been argued for quite some time.
As has been repeatedly stated in those discussions, while you're welcome to contact someone, it's not required. It's not mandatory. It's not policy. (Which I'll note that this page is tagged.) I'll also point out that it's not current practice (which is what policy and guidelines are typically sourced from). Some do, most don't.
So the text should reflect that. Not what a few of us may or may not "like" it to be.
Off the top of my head, the only instance of "required" notification in the XfD process, besides concerning uploaded media, is contacting the closer of a discussion which is nominated at WP:DRV.
And by the way, your link to my sub-page made me smile : ) - The text of that page was one of the first things I did in userspace after moving from being a reader, to an editor. I keep it more out of nostalgia reasons : ) - If you read my RfA, you'll see a few more things I've done that I haven't listed on a "trophy" page anywhere : ) - That said, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with listing how you choose to contribute to Wikipedia, as long as we remember that we are contributing to Wikipedia. (But this is a touch off-subject.)
Anyway, that said, as it isn't "required" in most cases, the text needs to be adjusted. I welcome discussion as to what the "final form" should be, but in the meantime, it should default to the previous format, while the discussion is ongoing. - jc37 19:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
One point of clarification. Three paragraphs up, you said that it is required to contact the closer of a discussion being nominated to DRV. Even in that case, it is explicitly not required (though it is very strongly encouraged). I'm inclined to agree that Moonriddengirl's recent change has gone beyond the established consensus and overstates the case. Rossami (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

All right, it's defaulted to the previous format, which was a little more revision than you had done.

I don't see how "when appropriate, notify the page's creator" could lead one to presume that policy mandates this, since "when appropriate" would seem by itself to invite reflection about the specifics of a situation. It's a far cry from "no matter what, notify the page's creator" or "under every circumstance notify the page's creator", after all. :) Likewise, the policy was changed under the administrator's steps to specifically say "Notification is not mandatory, though copyright violators should be warned." Neither of these changes would seem to suggest that notification is "required" (except that it is, in WP:CSD#G12, of course, already required).

There are good reasons to notify creators: (1) it is courteous to volunteers who choose to contribute to Wikipedia to explain to them why their contributions do not meet policies and guidelines, (2) it is beneficial to the project to teach potential new contributors how to contribute productively, and (3) it demystifies a confusing process particularly for new contributors, many of whom have no idea that watchlists even exist.

The only reasons I've seen that creators should not be notified are a fear of (1) potentially misleading them into thinking they WP:OWN the material or (2) making it easier for them to troll.

I don't believe the former is a concern. That you have contributions you haven't listed for nostalgic reasons is really beside the issue--it's a simple point that avoiding ownership issues does not require that we pretend we haven't added anything or that other contributors may not care about what they've added. WP:OWN acknowledges that they likely will and encourages us to work with other contributors when possible. It isn't having an interest in your work that causes the problem; it's becoming disruptive about it. Withholding from fear that warned contributors may become trolls seems to fail WP:AGF, and it also seems a bit peculiar given that we recommend at WP:Vandal leaving warnings for editors we know to be operating in bad faith. Most of the article creators I've encountered haven't been.

In terms of the policies on notifications with other deletion processes, even if they're argued (I'll take your word for it; I haven't seen those conversations, and I don't have time to go looking for them at the moment), the fact that the language still exists at so many of the XfD processes suggests that consensus wants it to, which means that currently, according to consensus, we don't presume that the XfD template is generally enough, as you indicated. We presume that it's courteous to notify. Of course, not everyone is going to take the courteous route, but WP:CIVIL encourages us to treat editors as "respected and admired colleague[s]." Generally speaking, I'm inclined to think most people would consider a frank and friendly notice that said colleague's work is problematic as part of that. At least, I'd like to think so.

Ultimately, though, I guess I'd wonder: do you object to notification in general, or to strengthening the suggestion of notification? If not, and the only problem here is that my text read to you like it mandated notification, I'd be grateful to hear specifics as to how that could be addressed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:23, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I believe I understand your points, and so, no need for repetition. (I note the usage of "you" to things concenring me, so I will presume that you (mrg) are directing such comments to me.)
Yes, I oppose "mandated notification". Yes, I would support language which suggests that it's nice to do, but isn't required (and shouldn't even be considered necessary, and in some case, possibly not even appropriate).
I also think that Image/Media for discussion practices should be greatly clarified (not just here, but quite a few places. Especially considering NFCC.)
Yes, it's a question of semantics. But we should try to be as accurate as possble, while not being overly prescriptive. (A balance that this page always attempts with varying degrees of sucess.) It's espeially important here, because the results of the deletions described on this page typically are ones which have a foundation in "precedent" rather than a current discussion. (We delete such pages because the community has agreed that such pages should be deleted based upon the general criteria on this page, while noting thhat exceptions may exist, which allows for review at WP:DRV.)
So anyway, let's discuss phrasing possibilities. - jc37 21:54, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm belaboring it. Since you didn't address some of these points, I felt they were worth repeating. And I did mean "you", because it took me quite a long time to write that note, and at the point I wrote it you and I seemed essentially alone in this conversation. Since I started a new section, there was no edit conflict to advise me that somebody else had spoken up until after I'd posted it. However, the final question certainly seems relevant to anyone, since it goes to the heart of whether change is desirable and, if so, where the wording as proposed and implemented was problematic. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:33, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
I guess you don't have specifics as to where the wording was problematic?
I had altered "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator." → "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and, when appropriate, notify the page's creator." and in the administrator section stating "Also, in some cases the article's creator should be notified." added the sentence "Notification is not mandatory, though copyright violators should be warned." This was to make sure that nobody thought notification was mandatory by explicitly saying so, although to me the phrases "when appropriate" and the already existing "in some cases" already made that clear. (I also reinforced that notification is mandated by policy under WP:CSD#G12, which is the point where "consider notifying" is not strong enough.)
Since I'm not sure what the problem is with the language used, perhaps a good solution is to employ what is already widely in use at the various XfD pages, by changing "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator." → "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets. While not required, except for copyright concerns, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion"? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I was actually waiting for your further suggestions concerning text : )
And, as we all know, text can, and often is, taken out of context. So in the introduction, we should be clear, and concise, and not relying on the body of the page to be so. The body is (mostly) for "further details" and "clearer presentation".
So, this section should be able to "stand on its own feet", and at the same time, the text in the body should directly reflect the text in this section.
To address your question directly, there is a fairly large semantic difference between "When appropriate, do this.", and "While it's not required, consider doing this."
Does this make more sense? (And I still would welcome alternative suggestions/further discussion.) - jc37 22:56, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I did make an alternative suggestion, in the last paragraph of the note you were responding to. Does it not work for you? (And I didn't change "While it's not required, consider doing this" to "When appropriate, do this"; I changed "and consider notifying" to "and, when appropriate, notify". And, of course, the fact continues to stand that sometimes, according to the policy, it is required--specifically for G12.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, scrolling up, I've apparently missed your suggestion, and don't see it. Would you repeat?
And your clarification of the text in mind, the two still are differently semantically, and really, give a different sense of suggested action. - jc37 01:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
"Since I'm not sure what the problem is with the language used, perhaps a good solution is to employ what is already widely in use at the various XfD pages, by changing "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets and consider notifying the page's creator." → "Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criteria the page meets. While not required, except for copyright concerns, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion"?"--Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Hmm. In general, I think I like the above. As an aside, do we need the first sentence at the intended placement point? (As in, isn't it described, better placed, elsewhere on the page?) - jc37 20:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay. Hectic work time. Lots of pots on the fire here as well. I don't know when or why the first sentence was added, but I'm guessing it was to deal with the people who put {{db}} and nothing more. I've only run into this a couple of times myself. Usually, at least, they do {{db}}. If you think it should be removed, that probably ought to be discussed in a new section, as I strongly suspect that few people are reading this one. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say "removed", I was asking if we needed to copy it from "there" to "here". Any particular reason? - jc37 01:03, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying you want to move it? I'm not sure when it entered the introduction. It's been where it is for quite some time. It was there the day before I got there. It was there in September of 2007 (albeit a bit higher in the intro than it is now). It was there in September of 2006. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and I realize that the two differ semantically. There'd be no point proposing a change merely to rephrase the original. A strengthening of the suggestion was the purpose. People frequently don't notify even when they are technically required to, much less when courtesy suggests that they probably should. I have so often encountered G12 articles for which creators were not notified that I created a template of my own, here, to rectify that failure. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
The only fair action is to always notify. Why would anyone not want to? Even supposing the person to be a troll, they'll be watching for trouble anyway. Supposing the person long gone, what harm will be done? Of course it should be done with a bot, but the only way of getting a bot to do it is to first make it required. It is always without exception appropriate to notify the page's creator and any significant editor. If the article was inserted in good faith, it will serve as a help. if in bad faith, as a warning. if it's improvable, it will get it possibly fixed. Even if it comes too late, it's friendlier than if it never comes. I have not yet seen an article where a notification would be out of place. DGG (talk) 03:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
The objection here seems to be to any perception that notification is mandatory. Your input on wording to help avoid that impression would be much welcome. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Once again, I also support notifying the editor and can't imagine a case when it would be out of place. I don't see why anyone would object to avoiding WP:BITE. As DGG notes, if the author is a legitimate newbie who doesn't understand Wikipedia policies, the notice will help explain what's going on. And if the author is a troll, then the notice can serve as a warning. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 04:40, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break 2, admins notifying

One thing that particularly annoys me is when an admin speedies an untagged page, and neglects to inform the creator, any of the other editors who have contributed to it, or the wikiproject which had tagged its talk page for assessment purposes. DuncanHill (talk) 14:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
The best way to handle that situation is a polite note on the admin's page reminding them why you'd like to be notified. No, you might not always get a good response (although I'd be sorely disappointed in any admin who blows you off), but you'll be more likely to make a difference in their actions than by posting here. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 14:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, the most recent case the admin is not online. I have asked for a copy of the article, and for them to let me know who created it, and pointed out that it didn't meet the criteria for speedy anyway. I could recreate the article from the Google cache, but this would 1) fail to properly record contributors (as required under the licence) and 2) probably get me warned for recreating deleted material (and the recreated article speedied by another admin who doesn't quite understand their job). DuncanHill (talk) 15:11, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, the reason I did post here in the first place was to try to make clear how disruptive such uncommunicative behaviour is. Admins should no go around deleting pages without telling anyone. DuncanHill (talk) 15:14, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
You don't need the admin who deleted to userfy; per Wikipedia:Userfy#Userfication_of_deleted_content, any admin can do it. I'd do it, for instance, as long as it doesn't violate copyright or BLP. Ideally, once in user space the article could be improved to the point that it would no longer be a concern before being moved to article space again. If the article is userfied, with history, GfDL is not a problem. If you think an article was improperly deleted, though, you may wish to wait until the admin comes back. I'd give it a couple of days anyway. If the admin seems gone for the long term, then you might try WP:DRV. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:18, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Well they've now userfied without history, so I have no idea if it is legitimate for me to edit and re-post it. And anyway, the point is not about this specific article, it is about non-notification. DuncanHill (talk) 15:21, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
It's not. You need the history. And I do understand your concerns. I'm the one who opened this conversation, after all; I agree with you that notification is a good thing. But I also share Fabrictramp's concern that posting here isn't likely to make much difference—not only because the specific admin may not see it, but most other admins probably will also miss it. Some of us may be watching this far up the page, but I imagine most of the attention is at the bottom. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC) (P.S. Hit post too soon! The only way you can legitimately post it is if you start it over from scratch, using none of the language supplied by other contributors. It'd probably be easiest just to ask the admin who userfied for the history.)
I have. I have also asked him to notify editors in future when he speedies pages. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to change CSD G7

Current wording:

Author requests deletion, if requested in good faith, and provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request.

Proposed new wording:

Author requests deletion, requested in good faith, and provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author. If the author blanks such a page outside their user space, this can be taken as a deletion request. Some editors blank pages in their userspace for different reasons, so blanked userspace pages should not be deleted under this criterion unless there has been an explicit request.

Reason: self-explanatory, though see also Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#User pages and CSD#G7.

Proposed by: Carcharoth (talk) 06:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -- Ned Scott 06:23, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Suggest changing the following sentence:
  • "If the author blanks such a page outside their user space, this can be taken as a deletion request."
to
  • "If the author blanks such a page (outside user space), this may be understood as a deletion request."
Not "set" on that, but something similar at least.
Otherwise, looks fine to me. - jc37 06:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Agree with the intent; no comment on the wording. --NE2 06:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Good intent, and either wording looks fine to me. The cited discussion indicates that there is no consensus on when a blank user subpage may be deleted, outside of explicit requests. Although, admittedly, I may be biased in that judgement. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
If a user leaves for over 18 months, deleting his or her blanked pages seems fine. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
That's not in the wording of the proposal. If you want to propose inserting "18 months inactivity" somewhere into the criterion, please propose that separately. And this could be a slippery slope. If we leave unblanked user pages there permanently, even if a user has been inactive for 5 years or more (or do we? was there a mass clearout of very old accounts at some point?), we don't delete their unblanked pages, so why delete their blanked pages, which are, presumably, a small fraction of the number of unblanked pages left behind by inactive users? Carcharoth (talk) 07:41, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Agree with this, I know I have blanked one of my userpages and did not want it deleting. Davewild (talk) 07:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
To address MZMcBride's point, though probably not in the way he intended, the following could be inserted somewhere (maybe in some policy or guideline on user pages? - WP:USER?): "Just as the unblanked pages of inactive users are not treated differently from the unblanked pages of active users, so the blanked pages of inactive users should not be treated differently from the blanked pages of active users". I've looked through WP:USER (and am about to leave a note on the talk page), and it does cover how to request deletion. It does not cover blankings. It would seem polite, if this change doesn't go through, to note, per G7, that "blanking your userpages may lead to them being deleted at some point". Since that point is not made clear at WP:USER, I think G7 over-reached here and the pages contradict each other by omission. Carcharoth (talk) 07:50, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any good justification for the change; it certainly is not self explanatory. Blanking the page is a deletion request, so saying "unless an explicit request is made" is somewhat confusing. In the end, the issue that the proposal has in mind can be solved through education - don't blank pages that you want to keep - rather than a change to CSD. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:57, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal, either Carcharoth or Jc37's wording. I'm not so sure about the user page bit.--BelovedFreak 13:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Carl, you say "In the end, the issue that the proposal has in mind can be solved through education - don't blank pages that you want to keep - rather than a change to CSD." I've noted at Wikipedia talk:User page that there is nothing at WP:USER about how blanking one's user page or user subpages might lead to deletion or not. We can't expect users to have read WP:CSD and know that blanking might lead to deletion. How about some clear guidance at WP:USER, with grandfathering in the old pages blanked before this change (ie. MZMcBride and others will have to incorporate some date functionality or go and tag the older pages with a "grandfathered in blank user page" tag to avoid them appearing on their filters), and then allowing user pages that are blanked after a certain date to be treated under G7? You might say "but we can delete now under G7", to which I will politely reply, "please don't". Enough doubt has been cast on G7 by this discussion to mark it disputed. Hopefully people will acknowledge what has been discussed here, rather than trying to delete stuff before the debate is concluded. Carcharoth (talk) 13:33, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't grandfathering mean that the old rules apply to old pages, not that new rules apply to old pages? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Well, um, I suppose I'm trying to say: change G7, then grandfather under the new G7, then change G7 again to allow deletion of blanked userpages, but only after a few months of that "blanking=deletion" notice being put in WP:USER. And I note with sadness that no-one has actually bothered to go to WT:USER. CSD doesn't exist in a vacuum, you know. It needs to be aware when it is sending out signals that other pages don't support, either by omission or direct contradiction. Carcharoth (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
I've made a change to WP:USER based on the discussion here. See here. It feels silly to be having to tell people reading that page:

"Blanking of user subpages is interpreted by some as a deletion request. If you are blanking one of your user subpages and wish the page history to be kept, it is best to leave a note to that effect on the blank page (eg. "blanked to page history - please do not delete"). If you want a user subpage deleted, it is best to use {{db-userreq}} to specifically request it, rather than blanking the page."

But hey, if you get a system developing where blanking is used to mean different things, that is what will happen. I think people should be educated to use deletion requests. No doubt that is instruction creep, though. I'm serious though that blanking is not always a deletion request. To really find out whether blankings are deletion requests, what should be done is to delete user subpages blanked by active users (or to be more polite to tag them and leave a note on the user talk page). If you get people going "hey, I wanted that page!", then we would have concrete evidence that there is a significant minority (or majority) of users who blank pages for reasons other than deletion. Obviously the "inactive for 18 months" people are unlikely to be as responsive, and in this case silence is not agreement! :-) In other words, rather than making assumptions, run a few test notifications and find out what people think, and then listen to them! Going back to inactive users, if the criterion is "18 months inactivity means they probably aren't coming back", then work out what to do with their non-blanked pages. If we keep those, there is no reason to delete the blanked ones, especially not if there are incoming links - something I don't see MZMcBride saying he checked. Carcharoth (talk) 17:59, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
The other point you made, Carl, was "Blanking the page is a deletion request" - that is just wrong. Several people in these discussions have said they blank pages in order to blank the page, but still keep the page history. There is no reliable way (especially when there is no edit summary) to distinguish between pages blanked in order to just keep stuff in the page history, and pages blanked because the author couldn't be bothered to request deletion. MZMcBride then suggested that pages blanked by long-term inactive users could be deleted, but the question of activity should not be conflated with that of blank pages. The only difference between blanked pages of inactive users and those of active users, is that we can expect an answer from the latter. If we are deleting blanked pages because of inactivity, then why are we keeping unblanked pages? The presumption here is that blanked pages have zero content. In fact, with the click of a button, the content that is there can be retrieved, so in fact they are not empty pages - content exists in the page history. Only if someone specifically requests deletion, should we assume that they don't want the old revisions and page history. I would have argued this if I had been here when G7 was set up, and I don't see why these arguments should carry any less weight because "we've done it differently in the past". Previous consensus can be wrong or outdated, which is why consensus can change. Carcharoth (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
The reason we treat blanking as a deletion request is that many users do blank pages when they are done with them, especially users who don't know about the CSD system. For more experienced users who want to save history in their pages, we simply need to remind them not to blank the page, but to leave a note "please save this page for its history".
I still don't give much weight to the argument "but they might be useful some day", which I think is the underlying motivation here. In practice these pages are extremely unlikely to ever be of use, and the few examples that have been given were only blank because the editors were unfamiliar with CSD. If one of those were deleted, it would be undeleted on request and the creator would know not to blank pages like that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:18, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
"many users do blank pages when they are done with them, especially users who don't know about the CSD system" - equally, people who do not know about the CSD system blank pages to hide them from search engines. I know enough to leave a "page blanked" note to prevent "no content" deletions, but I did miss one talk page of a user subpage, though as it turns out, talk pages are special cases and generally avoided anyway. Carcharoth (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Enough people commented in the discussion above that they do not intend a userpage blanking to indicate deletion that this change makes sense. I would temper my opinion if the people recommending deletion had been able to give any benefit to the project for the deletion of the pages, but they have been unable to do so. Whether or not there is a high or low likelihood that the undeleted pages will be useful has no bearing on the question of what benefit there is to deletion.
The proposal seems instruction creepish to me but apparently it is necessary creep. Rossami (talk) 14:25, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Conversely, the people in favor of keeping the pages have given no concrete argument for keeping them apart from "they might be useful someday". — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:33, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Agree with the intent, though the wording could be simplified I think. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:45, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

If a user accidentally creates a page that is deleted under CSD#A7, we don't say "how can we change that criterion", we say "now they have learned that these articles need to assert notability". Similarly, just because one or two editors here accidentally blanked pages they really wanted to keep, that doesn't mean we should change the CSD criterion. It just means that those editors have learned something else about the CSD system.

This proposal seems to be the result of a mistake by one or two editors in blanking pages they should not have blanked. Unless there is evidence that a significant number of pages deleted under this criterion shouldn't be (not just hypothetically might again be useful), there's no reason to change the CSD criterion. As far as I can tell this criterion has worked successfully for a long time. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:33, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Do you have evidence that anyone has bothered to clean out user pages before? If not, you might get a nasty surprise. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Blanking a page, overwhelmingly more often than not, means an editor is done with the content. There is no need for this kind of instruction creep and I see no meaningfully helpful reason to change CSD A7. Gwen Gale (talk) 15:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I think you mean G7 not A7. You claim this is instruction creep, but is there not instruction creep in the attitude "blanking more often than not means deletion"? The simple, non-instruction creep interpretation is that blanking=blanking, not that blanking=deletion request. In other words, the point at which people began interpreting blanking as deletion requests was the point at which instruction creep appeared. The instructions went out to admins to interpret blankings as deletion requests = instruction creep. I would have said "blanking does not mean deletion request". Carcharoth (talk) 17:42, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I support Carcharoth's proposal to restrict G7. My rationale: speedies are supposed to be for cases when it's so clear-cut that the page should be deleted that there's no point in having a discussion about it. As evidenced by our discussion here, cases in which a user has blanked one of his or her own pages are not as clear-cut as that. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:20, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Overall, these deletions are pretty clear cut. Like Gwen Gale said, the overwhelming reason for blanked pages is that the author is done with them. This is why the criterion is written as it is.
In the (apparently very few) cases where someone wants to preserve a page history, it's trivial to avoid these deletions by not blanking the page. No evidence has been presented that these deletions have actually caused any problems, leaving this proposal looking like a change in search of a reason. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:28, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Would you agree to a survey of active users (edited in the last two months) who have blanked any of their user pages to see if we can ascertain whether Gwen's "overwhelming reason" argument is correct or not? Or even to see if the "small amount" is as small as people seem to think it is? I'm assuming that MZMcBride could generate such a list, as it would seem to be a similar query to the one that produced the "inactive for 18 months and zero content" one. Carcharoth (talk) 18:57, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
The people the criterion is aimed at are the editors who don't even know CSD exists, but just blank pages when they are finished. People who have been here long enough to answer a survey are not those people (and really should read CSD more carefully). Anyone is free to generate some actual evidence that the criterion includes a significant number of pages for which deletion would be actually (not only potentially, or in the future) incorrect. If the person who created a page thought he or she was done with it when it was blanked, then deletion would probably be correct. At the moment, I don't think any hard evidence has been presented in favor of changing the criterion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:54, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Uhm, where is the source that states that "the overwhelming reason for blanked pages is that the author is done with them"? Be aware, if you keep making claims like this I'll just starting tossing in {{fact}} instead of replying directly. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
You're free to present some evidence to the contrary, of course. The reason this is a CSD criterion in the first place is because editors who aren't aware they can request deletion will sometimes blank pages when they are done with them. People who do know about CSD already should know that blank pages can be deleted; they don't have much excuse to be surprised about it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:54, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Very well. The overwhelming reason for blanked pages is because the author is going out for ice cream and won't be back for an indeterminate time. I'll note you're still stating opinion as fact and without anything backing it up, so allow me to join you. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Might also be worth noting that, in general, the clash here seems to be between two philosophies: (1) Delete first and then undelete if there are problems; and (2) Ask first and then delete if there is a positive response (or maybe if there is no response). Carcharoth (talk) 18:59, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Not sure that summary is entirely accurate. For a lot of these users, it's impossible to "ask first" as the contributor has (seemingly?) moved on. If someone blanks a page and goes inactive for 18 months, I think it's fairly safe to assume that the page can be deleted. While one might say that it's a delete and undelete if requested process, it's more of a delete and move on with your life process.... --MZMcBride (talk) 23:00, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
How about a "leave it alone and move on with your life" process... :-) It's probably, then, more a "show us it's needed" vs a "show us it's not needed" debate. But still rather pointless. Would you be up for creating a list of active users who have blanked any of their user pages? I'd be happy to ask a few tens of people by hand from such a list. You provide the list, we can get someone else to pick the names at random, and I'll ask the questions. Deal? Or should everyone just give up on this thread and move on? Carcharoth (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I think it very bad policy to delete user talk pages except for indefinitely banned editors or sockjpuppets. But I am not sure how to word this without preventing users from deleting subpages that might reasonably be deleted. DGG (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
I consider this proposal to be unnecessary instruction creep. Leaving a userspace page entirely blank but wanting to keep the page history just seems like a really rare situation that is not worth doubling the length of the criterion for. If something the user wanted to keep does get deleted under this criterion, then in that rare circumstance they could request it to be undeleted and I doubt any admin would have a problem with it. But by the same token, I also don't see a good reason for anyone to go scouting through other people's userspace looking for blank pages to G7 - and given that, this situation becomes even rarer and the change even more unnecessary. ~ mazca t | c 14:42, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
You do realise that this change was prompted by a discussion started (and I thank MzMcBride for starting that discussion) by someone who had run some query exactly to search people's userspaces "for blank pages to G7". So it is not a hypothetical. Carcharoth (talk) 20:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, and I consider that massively unnecessary and without benefit. If people stop rooting around for blank userspace pages that aren't harming anything, then the change to G7 would be unnecessary. Hence, two pieces of unnecessary bureaucracy avoided for the price of one. If G7 has to be reworded to stop people fiddling with userspace for no particular reason, then so be it, but I don't think it should be necessary. ~ mazca t | c 21:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Actually, there is a downside to unattended blank pages with history that no-one has mentioned yet. It is possible to hide content in there (sometimes quite large content) and then blank the page and then link to an old page version from off-site. As long as you don't mind the boilerplate surrounding it, you have a way to use Wikipedia as a webhost. For example, I could point to this from off-site, even though the page is blanked with a short note there instead. In reality, though, that is just a nearly-blank page with stuff in the history waiting for me to get back to it. The ability to link to versions in page histories has its advantages and disadvantages. The point here though is that most blank pages used for "bad" purposes will be those maintained by active users, so MZMcBride's "18 months of inactivity" criterion wouldn't apply in most cases. But yes, it is all a bit pointless. Carcharoth (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Ideally yes, folks would leave userspace alone except for actual deletion requests (not random spelunking through userspace and deleting anything we don't feel is useful). And while it may be instruction creep, it appears to be necessary instruction creep. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
any evidence this is being done widely? If we were to find instances, we could and would delerte via MfD. We do in cases where we suspect such abuse. DGG (talk) 23:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

How to content

I just opened this AfD because there seemed no other way to delete this article. Even though it has no chance at all of surviving AfD, we still have to run it through the process. It crossed my mind that "An article that contains nothing but how-to or other instructional content" might be a good speedy criteria. I wondered if maybe it's come up before, but, with 30 archives to search for this page, I thought I'd just run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes... Beeblbrox (talk) 18:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

We don't get all that many how-tos, really. That'd probably be the best reason not to have such as CSD, it wouldn't remove a large enough strain on AfD and PROD to make it worthwhile. Would fail #3 up at the top of the page. Just let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Heh. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 18:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Also, I think you'd have a hard time writing an objective criteria that would be uncontroversial. An article can be descriptive of a process and not merit deletion. Rules of chess springs to mind. -Chunky Rice (talk) 18:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Well it's a novel proposal so don't worry about that. This article is bad enough to make it look like there should be a speedy criteria for it... but honestly, I agree with the above people. This article is just a pretty extreme example... there really won't be many that are such easy calls. This is really a case where the problem is that the page creator can remove the PROD tag with zero comment... that part of PROD never made any sense to me. Of course if someone created a page they oppose deletion of it. --Rividian (talk) 21:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

CSD G8

Why shouldn't deleted pages' discussions be deleted? I thought all talk pages should be archived. → C Teng [talk] 15:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Ehm, they usually are. When an article has a talk page and the article is deleted, usually the talk page gets G8'd; sometimes admins forget, and sometimes the situation is extraordinary, but mostly G8 happens. So, uh, I think you're just reading it wrong. Cheers. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 15:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what Teng is saying, but I feel the need to rant about G8 a bit. G8 is mis-used sometimes. I have gone to a talk page and laid out sources for an article I intend to write later only to have someone who apparently did not look at the content come along and delete it. I have posted on talk pages information about why the article was deleted and what needs to be done if it is ever recreated only to have it get G8'd. Folks, PLEASE read pages before G8'ing them to ensure it makes sense to do so. Chillum 15:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I'll be honest, I use a script. But I have it set up so that if the page is tagged with {{go away}}, the script skips the page. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

{{Db-i8}} and {{ncd}}

What is the difference between {{Db-i8}} and {{ncd}}? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 18:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Even though most times it's grounds for Db-i8, there are occasional valid reasons for having an image on both Commons and Wikipedia. For example, when we're preparing to use an image from commons on the front page, we create a local copy of the image and fully protect it. Does that explain it? Vickser (talk) 08:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Waiting a week for CSD I8

One of the current provisions of CSD I8 is The image has been marked with {{subst:ncd}} or {{subst:ncd|Image:newname.ext}} for at least one week. Waiting one week is not necessary if it was the uploader who moved the image and marked it.. Is there a particular reason to wait a week, if the image meets the other provisions of CSD I8? Kelly hi! 16:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Er, you changed something about CSD I8 recently, with minimal discussion. Please try and get more people involved, and try and propose all the changes to I8 in one go, maybe? Just a thought, so please take the advice gently. Carcharoth (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I'm trying to address my concerns with I8 one issue at a time, to keep things simple. I've been posting my comments here at the talk page before making any changes to the policy, and only making changes if there seem to be no objections. Should I be going about this a different way? Kelly hi! 18:29, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
Possibly. Doing it bit by bit like this makes it hard to assess the overall impact. It can also feel like slipping bitesize bits through the gate. Maybe bring up all the points with I8 at once, and then propose each once bit by bit? Were there other changes I missed, or is it only these two so far? Carcharoth (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
And to answer the question, I presume one week is to allow the uploader to respond to notification. Does it mess things up to wait one week? Carcharoth (talk) 22:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
There is no notification for CSD I8. I'm not sure what the uploader would do even if there was. Kelly hi! 00:44, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but thinking on this some more, I think the "one week" thing must be to allow the uploader, or anyone else who has the image watchlisted, to check that the person who added "ncd" did so in good-faith and that it wasn't vandalism. It appears to be just an extra check in the system. I'd be careful about removing something like that from a system that seems to have worked well so far. Again, "Does it mess things up to wait one week?" If not, then probably best to leave it as it is. Alternatively, if no-one else who knows is reading this, why not dig back through the history of the page, find out when the change in the wording was made, and ask whoever made the change. You could also look in the talk page archives for the reasons for the original wording. I've done both these approaches in the past, and both can work and help when no-one is responding to talk page notices like this, and that is better than just assuming that silence is consensus (to be frank, those working on images don't really keep up to speed at WP:CSD from what I've seen). I have a vague memory that the I8 criteria were set up to fit the situation when Betacommand was using his bot to help deal with transfering images to Commons - maybe that was a reason for the current wording? If you find anything in the archives, do let people know by posting here. Carcharoth (talk) 05:30, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Looks like that provision has always been part of I8 since that criteria was added, apparently based on this proposal, which had minimal discussion. Seems to predate Betacommand and his bot. No reason was really given for the one-week delay in the proposal. In response to the vandalism concern - if a vandal added {{NowCommons}} when the image was not really on Commons, then it wouldn't pass the other conditions of CSD I8 anyway. All images tagged for I8 are vetted by MetsBot, or a human, prior to deletion, again by a human. So there are already checks and balances here. As far as messing things up to wait one week - well, I guess not, but I8 is currently, IMHO, way more wordy and complex than it needs to be (it really shouldn't need to be much more complex than I1), and I'm trying to figure out how to simplify it. Since deletion policy can be controversial, I'm taking it slow and tackling one provision at a time. I would disagree about image-working admins being not up to speed on deletion policy - I do a lot of work in that area. There is just a handful of admins who do that kind of work, and they seem extremely conscientious about following policy. Kelly hi! 13:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
OK. Thanks for looking that up. Maybe ask some of the other admins you know are working with such images, and see what they think? Better to get some opinion, even if slightly canvassed, rather than none. Carcharoth (talk) 20:58, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
My only guess of the one week time limit was to make it consistent with the time limits of the now rules #I4, #I5, and #I6.
By the way, there were in fact various prior discussions about the issues about moving images to commons, which are now archived on Wikipedia talk:Moving images to the Commons#Discussion moved from Talk:Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia talk:Images and media for deletion/archive/2#Deletion policy for images on both Commons and another Wikipedia and other pages. It seemed that once all those discussions were resolved, the proposal the Kelly mentioned, Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 11#proposed I8: Images available on Commons (again), was indeed implemented "as a compromise" but without a whole lot of discussion specifically on these CSD pages here. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
iirc, NowCommons images use to be deleted via IFD, which also probably was one of the reasons for the seven day time limit (same as IFD listings), and why not a whole lot of discussion back then in 2005-06 was not made specifically on the CSD talk pages. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:34, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
No reason to wait a week. The only real reason I see is to make sure the image wasn't uploaded to Commons when it shouldn't have been. The common situation is US-PD images not being public domain in their source country (which Commons requires, en.wp doesn't). I think there's a template somewhere that is used on these images now so it shouldn't be an issue anymore. All the issues I personally encountered dealt with images that were on Commons longer than a week anyway. As long as the admin checks to make sure everything was transferred properly, it shouldn't be controversial to speedy them. With global image review on the horizon, Commons admins will be able to help out with that part. Rocket000 (talk) 11:42, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
I second this. To be honest, I've actually been fudging a few deletions by simply confirming that everything is in place on both wikis before deleting the en-wiki image without waiting a week--the most recent one was Image:Ameer.jpg, where I fixed the licensing and history and added cats on Commons before deleting the image locally. As Kelly mentions, there are already significant checks in place in the form of humans or bots, so while I can ignore all rules and get the job done, I'd rather not have to. --jonny-mt 14:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I just realized today that no real consensus (from what I can see) was reached on this topic, so I decided to bring it back from the archives for further discussion. I'm obviously in favor of removing the week-long waiting period; any thoughts on this? --jonny-mt 14:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

A week seems more of a {{prod}} than a speedy. The only reason I like the week is that it gives User:718 Bot time to redirect all of the links, and I have no idea how quickly that bot responds. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:29, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
I think you might have mixed up MetsBot with 718 Bot. There shouldn't be any links to update for Commons dupes. Kelly hi! 15:04, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Oh dear, no. I hope that people have been checking links before deleting, as that is a requirement for i8. Many of the images that are uploaded to Commons are renamed, and in fact most should be. Image:100 1519.JPG -> Commons:Image:Cotswolds stone house in mist.jpg for example. Even a slightly descriptive name (Image:Zwerver 004.JPG) should probably be moved to a more descriptive name (Commons:Image:Cat Zwerver in the garden.JPG). Metsbot does not check this criteria with the rest, though 718 Bot does go through and fix the links at some point. Some images that are copied from the Commons to EN have different names as well, which I have seen a few times. It very much worries me if people are not checking or noticing this criteria before deleting, as this will make it almost impossible for editors or uploaders to find this image again. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 01:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it's not a criteria, it's here (which is linked to in the template). Does anyone object to adding it to the criteria? ~ JohnnyMrNinja 04:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm an admin that often deals with CSD I8 images. I certainly support removing the one-week criteria for I8, because there's no real need for the week delay, in my opinion. If the images have been renamed en route to Commons, they should ideally be switched over by the transferer, but if not, the admin should certainly switch the links over before deleting. Most images don't have more than about five inclusions anyway, except a few heavily-used icons, and in that rare instance, AWB or a bot can be employed. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 05:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how many people here have actively moved large amounts of images to the Commons, but even with CommonsHelper (which is a huge help) it's tedious. First checking the user's history and talk page to see if it's a likely copyvio, figuring out what the picture is of so that it can find the most appropriate name, fixing outdated tags that Commons doesn't accept, the actual moving of the image and placement of {{subst:ncd|newname.jpg}} (simplified by CommonsHelper), and the finding of appropriate categories or pages on Commons. Category:User-created public domain images alone has 165,917 images, so I see no point in further slowing down the process by forcing the mover to manually change all the image links when 718 Bot already does this automatically. If, however, the redirection of image links were added to the criteria, then that would be something Metsbot would check, and there would be no reason not to shorten the time period. Further, I see no reason not to add this to the criteria for i8. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Obviously I'm making no sense, it is in the criteria. So there is no reason to keep the week waiting period, presuming that the criteria have been met. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 06:59, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Question about process

Say an admin comes across a speedy-able article. The article hasn't been tagged with a speedy deletion template, but the admin can see that the article is clearly eligible for speedy deletion. Does the admin just directly delete it, or do they have to put a deletion tag on it first, and wait for another admin to delete it? I'm just curious. I'm not an admin, but I like to know how these things work.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 17:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, it certainly seems to happen that some admins will delete such an article (even if it is not clearly eligible for speedy deletion) without even telling the creator, or other editors, or the Wikiproject which has assessed the article already. DuncanHill (talk) 17:30, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that admin can speedy delete the article. Any article which meets any of the CSD criteria can be deleted at any time. Hut 8.5 17:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I can only tell you what I do as an admin, I can't speak for all 1500+ admins. :) If I see an article that is clearly something which needs to go right now (ie a page like "Jason is a booger" or "I hate Ashley"), I delete on sight. Most speedies really don't need to be deleted immediately, so I tag them so they can have the benefit of another pair of eyes. Having someone else look at the article increases the chances that nothing was overlooked -- I think the benefit of that outweighs the downside of having the article up longer.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a difference between what admins can do and what they should do. We need the power to delete single handed to deal with the undoubted junk--and there really is a good deal of stuff that no conceivable person would in good faith want to keep around a minute more than necessary. But most of the time, I think doing this is a very bad idea. Fabrictramp has it right. sometimes I find myself deviating from this, in impatience, and that means I should stop new page patrolling for a little while. I'm not known as prone to delete, but there are certainly one or two valid complaints a month about articles I should not have speedy deleted. Instead of disputing them, I undelete. DGG (talk)

Essay about CSD and spam

Greetings everyone. I have written an essay about the use and misuse of certain aspects of the CSD process, entitled "Not all business articles are spam". I am eager to hear everyone's feedback on this, as I feel it is a very important issue for many Wikipedia editors. Please leave your comments on the essay's talk page or my user talk page. Thanks. --Eastlaw (talk) 05:56, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of user pages under G11: discussion at DRV

I've opened a deletion review for the page User:Losplad, which was recently mentioned in an ongoing discussion at AN/I. I hope this somewhat nonstandard DRV nomination might help determine the actual consensus on whether pages like that one should be speedily deleted or not. Everyone here is welcome to comment. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

waiting period between csd tagging and deleting

  • Hi, I wonder if it would be wise (in many but not all cases) to codify a waiting period between the time an article is speedy-tagged and it is speedy-deleted. I'm thinking a pretty long time, actually: one day. I could perhaps live with 12 hours, though that would be kinda against the whole purpose... I say "many but not all" because of course we should have zero tolerance for attack pages etc.
  • Why not let some subsets of CSD-worthy articles breathe for a relatively short while? They may eventually blossom into real, honest Stub or start articles. Maybe the creating editor got a phone call, had to run get the laundry... who knows? Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 13:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't think 24 hours is needed, and some are so obviously going that any delay is a waste of time.
In general, I think an hour is enough to allow a hangon to get in. Mayalld (talk) 13:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Some there's no point bothering to keep it around. The content is so worthless that it wouldn't at all help someone write an article further down the road. I'm particularly thinking of typical A1 and A3 pages there, and at least a few A7s as well. Though, except in the cases of copyright violations and attack pages (and probably G8 talk pages, too), there's no harm in letting them stay up. The idea has been brought up before, but there hasn't previously been consensus for it (though you should still try). Cheers. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 13:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I... hope this won't put too fine a point on it, but.. going to a page where people hang out who enjoy deleting speedies...and asking for a waiting period for deleting speedies... is kinda... ummm there may be a selection bias in the results, don't you think?
  • The point here is that we have all the time in the world, so by definition it is not a waste of time to let certain subsets of speedies breathe a day (or two!) or so before snuffing their wick. They ain't gonna hurt the encyclopedia by their existence. And they might grow. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Fuhghettaboutit made {{hasty}} back in April for the same sort of reason. There's no policy behind it, but most admins would probably give it the time requested. Cheers. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 15:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Thanks for the template link. But the template says "one hour." I think one hour is too hasty. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that the waste of time issue is that if we are giving articles a specific stay of execution, any admin reviewing the category of pages up for speedy will inevitably waste time with articles that haven't "done their time" Mayalld (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
  • Right. Categories can't tell time. In order to have a waiting period, you'd need a page (or subpage) to act as a clearinghouse for csd noms, and admins would enter this: # {{la|ArticleName}} ~~~~
  • Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how I feel about the delay, but image categories seem to be able to tell time. Many have them specify time allowances. PRODs have time allowances, also. It seems as if immediately above you're suggesting that we have admins manually enter every article nominated for deletion? It's hard enough keeping on top of the CSD backlog as it is. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't think cats could tell time. If they can, then so much the better (and so much easier). Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how they do it, mind you, but they do seem to be able to somehow. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:39, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Can you show me an example of a cat that can tell time, please? Thanks! Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

If those cats could talk , what tales they'd tell... 'bout Jimbo and deletion and the bots as well. StephenBuxton (talk) 15:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
LOL! :D It's not so much the cats that tell time as the templates. Take a look at Category:Images with no fair use rationale for some examples. To place an image in NFU category, you put the date into the template, as set out here. An image that's been tagged with this looks like this. It encodes the time of deletion, as you see. These are listed under "Dated deletion categories" at C:CSD. So, the cats can tell time because the templates tell them how. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
My personal guess is that of the 1000 or so articles speedied each day, about 200 to 400 could be improved enough to at least pass speedy, and maybe half of them to pass AfD. Some of them are the copyvios. A copyvio about something notable can almost always be fixed--you take the information in the website, which is right there for you, and write a short article. If its notable, there should be an obvious reference or two around as well, but even without a reference it's a valid stub. Similarly, though a little harder, for most G11s about people or things that dont qualify for A7 as well. But it takes about 10 or 15 minutes for me to do one,and I typically will do only one a day, and not every day. But of the 1100 active admins, if each of us did only one of them a week, we could fix them all. DGG (talk) 22:35, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
My guess is that complete brand-spanking-new newbies who are motivated to contribute for the very first time will almost inevitably fall into the category of serious copyvio offenders—completely innocently and all unknowing: "Copyvio? What does that mean?". They then see their articles deleted, do a fairly quick mental cost-benefit calculation, and never contribute to Wikipedia again... except perhaps as casual vandals. Rescuing such articles reaps double-rewards: it saves the article itself, and helps prevent utter newbies from being discouraged and quitting. Is there still an "Article Rescue" wikiproject? Are they active? If there were a 24-hour "Right to Live" placed upon certain categories of speedied articles, couldn't that project turn the condemned articles into reformed articles? Lazarus articles? Pardoned articles? Ardent particles? Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 23:54, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
The facts don't bear that guess out. If everyone "almost inevitably" is dissuaded from editing wikipedia except as a vandal, how do you explain both the user creation statistics and the vandalism as a percentage of IP edit statistics? Protonk (talk) 00:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent) That's a red herring... The "almost inevitably" text refers to "fall into the category of serious copyvio offenders". Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 01:10, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

My mistake. Let me be more clear. The general claim that we are currently in some sort of new user crisis because we speedy delete new pages too quickly is false. Protonk (talk) 01:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
If an admin runs across an article that meets the speedy requirements they can delete it instantly thus means that a waiting time on tags is a little pointless.Geni 01:58, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
First, Protonk, no one ever mentioned a crisis... you're putting words in my mouth (repeatedly). Second, Geni, the whole point of this thread is to change the dynamic you just mentioned. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 02:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
adding waiting times to tags won't do that since admins don't need to tag. If you want delayed deletion you use prod.Geni 03:06, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
How am I putting words in your mouth? I apologize for using the word "crisis" but I am at a loss to explain your above paragraph (about speedy deletion of a new user's article) as anything other than a broad cautionary tale about how our current CSD policy is keeping new users away? I see that clear as day in the above paragraph and I'm disputing that claim. I'm not repeatedly putting words into your mouth and even if I am, it is sufficient to say "X is putting words into my mouth, however I will address your argument Y regardless." I'm not being facile or stupid. I don't think that you are claiming that "ZOMG everyone is trying to be an editor and we are destroying that". There simply aren't enough speedy deletions in a day to make that so. On the other hand I am not simply suggesting that the userbase would be zero under your scenario (though I admit it could be interpreted that way easily). I am suggesting that wikipedia generates a huge editor base, only some of whom are registered users. It is inaccurate to make a broad statement that CSD has a significant negative effect on new user creation or user retention without some sort of evidence for that claim. Since evidence would be very difficult to come by, I am prepared to accept, by proxy, evidence that we are in some sort of account creation slump or editor participation slump. I don't see that either. Absent some evidence that the practice of speedy deletion drives away new users in significant numbers, what rationale do we have for altering the speedy deletion process? Protonk (talk) 03:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I suppose one could take the stance that leaving speedy the way it is showa new users the value placed on content. It has to have merit for inclusion and is not a free substitute for other services. This is a working encyclopedia and not a sandbox. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I would favor anything that encourage new editors to do better and learn the wikipedia way of writing, reffing and staying NPOV. These are not skills easily learned by all. It would seem that a method, to avoid wasting admin energy, would be to allow an aging process to be lenient to also encourage the article to be fixed. By DGG's rough estimates above 10 percent of speedied articles could be worthwhile content; and that's roughly 100 articles a day. And i suggest that's also 100 potentiall good editors a day we could be helping to improve articles enough that the rest of us can see the notability. It's good to clear off the majority of stuff that shouldn't be articles as notability isn't there, etc. But let's also focus on the people creating as they are the most valuable resource. Banjeboi 06:00, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Along the lines of what Benjiboi is saying, I think that there is room for editors who are worried about this process to fix it at the moment of decision. If you think that speedy deletes should be contested more often, lurk around the CAT:CSD page and place {{holdon}} tags (with an explanation...:). ) on articles you think are worthy. Hang around new page patrol and mark patrolled pages that you think are a work in progress and meet A7 but that other editors might tag. Go get an admin bit and decline speedies that are hasty. Or accept speedies but take the time to write out a proper explanation for a new user as to why their page got deleted. Or hang around RfA's and ask questions about the prospective admin's willingness to speedy pages that are on the edge. No need to add a layer of bureaucracy to what should be a streamlined process. I agree that pages that are marginal (under almost any category) should not be speedied. But CSD is a vital tool for cleanup and maintenance. Attaching an arbitrary delay on it would seriously hamper that. Protonk (talk) 14:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. With a narrow exception for copyright violations, libel issues, violations of basic human dignity, obvious vandalism, and similar sources of actual direct harm, articles whose presence causes no direct harm but which merely fail to satisfy Wikipedia inclusion criteria should be handled with a gentler process that is a bit more respectful of newbie editors and their efforts to contribute (even if unsuccessful). I agree that this process should include notifying the author and some waiting period to give them an opportunity to correct problems before deleting. I would also suggest a 2-admin process, one admin to confirm that the article belongs in the speedy-delete queue and that the author has been notified, and start the waiting period clock, and a second admin at the end to confirm the end of the waiting period and delete. Two admins would also provide a second opinion and a check on over-hasty or inappropriate deletes. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 15:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
  • DGG, you state the copyvios on notable topics can usually be fixed. This is true, it's also largely irrelevant. A derived work is also a copyvio so in order to fix a copyvio it is necesarry to start from an untainted article. Rewriting a copyvio is insufficient. This means that when an article is speediable as a copyvio the best course of action in order to fix the article is first to delete it. Taemyr (talk) 16:57, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think that this discussion is coming at the problem (if there is one) from the wrong angle. The whole point of "speedy" deletion is that these articles can be deleted immediately. If you feel that any of the Criteria for Speedy Deletion should not result in immediate deletion, then you should propose removing those criteria from the list. Articles which would now be speedied under those criteria would then have to be PROD'ed or AFD'ed, thus imposing a five-day minimum wait for the article to be improved. I don't believe that there's any need to make the deletion processes more complicated by introducing what is essentially a "slow speedy" category.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 00:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
    • I agree completely. Well said. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
      • Very well said, indeed. Let's focus our attention on the specific criteria which are problematic, either because they are generating an unacceptable level of false positives or because they are poorly worded and misunderstood by our newer admins who were not around when the criteria were debated and the nuance hashed out. Rossami (talk) 03:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

  • As has been mentioned on other occasions, "speedy" does not indicate that deletion is quick or without delay, but that it is lightweight and not burdened by a lot of process overhead. A number of CSD have long featured a delay (e.g. the image CSDs). Dcoetzee 06:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Common sense says Dcoetzee is right: Speedy doesn't mean "mindless speed"; it means non-red-tapey. It means no need for yapping at AfD... but if there were a waiting period... some good articles could be rescued.
  • I dunno how y'all look into csds to see if they're salvageable. I came here 'cause an acquaintance of mine started a stub that was deleted seven minutes (read that again) after the CSD templates were placed (but two hours after stub creation). The stub obviously met CSD criteria; it was just a "see also". But... one giveaway that it could have ben saved... it was already wikilinked to by a cluster of different articles. I begged for an undelete, then fixed the darn thing in a relatively short time. There IS a WP that saves articles (Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron). If y'all decide on any particular set to give an extended death sentence to, maybe they should be notified..
  • I don't think copyvio should be left off the list of those that get a grace period. I dunno what Taemyr meant by "derived works"; I hope he/she is able to dip into his/her obvious knowledge of the topic and provide a very clear definition. I think if you delete all articles whose first incarnation in the article history is full of copyvio, then you'll have to WP:DELETEWIKIPEDIA. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 14:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
G12 only applies to articles where every revision is a copyvio. So no matter what it started as, if it was later fixed it can't be G12ed.
What he means by the derivative works thing is that most licenses don't allow for other works to be based off of them. So a mere rephrasing of the copyvio won't help, you have to completely rewrite the thing. That's part of why we speedy them. Besides the URL it's a copyvio of (which is included in the deletion log usually), there's nothing in the article that would be remotely useful in writing a new article. Giving them a grace period opens users and the WMF to much to possible litigation by the owners of the copyrighted material, which is generally a Bad ThingTM. Let me know if there's anything else I can help out by explaining about the CSD. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Oh, that was such a wonderful reply! Here, let me give you a couple smiley icons:   ... meanwhile, if PROD is a slow speedy, then why do things get speedied instead of prodded? I'm not making things to complex; they're too complex already. Rather than making things more complex, I suggest making them simpler: use either csd or prod (whichever is prettier), but give a 24-hour waiting period to anything that isn't WP:NPAvio or WP:BLP vio or whatever. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 15:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

A couple of possibilities leap to mind as to why things get nominated for speedy instead of prodded.
One is that there is a bit of a head rush in nominating something for speedy deletion and seeing it disappear quickly. A waiting period would certainly diminish that, but so would a bit more vigilance by admins. (For example, when I'm working on speedies, especially A1, A3, and A7, I try to always do a quick gsearch to see if there is potential. I've saved a number of articles this way, even if it means I have to rewrite them after another admin has deleted the article while I'm researching.)
Another possibility is that some editors get frustrated when they prod an article only to have the original author come along later and remove the prod tag with no comment -- then the article has to go to AfD is it still needs to be deleted. This doesn't bother me personally, because I watchlist all my prods, my prod reason is generally complete enough to stand up at AfD, and I use automated scripts so all I have to do is copy my prod reason, hit the AfD script, and paste in the reason. Would a waiting period for speedies solve this? I really don't have a feel for the answer.
Part of my gut feeling against a wait period for speedy deletion is that if people are using the system the way it should (in my understanding) by used, where speedy deletion is only for uncontroversial articles where the 'pedia will clearly benefit from their fast removal, then a wait period is counter productive. If people aren't using the system the way it should be used, then instruction creep may not improve things.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem with PROD is that if the author objects, it goes to AFD, so in the event of a dispute it's just an AfD with yet more process on top. And PRODs frequently get objected to. There's a need for a process that gives the user notice and a grace period and is a bit gentler than the current speedy, but nonetheless needs only a short, simple decision from one or two admins, without a full-blown community discussion. As to using the system the way it should be used -- It's in the nature of volunteer agencies that the volunteers won't be perfectly trained and won't always make perfect decisions. We need processes that can work in the world we live in. People sometimes make mistakes in speedy-delete decisions, and we need a process with enough checks to permit the occassional mistake to be noticed and corrected, but fast and simple enough that deleting thousands of mostly obviously non-notable articles doesn't overload the community with process and deliberation. The current speedy doesn't have enough checks. The current prod/AfD is too slow and process-intensive. Something in between, a bit more careful than the current speedy but a lot simpler than the current PROD/AFD, would be better. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC).
In my experience, it's simple enough to overturn bad speedies at DRV. Takes a day or two, but usually not more, since they WP:SNOW all year there. lifebaka++ 18:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Fabrictemp said: "...a couple of possibilities leap to mind as to why things get nominated for speedy instead of prodded...One is that there is a bit of a head rush in nominating something for speedy deletion and seeing it disappear quickly." Very well said. Very well said indeed. See my earlier comments about a selection bias in the results of a discussion among admins about a waiting period on speedies. I knew there would be zero-point-zero chance for a move to slow the finger on the joystick ("Kewl! I deleted it! Zap! Two points!!"), but I am gratified that at least one or two people are taking the time to consider the idea in an adult, reflective manner. Ling.Nut (WP:3IAR) 03:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Failure to establish notability

I was disappointed to note that A7 doesn't appear to cover very many things which do not assert their notability. Specifically, I would like to see songs included, as people frequently seem to create articles for a band, all their albums, all the band members, and all the songs they ever made. I would therefore like to propose that a new criterion be created as follows:

  • An article about an individual work or component of a work which does not assert the notability of the article's subject independent of its creator or any collection of which it is a part.

This would enable us to speedily delete articles on maddeningly trivial things from individual songs of no significance to pages of a book or frames of a video, without having to create multi-article AfD discussions (which may miss some, necessitating more such discussions) and wait one week. --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 09:57, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

No. A7 is meant to be subject specific because it is admited to be a less than ideal solution in the areas where the amount of nn stuff is overwelming. For everything else there is prod and AFD.Geni 11:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if it's overwhelming, but it certainly is volumnous. --Falcon Darkstar Kirtaran (talk) 11:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is exactly the way to go on this. We get requests to expand A7 pretty often, and the last two ideas (here, scroll down in the thread; and here) failed to reach critical mass to be added. In my opinion, they were supperior ideas (but I admit I may be baised there) to this one, as they make it more difficult to possibly delete articles that are actually notable. There are many articles about albums which could be deleted under the proposed criterion but are clearly notable (WP:MUSIC#Albums says albums by notable artists are notable). The collateral damage is not acceptable, though the thought behind the proposition is good. Cheers. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 13:54, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, WP:MUSIC#Albums says albums by notable artists may be notable. This does not imply automatic notability. :) --Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Eh, close enough for the purposes of A7. If there's even a chance, and in this case there's usually a pretty good chance, of notability we shouldn't be speedying it. lifebaka++ 23:14, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

obvious hoax

Is this no longer a speedy category?? Cheers Dloh cierekim 22:47, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There have been numerous discussions on this. The most recent I can find is Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_29#Hoax_confusions.2C_part_325.2C879, when hoax was removed from G3.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:04, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Wow. Just 4 months behind the times. I think the change is for the best, though. One person's hoax is another's obscure fact. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 23:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
WP:CSD#G3 still "includes blatant and obvious misinformation." :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
There wasn't supposed to be a functional change in removing that; terribly obvious hoaxes are still covered by "blatant and obvious misinformation". People were just misusing the criterion, so it was clairified a bit. Feel free to G3 articles like "John Doe is God!" Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
The point of the previous discussion was that pages that obvious are already speedy-deletable as vandalism. The "hoax" wording was creating too much confusion and resulting in too many false positives - speedy-deletions of articles about hoaxes or sometimes even true though very obscure or poorly written articles. If it's not patently obvious vandalism, suspected hoaxes really need to go to AfD. The {{hoax}} tag is sufficient to warn our readers during the discussion period. Rossami (talk) 03:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

P2 reworded

Right now, P2 is really confusing. It says right now:

Underpopulated portal. Any portal based on a topic for which there is not a non-stub header article and at least three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to present under the title of that portal.

I propose an uncontroversial rewording to:

Underpopulated portal. Any portal based on a topic for which there is a stub header article and less than three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to present under the title of that portal.

It doesn't change the meaning of the deletion criteria, and it makes it less confusing. Pie is good (Apple is the best) 20:55, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a good change; removal of the double-negative makes the criterion easier to read and apply. I would offer only one revision in wording: change "and" to "or", so that the criterion continues to apply if either of the two provisions (stub header article, less than three non-stub articles) is not met. –Black Falcon (Talk) 21:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Incorporating Black Falcon's suggestion, with a couple minor clarity/grammatical tweaks:

Underpopulated portal. Any portal based on a topic for which there is only a stub header article or fewer than three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to present under the title of that portal.

Makes it more clear what the problem with stub header is. I think. Darkspots (talk) 21:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

No objections have been made, so I've made the change. Darkspots (talk) 19:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Why doesn't G4 include previous CSDs?

Another editor (properly) removed a G4 tag that I put on an article. I say "properly" because the article was previously deleted under CSD A7. I didn't realize until now that previously CSD'd articles are specifically ineligible under G4. Why is this? I think an editor constantly recreating the same spam/attack/bio article would be exactly what we would want to speedy most quickly. Now, I realize that the repeat article can be nominated under the same category as the original, but there's no way to note the previous incarnations in the CSD templates, and leaving notices on the article talk just seems like a pain. Is this an old argument that I should go search (gah!) the archives for? Livitup (talk) 23:06, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, besides that the previous speedy could still apply, the CSD are only supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions. So, recreating the article could be viewed as contesting that. Sorta' like PRODs, where an article can only be PRODed once (except you can A7 an article ad infinitum, forgive my bad Latin spelling). When admins delete an article they get a look at the deletion log for it, so we know when an article's been deleted before and can make decisions to salt/etc. accordingly. Hope that helps. Cheers! lifebaka++ 23:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
It's probably best to just go ahead and AFD rather than tagging it as a G4. I recently deleted an article that was speedied a total of three times. Last I looked, the AFD had not yet gained a consensus. It would probably be better to AFD a repost that isn't total gibberish than to be overturned at WP:DRV. Cheers, Dlohcierekim 23:35, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

- :As you note, articles recreated after being speedied should still qualify under the same criteria they were intially deleted for. G4 is for articles that don't fall into those categories. Say, a well written, sourced article about a subject with marginal notability that was determined by community consensus at AfD to fall short of our notability guideline. Something like that wouldn't normally qualify for speedy deletion, but because we already have community consensus on the amtter, the deletion is uncontroversial and therefore can be a speedy. As far as dealing with an editor who is continually recreating a speedy deleted article, that's disruptive so just warn them (uw-create1, etc.) and block if necessary. -Chunky Rice (talk) 23:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

That does not always work out. Sometimes we delete things that should not be deleted. Dlohcierekim 23:41, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
What does not always work out? -Chunky Rice (talk) 00:23, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

If it qualifies for a CSD then just tag it for that. Articles can be improved when re-created... just nominating it blindly because it was deleted once is a terrible idea. You still need to identify whether the new version meets a CSD, and thus, figure out what that CSD is. --Rividian (talk) 00:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Why this doesn't work is shown by simple examples: notable article created as copyvio deleted under CSD G12 three times; new well done version is created that is not a copyvio. Likewise: one sentence article is deleted under A1, A3 or A7; new beautiful 25k article created. Under either scenario, if G4 applied, those new articles would be speedy candidates.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:24, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Umm no, because both of your examples would fail the following test from G4: provided the copy is substantially identical to the deleted version and that any changes in the recreated page do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted. Regardless, I understand the reasoning, and while I think it's a little pendantic, I'll roll with the flow. Thanks. Livitup (talk) 12:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I point out that persistent re-creation of unacceptable articles, especially if they are copyvio, is quite sufficient for a warning on the user page, and, if it becomes, disruptive, for blocking the user. I've given a number of such warnings--usually if created a third time, or a second in case they are outrageously unacceptable.DGG (talk) 15:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Salting is also an option to deal with articles that are recreated with material that meets the speedy deletion criteria. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:50, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Not to side-track, but salting should be done after warning/blocking a single offender proves ineffective. When a non-admin comes across a salted page, it can be an ordeal to do anything... you have to find an admin to show you the deleted content, verify your new content is okay, move it there and unprotect, etc. I suspect a lot of times just warning/blocking will solve the problem without inconveniencing other people in the future. --136.165.78.70 (talk) 20:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I've found in a few cases that a brief period of salt sometimes does the trick and is useful without blocking potentially useful content permanently. For instance, if someone insists on re-re-re-recreating an article four times in a single day for a non-notable musician or athlete (just as an example) where there's a chance that that person will be notable in the future, even a week's worth of salt can save a week's worth of trouble without blocking anyone from creating an article in the future if/when their third album goes platinum, or they join the major leagues. Or whatever. The brief salting usually discourages the editor without long-term effects. I try to keep salting periods short for people with common names because perma-blocking the Jane Smith who's a non-notable Grade 7 student will inconvenience people writing about the Jane Smith who wins high political office. Accounting4Taste:talk 17:51, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
A4T, I think you and the IP user are saying the same thing. In your example of the person who re-re-re-recreates an article, they've probably been warned by the 2nd or 3rd time. (At the very least, there are doubts about their clue level if they get notified 4 times their article is being speedied and they don't ask someone why that's happening. *grin*) --Fabrictramp | talk to me 18:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
It just seems unlikely 4 unrelated accounts are going to create an article on Jane Smith in a row one day... more likely it's one account, that can be blocked for abuse. Blocks can expire automatically, salting can't... so I'd prefer the method that doesn't rely on an admin remembering a week or two later. Just seems more reliable. --Rividian (talk) 18:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, salting can be temporary. It is doable just by putting on page protection with an expiry date after deleting the article. Here is the last one that I did. GRBerry 18:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

[exdent for convenience] Yes, I don't doubt I was treading ground already covered; I was just trying to give a helpful hint from my own experience, because it seems that not everyone knew that it's easy to salt a title for a week (as per User:GRBerry's note immediately above). And I may have added confusion by using the phrase "perma-blocking" with respect to Jane Smith when I really meant "perma-salting". But I certainly agree with User:Rividian -- if I had to rely on my memory to remove a block or a salt, well, I just wouldn't, because even if it's written in big red letters in front of my nose on my calendar, I still miss doctor's appointments <sigh>. I'm grateful for the opportunity to do these things in a time-limited way. Accounting4Taste:talk 18:31, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

New criteria "non sequitur"

Yesterday, I came across an article titled "Edit Grammar". The content looked like someone's resume. I speedied it as a "test page". I've seen a few more of those in Special:NewPages but not sure just how often it happens though. Still, it got me thinking of a possible new speedy criteria, "non sequitur". This would be for articles with a title like "Apples" but the author is writing about "Oranges". This would only be for situations where the article couldn't be moved to a more relevant title like my resume example or if an article already exists on what is actually being written about.

Opinions? --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't that fall under the criteria of patent nonsense (G1) most of the time? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 01:30, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes it is and I have seen a few but I've also seen a few that weren't. One was called "Make a profile" but was obviously about an individual. That one however was "movable". I think what actually happened with it was the author made a new article with the correct title and requested the old one be deleted. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't see a real need for a new criterion here. Use A1, A3, A7, G1, or G2. It's not always about having the criteria fit perfectly. Sometimes 'ish' is good enough. Or, if you're really anal about it, just use a custom deletion summary; e.g., "article made no sense" or whatever. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
There's always G3, don't forget that one. lifebaka++ 11:42, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
(Not arguing the proposal, just replying) So far most of the "non sequiturs" I've seen were most likely good faith creations. to use G3 for anything but obvious vandalism is a bit bitey. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

You find some bizarre stuff doing cleanup. But these sorts of disasters are relatively rare... I don't really think we need a specific rule for something that happens maybe once a day if that. The key thing about the article and general CSDs is that they're supposed to arise frequently, which in Wikipedia article creation terms means several times an hour. --Rividian (talk) 13:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

There's also always the option of moving it to the creator's userspace, and telling them they created it under a bad title, and to move it wherever it goes. If it's a duplicate page, duplicates have traditionally been deletable as uncontroversial housekeeping. --Rividian (talk) 13:25, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

When the article is titled "Apples" and the editor is writing about "oranges", this seems to be an editing issue, not a deletion issue. Either redirect to an exising title, or change it to a stub about apples. If neither is possible, it's probably something that needs a prod or AfD, not a speedy.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

IAR as a CSD criterion

What are your thoughts? I turned down the chance to do that. Right now the thing looks like it's heading toward a snowball. Dlohcierekim 22:11, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

In this particular case, it was clear the article wasn't appropriate for wikipedia. Per WP:SNOW,
"If an issue doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell of getting an unexpected outcome from a certain process, then there is no need to run it through that process."
— Carl (CBM · talk) 22:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't we not need it? I mean, ignoring the speedy rules, you can speedy whatever you like, so... Kinda' redundant to allow it here when IAR already allows it. lifebaka++ 23:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
It probably wouldn't be a bad idea if admins actually undeleted promptly and listed if someone had a meaningful objection. But it seems like the admins who make these deletions tend to ignore complaints or say something like "I'm not going to do process for the sake of process, file a RFC if you don't like it, bye". --Rividian (talk) 00:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Process for the sake of process is unproductive. When an admin speedys something, having it restored so that three people at an unwatched AfD can say "delete" (so that they can show that they participate in deletion discussions when they run for adminship in the future) is a waste of time. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about... someone wants a shot at improving the article but an admin who can predict the future tells them it's a waste of time. IAR is not about steamrolling over objectors. This attitude sends people who actually write content fleeing in terror, and at best the clairvoyant admins only have a 50/50 grasp of how the AFD will actually turn out anyway. I'm all for IAR deletions if they truly avoid an unneeded process, but if someone comes along and explains in good faith why the process was needed, you should listen to them, not tell them you know more than they do. --Rividian (talk) 12:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
IAR and SNOW are extraordinarily dangerous when applied to the speedy-deletion criteria. History has shown us that, outside a few narrow situations, we are not very good as individual editors at determining what is and is not repairable or what is and is not appropriate for the encyclopedia. The XfD process was designed to encourage the kind of community debate and discussion that builds consensus around those questions - to get the multiple sets of eyes on the page that leads to solid decisions.
Speedy-deletions were created purely to remove some of the backlog from XfD (then called VfD). They were a way to define a limited set of pages where consensus had already been demonstrated that pages of this time were inappropriate and where the classification of a page into that category was so obvious that it could be reliably made by any single pair of eyes.
This is a case where process is important. Speedy-deletions remain highly controversial and adversarial. Holding ourselves strictly accountable to the process is important to gaining and retaining the trust we want new editors to have in the process and in our standards. The costs of a 5-day discussion and a couple of extra edits in the XfD discussion are far outweighed by the benefits to the project from transparency in our processes and decisions. So, no, IAR should never become a speedy-criterion. Rossami (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I recently applied WP:IAR to reject a speedy delete request, see the diff and the requester talk page message. In the particular case of WP:COPYVIO, my view was that if there's no conceivable possibility a copyright owner would object, the fact that a couple of sentences on a notable article happen to be identical to a couple of sentences a website doesn't serve the purpose of WP:COPYVIO, protecting the Foundation from liability and being respectful of others' property. That is, WP:IAR means that speedy-delete should be turned down if it doesn't serve the underlying policy and project purposes, and shouldn't be done mechanically. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 22:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
That was a bad reason for declining the speedy. We delete copyvio articles because such articles can not be released under GFDL. That said, facts are not copy rightable, so this article is too lacking in content to be considered a copyvio. Taemyr (talk) 02:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, a single sentence or even an "apt phrase" is a copyright violation if it's not attributed. As WP:FU notes, "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. Copyrighted text must be attributed and used verbatim." Libertas Academia is under a "Creative Commons Attribution" license, though, so all that's needed to fix that is attribution. I don't believe we should IAR if it leads to ignoring copyright violations or BLP issues. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC) (I want to add as a belated PS, in case this note gives the wrong impression: I don't think it was bad to decline that particular G12. We're talking a single sentence, which could have been removed without damage to the article. And the source has a license compliant with GFDL. This does not meet the criterion. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 03:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC))
A copyright violation is a violation even if we properly attribute statements. There is just nothing in the article that I can conceive as being copyrightable material. Taemyr (talk) 02:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Attribution is not irrelevant. :) For starters, Creative Commons Attribution license works like GFDL--anybody can reproduce the material anywhere, commercially or otherwise, but credit must be given. The contributors continue to own copyright to their work, though the license they allow is very generous. Attribution is essential. But even barring creative commons, attribution is essential to comply with fair use. An entire sentence from that article duplicated a sentence at the source. Without attribution, that's a copyright violation. Again, as WP:FU notes, "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. Copyrighted text must be attributed and used verbatim." (emphasis added) Wikipedia cannot copy sentences from other sources without quotation marks and attribution, along with the other requirements of FU. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:48, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, if the license demands attribution, or if fair use is being considered attribution is a point. Neither of these two applies here though. Taemyr (talk) 02:56, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
How do you figure? A copied sentence is a copied sentence. The sentence at Clinical medicine: oncology (now attributed) duplicated word for word the sentence at the source. Facts are not copyrightable, but the creative organization of text into "apt phrases" and sentences is. Why do you see an exception in this case? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I may be totally out on thin ice here. However according to our article United States copyright law, in Feist v. Rural the supreme court ruled that a non-selective collection of facts ordered in a non-creative way is not subject to copyright protection. I would judge the sentence in question to fall under that concern. Ultimately it does not matter in this case as attribution is wanted for verification as well. So this would in any case go under fair use. Taemyr (talk) 03:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, that was with regards to a telephone directly listed in alphabetical order.:) As the court indicated there, "the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matter how crude, humble or obvious' it might be." Directories, listings of ingredients and whatnot are not copyrightable, but a sentence is not a non-selective collection of facts, but a creative expression, even if not the most poetic creative expression in the world. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:48, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
  • <humorous way of making a point> Criteria for speedy deletion are rules. IAR is short for "ignore all rules". IAR can not be a speedy deletion rule; that would be too much of a contradiction. </humorous way of making a point> GRBerry 23:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose: SNOW is too subjective by far to ever be a CSD; even well-intentioned editors frequently fail to predict the actual outcome of a hypothetical deletion discussion. I don't reject SNOW itself, but a fundameantal part of SNOW as it stands today is that the person who deletes an article under WP:SNOW is taking responsibility for that action, and has no policy to hide behind, if it turns out to be an ill-informed action; this makes them cautious. Dcoetzee 04:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

IPs removing speedy

Over the past week or so, I've noticed a jump in the number of occasions where a speedy template is immediately removed by an IP editor. In some cases, there is a probability that the article creator has logged out to remove the template, and is trying to get round the rules.

Clearly we can use WP:SSP and WP:RFCU, but given that this is speedy deletion, we are currently a hostage to fortune, and in a position where any article creator can derail deletion of an article by gaming the system.

I am starting to wonder if we should forbid removal of speedy tags by IPs. Mayalld (talk) 20:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, if a CSD tag is removed by anyone with no reason given, I don't think you'll get a lot of flack for re-adding it. At the same time, if an IP removes the tag and gives a valid reason, that should be respected too. It's really best to just wait for an admin or experienced CSDer though... most of them have a good grasp of policy (some of course, don't). Ideally, the quality of the explanation rather than the status of the remover should be the key thing here. --Rividian (talk) 21:51, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Of course, gaming the system is always possible if someone is determined enough. I take the speedy tag removal as an indication that the deletion is not uncontroversial and it probably needs to do to AfD. (That said, I'm not overly fond of IP edits in general, but it's a necessary evil.)--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I am an experienced CSDer! AFAICS policy doesn't allow me to revert the removal by an IP as it would if the account of the author removed it.
The CSD process recognises that the author of an article is very likely to oppose its deletion, and consequently doesn't permit the author to remove the tag, merely to add {{hangon}}. If the deletion is only opposed by the creator, is AfD needed?
Now clearly, any article creator can create a sock to remove the tag, but why bother if you can just log out, and remove as an IP?!
The problem I see is that when caught, people will just claim that it was an innocent mistake, whereas if such gaming the system required registering a sock account, it would be exposed.
Perhaps the answer is that where an IP removes a template, this can be reverted to {{hangon}} if the IP is reported to WP:SSP
Mayalld (talk) 07:18, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
What if the IP provides a good reason though? Your hard rule would seem to dictate we investigate an IP as a sockpuppet just because it happened along and removed an invalid CSD. --Rividian (talk) 13:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
If it's still a valid CSD, then just re-tag it. I don't think there's a need for another rule here. Besides, how would we enforce it? Automatic semi-protection of CSD's?--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 13:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
In the normal situation where there is just removal and no explanation, re-tag and warn with {{uw-speedy1}} and later in the series if necessary ({{uw-speedy2}}, etc.) We're talking here about the extreme exception to the rule. In all my time of new pages patrol and later CAT:CSD patrol (many thousands of articles), I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times an IP removed a speedy and posted something sounding mildly legitimate anywhere regarding the removal. Taking an IP to SSP over a speedy removal is a waste of your time and of those who review there.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
If the IP legitimately believes the CSD doesn't apply, they should at least say in their edit summary that that's why they're deleting it. Ideally their justification would be more than that, but that would at least allow a discussion to be opened about it on their talk page. Dcoetzee 22:12, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
CSD isn't like WP:PROD, removing the tag really doesn't mean anything. If it meets the criteria, it meets the criteria. The presence/absence of a tag really doesn't mean anything, its just for notification and categorization. Mr.Z-man 00:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Prodding user pages

I've proposed that user and user talk pages should not be eligible for PROD. See WT:PROD#Prodding user pages -- Ned Scott 06:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion race

Please take a look here where there's a user who is engaged in a race to delete new articles as soon as possible (typically within seconds of creation). This policy might need an update to clarify that "speedy deletion" does not mean deletion of new articles as quickly as possible. Socrates2008 (Talk) 14:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Likely just a talk with the user will do. I'll go leave him one. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarification on G8 and namespaces

My understanding of G8 has been that it applies in multiple namespaces (being, after all, a general criterion), but I recently saw a user noting that its summary reads: "Talk pages whose corresponding article does not exist." It goes on to mention user talk pages, of course, so the waters are a bit muddy. Should "article" be replaced with "page," here, or is a more nuanced clarification required? – Luna Santin (talk) 03:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"Page" probably would be better for the bolded portion. -- Ned Scott 05:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
I've made the change. Since it is a "general" criterion, G8 has traditionally been interpreted as applying to talk pages in all namespaces (except, as noted, user talk pages and some image talk pages). –Black Falcon (Talk) 05:17, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal - new Image criterion: no permission

I've been spending some time at Commons lately, and have come to admire their npd tag that works alongside their {{nsd}} and {{nld}} and looks a bit like this (trimmed of the multi-lingual template we don't have/need here):

Warning sign This image is missing permission. It has an author and source, but there is no proof that the author agreed to license the file under the given license. Please provide a link to a webpage with an explicit permission. If you obtained such a permission via email, please forward it to permissions-commons@wikimedia.org and reference it at upload.
Unless the permission is given, the image can be speedy deleted seven days after this template was added and the uploader was notified: ({{{day}}} {{{month}}} 2024).

Admins: With the tool CheckUsage you can check the usage of this file in other Wikimedia projects.

When applying this tag:
Use {{subst:npd}}, to categorize by tag date.
Also, use

{{subst:image permission|Image:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 30}} ~~~~

to notify the uploader.

I think the text of the template speaks for itself, and think it would be a handy way to take some load off WP:PUI. Thoughts? --Rlandmann (talk) 05:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'm a fan of this. While {{nld}} and {{nsd}} are much more common, there are enough cases of people uploading works by others with the claim that permission is in the mail that it's useful not only for handling those cases where permission is obviously not forthcoming (e.g. movie posters and the like), but also those cases that have been tagged for weeks or months with {{OTRS pending}}. It also helps take care of those cases where someone uploads images obviously taken by someone else--to give an example, I have a case at Commons where an art teacher has been uploading images by his student and his son under a license claiming them as his own work.
So, would anyone object if I threw together a template that we can use as a basis for discussion? Since this is not technically a speedy deletion, we might also want to bring it up at WT:PUI. --jonny-mt 05:40, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. Actually, it is a speedy in the same sense that CSD:I4 is - that if an image has had this tag on it for seven days and the uploader was notified at the time, it can be deleted without any further ado. I already put a note on the PUI talk page, pointing to this discussion.
Maybe instead of a whole new criterion, we could just expand I4 to encompass npd's as well? --Rlandmann (talk) 06:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I like it very much. It's basically what I've been doing a lot of at WP:CP with images anyway. It's clear on the problem and the solution. I would, however, tweak the template to include a link to WP:Permission, since it may help uploaders figure out how to get such a letter...and what it needs to say. Whether this is a new criterion or an expansion of I4, I think it's a good idea! :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. I often use I9 if the uploaders licensing and the source disagree, but in many cases it seems a bit harsh. This will cover the not so blatant cases well. Kevin (talk) 22:39, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
When I come across an image like this, I just strike out the license tag and put {{nld}} and a comment that the specified license seems to be incorrect. Do we really need a new CSD to cover this? --Carnildo (talk) 04:47, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed wording

11. No evidence of permission more than seven days after the uploader has been notified. Images where a source and license have been provided, but there is no evidence (via the original source or via OTRS) that a third-party copyright holder or publisher has agreed to release the work under the specified licence, provided one of following conditions is met:

  • the uploader has identified a third party (even if an organisation that the uploader claims to belong to) as the creator or publisher of the image or
  • the uploader has identified a previously self-published source as the source of the image (eg. a private website)

Images where the uploader has not identified a source should be treated under CSD:I9 (where a source has been discovered) or CSD:I4 (where one has not) instead. Images where the uploader has identified a patently implausible source (eg. website of large entertainment corporation) should be treated under CSD:I9. Images where the uploader has not identified a license should be treated under CSD:I4. Cases where it is unclear whether the uploader is identifying him/herself or a third party as the creator of the image should be discussed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images.
Rlandmann (talk) 01:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed templates

Rlandmann (talk) 01:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm still in support of this. :)
Wording question: "including an organisation that the uploader claims to belong to." This seems to me that it might be read as a requirement. What about a minor change like:
  • the uploader has identified a third party (even if an organisation that the uploader claims to belong to) as the creator or publisher of the image or
Not sure if "even if" would be final wording. I do agree with you that whatever wording reached needs to make it clear that it doesn't matter whether the uploader claims to be a member of the organization if verification is not provided, but I suspect that if it can be read as a requirement, there will be people who will read it as a requirement. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh, not sure where you've publicized this for wider review, but might I suggest WP:MCQ might be a good place? Seems to me some of the responders there may have insight into the matter. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - that's a great tweak to the wording, and while I can see that you knew what I meant, I take your point that others wouldn't necessarily! Since this discussion is so small so far, I've gone ahead and made the change. Once (if?) more people join in, I'll freeze it.
So far, I've only brought this up here and at PUI. Thanks for suggesting MCQ as well - I'll head over there now :) --Rlandmann (talk) 20:54, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment: I like the idea in general, but I'm not sure if the text needs to be as long and complex as the proposal above. I'm not quite getting the motivation of the distinction between the two sub-points ("organisation" versus "self-published source"). Do we need that? I'd think of something simpler:

No evidence of permission: If an uploader has specified a license and has named a third party as the source/copyright holder without providing evidence that this third party has in fact agreed, the item may be deleted seven days after notification of the uploader. Acceptable evidence of licensing normally consists of either a link to the source website where the license is stated, or a statement by the copyright holder e-mailed or forwarded to permissions-en@wikimedia.org. Such a confirmation is also required if the source is an organisation which the uploader claims to represent, or a web publication which the uploader claims to be their own.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:26, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The first subpoint catches instances where an uploader identifies a third party as the owner of the image ("Photo taken by Fred Smith who said I could upload it"), even when this third party is an entity that they may claim to belong to ("Photo from the Pigeon-Breeder's Society of Outer Lilliput website") - your paraphrase of this above is exactly right.
The second criterion catches a different situation - where the uploader identifies themselves as the source of the image, but where they also link to self-publication elsewhere (a personal website, blog, myspace page etc - "Photo taken by me - www.myspace.com/somebody) and there's no free license visible at that site.
Maybe to clarify this, the second subpoint above should say "the uploader has identified their own previously self-published source as the source of the image (eg. a private website). Better? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:51, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Just re-reading my original wording - I can see how I completely failed to make that distinction! Great catch - thank you! :) --Rlandmann (talk) 21:53, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Ah, okay, got it. I'm not sure if we always need to be so distrustful where uploaders identify themselves as owners of some private website, but I must admit I've seen cases where I have felt I had to insist on such a confirmation too. I've added a phrase to my proposal above, do you think that covers it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Elegant and succinct! I'd certainly endorse that version over my own bureaucrat-ese attempt.
As a procedural note, I'd still like to emphasise that it is the uploader who has identified the third-party source, not a copyvio patroller ("I just found this same picture on a geocities site") - this can probably be addressed just by bolding "uploader" in the first sentence if others agree that this emphasis is helpful
There are probably some instances where it would indeed be very petty to try and invoke this criterion for a private website - if the uploader here is User:TimCitizen837 and the private website is at geocities/timcitizen837 and titled "Tim's Holiday Snaps of Outer Lilliput". But it seems rarely that clear-cut; the images this criterion is mainly aimed at are those where the uploader, User:Coolguy71, sources them to "his" site cacti-of-lilliput.com, where we really have nothing to link the uploader and the site together. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
I like the rewording as well. And I'm for bolding or otherwise emphasizing uploader, because, again, if it can be misinterpreted, it will be. Best to be clear. :) (Alternatively, I suppose, we could expand at Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Explanations.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
This has been widely publicized with no opposition. Is it time to implement? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
In fairness, it hasn't attracted much comment at all, so it's hard to know what people's thoughts really are (Warnock's Dilemma). I guess it's time for the bold part of the BRD cycle. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Sorry about that! From reading through this a little bit more, I think we may need to tighten up some of the wording to make sure that I9 speedies aren't kept around for a week just because the source is given as a third-party website. I know this is kind of a gray area, but saying something along the lines of "Instances of obvious copyright violations where the uploader would have no reasonable expectation of obtaining permission (e.g. major studio movie posters, TV screenshots) should be speedily deleted per Criteria I9" would save a lot of hassle.

Putting on my still-fairly-brand-new Commons admin hat, the npd criteria seems to be primarily used as a control on images uploaded with {{OTRS pending}} and a way of allowing a little breathing room for questionable cases. I'll go ahead and leave a message for User:ShakataGaNai, a Commons admin who deals with this kind of stuff on a regular basis, and see if he wouldn't mind providing some input on how best to word the criteria. --jonny-mt 01:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I haz been paged by name. I can tell you what we generally do on Commons. Our NPD template is used most of the time an image sites a 3rd party site (mainly when the link is to somewhere smaller, more personal). Even if User:JimBobSmith29 uploads an image from geocities.com/JimBobSmith29, it might not be the same person. Alot of times we find that vandals will create accounts specifically because they think we're stupid enough to believe that same username = same person. Additionally we also use it when we believe the user didn't take the picture (For example: Professional looking shots). Yes, this can lead to Copyvio's sitting around for 7 days, but if it is possible - we give them a chance (AGF and all). Sometimes the users even respond to tell us "Oh we found it on X site as a PR image, can't we use that?", we explain it and delete it. Additionally if they make the text claim to permission somehow on the image, I'll leave an NPD (Mainly so they'll get the "how to get your permission to OTRS" text). No, we do not tag this on images that OBVIOUS copyvio's (IE: Movies, TV, "Hey I found this on X Site"). If someone says "Found it on Google" or gives a URL of a big companies website, we assume copyvio.
I hope this answers most of your questions. If you have anything else about "How commons does it" feel free to poke at me (I'll try to remember to come back and check this page again). --ShakataGaNai ^_^ 02:49, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Would anyone here object to me adding jonny-mt's disclaimer to the version that now appears on the CSD page? --Rlandmann (talk) 09:51, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
None from me. I think it's a good clarification. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:28, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

"Proposed" tag

I think it's time to remove this. It's been 8 days since it was tagged. The proposal was widely publicized when it was made. It seems to have settled. Are all the templates for implementation in place? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal: I11 (or I12 maybe):

Okay, I think its quite stupid that if someone uploads images for a article that gets speedy deleted, the images the author uploaded for it don't get speedy deleted too. So this is why, I'd like to propose this:

Proposed Wording

12. An image that was uploaded for an article speedily deleted under criteria A7, orphaned for 7 days, with no possible use elsewhere on another page or Wikimedia project.

If the image can be used "elsewhere" (defined as any other Wikipedia page, or placed on the Commons), its not defined as "possible encyclopedic use elsewhere". If the image is non-free, it will automatically qualify under this criteria. ViperSnake151 00:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

If the image is non-free, then it's already speedy-deletable under I5; images uploaded to support blatant advertising are already speedy-deletable under G11 (the G-series applies across all namespaces). So I guess this proposed criterion really only needs to be linked to A7. The main misgiving I have is that a speedy might not be the best way to judge the lack of encyclopedic value of an image. Consider that the image that someone uploads of their completely un-notable band might still be useful to illustrate an article on an instrument, fashion, hairstyle, musical genre etc. Do you have examples of some images that you think might fall under this proposed criterion? --Rlandmann (talk) 00:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
Right. if the image is free, it may be possible to use it elsewhere. Of course, such images with possible general usefulness belong on commons, and they really should be moved there. DGG (talk) 03:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's why it says no possible encyclopedic use elsewhere.. If it can still be used somewhere on a Wikimedia project, it is not subjected to this criteria. ViperSnake151 03:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not too sure I like the idea of a single admin making a binding judgment call about something as nebulous as the potential encyclopedic usefulness of an image--that's why we have WP:IFD. As Rlandmann says above, we regularly delete images under G11 and the like, so it seems that those should be sufficient. --jonny-mt 16:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. That would finally put an end to images for user pages violating WP:MYSPACE. Admiral Norton (talk) 13:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, made a little "adjustment", new wording time. I added a 7 day rule that will allow us to either find a place for it to go, or be uploaded to the Commons if possible. ViperSnake151 17:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
No real need for this, we usually delete these under G6 if they aren't copyvios, non-free, or vandalism. Stifle (talk) 16:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:CSD#R3 question

I'm sure this is in one of the two dozen archives of this page, but hopefully someone just knows and can save me the trouble: why does CSD#R3 specify only recently created redirects from implausible typos qualify? What's wrong with nuking an old implausible typo? --barneca (talk) 20:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

They may have been linked-to from external websites, and we have no way of checking for this. Link rot is a bad enough problem on-wiki; we don't need to make the global problem worse by breaking incoming links as well :D Happy‑melon 20:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
. . .And they can always be nuked after discussion at RfD if they are truly implausible. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, yes, I know, but the effort involved in such a discussion seldom outweighs the benefit in getting rid of a useless redirect. If the only reason was it's implausibility, I mean. Thanks, Happy-melon, that's what I was looking for. Not sure I agree with it 100%, but it's a reasonable, understandable rationale, and that's what I was looking for. --barneca (talk) 21:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The real problem is that as individual editors, our own history has shown that we are not very good at identifying "useless" redirects. You and I (probably) navigate through Wikipedia differently. Redirects that seem perfectly obvious to you may be completely impenetrable to me. Certainly, the older editors/readers navigated differently - they didn't have the same tools we have now. This CSD criterion is less of a problem for redirects created in the past few minutes or days but redirects that have been around for a while often have some logic in their history - logic that's not obvious to a single admin. Far too many of the pages nominated at RfD as "implausible redirects" get regularly kept for the proposed expansion to be a useful speedy-deletion criterion. Rossami (talk) 04:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Criteria proposal

Hi. How about CSD for POV forks? Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 17:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, deciding whether or not something is a POV fork is a bit too subjective for CSD. And are there really so many POV forks that they can't be dealt with through other processes (PROD, AFD)? Hut 8.5 17:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
I also think that it would be way to easy to abuse. --76.69.165.93 (talk) 17:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Hi. No, I meant POV forks as subpages of the main article, not POV articles and pages in general. Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 23:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
"A content fork for an article in the main namespace as a subpage of its subject's article (such as John Doe/Criticism of John Doe for example). Note, that this excludes subpages made for the rewriting of an article due to BLP or copyright concerns." ViperSnake151 23:39, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Fails 1, 3, and possibly 4 at the top of this page. Who uses subpages anymore in the main namespace anyway? Stifle (talk) 09:11, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Asserted notability and masonic Grand Lodges

There's an argument currently going on about Grand Lodges and whether they should be put through speedy deletions under A7, or whether as a matter of course they should go through prods and AfDs. On one side of the argument is that the speedy deletions tags are mostly being applied to articles with little in the way of external independent links and there is no evidence (or assertion) of the idea that they are not three men and an apron. The other side of the argument is that these call themselves Grand Lodges and so within the very title there is an assertion of notability and national coverage. This makes it an unsuitable candidate for a speedy deletion (although in some cases these will fail an AfD).

There is another point about membership of an international grouping, but this is incidental.

Some background is here:


Which view is right?

JASpencer (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

From what I've read in a couple of the AfDs, I can make a good case that these are not uncontroversial deletions. That alone would disqualify them from speedy and prod.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:04, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
If an article has an assertion of notability, even if the assertion is undocumented, or false, then the article is not eligible for A7. If, as a rule, Masonic Grand Lodges are considered notable than an assertion that an organization is one would make an article ineligible for A7. Dsmdgold (talk) 10:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
JASpencer misinterprets what I have been trying to tell him... I am discussing articles that do not contain any assertion of notablility. Take this article for example. As that article stood, I feel it would clearly have qualified for A7 speedy. It contained no assertion as to what makes the org significant or important. (Note: I have subsequently added such an assertion, so it no longer qualifies... but prior to my edits, it did.) Am I missing something here? Blueboar (talk) 14:15, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

G8 and Copyvios

I have noticed a problem with G8 being used to delete talk pages without reading the entries, even on very short pages. This is a problem because the reason that G8 does not apply is often apparent there. It is established procedure for copyvio articles to have a new "clean" article started at Talk:article_name/Temp and normally to note this fact on the main Talk page, then when an admin reviews the copyvio, he or she should generally move the /Temp article back and delete the redirect. This doesn't always happen, however, as there is a lot of misunderstanding of copyvios. Some people incorrectly blank the pages, others delete without reading anything (especially if they come across the article independent of WP:CV). The /Temp article ends up hanging out there, generally unnoticed, while the underlying talk page is deleted under G8. I bring this to everyone's attention here in hopes that someone has some good ideas on how to prevent this, as well as to simply get the word out. If there is discussion of a copyvio please look for a /Temp page.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 03:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, you're only talking about articles tagged with {{copyvio}} and not those tagged as G12s? It would be very rare that a G12 would have /temp page because the only way anyone even knows to make a /temp page is through the copyvio tag. If this is the situation you're talking about, why not add to the copyvio tag, in glaring red, right above where it says "By default, this template blanks...", something like: Note to administrators: If the following link is blue ([[{{PAGENAME}}/Temp]]), a temporary page exists per the instructions given below, which should be assessed and if acceptable, moved to this name after this page is deleted. That would take care of the G8 issue as well, because talk pages are almost always deleted as an afterthought following the article deletion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea. I'll bring that up over at WT:CV WT:CP at the template page. Thanks. (and no, I was not talking about G12 - commonly I create the /Temp on initial review with the intent to come back when the 7 days are up, or I create a shell and ask a subject matter expert to work on it, only to find when I return that either the talk page, the /Temp page or both, have been deleted under G8).--Doug.(talk • contribs) 00:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Great. It just might work. It surprises me that any of this is necessary. I would have thought most of those people who worked on copyvio review would be regulars and would thus check for /temp pages as a matter of course.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
So far as I know, I'm the only volunteer at WP:CP at the moment. I've been working it for about a month? In any event, looking for the bluelink is on my to-do list. Hopefully no accidents have happened. Nobody has informed me of any, anyway. :) Of course, other admins undoubtedly arrive at copyright problems via Category:Possible copyright violations. But looking for that bluelink is in Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins, so it may be that admins who don't look for the bluelink may not be reading the instructions. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, there goes my theory on regulars. I've never worked on the administrative end of copyright problems but you're making a good case for some extra hands.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:49, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
If you get a hankering, come, hang out. We can pretend we have popcorn. :) (Alternatively, I suppose, we could separately and individually actually make popcorn....) It's gotten a bit easier around there since images have been removed to WP:PUI. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC) (P.S. To be more accurate, I should say "are in the process of being removed". There's a lag in actual changeover.)
It wasn't a recent happening, certainly nothing you did Moonriddengirl. I did recently find a /Temp all by it's lonesome recently. The page had been deleted and apparently the /Temp wasn't ready to move back, the Talk page got deleted leaving the /Temp all alone. I don't think that one actually came out of WP:CP, but I've certainly seen them there. I have been out of circulation for a few months but when I'm around I try to make my rounds of all the copyright pages. Lately no time to be a regular anywhere.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 00:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Template for talk pages with archived deletion discussion

I've just created a new template, {{deletion discussion}}, for tagging talk pages that contain archived deletion discussions and should not be speedied per criterion G8. Feel free to tweak it if you can think of any improvements. Comments are also welcome. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've tweaked it slightly, changing "Do not edit the contents of this page." to "Do not edit the contents of the deletion discussion." In most cases, the deletion discussion is only one section out of many on a talk page, so the template should not discourage editing on the whole page. –Black Falcon (Talk) 20:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Can you explain the use of this template? If I delete a page that has some mention of rationale for deletion, should I tag the talk page? What if the real discussion took place at an XfD but there is some mention or questioning of the necessity of the page on the talk page? Is there some discussion somewhere of this as the documentation is pretty lean?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 22:08, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the intent is to put it on the old Talk pages that sometimes hold deletion discussion results from before we started the current process of sub-pages and dedicated discussion pages. The original process was to archive the discussion onto the article's Talk page via copy-paste (if the deletion discussion was even archived at all - things were a lot looser when we first started). Rossami (talk) 14:56, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
That is indeed one of the intended uses. Other potential uses include contested speedies, which may sometimes generate extended talk page discussion, especially in the case of some of the "not-so-speedy" image deletion criteria (see e.g. Category:Talk pages of the deleted replaceable fair use images, which pre-dates this template). Of course, in borderline cases one should exercise some discretion as to whether the discussion is actually substantial enough to be worth retaining. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Misuse

Is there anything that could be done about editors who misuse CSD? I mean someone who persistently nominates articles for deletion which don't meet the criteria? Would it be possible to create a template similar to {{uw-AIV}}? AndrewRT(Talk) 23:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You could try raising it at WP:AIN, and alert the user with {{ANI-notice}}. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
After talking to them first, of course. Politely explaining proper policy to them in personal terms usually goes a long way. I would recommend ANI only if they defiantly keep doing it. — Satori Son 13:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

RfA and CSD

The editors at RfA have a minor proposal for amending the G7 criteria. See this for details.---Balloonman PoppaBalloon 07:02, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Is it best to expand G7 to cover this, or to create a new criterion for such deletions, particularly as it isn't a general criterion, but specific to project space (and should be an entirely new prefix?).?

W1 Procedural deletion of RfA subpages where the RfA was closed as WP:NOTNOW, the user has been editing for less than 3 months, has less than 1000 edits, and agrees to the deletion.

While this could be tacked onto either G7 or U1, I think a new criterion makes more sense. Still, why not something a bit less formulaic, like:
W1 Prematurely closed or withdrawn adminship requests, where the candidate requests deletion and (if the request was created or accepted by the candidate) has not previously applied for adminship.
Yes, this would give everybody one potential "free pass" to have their crashed-and-burned RfA deleted. I'm not convinced this would be a bad thing. I also inserted a parenthetical remark to allow declined RfA nominations to be deleted regardless of past RfAs — this would seem reasonable to me, and I believe we generally already do that for frivolous nominations. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Makes sense to me: NOTNOW-closed RfAs should not really affect a candidate's future hopes, and keeping the old requests around is pointless seeing as very few people will want/need to see them (and admins would be able to see them in the event that this was necessary). However, the prefix W1 is slightly odd; I realise that this is a sort of 'miscellaneous' or 'unclassified' prefix, but wouldn't X1 make more sense? RichardΩ612 Ɣ ɸ 12:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I would like to retain some restriction for new users on this. We don't want long term problematic users to use it to run a 4 day "testing the water RfA" then withdraw and get it deleted, because there is scope for WP:GAME here.
I chose W1 because this is a criterion which specifically affects only the Wikipedia namespace. Mayalld (talk) 15:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we really need a CSD criteria for this... if they want to make that sort of deletion part of RFA, then it's part of RFA, not CSD. I mean, they already delete WP:RFCs in certain situations, there's no CSD for that. Adding a criteria here would just bloat this policy page unnecessarily. --Rividian (talk) 12:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this needs a CSD at all; it's not frequent enough to be a problem, it's done by obvious consensus and it lives in a strictly administrative namespace. If anyone complains enough that you'd need to quote a rule to justify the deletion then the page should not have been deleted. — Coren (talk) 12:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I do think that it is useful to record the criterion in CSD, even if it does just happen as a part of the RfA process. It allows for sensible recording of the reason for deletion in the logs. Mayalld (talk) 15:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
You could just as easily point to the RFA instructions. A hypothetical CSD criteria W1 would just link there anyway. --Rividian (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
How so?
  • As far as I can see, there is a consensus at WT:RFA and WP:VPP that such RFAs should be deleted (point 2)
  • These RFAs do arise with a reasonable degree of frequency, and certainly more often than some criteria that we already have. That coupled with a total lack of subjectivity suggests that this is worth doing (point )
  • The criterion is entirely objective (point 1)
Mayalld (talk) 13:44, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Support provided that it's limited to new users. If a user with 15,000 edits applies for adminship for the first time and then bails out as he or she is about to crash and burn, that will be relevant when he or she tries again at 20,000. RFA can do this on it's own but it is probably worthwhile to document the criterion here so others know it exists. However, it should be simply a link to RFA and should be controlled by the consensus indicated by the participants there. The only editors who are going to really care about the details already frequent RFA. G7 should not apply unless there are no comments or !votes by others. W1 makes more sense than X1, X is a placeholder as in "XfD".--Doug.(talk • contribs) 00:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I8 clarification

Criterion I8 is written to apply only when "[a]ll image revisions ... have been transferred to Commons as revisions of the Commons copy and properly marked as such" and "[a]ll information on the image description page is present on the Commons image description page, including the complete upload history with links to the uploader's local user pages".

However, is that strictly necessary for a case such as Image:Iblinchurch.jpg? The photo was taken by Almog, uploaded to the Hebrew Wikipedia by Almog, uploaded to en.wikipedia by another user (who credited Almog), and then uploaded to Commons by Almog. Since the photo was taken, originally uploaded to a Wikimedia project, and finally uploaded to Commons by Almog, is there really any need to transfer the history of the local version of the image prior to deleting it? –Black Falcon (Talk) 04:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Not especially. I don't think anyone will get too bothered about the image being deleted in those circumstances. Stifle (talk) 09:01, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
OK, I've deleted the image and briefly noted the circumstances in the deletion summary. Thanks, –Black Falcon (Talk) 20:21, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Poorly sourced Allsvenska players

There are a large groupe of players in the top swedish football/soocer league, aka Allsvenskan, that are without any form of source regarding theire playing career, have taged them with propiet signs telling people to source the articel, however this havent happend, now wonder if they reach the criteria for speedy deletions ? --> Halmstad, Talk to me 20:28, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I would think not. Unsourced is simply not amoung the CSD criteria. And being pro soccer league players is definitely an assertion of notability. Sorry. - TexasAndroid (talk) 20:48, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
It sounds like a good question to ask in an AfD nomination, though. I recommend picking one or two good examples and mentioning in your nomination that you would like to make it a test case for x very similar articles. If the community concludes that your test cases should be deleted, then you can make a mass-nomination and reference the prior decision. Rossami (talk) 22:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

[personal attack by Michael Hardy redacted]

This discussion isn't helpful. Mistakes were made, let's move on. Stifle (talk) 09:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, and I think the fact that you're wrong about this point is of considerable importance. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:35, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

An anonymous vandal comes along and blanks a page. It was a biographical article. So then our heroic ever-vigilant speedy-deletion people come along, tag it for speedy deletion because it doesn't (after the vandalism) assert notability. And it gets deleted accordingly.

True story.

I restored the edit history.

I hope you're all proud of this. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

What's your point? Mistakes happen... they can be fixed and apparently were in this case. Do you somehow think a mere policy page was responsible for a tagger/admin acting too hastily? No policy can ever be written such that someone, somewhere, won't make a mistake. But Wikipedia is built so that all mistakes can be undone. Guilt tripping people over already fixed oversights seems unneeded. --Rividian (talk) 06:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I have suggested on this page such things as:

  • Before speedy deletion, one should look at what articles link to the article in question. Sometimes that sheds light and suggests further edits that would make speedy deletion inappropriate.
  • Before speedy deletion, one should Google the topic to see if that indicates anything about notability. Sometimes it does.
  • One could look at category tags; that sometimes tell one where to look for further information about notability.

...and various other things of that sort. And I meet with opposition to these suggestions, and with orders to bow down to those who spend most of their time on speedy deletions, like a plantation slave to an overseer.

I thought these problems had gone away after I raised a big fuss about them in March 2008. And they had. But I'm starting to wonder if they might be starting to re-emerge. Michael Hardy (talk) 07:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

What about "before one speedies an article for being blank, one should check if it just got blanked by a vandal"? I somehow seem to be avoiding being hit by falling chunks of sky right now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Michael on this, a little more care from both taggers and deleting admins could reduce the effects of vandalism, and also reduce the tension between creators and deleters. DuncanHill (talk) 09:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
We already have notices to warn admins about the problem - the deletion form asks the admin to look at the links to the page, and the speedy deletion tag itself asks the admin to check the history, logs and links before deleting the page (and this is going to be far more visible than something added to the policy page). Wikipedia is going to delete around 40000 articles this month and if one or two have this problem that means that well over 99.99% didn't - there's no need to describe it in such overblown language. Hut 8.5 09:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Do you really think mistakes are somehow never going to happen when there are thousands of speedy deletions every day? This thread is rather insulting... "Speedy deleters help vandals"? Because one guy made a mistake that's been fixed? It's very rude to come in here and accuse us of helping vandals because you found one mistake that no one argues was a good deletion. mistakes happen, this page advises checking the edit history first, everyone knows this was a bad deletion because that didn't happen. What can we really do now except insult people over an already fixed error? Apparently not much. --Rividian (talk) 12:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
When you hit the delete button the first line of the page that comes up reads "Warning: The page you are about to delete has a history". We are supposed to check the edit history for just this reason. That said, I am certain that every admin has deleted article without checking the edit history, and every admin, including me, has had their sloppiness bite them in the posterior. You learn from your mistakes. Dsmdgold (talk) 10:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more. No we're not proud of it. What do you want us to do about it? Aside, that is, from the jaw-droppingly obvious don't-make-the-same-mistake-again? Happy‑melon 11:08, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Holy shit, you found a mistake! Break out the gibbet.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

This has already been dealt with at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_August_16#Cassi Davis (closed). Alexf made a mistake by not checking the page history. The article has been restored, Alexf has acknowledged the mistake and will presumably try not to do it again. Short of tarring and feathering him, I'm not sure what else we're supposed to do here. Incidentally I've informed Alexf of this thread, as Michael seems to have forgotten to do that. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 12:10, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Iain for letting me know (Michael should have but forgot I guess). As many admins I do a fair amount of CSD work. I have deleted what seems like hundreds of crap articles (most of them garage bands - what is it with these kids?). Yes, mistakes happen. As you already now I acknowledged a mistake in the Cassi Davis case. Also as pointed above you will notice that over 99.9% of the deletions are correct. When you are faced with a flood of crap, mistakes are bound to happen but they are easily corrected and restored. What else can I say other than try to be careful. No matter what the policies are, mistakes will always happen. Conversely I have seen (one just recently) pages that should have been challenged and deleted and they were allowed to live for months for whatever reason. That is also a mistake. We have to live with them and correct them when we see them. -- Alexf42 12:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Alexf wrote "you will notice that over 99.9% of the deletions are correct". I will notice nothing of the sort. That number is fiction. It is patent nonsense. I challenge anyone to be specific about how it was computed. Show me the precise data. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:02, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
In June 2008 Wikipedia deleted 37400 articles. You have presented one example of an article being incorrectly deleted as the deleting admin didn't check the edit history. Suppose there are three a month, that equates to 0.008% of all deletions. This is not a massive, widespread problem, this is one admin making a mistake that was corrected. Alexf has made 5142 deletions and I would be very surprised if there wasn't one bad one in there somewhere. People make mistakes - big deal. I fail to see what this thread is trying to accomplish. Hut 8.5 15:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

All this came within minutes of my finding this absurd edit, and that article actually got deleted, and I restored it; and this edit. In the latter case, the "algebraic geometry" and "homological algebra" category tags were there when the speedy deletion proposal was put there, and the proposer could easily have looked further. Cooler heads prevailed and a badly needed "context" tag replaced the absurd speedy-deletion proposal and the article got cleaned up. Remember that last February and March the mere fact that a new article was on mathematics was treated by numerous admins as grounds for speedy deletion and that went on daily for maybe about six weeks. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, what is the point of this thread? No one denies that there have been various silly deletion taggings over the years. In an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, there will be some bad edits. What are you expecting to accomplish here, other than embarassing some people who made bad deletion taggings? --Rividian (talk) 15:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. What do you want, Michael Hardy? Happy‑melon
I'm impressed that Michael Hardy has never made a mistake of any kind and so can cast the first stone. Seriously, though, this particular mistake was acknowledged, corrected and apologized for. Yes, there are some bad apples on Wikipedia. Those are the editors who need to be dealt with, and I can't see that this is one of those cases.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I am closing this thread which serves no purpose but to be divisive over a resolved issue that resulted from a good faith error--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

(as the discussion is continuing, I removed the archive tag that had been placed at this point.) DGG (talk) 17:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I object to the archiving of this thread, as well as the offensive tone of some of the comments. Michael came here in good faith to point out a problem (and it is not a one off). He then gets attacked, and editors who should know better make up figures like "99.99% of deletions not having any problem". Care to give some evidence of that? Well it is not good enough. This self-satisfied "so what if we make mistakes, how dare you suggest ways of preventing them" attitude is anti-collegiate and demoralizing. DuncanHill (talk) 15:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
If the discussion had actually generated any usable suggestions for preventing such mistakes (other than those that are already in place) then there would not have been any problem. The issue was not that the discussion highlighted mistakes so much as that it highlighted mistakes for no apparent purpose other than to disparage those who made them. Happy‑melon 16:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
DuncanHill, I can tell from your comments that you are upset. But I would ask you to take a minute and try to look at all of the comments, including the ones you just made, with a neutral eye. The only actual proposal made for how to improve the speedy deletion process (which was not made in the initial post) pretty much duplicates what WP:SPEEDY already says: "Before nominating an article for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere or be handled with some other action short of deletion. If this is possible, speedy deletion is probably inappropriate."
If you or anyone else has a constructive suggestion for how to get more editors AND more admins to follow along with this, I'd be delighted to hear it. I am probably just as frustrated as you are about the number of articles that are inappropriately speedied, especially under G1 patent nonsense, when a 15 second google search would show the article can be improved. If the debate can become constructive, then by all means lets continue. If it's going to be a forum for name calling, then the debate is not at all appropriate (or even a debate).--Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I never objected to people suggesting solutions. To characterize my argument as "so what if we make mistakes, how dare you suggest ways of preventing them" is as insulting as the original poster. He came in and seemed to be abusing everyone involved in speedy deletion, as if one mistake somewhere means we should all be ashamed of ourselves. That's just silly and should be pointed out as such. When pressed he offered some obvious suggestions for how to make better calls, most of which are already in policy... so his participation has been very long on the insults and short on useful suggestions. it's sad that you joined in on the insulting, DuncanHill. --Rividian (talk) 22:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, OK here's a useful suggestion - follow the policy. Maybe that would help. DuncanHill (talk) 22:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
So are you saying I don't follow CSD policy? I don't understand why you're telling me to follow it... I'm all for following it. Your comment doesn't explain why you felt the need to badly distort my comment. --Rividian (talk) 22:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
You asked for a useful suggestion to prevent such improper speedies. I never said that you weren't following policy, but there are a significant number of admins who do ignore policy in this area. DuncanHill (talk) 22:24, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
That's like saying the solution to a crime problem is for more people to obey the law. It's basically not useful advice at all. --Rividian (talk) 22:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, OK, I agree it is not useful to ask such admins to follow policy, as they know they are untouchable. I also agree that some of our more enthusiastic taggers are unlikely to be motivated by a desire to abide by policy, but at least there will be some good-faith editors and admins reading this who may be inspired to take a closer look in future. DuncanHill (talk) 22:30, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, that's all fine and well, but it seems like we'll always have people who don't feel like following policy if they aren't forced to do so... no ammount of asking people to look more closely will really change that. We can introduce consequences for serial ignorers of CSD, or make DRV more likely to overturn violations of CSD... but that's about it. At any rate, none of this justifies the original poster running around insulting everyone involved in CSD because he's found a handful of bad taggings made in the past year. --Rividian (talk) 22:38, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it is possible to get many more admins to follow what speedy actually says. There are too many who enjoy the ability to disrupt the encyclopædia by creating drama or driving away editors. In my time on Wikipedia I have seen several workable suggestions to improve speedy, but absolutely no interest in improving speedy from the majority of deletionist admins or wannabes. DuncanHill (talk) 17:06, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I just want to be clear on what you're saying; you're talking about a subset of admins who you feel are a problem, rather than every admin? And you feel that a debate is a waste of time? If I've got this wrong, please enlighten me. Thanks!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and every debate on this subject I have seen has failed to achieve anything. DuncanHill (talk) 22:21, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
We do need to continue this. I've long intend to do an analysis of the speedies. There are 3 sorts of incorrect speedy deletes: where t he article is valid, usually as a stub, or the sort of vandalism mentioned at the top. where the article would not hold up in the end, Second, where the article would not have held at Afd but did not meet the criterion for speedy given. Third, where the article did meet the critrion but could be fixed, and the ones that are correct. Let me use my estimate of my own work to avoid the charge of blaming others: I think that 80% of the speedies I place are correct, and unfixable. I think another 9% might be fixable, but I didn't have time or energy to fix them (eg copyviols that could have been stubbified). Perhaps 1% of the time I speedy an article that didn't literally meet the criteria, but is hopeless anyway, And I known i make at least 1% outright mistakes. There are probably some admins more careful than I; I know there are some much sloppier, and there are even some who deliberately speedy articles that do not match the speedy criterion but which they think hopeless, or match what they think ought to be the speedy criterion. DGG (talk) 17:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Any suggestions for improvement?--Fabrictramp | talk to me 17:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I can not think of any one remedy, but I can think of many partial ones. First some very simply technical ones,
The First technical one is to automatically remove tags for notability or empty or context that are placed on articles with one hour after creation. (Actually, I'd make it 24 hours, but then we'd need a mechanism for seeing they don't missed, which as an automatic holding pen).
The Second technical one is to require notification to all major contributors, and do it by a bot that works faster than the articles get deleted. We're in an impasse here--the bot people have refused to do one unless we make it required, and people here have refused to make it required unless we have a bot.
The Third technical one is to limit the speed at which an admin can do deletions, or the length of time he can spend on that alone. I make many more errors at the end of a session of this. We have lots of admins, and no real backlogs unless a bot has done some tagging.
The First more General one is to not permit single-handed deletions except for undoubted copyvio and for undoubted BLP and clearly obnoxious vandalism. I know other admins occasional find a error in my speedy tagging and do not speedy it, and they are almost always correct.
The Second is a matter of peer pressure and attitutde, which is to always complain on the admins talk page if one thinks the deletion incorrect, andfor others to fell free to add their opinion. Michael Hardy knows his way around and is quite rightly complaining. Others who are less self-assurred should be encouraged to.
The Third extends that: to permit easier undeletion. Any admin ought to be able to restore a speedy (except blp) on request, the same way they can restore a Prod. Normally one would check with the deleting admin, but one could dod it if they are not immediately available, or even if they decline, without it being considered wheel-warring, o needing to go to Deletion Review. One could do this if either the speedy is incorrect or the subject reasonably promises improvement. Normally one would place an afd or a prod either immediately or after a day or two if not improved, and so could the original deleting admin. Obviously one would be responsible for following up what one undeleted.
And Finally, those few admins who insist on speedying for reason not provided for, after a sufficent number of unjustified clear mistake, lose the power to speedy until they are willing to certify they have reread Deletion policy and CSD.. (my idea of numbers here is 5 clear mistakes within 4 weeks) This goes along with the opposite, that no admin regard it as a big deal if someone tells him he's made a particular mistake, and it not be treated as an attempted lynch.
There's a Fifth, which doesn't apply only to speedies--that we more frequently invoke the already accepted rule that admins who habitually do not reply to queries fro users or reply rudely lose the tools altogether. DGG (talk) 17:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
There are some interesting points here. I don't think that a technical restriction is likely to be popular, practical, or doable (the devs would probably have a fit if you suggested it!). The admin appointment process is intended to select only those who can use the tools responsibly: if we have admins who are deleting inappropriately on a regular basis, then the problem is with the system, not the software. I approve of the "two-man-rule" approach: I almost never delete untagged articles: I either respond to CSD tags, or place them for other admins to evaluate. I can't see why this shouldn't be institutionalised. I think that calling for CSDs to be reverted as easily as PRODs threatens the whole speedy system (of catching the bulk of the crap that we all know doesn't belong here). More rigid adherence to the rules is, as always, the way to go to minimise abuse of the CSD system, I think. Proper and immediate notification of authors when their article or other page has been tagged would certainly help, and it would be nice (although currently technically impractical) for all CSD tags to have time delays in them. Ultimately, the DeletionQueue extension is probably the final solution to all this. Happy‑melon 18:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the well-thought suggestions. Especially T1 (Technical 1), which had never occurred to me, but makes a lot of sense.
I heartily agree with G1. I've been asking on the Twinkle page for eons to have tagging be the default, not deletion. Two sets of eyes on an article, unless it's a clear case of an attack page (or a page of the "I like cheese" variety), are always a good thing.
A comment on G2 would be that encouraging people to complain is great, but approach can be everything. We're all human, especially admins, and when someone leaves a message on your talk page that starts with "You *#&*$#&, how could you...", it doesn't encourage clear thinking on the admin's part. Perhaps people could be encouraged to ask for clarification, or to say "hey, you may not have known about xyz, would that make a difference", or to say "I was still working on the page -- what does it need, and will you userfy it for me". Honey always works a lot better with me than vinegar does -- questions and comments are the main way I learn things here. (And dark chocolate will always get my attention! LOL)
G3 is also a good idea, but care needs to be taken not to encourage "admin shopping".
G4 and G5 bring up the point that a good system for constructive feedback for admins would probably be quite valuable.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:07, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
A clarification on DGG's Third recommendation above. Any admin already can undo a speedy-deletion which was patently out-of-process. That was a condition set by the community when the speedy-deletion process was first proposed and approved. If another admin looks at the deleted content and, in good faith, disagrees with the assessment that the page qualified under any of the speedy-deletion criteria, the page is to be immediately restored and nominated to (then VfD, now) XfD for discussion and decision. The only exceptions at this point that I know of are WP:OFFICE actions, copyright violations (including some of the image clauses about licensing) and WP:BLP violations.
DGG and Fabrictramp are correct, of course, that we must be very careful to check for and avoid "admin-shopping" and wheel wars but the rule for speedy-deletions has always been "when in doubt, send it to discussion". Rossami (talk) 20:33, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Random section break ("Speedy deleters help vandals")

For future reference, coming into this page, saying "Speedy deleters help vandals", which sounds like an accusation that people involved in speedy deletion policy and daily administration are helping vandals, is a horribly undiplomatic, if not outright insulting and rude way to go about trying to accomplish anything. Note that no suggestions were offered, only abuse. It was a terrible way to start a conversation, and not surprisingly, it got people upset. --Rividian (talk) 18:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

"Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar." — Satori Son 20:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

A more subtle problem is where a good faith editor alters a formerly keepable article to the point where it's speediable - say, by stubbifying it for lack of sources, copyvio, removing an assertion of notability as being peacockery, etc. In these occasional cases, that would be fine if the article were kept and allowed to grow but the article dies from the one-two punch, sometimes coming from the same person who tags it for speedy, or by someone who notices a PROD or deletion tag. No great harm, and nothing to be done about it other than being careful. If the article is worth keeping then someone will probably notice and fix it. Wikidemo (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've also seen this done in not-so-good faith. I know of one contributor who likes to strip marginal articles of all unreferenced content, and then nominate them for deletion (sometimes speedy, sometimes not) because they're too short. What amazes me is that most participants at AFD and admins performing speedies do not seem to have a problem with this. - Eureka Lott 19:23, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
some clarifications: Yes, I was aware that any admin can remove an erroneous speedy tag, But most of us are very reluctant to get into a situation that looks like wheel-warring or admin-shopping. I have been asked to do so a number of times, but have always declined unless the admim is unreachable or its just a technical matter. What I have done from time to time is asked the deletion admin on behalf of the other person. But then, as a known anti-deletionist I feel especially necessary not to use my tools in a way that could even conceivably be suggested as being not within the accepted standards.We perhaps need a more encouraging wording here.
The problem Wikidemo mentions is very real indeed, and we need to be more of a look out for it. This trick was especially the case during the rash of deletions of in popular culture materials,and it succeeded many times. This is more a matter of general awareness at AfD, for at least they are public and stay there for a while. A related rick used in the same circumstances was to split off content into a separate article, and then remove it as not being able to stand on its own. There seems to be an equivalent question with lists: I have seen medium-sized ones nominated for Afd as being too short, and also for being too long--as if either were a reason for deletion. But t his is a matter for deletion policy, where I am developing a number of suggestions as well.
Here's the problem with simply trusting admins: there are no intermediate sanctions. It takes something really outrageous to be worth going to arbcom, and if someone is willing to ignore reversals at Del Rev and comments at AN/I they can just go on their merry way indefinitely. So that brings us to admin reform, another major se of issues. I wouldn't mind everyone having to stand again after two years or so--there have been suggestions for sooner, but the work involved would be absurd. It took me some thought here to come up with the mildest sanction I possibly could, one that would not be humiliating. Just a renewed undertaking to read and respect the rules. I myself have no problem in telling almost anyone here to their face that I think they have done something wrong, but even after a year's admin there are a few people I am quite frankly unwilling to complaining to or about. The good faith contributors are in general the ones last likely to complain--the gamesters will misuse every trick in the book, and w would always continue to give them a very short hearing and then get rid of them--I at least totally ignore hangons placed with a clear absence of justification.:DGG (talk) 22:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if we shouldn't encourage open review of each others' work. I've mentioned on my talk page that speedies worry me a bit since improper speedies can go undetected for quite some time. It's a half-baked idea in that I have no idea how it would be implemented, but I suspect that a system that encourages mentorship rather than trout-whacking could be helpful. There are some admins who bulldoze through articles, but I suspect that there is also plain old-fashioned misunderstanding of the criteria. I'm pretty sure I'd be mortified to find out that I'd been misapplying the criteria. I'm completely sure I'd prefer to find out that I'd been misapplying the criteria than to continue misapplying them. :) I wish that we had better recourse to "peer counseling"...giving and getting. I'd be happy to pitch in, and I'd be happy to receive constructive advice. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
In my experience, most admins straighten up after a DRV or two where it's clear consensus is against them. Then there are the handful of admins who don't seem to change their mind no matter how many times they get overturned at DRV/AFD/etc. I seriously doubt mentoring will help there for obvious reasons. The problem is this thread's premise seems to be ways to get a community of millions of people never to make a single mistake... which is just silly. Mistakes will happen, we just need to worry about detecting and fixing them when they occur. --Rividian (talk) 02:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I wish more admins weren't quite so afraid of fixing each others' mistakes. Wheel warring is bad, yes, but merely undoing an admin action does not in itself a wheel war make. Speedy deletions are meant to be easily reversable and should, in a sense, be immune to "admin shopping": if the deletion really was uncontroversial, you won't find an admin who disagrees — whereas if you do find an admin who thinks the page should be undeleted, then, per policy, it probably indeed should be undeleted. Of course, if the deletion was recent, or due to unclear or sensitive reasons (like BLP concerns), then asking the admin who deleted the page first makes sense. But if it simply looks like something was deleted as nonsense that wasn't, or something equally straightforward, then there should be no harm in just undeleting and leaving a note to the deleting admin about it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I think better tools can help deal with some cases like this. For example, a tool could show the history alongside the current page text. Another thing we can do to help prevent spurious deletions is to create a "checked for speedy deletion" tag to put on the talk page of articles that an admin does not delete. The idea here: if an article looks suspiciously like it might meet a CSD, because each admin examines it acts independently, eventually someone will decide that it does. If previous admins can assert, however briefly, that they don't think it does, this may prevent hasty action and encourage more careful review. Dcoetzee 09:45, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
The traditional way to accomplish that is "speedy via AfD": just to send the page to AfD with a note saying "not sure if this is a speedy, third opinions sought" or something like that. If it really is speediable, the AfD will probably be speedily closed after a couple of unanimous (!)votes to that effect; if not, it'll just get the standard five-day treatment. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A7

Is there anyway to change A7 to include anything that is not notable? For example, this page is clearly not notable, a "new term" that some user was hoping would become notable in English language. Had their been anything been covered in A7, it would have been speedy deleted, but since it isn't, we have to wait for the AfD to go through. By including anything that is "not notable" we can speed up the deletion of these kinds of pages. CTJF83Talk 00:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

The topic of expanding A7 or adding a new criterion which addresses what A7 is suggested to miss has been discussed many times before and thus far always rejected on various grounds. See for example here, here, here, here, here and here. I'll just throw it out there: my last suggesion on this topic was for a new proposed criterion to cover: An article on a thing (word, phrase, game, ceremony, philosophy, religion, etc.), which indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know, and does not indicate why the subject is important or significant.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:06, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
WP:DEADLINE. Darkspots (talk) 01:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Dark, that is a lame reason...why are there SDs if there are no deadlines CTJF83Talk 01:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
It is right there at the top of WP:CSD: In this context, "speedy" refers to the simple decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created. We delete a LOT of pages by using speedy, so PROD and AfD aren't overwhelmed by the occasional article that needs some more sets of eyes to see if the material is notable or not. I'm very serious about linking to that essay. Five days is not a huge chunk of time for an article about a neologism or a piece of software to sit there with an AfD tag on it. Darkspots (talk) 00:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
The reason there are speedy deletions without deadlines is that these are supposed to be in no way controversial, and speedy is a method for deletion without much red tape. And because there is no deadline, prod can easily take care of anything that isn't notable. (And is a lot more newbie-friendly than speedy).--Fabrictramp | talk to me 13:42, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
This comes up all the time, and one of the classic problems is that it's apples and oranges. It's relatively easy for the average editor/admin to determine whether something in an article about a band is a claim of importance; nearly all of us know something about music, we can tell the difference between a garage band and AC/DC. But when it gets to topics that are specialized, that the average editor doesn't know much about, we'd be pretty bad making that call. I sure wouldn't know what a claim of importance is on an article about an amino acid or a microprocessor technology. --Rividian (talk) 14:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not talking about difficult topics like amino acids! I'm talking about the new term floating around Joe Shmoe's high school, that a new user or IP feels the need to add. CTJF83Talk 21:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, an IP editor can't create pages. Prod can still take care of the new term Joe Shmoe made up. Plenty of editors nominate that under G1, patent nonsense. I'm not a fan of using it that way, but plenty of other admins will delete it if you tag it as such, and even I wouldn't decline it for the really obvious cases.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Further comment on G1. In the example you gave, I wouldn't have slapped a G1 on it because of WP:BITE. But I doubt I'd have declined a speedy either. It's not technically in G1, but it certainly meets the spirit of G1 and could be an IAR speedy.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Oh, ok, I suppose I could try G1, and if it doesn't work, I'll ask you to delete it! LOL CTJF83Talk 23:03, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
But you are talking about amino acids, as you said you wanted A7 to apply to everything. The problem is it only works when applied to certain things. --Rividian (talk) 23:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
UGH! You know what I mean...Not notable stupid stuff like I mentioned. But I do see your point of including everything not notable. So how can we add just the stupid stuff like the new high school word, or is it best to just use G1? CTJF83Talk 23:22, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
I have opposed this idea in the past, and still do. Although your example is of a neologism, if you expand A7 to include any article that fails to assert notability, then people would slap articles on significant topics with speedy tags, and some of them would be deleted. Neologisms are the one area where I might support an expansion of A7, if it could be demonstrated that PROD and AFD were being overburdened by them, and a very narrow wording could be found. It must be remembered that some neologisms are notable (Truthiness, for example). I BTW woulf have declined the speedy and PRODed the article. I have done it many times with neologisms, and every one of them has been deleted. Dsmdgold (talk) 01:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, one criterion that might be useful is if the contributor him/herself has stated or strongly implied that it's their own neologism (as in this case). I wonder how much of this kind of stuff regularly gets deleted under G1 or G3 anyway... --Rlandmann (talk) 01:40, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
As others have said above. Additionally, you seem to be concerned mainly about articles about high schools, the deletion of which is more than controversial enough to justify a trip to AfD. Many high schools have legitimate articles, hundreds in the US alone; and considering all the regional awards and such that schools receive, it's difficult to be sure what is a legitimate claim of significance. Dcoetzee 08:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Why would a new term at the high school be notable? Especially one with it's own page, as opposed to a small section in the high school page. CTJF83Talk 11:48, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the user above must of misread your comment and for some reason assumed you wanted High Schools deleated. --76.69.168.182 (talk) 06:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, IP...yes, Dcoetzee, I have no problem with high schools, just articles about the new high school phrase going around. CTJF83Talk 19:46, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
New terms are almost exactly the sort of thing that should not be subject to speedy deletion. Identifying those relatively few that might possibly be worth articles is a matter of recognition, and the wider attention given to them the better. Often a naive editor will write an article on this, and give it with a local or inadequate reference, or none at all, and it will actually be in much broader use. Many a high school student invents something novel to them that has already been long known to others. Neologisms brought to a discussion often give surprising results when someone does the work to identify them.DGG (talk) 23:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
You can, however, almost universally say that articles about neologisms are dictionary entries which are more appropriate at Wiktionary than at Wikipedia. A quick transwiki and {{wi}} and the page is moved to the right project. I can not think of a mere handful of neologisms where there was sufficient sourcable content to support a full-blown encyclopedia article. Rossami (talk) 02:22, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

What do speedy deleters do?

Nobody knows the answer to that question. And there seems to be no way to find out.

User:Jitse's bot attempts to keep track of information on creation, deletion, and editing of articles bearing any of the various mathematics category tags. There are probably about 20,000 such articles, so it's a fairly big project. Some of the results are displayed on the current activity page. In particular, when an article in any of the many math categories is nominated for deletion on AfD, it appears there.

But at user talk:Jitse's bot, I asked this question:

If a new article is created and has one of the math category tags on it, and gets speedily deleted 20 minutes later, does this bot add it to the list of deletions? Remember that last February and March, for about six weeks, there was effectively a policy that if a new article is about mathematics, that was grounds for speedy deletion. Recently there was a minor recurrence (but in that case the speedy deletion tag got removed and the article improved before the deletion actually happened). Is there any way to tell how often such speedy deletions occur? And to which articles? Michael Hardy (talk) 01:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

and Jitse Niesen replied:

Articles will only be picked up if they exist when Oleg's bot (User:Mathbot) runs. That bots runs once a day, so an article that is deleted after 20 minutes will almost certainly not be listed.
The quantity of deletions is immense (the deletion log for the last 24 hours has about 2000 entries), so I don't want to retrieve the text of all deleted articles. Regrettably, I don't see an easy way to find out what you want. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:40, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Note the problem I mentioned:

Remember that last February and March, for about six weeks, there was effectively a policy that if a new article is about mathematics, that was grounds for speedy deletion.

That stopped abruptly in late March after I complained rather stridently on this page. At least as far as the problem could be identified. But that's limited, since Jitse's bot runs only once a day.

Is there simply no way to tell what speedy deleters are doing? So it appears. Can one find a list of speedily deleted articles in the last 48 hours bearing a particular category tag, so that people with expertise in that area can look them over and judge whether the speedy deletions were justified? Apparently not. Nobody here volunteered that any such methods exist when I raised this issue above.

Fictional numbers keep getting cited. People say some particular percent—98 or 99.99 [sic!—see above!] of speedy deletions are valid. Well, the fact is 84.63% of statistics found on the internet are made up.

As long as we are deprived of methods of finding out what speedy deleters are doing, besides giving us these bogus numerical data, we must view the whole activity and those who participate in it with suspicion. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

This is really bordering on trolling at this point, are you going to show up here every week to rehash this? One math article got tagged erroneously, that's all I've seen evidence of, yet you claim "there was effectively a policy that if a new article is about mathematics, that was grounds for speedy deletion". As far as I can tell that is simply made up, and continuing to claim it is true seems like trolling. You continue to have no suggestions, very faulty evidence, and ultimately nothing to offer but abuse. I'm sorry you saw an incorrectly tagged page once... but that doesn't justify treating everyone involved in CSD like we're vandals. --Rividian (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, if you're genuinely curious as to what speedy deleters do, you could help out on CAT:CSD sometime. Admins who will remove faulty tags as well as delete validly tagged articles are always helpful. You might find it's not so easy to complain about people once you've tried to do their job. --Rividian (talk) 18:57, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

You say "you continue to have no suggestions". That means you didn't read what I wrote. My suggestion was: We need a way to tell what is happening; specifically, one should be able to find out which articles bearing any specified category tags have recently been speedily deleted, so that those who have exptertise in that area can tell what's going on.

And if you try to make the charge of "trolling" stick, you will fail. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you could provide a list of the deleted articles from that six week period? Even a partial one would suffice. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:49, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Just for grins, I looked up the complaint Michael has mentioned more than once. I read the entire section twice and all I see is a complaint about two articles being tagging (admittedly inappropriately) with speedy deletion tags. Both speedies were correctly declined. Only one of these two articles was tagged shortly after creation. In a separate complaint in May, an article was speedily deleted, and subsequently restored. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:09, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
And people had the same reaction then as different people are having now. That means something. Anyway, the idea that a complaint on this page systematically stopped the supposed conspiracy of deleting math articles is a bit naive... most people who do CSD don't read this talk page regularly (or at least post here), so the impact of one thread is not going to be that great. --Rividian (talk) 21:18, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
I would guess that very few articles with category tags are speedy deleted. If you did CSD you'd know the vast majority of speedy deleted articles are not formatted because they are created very quickly and haphazardly, in a minute or two. Categorization just isn't something someone is likely to think of when creating a new article haphazardly, and haphazardly created articles are the ones that are vastly more likely to be deleted. Again, this is why it would help if you actually did CSD before coming in here and telling us how awful we are.
At any rate, to generate this information, as the person you asked said, would require a bot look at all deleted articles. Feel free to write it, the results could be useful but just demanding such an extremely complex bot be written is unlikely to get results, especially with your attitude. A CSDer is going to spend dozens of hours writing a complex bot because you came in here and said he was basically a vandal? Your attitude seems to make results almost entirely impossible, and everyone is picking up on that but you. --Rividian (talk) 20:03, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Fabrictramp: Can you deal with the actual suggestion I'm making, or can you only offer these specious arguments about something else? My comments that you link to may have explicitly mentioned only two articles, but it is a fact that about a half dozen articles a day got tagged for speedy deletion only because they were math articles for about six weeks in February and March, and that the problem abruptly stopped after I posted here about it. There was an isolated recurrence in May and another a few days ago.
    • Michael, don't be insulting. I'm simply asking for facts so I can assess for myself the scope of the problem. You have complained about others throwing out numbers without facts to back them up. I would like to be able to take a look at the articles you have complained about multiple times. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Rividian: You say you would GUESS that very few articles with category tags are speedy deleted. "Guess". That's the word you used. And that's the problem: You have to guess. You can't actually know. What I'm saying is we need some way to know these things rather than guessing. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Well if you really think a majority of speedily deleted articles have categories, feel free to prove me wrong... until them, I'm the one who's actually done CSD work in the past year and you aren't. And feel free to point out what these 6 articles a day were which were being tagged for deletion "because they were math articles". Anyway, I seriously doubt anyone is going to undertake this massive coding project just because you came in and abused everyone involved with CSD, in fact you have already destroyed any goodwill you might have gotten. Better CSD stats is a good idea, but it's a big undertaking... not one someone is going to be inspired to take because a guy came in and compared them to vandals. If you really have nothing to say but that we suck, and we should spend hours doing your pet coding project for you... you're really just wasting everyone's time. --Rividian (talk) 03:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Rividian: I do NOT think the MAJORITY of speedily deleted articles have category tags. You are not my spokesperson. Don't make up crap like that and attribute it to me. What happens with the MAJORITY of speedily deleted articles has no relevance at all to this discussion. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:36, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Rividian, why would you write a comment like the following?
If you did CSD you'd know the vast majority of speedy deleted articles are not formatted because they are created very quickly and haphazardly, in a minute or two. Categorization just isn't something someone is likely to think of when creating a new article haphazardly
How is any of that relevant? What happens with MOST speedily deleted articles is not relevant here. What happens with TYPICAL speedily deleted articles is not relevant here. What happens with articles created haphazardly in a minute or two is not relevant here. I'm talking about well-written, category-tagged articles that are NOT typical of speedily deleted articles, that get speedily deleted on the grounds that an admin doesn't understand what they say and isn't willing to give that any thought. So what happens with MOST speedy deletions or with TYPICAL speedy deletions is beside the point. All you tell me is that you would GUESS something about those. Just guess. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:36, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
So in that case, take it to WP:DRV, if an admin keeps doing it, take it to WP:RFAr and have them desysopped. Abusing us won't help, we don't have the power to control all 2,000+ admins and tell them to never do something stupid. There's a system to deal with bad deletions, ones that don't follow this policy... abusing us is completely misdirecting your energy. Deal with the bad guys, not the people who try to keep the policy in order. As for the other parts of your comment, I think you really need to calm down, you sound very emotional. This is just deletion policy... it's not really that big of a deal. --Rividian (talk) 03:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about controlling what admins do; I was talking about being able to find out what they do. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Rividian, why have you accused me of abusing you? Can you find something specific under this present heading, "What do speedy deleters do", in which I was abusive? Michael Hardy (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
You said you regard all people involved in CSD with suspicion. What if I said I distrusted everyone who works on math articles? It's just a needlessly rude thing to say, especially when you're basically asking us to write and run a very complicated bot for you. In the previous thread you accused everyone involved in speedy deletion of being out to help vandals. Maybe you aren't meaning to come off as rude, but you are making statements that being taken that way. --Rividian (talk) 04:02, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I do think everyone involved in CSD should be viewed with suspicion. I don't think it's abusive to say that. I've suggested a way to make it unnecessary to view them that way. Now maybe it's not their fault that they need to be viewed with suspicion, but it's still a fact. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, if this is your attitude, you're probably wasting your time here. I was hoping you could understand by analogy, if I came into a dispute with you and said "Well I don't trust you, you edit math articles" I'm pretty sure how you'd take it, and with good cause. Yet you think it's okay to say you don't trust anyone who's involved with CSD, because they're involved with it. If you can't see the problem, I guess there's no point in continuing. Although I'll still be watching to see if you ever come up with that list of the 270 math articles you claim were speedy deleted because they were about math... --Rividian (talk) 04:10, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
When I edit math articles, you can see what I'm doing. With deletions, it's hard to keep track. Deletion logs just show ALL deletions; you can't sort them intelligently. Any time Wikipedians works in an area that lacks that sort of transparency, one must view them with a certain amount of suspicion. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
If you want that sort of transparency, it's really on you to figure out how to accomplish it. It might be nice, but it's a very complicated thing to do, it requires either a labor-intensive bot or a major rethinking of MediaWiki. Just coming in here and saying "I don't trust you, you're basically a vandal, now completely rebuild MediaWiki to pacify me" is really a waste of everyone's time. If you want a better idea of what speedy deleters do, your best bet is to actually do some CSD work. Try to clear CAT:CSD during an off-hour. You might find speedy deletion isn't some unified team of people running around to delete math articles, but a decentralized bunch of people just trying to deal with the daily deluge of spam and vandalism that comes in. --Rividian (talk) 17:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Rividian, are you under the impression that I do not, about twice a week for several years now, receive missives telling me I'm part of an evil conspiracy because I edit Wikipedia math articles? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I didn't even know who you were until you came to this talk page, so I am not aware of what missives you have or have not been receiving. --Rividian (talk) 18:29, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Do you think the fact that you have been on the receiving end of unwarranted and misdirected attacks gives you license to do the same? Your past thread was a nasty personal attack on one editor which continued on to paint others with a massive brush, and this, coming right on its heels, cannot help but be seen as a continuation of the same.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
No. I did not attack anyone. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:41, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
You said by virtue of being involved with CSD, we helped vandals... which most of us seemed to take as an attack. Bolding your claims really does nothing to make them true. --Rividian (talk) 03:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Some further discussion on this at User talk:Fuhghettaboutit#No attacks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Please, Michael Hardy, if you want statistics, go get them. Go have a look at the deletion log, find the CSDs, see which ones have been overturned or look suspicious, do some sums. You're an admin, you can see deleted histories - there is nothing stopping you from gathering the data yourself, by hand or using a simple script. You call yourself a mathematician, so do the maths and bring us back the answer - I'm sure there is no one here who doesn't want to have a solid figure. If a rigorous and impartial analysis indicates a problem, then everyone here will, I know for a fact, jump through fire hoops to ensure that the problem is corrected. But sitting there, demanding solutions to 'problems' which you have not proved actually exist, and criticising the efforts of hundreds of volunteers who have put thousands of manhours into a process that you could, but have not, given any assistance to; achieves only one end: to discredit you so much in the eyes of everyone who frequents this page, that any legitimate criticism you have, of a process which no one claims is foolproof or inviolate, but which seems to work correctly __% of the time, is ignored entirely by people fed up of reading what appear to be nothing more than diatribes against CSD and everyone involved with it. Now please, fill in that blank for me: you'll be doing us all a favour. Happy‑melon 12:20, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm downloading some information now, and will post some statistics about categorized CSD pages soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:54, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Six weeks of deletion taggings × six taggings/day × seven days/week ≈ 250 taggings. And Fabrictramp says he she knows about two improper taggings. There's a discrepancy of a couple orders of magnitude here. Michael Hardy, you've made some really good points in the past (I'm thinking about the A3 discussion, where I was very much in agreement with large parts of your argument even though I greatly disliked the way in which you made it), but you have to show real evidence to make the kind of statement that you're making here, that an informal policy existed that new math-related articles, even properly formatted and categorized ones, were being targeted and tagged for deletion in the spring. Can you provide the names of even twenty-five articles about mathematics, of any quality, that were improperly tagged for speedy deletion in 2008? Darkspots (talk) 21:08, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, Michael Hardy, could you please clarify if you are talking about articles simply being tagged (without being deleted), or articles that have actually been deleted? Thanks!--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:37, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to make some suggestions.
  • How about a template like "math article needs to be checked to see if it makes sense" that new-page patrollers can add to questionable new math articles, instead of speedy-delete tags they might be tempted to add instead. Then people who understand math can look over articles in that category.
  • How about a bot that collects statistics on math articles. There may be a bot (one of Cobi's Cluebots, perhaps) that looks at all new pages. If so, maybe the person running that bot could be persuaded to add a math page feature; or a copy of the bot could be made and modified for that purpose. The bot could look at the contents of all new pages, and collect in a file on a local computer copies of all new pages with math category tags. Then later a human could look these over to see if any good articles got deleted.
  • Alternatively, a bot could look at the list of titles of new pages. That would take less of resources than looking at the contents of new pages. It could look for math keywords like "function" and "prime" and so on in the titles.
  • Is there any way that an admin can easily get a list of all deleted articles in a given category?
At User talk:Coppertwig/Archive 3#Primes / rules / patterns / location is a discussion in January 2008 about a math article which had been incorrectly marked with a speedy-delete tag as "nonsense" by someone who mistook a true statement about prime numbers for nonsense. I replaced the speedy-delete tag with a "prod" tag, which led to its deletion 5 days later
The "nonsense" criterion should be used as described in this policy, not as a general way of speedy-deleting any article one thinks deserves to be deleted. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 21:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
All new math articles, if properly categorized, show up in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Current activity a day or so after their creation, and will often then be viewed by a human project member. So if insufficiently expert new-page patrollers would make sure that there's a category (even {{math-stub}}), the rest will likely follow. But I'm not sure how we should go about training them to do so; math is only a small fraction of the total volume of new pages created all the time and we can't expect to have similarly idiosyncratic procedures for every different project. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:49, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
"All new math articles...." That statement is false. It is only the ones that continue to exist for a sufficient time—sometimes as long as 24 hours—to which that applies. As noted above at the beginning of this discussion. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
We could append to the G1 policy "Be careful with articles which look to you as if they make no sense but may actually make sense to someone who understands the subject, for example math articles." ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 13:11, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Less is more: I'd say "Be careful with complicated topics, which may just be using very technical language." Happy‑melon 13:30, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem isn't just technical language or complicated topics. The example that always comes to my mind is See-through frog, which was tagged as nonsense a minute after creation. The first page of g-hits turned up two reliable sources. (Yes, I was surprised, because it sounded like nonsense to me, too.) Unfortunately, I don't know a good way to adjust the clue level of people who mis-apply the G1 tag; they seem particularly resistant when I drop a friendly note to them. Any suggestions?--Fabrictramp | talk to me 14:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
TBH I'd rather that articles like that were tagged for CSD than that similar nonsense articles slipped through. If the article had been deleted, then that's another issue entirely, but as long as it was correctly identified as valid at some point in the process, I consider that a success story. That's why a two-man-rule is so important. Happy‑melon 14:40, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I can see that viewpoint, but I guess I take a more inclusionist/welcoming tact. Imagine getting your courage up and submitting your first article. Then a minute later someone slaps a "nonsense" tag on it and leaves a message saying "your article may get deleted" on the editor's talk page. Not a very friendly welcome, even if the article isn't deleted. :) I'd rather see a fact tag on the article for the 30 seconds it takes to do a gsearch, and a little less viewing NPP as a race. And, of course, sometimes the article does get deleted even with two eyes. Several times I've come across a G1 tag and the article gets deleted while I'm doing that 30 second research. Then I have to restore the article before I can add the sources I found. *sigh*--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't think adding language like "Don't use this rule incorrectly" or "Don't make mistakes when using this rule" is helpful... it's not like someone makes a mistake because they forgot to not make a mistake, that's just silly, if someone realized they were making a bad deletion or a deletion where they didn't know enough about the topic, they wouldn't make the deletion. We can make the existing language more clear, but just saying "Don't screw this up" in every rule does nothing but bloat the policy, which means fewer people read it. --Rividian (talk) 20:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Math is among the least of the problems--at least we know that many people don't understand the subject and are likely to tag & delete wrongly, and there aren't too many articles to check. The misuse of the nonsense tag is pretty general, and there are a lot of times when even good admins have an overestimate of their general knowledge. There may even be some otherwise excellent admins who just don't have the intuitive special ability involved to make accurate guesses about what is actually unfamiliar to them. The only practical rule is to consistently follow up with people who make the bad tagging and especially with admins who make bad deletions. I've notice an even bigger problem with the "no context" tag--and a special problem with people who come in , often as IPs, and immediately start nominating for speedy. Perhaps at least we should require the same registration requirement as for AfD. DGG (talk) 21:04, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
"aren't too many articles to check", meaning what specifically? Here are the ones starting with one letter of the alphabet. And that's not including articles about mathematicians. It's not just new articles that get tagged for speedy deletion. Someone tagged MathWorld for speedy deletion as "blatant advertising". It's an article about a web site that was famous and respected when Wikipedia was unknown, and still is now, and the article was created when Wikipedia was unknown, and nearly 1500 (literally---check for yourself) other articles linked to it, many of them put there by professionals in the field, some by world-renowned researchers, and it didn't link to the company allegedly being advertised, and many thousands (again, literally) of external links to MathWorld were put into Wikipedia articles by professionals in the field. I think there are about 20,000 articles with math category tags on them (not category:mathematics, for the most part, but more specific math categories). Michael Hardy (talk) 21:38, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I made a list of the most recent 30,000 deletions of main-namespace articles, going back to July 30. Then I filtered out a lot of them based on deletion summary to exclude reasons like R1-R3, G3, PROD, AFD, etc. That left about 9700, of which about 3500 were A7. I downloaded the deleted content of those 9700 and searched for either categories or stub tags that indicated a relationship to mathematics (and I search for the term 'mathemat' as well). This turned up 4 articles. Two were test pages, one was deleted at the request of its author during an AFD (Declan Davis), and the final one was actually interesting, but its deletion was reasonable (here). — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
OK, if you can do that in the time from my posting to your response, that suggests to one such as myself with no knowledge of bot software that maybe it won't be INCREDIBLY onerous to create software that would do this every day and post the information on a suituable current-activity page like the one used by the math WikiProject (maybe the same one). (I'd guess doing this for February and March 2008) would turn up a much larger number of these.) Michael Hardy (talk) 02:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
You'd GUESS? You say you would GUESS. That's the word you used. And that's the problem: You have to guess. You can't actually know. --Rividian (talk) 02:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, my interpretation of the chain of events is that it's taken him three days to come up with the evidence to flatly disprove your allegations. How much longer is this going to go on? Happy‑melon 10:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
You know, CBM probably spent several hours on that query, Hardy. You could at least thank him for his labors, rather than do nothing but suggest more work he could do. I'll say it though, thanks for your work, CBM, that sounds like a very thorough job. --Rividian (talk) 11:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Michael, this has blown out of all proportion. Just because one article got speedied after a vandal hit it (and the deletion was quickly, and correctly, reversed), does not mean that speedy deletion is broken, admins are out of control, and the sky is falling in. Please be proportionate. Stifle (talk) 09:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion for unreferenced articles

WP is improving it's authoritativeness because of the requirement for references. Editors are often given prompting to give references and unreferenced articles, sections of articles and sentences are tagged with the need for references. I would like to see the speedy deletion criteria to allow for unreferenced articles to be deleted. This makes editors who create article more cognisant of the need for references. This requirement would make it easier for subsequent editors to expand the article and it will help improve the status of WP as an encyclopedia. A claim in itself to notability should not be sufficient. If the article is notable there must be published information on it. If an editor does not include references to this published information it should be speedily deleted.

The need to provide references from the time an article is first created will weed out the non-notable articles. It will also result in a better quality article from its inception. I am annoyed by articles that are produced by some of the newbie editors who put very little effort into creating an article and leaving it to others to clean it up. This means that WP will always have a number of articles that are below the level of the rest of WP. Deleting unreferenced article will eliminate this problem and make WP more professional. Editors who wish to create articles that do not have references can always try at Wikipedia:Articles for creation. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

That is a horrible idea! You are probably going to get a lot of disagreement with this suggestion. For example, when I was looking earlier, I noticed Yogi Bear is unsourced. Clearly this is a notable article. Other notable articles that are unsourced are Five-card draw, History of Libya, November (how can you delete one month, and none of the rest....you can't), Nuclear physics, and Topology to name a few. Based on what links to Template:Unreferenced there are tens of thousands of pages with the unreferenced tag on them. (I suppose some might be from an unreferenced section), but either way, you are looking at deleting thousands and thousands of pages, without any consensus or review?! Horrible idea! CTJF83Talk 22:07, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
CSD is for uncontroversial deletions. This is anything but. -Chunky Rice (talk) 22:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
As others have said, a truly horrible idea; the fact that anyone can contribute a poor, unreferenced stub on a notable topic is one of the sources of Wikipedia's growth and success. The comment about making "editors who create article more cognisant of the need for references" sounds punitive to me. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
This is too extreme... but it would be nice if the article creation system actually brought up a warning screen for people who created articles without references. Still, the mere presence of references is vastly less meaningful than most people seem to think... they only mean anything if someone actually checks them. I think proposals like yours, which just seem to be after increasing the number of those pretty superscript blue numbers, take our focus away from verification and fixates everyone on just adding a lot of inline citations that are rarely really scrutinized. --Rividian (talk) 22:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
While I'm a strong advocate for "everything must be sourced", speedy deletion isn't the right way to take care of an editing issue.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:28, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
No, no, no. Been proposed many times and always declined. Sources are important and should be encouraged, but should never be required in a new article just being developed; frequently the original authors are writing based on internalized expertise and time and effort (frequently by other contributors) is required to dig up sources for all of it. This process is fundamental to how we write articles and shouldn't be discouraged. Dcoetzee 00:19, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Do we already have an essay on the perennial CSD proposals? If not, we oughta' write one.
Anyway, mirroring the above, this isn't a good idea. There are way too many articles which should obviously be kept and improved which have no references. Yogi Bear was already linked, another is Air quotes (which could use some work besides). So, too many bad hits. Cheers. lifebaka++ 00:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I1 same format — still required?

CSD I1 requires that an image which is to be speedied as redundant be in the same file format as the other image. This requirement dates back to before we could undelete images and was there in case there were compression artifacts or other undesirable features on the new image, or to preserve a raster version of a vector image or vice-versa. I'm not sure we need this any more... opinions? Stifle (talk) 09:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I would not speedily delete raster images converted to vector format (no current tracing software is exact enough to actually produce a pixel-for-pixel identical copy if rerasterized), nor images converted to or from lossy image formats. Also, occasionally raster versions of vector images may be needed to overcome quirks in MediaWiki SVG rendering and scaling. (In particular, MediaWiki renders SVG images directly to the target size, even though often rendering to a larger size and scaling down would produce better output (but be slower). The difference is often marginal, but occasionally does make a difference.) About the only case I can think of where I could see the rule being relaxed would be non-animated GIFs converted to PNG. Do we really get enough of those (or other cases where you feel relaxing the rule would be useful) that it matters? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
What I'm saying is that if the old version of the image was needed again it could be undeleted. Stifle (talk) 08:49, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, yes, assuming that a) you know it's there, b) you're sure enough that it contains something useful to bother an admin about it, and c) it hasn't been permanently lost for some reason. Deletion is not permanent archival — the server admins are still allowed to purge deleted images (and pages) if they decide they need the disk space, and even if they don't, they're probably not spending much effort on maintaining reliable backups of them either. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarification of A1 (no context)

User:Toddst1 and I are disagreeing about whether this version of Integration with other techniques falls under CSD A1. As you can see from User talk:Toddst1#CSD A1, our positions are far apart, which worries me because I thought the criteria were supposed to be clear cut. I'm curious to what others think about this: does criterion A1 apply in this case? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

My own two cents: there is no context to make the article viable and it's a speedy candidate. I have no idea what the article is even about; and while I expect a math expert would recognize the contents there is insufficient context for a layman to do so. — Coren (talk) 12:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
The article name "Integration with other techniques" and the first heading "Integration Using Parametric Derivatives" alone identify the topic of the article, and it isn't even "very short", so WP:CSD#A1 does not apply here—I can't think of a better way to describe those pages other than those headlines, and I'm not a math expert
The article violates a number of style and content guidelines, and "other thechniques" does lack the context of the techniques described in Integral#Methods and applications, but I can easily see it developing into an overview of integration techniques that aren't covered in the articles listed here. --AmaltheaTalk 12:36, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
The title does not identify the topic. Other than what??? Michael Hardy (talk) 22:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Does that really matter? It's about integration techniques, I think that is made abundantly clear by title, section header, and the content. A poorly worded title is not enough to fulfill CSD#A1, it asks that the article as a whole must not be enough to identify the subject. If there's any doubt about it it shouldn't be speedily deleted. --AmaltheaTalk 23:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
(ecX2)I agree with you, Jitse: very definitely not A1, in my opinion. Even if it had no context, it is certainly not "very short": there's a lot of content there that someone has taken some trouble to create. In order to meet the A1 criterion it would have to be very short, and it is not. Furthermore, I argue that it has context. It's quite clear what it's about: the title and the first sentence specify the context uniquely in my opinion. Even if were very short, therefore, it would not qualify for deletion under A1. Improving > deleting.
Shortly after I created Confidence region, Michael Hardy inserted the words "in statistics" in the first sentence, to provide more context. (He did not tag the article for speedy deletion instead. ☺) If the context can be made more obvious to the reader, we should do so, but not delete an article simply because that has not been done yet.
People tagging articles with speedy-delete tags should read the criteria carefully and make sure the articles meet the actual criteria, not just that they seem to be describable with one-word abbreviations for the criteria. Todds1 seems to have missed noticing the words "Very short articles" in the A1 criterion.
Coren: If you don't understand an article in math or some other subject, please leave it to be improved by people who do understand it, or mark it for deletion under prod or afd if you like, but please don't speedy-delete it. Which criterion do you think it meets? Even not being in English doesn't qualify an article for speedy deletion, so just not being understood by one editor doesn't either. Coppertwig (talk) 12:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Not an A1 candidate. I consider myself a layman and I know that's about calculus. I would put {{math-stub}} on it, definitely, which I just did, along with a category that seemed appropriate. But I think if you know enough about an article to be able to figure out a specific category for the article, it meets the standards of A1. Darkspots (talk) 13:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
To add on to Coppertwig's comments, another possible way to deal with topics one might not understand is to ask for help at the relevant wikiproject. I've done that a number of times and, with just one exception (the wikiproject looked kind of dead), always received prompt and helpful advice.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:44, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Agree with those before me, that isn't an A1 candidate. The topic may not be fully identified or the article well written, but visual inspection reveals it is about some method of integration within the field of calculus. A comparable example I processed yesterday is here. It was very clear that the article was about a historical person, and a quick google search based on the two proper names in the first sentence let me figure out which person that sentence was about. Unfortunately, there are at least 14 notable historic people with that name, and I'm not convinced that the second paragraph is about the same person... so that article needs more work than I was able to give it. GRBerry 14:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It would certainly be valid to tag the article with {{context}}. But it's not a speedy candidate, I agree. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Note: I split that article into two articles Integration using parametric derivatives and Integration using complex analysis. RJFJR (talk) 14:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Tagger not understanding article is not a CSD

As I understand the criteria, someone shouldn't tag an article as G1 or A1 simply because they can't understand it: they have to be reasonably confident that the article couldn't be understood by others either. For example, an article on a difficult topic in mathematics might be understandable by only a few people, but that doesn't make it a speedy-deletion candidate. (It may need to be improved to be more understandable or maybe even deleted, but not speedy-deleted.) ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 02:14, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

But how could someone think that something is gibberish, yet think it would make sense to others? When someone tags something as nonsense, they think it is nonsense. Sometimes they're just not understanding something that does make sense, but they don't realize it. I don't think anyone is intentionally deleting articles they know to be sensible to some people just because it's over their head. --Rividian (talk) 12:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
That's what should happen, but I'm not convinced that's what always happens. Consider this comment by Coren in the thread above, for example. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:45, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
It's up to someone who creates an article to make it understandable enough, or include enough understandable material, for it to be obvious that it's not a CSD. Wikipedia is a general-purpose encyclopedia for a general audience. In Wikipedia's early days there was some justification for retaining very bad or very short articles. Everyone was in a hurry, sketching out the scope of the enterprise was important, and simply creating something that was not much more than a placeholder to show where articles were needed, was a useful contribution. That hasn't been true for years. In the year 2008, if someone can't be bothered to write one good, coherent paragraph, then the value of the contribution to Wikipedia is zero, and nothing is lost by deleting it.
Surely you wouldn't argue that you can't delete gibberish, on the grounds that someone might be able to understand it?
(On the other hand, IMHO Integration with other techniques is clearly not a CSD.
Dpbsmith (talk) 13:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec) "Sufficient context to identify" or "understandable enough" is of course a judgement call that can't easily be forged into a policy. CSD should try hard to err on the side of caution though, and I think that's just why the criteria in A1 should be used rather strict.
After all, almost nothing is lost taking the article to PROD or AfD, deleting it speedily without giving the author a chance to work on it might loose a contributor though.
And although AfD and PROD aren't supposed to be cleanup mechanisms, they still function like one from time to time.
Basically: delete gibberish as G1, delete NO context as A1, but take the unclear context to AfD (or tag it with the templates mentioned below and above). --AmaltheaTalk 14:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you that Coren was taking too radical a position there. That's why we have the {{context}} and {{Expert-verify}} tags, for just such situations. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
That's me, the free radical!  :-) Incidentally, I said I beleived that the article qualifies for A1, not that I would have deleted it as such myself because I recognize the contents as potentially useful; but someone who knows nothing to little of math (let alone calculus) would get to that opaque wall of formulae and just be confused since there wasn't even a brief explanatory lead pointing to, say, calculus. What if you hit an article title "Hadron interactions" containing a one liner accompanied by a few Feynman diagrams? It'd be opaque to 99.95% of the planet's population; yet it could be very salvagable information from a topic expert; but who's to know? — Coren (talk) 14:18, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Based on the reactions in this and the previous section, I added the following points to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations under A1:

  • An article has to satisfy three conditions to fall under criterion A1: it is very short, it lacks sufficient context, and the subject of the article cannot be identified.
  • Articles about highly specialist topics can be completely unintelligible to the majority of editors, especially in their first version. If unsure, do not delete the article (alternatives include tagging with {{context}} or asking at a WikiProject).

-- Jitse Niesen (talk) 16:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarification on CSD I1

I noticed today an example of an image put up for speedy deletion under CSD I1. Everything was in order, but the two images were images of a movie poster. The thing that makes me wonder is -- I thought that for WP:NFCC purposes, we like fair use images to be low resolution. Should we really be deleting images when a higher-res one exists in this kind of case? Mangojuicetalk 17:08, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Clear abuse of "speedy" template

This edit and this one are clear abuses of the "speedy deletion" template. The template says

unsalvageably incoherent with no meaningful content

It is not to be used merely because an article is badly written or needs some improvement. Could some cool-headed person knowledgeable in "speedy" conventions help this confused user? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:00, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You mean like this and this? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:07, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
Eh, I only just noticed the discussion here, so I'll repeat what I said at Fatal!ty's:
To be fair, the article at this point was an exact copy of Grzegorz Rasiak, and Fatal!ty changed the db-tag to an underconstruction-tag as soon as the originial author started transforming it into an actual article about Bartosz Kupper.
Still not a G1, but also not completely irrational.
AmaltheaTalk 14:18, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of user talk page

I keep noticing user talk pages are getting deleted under U1. [6] I was under the impression that this was not done unless there is personal information involved. -- Ned Scott 23:16, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

You should have came to me first. I think typically, we do not delete such pages, however, the user had contacted us asking for this to be done, and they had a valid reason to. As there was no information in the history which needed to be retained for administrative purposes, I deleted the page. The user left the project 6 months ago anyhow – I don't think this should be an issue. - Rjd0060 (talk) 23:24, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
It's not just you, I meant to find more examples so I wasn't just focusing on that one deletion, but got side tracked. -- Ned Scott 23:35, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

There's more, but my watchlist will only let me go back so far. -- Ned Scott 23:42, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

We have __NOINDEX__, page blanking, and page protection. Unless there's some personal information that can't be selectively deleted, or it's a case of simple vandalism and the user is using their talk page as a trophy page (for a lack of better words), this shouldn't be happening. -- Ned Scott 23:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Just a note, but {{NOINDEX}} should be used instead of __NOINDEX__ for tracking purposes. Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:44, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I've always understood this somewhat differently: Unless there is an actual reason for keeping (important discussion or something), it can be deleted, and things like personal information would override any reason for keeping. Mr.Z-man 12:52, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
"Important discussion" to my mind includes any discussion of an article where there is any conceivable possibility of it being restored in some version, or anything relating to questionable wiki behavior. Yes, these are available to admins (if they remember to track them down), but people who leave sometimes come back, and so do questioned articles; anyone patrolling should be able to see the history. DGG (talk) 20:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps my impression came from another page.. Somewhere it mentioned user talk pages being different than normal talk pages (in how a user manages such pages) because it contains a lot of comments/content from other editors.

The talk page system leaves much to be desired for many reasons, one of them is that when a user talk page gets deleted like that, you often cut out part (or all) of a discussion. The normal trail of comments that we use to piece together the history of something gets lost. Granted this happens with things like article talk pages, but then you're normally only losing some discussion about general content, rather than a direct message to or from a user. We also accept a user talk page without corresponding user page, which makes this different than article talk page situations. (technically speaking, WP:CSD does say to not delete an article talk page even if the article page is deleted if it has some level of value, etc)

I also wonder if these user talk pages get deleted because a user generically requests user page deletion. In Steve's talk page example above, he did not oppose restoration of his talk page when someone thought it would be a good idea to keep it.

How would people here feel about a proposal to exclude (or possibly just discourage) user talk pages from being deleted at request? -- Ned Scott 02:08, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed alteration to WP:CSD#G4

I have removed language added to G4, here, as I do not believe that consensus has been demonstrated for its inclusion. I am not myself comfortable with including the text as added. It's rather vague--how much time? The {{underconstruction}} template says, "If this article has not been edited in several days." Are we to wait several days before deleting a recreated article? What's to stop contributors from repeatedly using this to extend an article's publication after consensus is for its deletion? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

These additions I made today have already been discussed on a few other talk pages. Sebwite (talk) 21:00, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Care to at least point us to those discussions, since you already rereverted? --AmaltheaTalk 21:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
According to WP:POLICY, "Updates to a policy or guideline page are typically discussed on the associated talk page." That would be here. I tend to watch this page, and I don't remember this conversation. Also, while WP:POLICY indicates that changes may be made directly to policy pages, WP:BOLD notes that "Be bold does not apply to policy pages." The policy at WP:Consensus notes that "In the case of policy pages a higher standard of participation and consensus is expected." Consensus needs to be reached before this change is implemented. While I'm all for giving articles time to develop before deleting them, the language you're implementing here is far too open-ended, and I am opposed to the inclusion as worded. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Agree with Moonriddengirl. Sure, I think in many cases an "under construction" tag would prompt an admin to think twice before deleting a potentially fixable G4 too quickly. But really, the best approach would be for the user to create a draft in userspace and move it to mainspace only once it is ready. Or, even better, to go through WP:DRV. Mangojuicetalk 04:20, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Draft CSD templates

The draft CSD templates (from back in March) have been nominated for deletion. See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Draft CSD templates. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 22:52, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers

According to the very top of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, " "speedy" refers to the simple decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created." The issue of "recently created" for a redirect was raised in the redirect deletion discussion Qazwsxedcrfvtgbyhnujmikolp → QWERTY, where I wrote "I think that no one other than the redirect creator ever came across these redirects, so the recently created redirect page requirement does not seem to make sense in this case. Perhaps the policy should be modified to read something to cover situations like this." The "recently created" criteria was added to the deletion template 21 May 2007. Was there a prior discussion on this? My thinking is that if an administrator judges that the typo or misnomer is clearly implausible, why does it matter that the redirect has been around for a while when there is no evidence of anyone actually using the clearly implausible redirect? Applying the "recently created" criteria to other speedy delete basis, if an administrator judges that a page is a test page, but the page was not recently created, should it still be speedy deleted? The "recently created" criteria for redirects should be removed to be consistent with the other speedy deletions categories and the general speedy deletion policy. Suntag (talk) 16:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

  • The rationale behind the "recently created" at R3 is that historical versions of articles are less likely to have ever used this implausible typo or misnomer if it was created recently—see WP:RFD#HARMFUL.
    It might be debatable whether it is important to keep redirects in old versions working when all other deletions, mergers etc. will still produce lots of redlinks, but as long as it's a criterion for RfDs it must also be a requirement for the speedy, discussionless deletion. --AmaltheaTalk 16:35, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
    • (e/c) I can only think of two meaningful reasons that implausibly named, older redirects should not be deleted. First and foremost is where the redirect has a non-trivial page history, such as that it was where the article resided for some development before being redirected to a better-named, independent article (or cut and pasted rather than moved, which was actually the recommended method before the move function was implemented). Second is where despite being implausible, for whatever reason, the redirect is in actual use somewhere on Wikipedia. Both concerns would almost never be the case for a recently created redirect but might lie for an older example. Both issues can be addressed by changing the language to something like: "Redirects from implausible typos or misnomers that do not have significant page histories and no useful incoming links." Then the rule of thumb (that would be added to {{Db-r3}}) would be that if older, always check Special:whatlinkshere and the page history. The only other purpose I can think of would be that there could be off-wikipedia links to the article directed at the URL of the redirect. I think that is likely rare enough to discount, and not of paramount concern.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • There are several issues going on here. First, our history here at Wikipedia shows that individual editors are not very good at determining "implausible" typos. Many redirects are nominated to RfD with that justification but kept when others look at the redirect - it can be a key-transposition on a keyboard that you don't use, a misspelling based on a particular language, etc. If the redirect has been around for more than a few days, you can pretty much trust that some other responsible editor saw it (perhaps on the newpages patrol) and thought it was at least plausible.
    Second and far more importantly, many redirects that appear implausible today were perfectly plausible under the older MediaWiki software or older editing conventions. The old CamelCase redirects are an example. The subpages are another. The worked at the time but have now been deprecated - we keep them to ensure that valuable history is not lost.
    Third, if the redirect has existed for any length of time, there is a fair chance that it has inbound links. If there are any current internal links, you can find them using whatlinkshere but you will not be able to see (or fix) any instances where the link is in an older version of another page's history. If that other page is reverted (for example, to fix vandalism), you will unnecessarily restore the broken link. And, of course, if there are any external links, we don't even have a way to know about those, much less to fix them. (And contrary to Fuhghettaboutit's hypothesis, this is not a rare occurrence. Wikipedia's use as a reference is steadily increasing.) Again, if the link's only existed for a few days, the odds of breaking inbound links are small. The odds rise the older the redirect is. For all those reasons, I oppose any weakening of this criterion. Frankly, given how often the "implausible typo" nominations are rejected at RfD, I believe this clause should probably be rescinded as a CSD criterion. The only time that it's reliable is when the newly-created redirect is so obviously bad-faith that it already qualifies as vandalism. Rossami (talk) 02:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Keep in mind that this says implausible typos. RfD is currently wasting time dealing with a whole bunch of garbagy redirects to QWERTY (like QAZWSXEDCRFVTGBYHNUJMIKOLP). And I was involved with another one which slipped through and got speedied even though it was 18 months "recent." Stuff like this won't have incoming links (internal or external) or history (though of course one can check). Also, just because full RfD has a requirement for normal redirects doesn't mean it needs to apply for implausible ones. Let's keep the load off RfD and loosen this rule. Matchups 03:40, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
(Responding to Rossami) I think you are referring to a strawman or misunderstood what I said when you wrote "contrary to Fuhghettaboutit's hypothesis, this is not a rare occurrence. Wikipedia's use as a reference is steadily increasing." How does Wikipedia's increasing use as a reference bear any relationship to the number of off-wikipedia links that are directed at implausible Wikipedia name targets? In fact I would hypothesize that it is exceedingly rare that off-wikipedia links are to implausible redirected name, given that off-Wikipedia links to Wikipedia pages are going to be made by copying the URL of the Wikipedia page directly, so even if the Wikipedia page was initially found through an implausible name search, the URL will be correct. In any event, an implausible typo, if truly implausible, is by definition going to be rarely linked to and used, and thus not going to be the subject of many internal, external or incoming links, for the very reason that it is implausible. What you are really getting at is something entirely different. You are talking about the mislabeling and mistagging of plausible misnomers and typoes as implausible, and asserting that people are not good at distinguishing between the two. About that you may be quite right.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:50, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, the URL is not rewritten when accessing a redirect, i.e. it's not a 301/302 HTTP redirect. Try Wikipedia:CSD. --AmaltheaTalk 09:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Db-disambig

Since when has it been acceptable to delete a disambiguation with only redlinks? Even before the articles were created, there wasn't consensus to delete on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Rogers House. --NE2 18:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Add a note saying that if links can be added, editors should do that instead of deleting the dab. As far as these go, I've got no preference between CSD and AfD/PROD for them, so I see no compelling reason to break the status quo here. I'd also like to note that the AfD above only closed as keep due to the addition of such links. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Also, I believe CharlotteWebb is starting a TfD for it. (1) lifebaka++ 18:44, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
I changed my mind in favor of changing the language used. I'm willing to hope that this is the creator's intent [10]. TFD nom is on the clipboard and ready to paste if this gets reverted. — CharlotteWebb 18:49, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Recreation of deleted material and categories

Related discussion at: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_18#Recreation_of_categories * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive4#Some_thoughts_on_the_G4_criterion * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_12#G4_on_redirects * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_13#G4_corollary * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_17#G4_seems_to_have_a_wording_problem... * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_25#Scope_of_G4.3F_Time_limit.3F

I'd like to ask for thoughts about how G4 applies to categories since they cannot by definition be anything other than identical to the deleted version. Hiding T 20:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Clearly it applies if there was a full discussion at CfD. If it was a speedy as empty (C1), then G4 would not apply. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Right, unless there are new points brought up or the arguments from the CfD don't apply anymore of course. --AmaltheaTalk 21:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
It can't clearly apply if consensus can change. Now fair play, that applies to anything, but with a category it is far harder to establish a footing. Articles have all manner of places where we can debate; an article speedied as recreation can be taken to DRV where the identicality can be debated. You can't do that on a category, since by definition it exists in name only and therefore is identical. So, we have ourselves a situation which isn't as cut and dried as guidance would like it to appear. Of that much I am certain. The solution I am less sure of. Ad hoc case by case may be the best answer. But I'd at least like to air the potentialities. Hiding T 21:24, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Category pages can have criteria for their use on the category page, which have changed. Or they can be renamed from X to Y by CFD1, Y to Z by CFD2, ..., W to X by CFDn. Or the reason for deletion might have been crystal ballism that no longer applies (e.g. Category:2010 Winter Olympics Gold Medalists, but not in 2011...). So there can be recreations that address the original CFD deletion reason. Judgment would be required. GRBerry 21:12, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Application of G7 in userspace

Why does criterion G7 fail to recognise page blanking as a way of requesting deletion in userspace? Consider the following example: User:Example creates User:Example/useboxes (note the typo), blanks the page, and then creates User:Example/userboxes. Why should the first subpage page not fall under G7? –Black Falcon (Talk) 21:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

You can blank the page to begin something else in that workspace, but still want the old work in the history. How likely is this to be a problem that can't be resolved with a quick talk page conversation that results in user requested anyway? Hiding T 21:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Discussion generally would do the trick, except when the user is inactive, which is often the case with abandoned user subpages. However, I didn't have in mind actual user pages or sandboxes, which I agree generally shouldn't be deleted solely for being blank, but rather pages which were created by mistake (e.g. typo) or abandoned and blanked while the user was active. –Black Falcon (Talk) 21:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm. I'd be inclined to allow admin discretion there, although others might kick up a fuss. It's not something I'm going to go looking for, and I wonder if looking for that stuff or going out of one's way to delete it is worthwhile effort, but I'd be willing to let them go through under what used to be housekeeping and is now Technical deletions. Justification being it's as long as it is broad to move User:Example/useboxes to User:Example/userboxes in order to merge page history. If you see what I mean. I would have good faith that any admin so deleting a user page would recreate it if requested, and that common sense woul prevail somewhere in the chain if the user returned and the admin had left. Hiding T 22:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, that's a good way of thinking about it. I agree that it's not something worth searching for; my query was prompted not by an actual example but rather by my discovery of the exception in the text of G7. And, of course, I agree with your point regarding restoring the content. After all, it's userspace and no one can know better whether a page blanking was a request for deletion than the user who blanked the page. Thanks, –Black Falcon (Talk) 22:57, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, I went digging through the archives and it is quite a recent change. Initial discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_30#User_pages_and_CSD.23G7 prompted the proposed change discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_30#Proposal_to_change_CSD_G7. Still not sure I understand it all, it looks to be a case of taking something to the logical conclusion, but I figure there's a way around anything if you're creative enough. Hiding T 23:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Found this point useful to, from EVula at [11]:"Pages lying stagnant have no impact on anything and should be left alone. Arguments for deleting them (so as to save disk space) are bogus, as it would actually take more space to delete them (they'd still be saved somewhere, but then the system would log the deletion information as well)." FWIW. Hiding T 23:36, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, those links help to put the change in context. As for EVula's quote regarding deletion ... I think it fails to consider human performance. While deletion does not positively affect server performance, it does remove clutter, which in turn improves the performance of editors who no longer need wade through countless stagnant or abandoned pages. Of course, this issue is less pressing in userspace, since most editors have no need to wade through user pages. –Black Falcon (Talk) 20:15, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Old criteria

Is there any place where I can find what the old criteria were, such as A4 and A6? It might be helpful for historical purposes to have something on here explaining what they were, so I'd not have to go digging into the ancient archives of this page. Nyttend (talk) 12:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

See the version from 22 November 2005. --AmaltheaTalk 16:24, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that keeping the old criteria around anywhere but in the history is necessary. In fact I think it's already pretty clear, A6 and A8 were simply superseded by their generic versions, and A3 and A4 were merged. Is there more to know? --AmaltheaTalk 16:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I figured anyone who likes to play battleship with speedy deletion templates would have answered their own question by trying {{db-a4}}, {{db-a6}}. — CharlotteWebb 21:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually I'm now convinced that all these should be deprecated in favor of {{db|a specific plain-english reason}}. — CharlotteWebb 21:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Twinkle

Seeing how many articles are mistagged as an A1, I filed a bug report two days ago to fix the label to better reflect what A1 is actually saying. At the moment, it reads:

Little or no context – Very short articles providing little or no context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Limited content is not in itself a reason to delete if there is enough context for the article to qualify as a valid stub

while the current exact wording is:

No context – Very short 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." Context is different from content, treated in A3, below.

I think that this is one of the reasons why it's misapplied so often, and seeing that the bug report page has a great many unresolved reports and that this is a really easy fix: can some admin with enough programming knowledge to know how not to break anything change the texts in User:AzaToth/twinklespeedy.js by the ones above, to conform to WP:CSD#A1? It's in lines 303 ff.
Cheers, AmaltheaTalk 15:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

On the technical side, just change
				{
					label: 'A1: Little or no context',
					value: 'nocontext',
					tooltip: 'Very short articles providing little or no context (e.g., "He is a funny man that has created Factory and the Hacienda. And, by the way, his wife is great."). Limited content is not in itself a reason to delete if there is enough context for the article to qualify as a valid stub'
				},
to read
				{
					label: 'A1: Little or no context',
					value: 'nocontext',
					tooltip: 'Very short 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." Context is different from content, treated in A3, below.'
				},
That should do it.
On the other hand, I don't think there's any reason to do it. The two pretty well mean the same thing, so I don't think it's urgent in the least. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
The only way it would work would be if people actually read the text. My experience with the people misapplying it indicates that's not always happening. :) --Fabrictramp | talk to me 20:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Lifebaka, you missed that the label of A1 changed, too, from "Little or no context" to "No context", which is an important change for inexperienced taggers only looking at the lables. I also think that there's a big difference between "little or no context" and "unable to identify the subject of the article", the former can be applied to a far broader range of articles. I know that during my very early days I have used it on articles that I was convinced were worthy of deletion but didn't fit any of the other CSD categories – little context often did. --AmaltheaTalk 21:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Lack of transparency....

I have complained before of the lack of transparency in the speedy deletion process. Now I observe that on April 19, 2008 Mu Sigma Rho was speedily deleted. It's one of a LONG list of honor societies listed in the article titled honor society and it was singled out for speedy deletion while all the others were left intact. So we look at the contributions of user:Stifle, who deleted it, for April 19th, 2008 and we can find no sign that this was deleted. When I formerly raised some qualms about speedy deletion of pages with category tags, some idiot pointed out the obvious fact that most speedily deleted pages don't have category tags (as if that were somehow relevant) and said that I believed that most speedily deleted pages do have category tags. That last was the most irresponsible bogus attribution I've seen in a while. Now:

  • There is nothing in user:Stifle's history of contributions that tells us when that user deletes a page.
  • Were any WikiProjects associated with the three category tags in that article were notified?
  • Were the talk pages of articles that link to that one notified?

Please don't respond (as if it were relevant) that for every case like this there are EXACTLY 352,078,150,000,000,000,001 speedy deletions of carp articles (and the fact that that number is EXACT usually does get alleged here on this page when this topic is raised).

The fact is, we still have problem of lack of transparency in this process. Michael Hardy (talk) 23:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

You can easily find exactly what pages any admin has deleted at the deletion log. This is a list of my deletions and here is a list of yours. The other questions you can easily find the answers to yourself. --Fabrictramp | talk to me 23:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, so I can find what pages AN ADMIN has deleted, when I know which admin. Can I find which pages with a mathematics category tag (e.g. category:combinatorics, category:probability distributions) or any of many others)? If I decide to watchlist category:queueing theory, will I see all deletions of article bearing that category tag when I look at my watchlist? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: No.
Long answer: MediaWiki does not have the capability to watch a category page for modifications to its content, and doing so has been said to be "practically impossible" without a major change in MediaWiki. So, it is not currently possible to detect category additions / removals with our current software without having a bot crawl through categories like WP 1.0 bot does. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 01:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
If you copied a list of the pages in a category into a page (in your userspace, for example) then Special:RelatedChanges would tell you when an article linked to from that page was deleted. If you are particularly interested in a page then you are generally expected to have it on your watchlist and that does show when a page is deleted. Hut 8.5 15:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
That doesn't help with articles which are deleted before one has a chance to notice that they exist. DuncanHill (talk) 15:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Just a note that WikiProjects don't own articles (nor does anyone else) and do not have to be notified or asked for permission to delete a page. Stifle (talk) 13:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
True, but notification (as well as being good manners) does actually reduce drama as it allows community input to the process, and also enables editors to take the opportunity to improve articles - which may negate the need for deletion. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Dealing with multiple uploaders

A large percentage of fair-use images are reduced by other editors to meet the low-res requirements. When these same images are being nominated for speedy deletion (regardless of the reason), typically only the most recent uploader is informed. As that uploader only reduced the image, they usually can't (or won't) fix problems like missing source or rationale. These guidelines should be changed to state that either the "original uploader" must be notified, or "all uploaders" must be notified. Otherwise we are not giving people an opportunity to save their images from being deleted. Kaldari (talk) 16:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Here are some examples:

There are lots more where that came from. Kaldari (talk) 15:48, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

If by "must be notified" you mean "should be notified", then sure. But there is not (and never has been) a requirement to notify people of pages being deleted. Stifle (talk) 14:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
You make a good point, but there's a technical limitation to your suggestion. When a fair use image is rescaled, the older version is typically deleted. When that occurs, the original uploader's name is no longer attached to the file history, and non-admins cannot identify the user unless they check the page's log. - Eureka Lott 15:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

What does this count as?

A question. An editor moves a page. The talk page is moved as well. The redirect on the article is removed, in order to convert the original title to a disambiguation page. However, the talk page of the dab page still contains a redirect, which is now not relevant: it should now be the place for discussing the dab page, not the original subject. One way of fixing this is just to remove the talk page redirect, but this leaves a blank page. Surely there is a criteria for speedy deletion which applies here? None of WP:CSD#R1, WP:CSD#R2 and WP:CSD#R3 seem to at the moment.

As this is a plausible scenario (it just happened to me twice today, with Neil Cameron and William Waddell), perhaps we need a specific criterion for this. --RFBailey (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Please. Don't write "There is a criteria". Write "There is a criterion". "Criteria" is plural. You can write "There are three criteria". Michael Hardy (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Doesn't need to be deleted in my opinion. Instead, put {{talkheader}} and {{DisambigProject}} on it. ~ Ameliorate! U T C @ 14:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
{{DisambigProject}} sounds like a sensible addition. I take it you haven't seen the drama on WP:AN about the addition of {{talkheader}}. --RFBailey (talk) 14:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I thought the drama was only about talkpages being created with only a talkheader on them? If the talkpage already exists it doesn't hurt to add the template, in my opinion. ~ Ameliorate! U T C @ 14:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Dabs need talk pages too, as far as I can see. Add some tags and leave it. There's no need for deletion in these cases. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I7

Can someone please explain to me (in simple words if possible :)) the difference between the second and third cases of CSD I7? Stifle (talk) 15:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it: #1 implies frivolous fair use claim, #2 implies no fair use claim and #3 implies an incorrect or invalid fair use claim (such as a photo of a living person etc.) The border between #1 and #3 is more blurred to me than the one between #2 and #3. Admiral Norton (talk) 15:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, no fair use claim should be I6, not I7. I7#1 (which was the only entry at I7 when I proposed it a couple years ago) is for use when someone puts up something clearly ludicrous, like {{non-free logo}} on a photo of someone. It's still up in the air for me. Stifle (talk) 13:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Anyone else? I'm inclined to merge these otherwise. Stifle (talk) 15:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Reading further into it, I think that the distinction may be between replaceable fair use (48 hours) and just generally bad fair use (7 days). Let's see if I can get that meaning in. Stifle (talk) 15:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Remove T3

I've got a template up for deletion and was pointed to WP:CSD#T3. I've got to ask what's the rationale to this criterion?
WP:CSD#T3 - Tag the page, wait 7 days, and if nobody removes the tag it's then deleted. If somebody objects it comes to TfD, and another 7 day period starts, with the handicap that folks looking at the TfD may think somebody's tried to bypass scrutiny. This route : 7 days MIN, 14 days MAX.
TfD - nothing hidden, everybody's notified, everybody's happy, This route : 7 days.
What's the point of a 'speedy' that is never faster than the slow route, and may end up taking twice as long? Bazj (talk) 17:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Presumably, the idea is that it should be used only for obvious and uncontroversial cases for which a full TfD nomination would be needless busywork. This is reflected in the wording of the criterion, which essentially seems to be trying to ensure that only useless templates can be deleted using it. It's essentially PROD for templates. Of course, if someone disagrees with the deletion, then it obviously wasn't uncontroversial after all and should've been taken to TfD to begin with. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Right. No need to have people debating something that's obvious. The reason for the delay is that sometimes templates may appear to be deprecated and unused, but may in fact always be substituted or have some other strange quirk to them. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion it is a redundant criterion; there is no instance where I personally would use CSD:T3 over going straight to TFD. If it is obviously going to be deleted, then the TFD will reflect this, if it is tagged as T3 and someone disagrees, then it goes to TFD anyway - which ends up wasting more time and increasing the busywork (even though the criteria was apparently designed to have the opposite effect). The only way T3 would be preferable over TFD is if the time period is substantially less - which as MZMcBride says could result in a useful template being deleted without the proper community input. I therefore agree with Bazj, that the criteria should be removed (or have the time-period lowered to 3 days.) ~ AmeIiorate U T C @ 06:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, if its obviously going to be deleted, TFD will reflect that, and the same could be said for every other speedy deletion criterion. The point is that instead of nominating it for TFD, having several users spend their time reviewing it and agreeing with the nomination, and an admin having to close the TFD (substantially more work than just deleting something), we save everyone involved a bunch of time by just tagging it, making sure no one disagrees, then deleting it. Mr.Z-man 16:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I've since come across a couple of additional factors which affect the amount of time taken:

  • on the T3 there's a delay of a couple of days between the 7 day period expiring and the Cat:Template for deletion tag being added to the template (though you can do a null edit to speed things along, I was waiting 2 days on my T3 before I gave up waiting and did a null edit);
  • a couple of TfDs where the creator and sole editor of the template agreed with the nomination, and put it on a G7 speedy;
  • a couple of TfDs where the creator (through some parental concern?) couldn't accept that the template could not logically work and voted keep (and would presumably have sunk a T3);
  • several votes for changing the template to a REDIR (motto: REDIR's are cheap) including TfDs where the template is already a REDIR that's been there for a couple of years.

I understand the points above about busywork, but I don't think many editors contemplating the deletion of a Template look at the process in that light. They've just decided that the template is surplus to requirements; if it's left any longer then other editors might use it, making more work in correcting the articles to use the correct template; deleting the template quickly is their principal consideration.

  • T3 Best case : un-opposed, 7 day period with the T3 notice on the template, 1 day for the template to be added to the speedy category = 8 days + admin time.
  • T3 Worst case : opposed at the last minute (perhaps without reasonable justification by a REDIRs-are-cheap groupie, or a proud creator) forcing it through TfD = 7 days + full TfD time = 14 days + admin time.
  • TfD Best case : creator has been invited to comment as per TfD process, agrees, and adds a G7 speedy request = 1 day + admin time.
  • TfD Worst case : debate goes to full length, 7 days + admin time.

From the viewpoint of a potential deleter there's no way the T3 speedy is faster than the TfD. The choice is a no-brainer. Either the terms of T3 need redefining, or T3's pointless and needs to be deleted. Bazj (talk) 21:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I second that. Check {{Emmerdale Character}} and Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Emmerdale_Character. I preferred to go for a TfD rather tagging it for "speedy" and risking some anonynous IP to remove the tag and lose more time. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Trouble here isn't so much that it's redundant, as that it's being systematically misapplied. It states: "Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, and are either: substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template[...]" Emphasis in original. The eight-a-minute mass-tagging of these, however, is clearly paying no attention to the latter part of the clause, and is speculatively tagging everything that isn't currently in use (or marked up in "please don't delete me" manner). What depresses me about this is we've had exactly this discussion several times before, but the tagging continues on regardless.
Obviously the "advantage" of T3 is that it allows tagging hundreds of templates in a way that gives rise to only low-key objections like this discussions, whereas if they were suddenly all dumped onto WP:TFD, there would be howls of outrage and consternation. To which I respond: where's the fire? Isn't it preferable to do this more gradually and more accurately, anyway? Alai (talk) 15:36, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
There are about 15,000 unused templates that are not redirects. If we assume that 10,000 of those could be listed at TfD, it would take someone listing 20 templates every single day for the next 500 days in order to work through the load. As much fun as that sounds, I think tagging them under T3 is a bit more practical. Looking at the broader issue, templates can certainly be redundant, unnecessary, orphaned, or deprecated without necessarily being substantial duplicates of other templates. In essence, a great deal of these templates are redundant to having no template at all. Though, frankly, constantly having to justify this is getting quite tiresome. There's no doubt that the majority of these templates would be deleted at TfD. This back-and-forth is fast becoming tedious. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
To argue that tagging them in this way is the "practical" thing to do, or that "a great deal" them are "essentially" redundant is to ignore both the actual criterion you're seeking to invoke, and the legitimate objections of those that you're imposing an "opt-out or delete" scheme on. I entirely agree about the "tedious back-and-forth". I find it especially tedious to be re-explaining your errors with regard to stub templates, in particular. But certainly not that you've justified what you're doing -- or more importantly, how you're doing it -- or that it's reasonable that you continue in this manner. Alai (talk) 16:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
In April 2007, you created a template to use on Amberg-related stubs. Sixteen months later, there's still no use for it. But it's somehow exempt from CSD#T3 because... you say so? And instead of resolving this for the near future by simply tagging the page as unused (which is also a courteous thing to do), you choose to argue here. Can't we simply recognize that some of these templates truly aren't needed and then delete them? Seems like the reasonable thing to do. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
You misunderstand the use of stub templates. Amberg-geo-stub has indeed been used - I have used it myself. The stub in question was then presumably expanded by someone else to the point where the article is no longer a stub. Stub templates are not designed as permanent templates on articles - as such, they are there to temporarily mark arrticles that may need them, as and when they need them. Deleting individual stub templates that are part of an overall scheme whether they are used or not is ridiculous - or do you propose re-creating these templates whenever a stub for a particular district of Germany comes along and then re-deleting it when the stub is expanded? Let's take a more extreme, but very much analogous - example. Say that, by some miracle, every article currently marked with {{wikify}} was wikified. Would it be deleted as unused, or would it be considered that there just may be a case where a new article coming along needed wikification? Or would we delete it then recreate it for the first new article needing to be wikified, wikify the article and deletee the template, re-create the template for the next new article, wikify, delete, recreate, wikify, delete, recreate... there is a very good reason why such templates are not and should never be speedied. Grutness...wha? 23:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Then tag the page telling other people that it's intentionally unused (temporarily, permanently, whatever). There are variety of templates you can use (e.g., {{transclusionless}}). --MZMcBride (talk) 23:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Re Grutness: if there are two stub templates that populate the same stub category, one of which is used and one isn't, the unused one meets the criteria of T3 quite clearly. I take it you're suggesting that stub templates should simply be exempt from T3? — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


The above list makes several assumptions, many of which are incorrect. If someone redirects it without a TFD, who cares? 7 days of time was spent, but no one did anything between the tagging and the redirect. If they oppose the deletion to make it a redirect, but don't actually redirect it, they need a good {{trout}}ing. It also assumes that "speedy deletion admin time" == "TFD admin time" - this is not the case, it takes substantially longer to close a TFD and delete something than just deleting it. It also seems to ignore all the time people spend commenting on TFDs, which is removed for T3, "T3 time" is just empty time, no one is doing anything, on a TFD, several people will review the template and comment on it. Mr.Z-man 15:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Could someone look at The templates Old template and Db-t3 as the former does not look to me as being consistent with current policy. Perhaps it is something to do with outdated pages. --Rumping (talk) 23:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I replied at Template talk:Old template. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
That discussion failed to see a meeting of minds so see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Old template--Rumping (talk) 05:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert Denno

OK, I am told that speedy deletion gets rid of article, like those about non-notable garage bands, that would clutter Wikipedia with worthless crap.

That's what I'm told.

It has a certain plausibility. Maybe one can take some comfort in believing such things. But I just never encounter speedy deleters except when they seem to be trying to demonstrate how irrational they are. The new article titled Robert Denno is "blatant advertising" and is a "possible autobiography" written in September 2008 of a person who died in March 2008.

OK.

Right.

I never heard of Robert Denno until a few minutes before I restored the deleted article, and I added his dates of birth and death, which were effortlessly available elsewhere within Wikipedia (I found them literally within 30 seconds of first seeing the name Robert Denno; couldn't the deleting admin have done the same just as easily?).

Why is it that every time I see something like this I get lectured about how irresponsible and stupid it is for me to fail to see the obvious reason why the article I restored had to be deleted and the person who said it's an autobiography written six months after its author's death understands everything and I understand nothing and should be ashamed of myself? Michael Hardy (talk) 07:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I deleted the article as a blatant copyright violation of [12]. Garion96 (talk) 08:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
The article as I read it there is an obituary, and it was previously deleted as a G11 blatant advertising. I wouldn't have tagged it as such, but "Pages which exclusively promote some entity and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic" certainly applies to an obituary. I'm not sure that it should though, it doesn't have the spammy intention to violate what I see as the spirit of G11. --AmaltheaTalk 10:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The person who initially deleted it is now saying it does not have to be written by the subject in order to be an autobiography. How weird can you get? Michael Hardy (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, the page is gone, so let's just all go our separate ways now, eh? No point sticking around here for a G12. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 16:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Restored again

I have now adapted the article to Wikipedia's conventions, and deleted material that I lack sufficient scientific expertise in that field to adapt (maybe more than 75% of the article?). Then I restored the edit history, thus making it possible for those who are experts in that area to find that material and adapt it and put it back into the article in suitable form, and thus also giving proper credit to the article's original author.

Now the major point: That's the way to handle these situations. How often do articles get speedily deleted that could be dealt with in this way instead? Probably no one knows. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

You can't do that. Copyright violations can't be left in the edit history, and adapting copyrighted material without permission of the copyright owner violates copyright law. Hut 8.5 19:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
G12 demands that "there is no non-infringing content on either the page itself, or in the history, worth saving" (as it was in this case). Typically, if an edit is only in parts a copyright violation, those bits are removed, but they are indeed left in the edit history.
Also, I don't think that the current article violates copyright as a derivative work, it only uses the information from the source article, not the sentences as far as I can tell. --AmaltheaTalk 19:28, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
The current version isn't, no, but there is still infringing material in the edit history which should be removed. Michael Hardy restored the edit history so information there so editors could adapt it and incorporate it into the current version, which would make it a derivative work. Hut 8.5 19:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree that it should be deleted. While small violations can be excised with a warning against restoration, there's no reason to keep the history when it is entirely a copyright violation. A link to the external site gives other editors all the access to it that they need. If credit is to be given, that can be done in edit history or at the talk page. Meanwhile, unless we receive external verification, we can't use it, and there is no good reason to risk inadvertent restoration of any of the material. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:49, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I have deleted the copyright violation from history in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins, restoring non-violating versions of the text. I have also included a link to the obituary which was originally copied and credited B. denno for her (probably) contribution to the article in edit summary. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

T4

Wouldn't T4 (removing doc subpages for deleted templates) be covered under the deletion of the original template, or as non-controversial housekeeping (G6)? Just to throw that thought out there.. -- Ned Scott 19:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, but see the previous section above. Anyway, the original idea of WP:CSD, back in the dawn of time, was precisely to serve as an explicit list of obvious, bright-line cases where deletion is clearly OK, so that we wouldn't have to wonder whether or not a particular case might or might not fall under vague wording like "non-controversial". It's drifted a bit from that ideal over time, but, given that what we have here is indeed just such a simple, bright-line situation, I just figured we might as well use the list for its original purpose. This way, the question is settled once and for all: documentation pages of deleted templates can be speedily deleted, and no new admin will ever again have any need to be unsure of that. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:29, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I thought it was impossible to out-do the uselessness of CSD#P2, but we've somehow managed it. /doc subpages are unquestionably CSD#G6 or if you're really, really concerned about, as Ned points out, they fall under the deletion of the actual template. Having this criterion makes us look sillier than usual. It looks like policy bureaucracy at its worst. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I always counted documentation deletion in the same class as template talk page deletion; just another part of cleaning up. Definitely a G6 under our current terms. I find the more specific reasons we have, the harder it is to keep track of them in drop down menus, and the less likely I am to actually bother to put a reason in. MBisanz talk 12:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Please read Happy-melon's proposed addition to G8 above. This would get rid of the "need" for T4, but also broaden the overly-specific G8. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 17:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

A "wrong" use of db-copypaste

  • Today I found two uses of the db-copypaste tag as "{{db-copypaste|Page moved back to xxxxxx}}", trying to say "Please delete this page because it started as a section cut-&-pasted from page xxxxxx, and it has now been copy-&-pasted back into a section of page xxxxxx where it came from", but actually producing "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion because as a copy-and-paste page move of Page moved back to xxxxxx which needs to be temporarily deleted to make room for a clean page move.". In both cases, instead of deleting, I replaced it by a redirect. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 14:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Um, I don't see exactly what needs to be discussed here. It seems to me like this should be handled with the users themselves, or maybe at WP:NPP rather than here, where it'll get the proper attention. Or am I just missing something? lifebaka++ 14:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Claim of Fair Use

Does a simple regurgitation of the list of fair use for non-free content qualify as a "claim of fair use" under I9? (I6?) It seems to me that to qualify as a claim, the claim should including supporting evidence or at least not be blatantly false. Otherwise, this requirement doesn't seem to be reasonably stringent. --Danorton (talk) 05:46, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

If a claim is "blatantly false", then the editor's contribution counts as vandalism. Likewise if you can show a pattern of bad-faith edits by the contributor involved. Other than that, yes the standard for speedy deletion really is that high. The rest need to go through the discussion process and have multiple eyes review the decision. Rossami (talk) 05:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, looking again at I6, I now see "The boilerplate copyright tags setting out fair use criteria do not constitute a use rationale." That answers my question, thanks. --Danorton (talk) 06:12, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

4 Duplicated photos with Commons

Hi, I have 4 photos that are conflicted after uploading them at Commons. 2 of them I received from Plácido Domingo's PR hav been put up in Wiki Commons and accepted by OTRS - they are Image:DomingoJ1.jpg and Image:Domingo OtelloJ2.jpg. The other 2 photos, I received from a user also conflicted once they were uploaded to Commons, they are Image:Domingo Statue1.jpg and Image:Domingo Statue2.jpg. Hope you could delete them all in Wikipedia, so then the link can go straight to commons. Thanks - Jay (talk) 07:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted the last one. The first two need an OTRS ticket number to be added, and the third one may be non-free — is there freedom of panorama in Mexico? If not, then the permission of the sculptor is needed or a fair use claim must be made out. Stifle (talk) 18:12, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Stifle, cant you see that the first 2 photos have OTRS tag already? Secondly, about freedom of panorama, I have never heard of that in Mexico. if it does exist, probably you should take a look at all article related to Mexico there are many photos taken by users in here - Jay (talk) 01:19, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

They do now. Stifle (talk) 20:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
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