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Retitled images - add to G6 or new R4

Currently there are a quite a few near-identical nominations at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 22 of redirects due to images being retitled, due to short or generic file names. Not so long back there was at least one day with circa 30 such nominations, most or all of which were speedily deleted per WP:CSD#G6.

I think that it would be useful to explicitly add to the allowable uses of G6 or make a new criterion (R4) with wording like:

Redirects created due to the retitling of an image with a generic or very short file name (Y characters + file extension or fewer), may be speedily deleted X days after all internal links, including file links in active discussions, have been updated. If there is evidence of continuing internal or external use of the old title, then this criterion does not apply.

The X days should probably be one of 7, 10 or 14 imho. The figure for Y characters should probably be something like 7 or 8, but I'm willing to be guided by those who do more file work than I do. By "file links" I mean uses like File:Example.png, which show in WhatLinksHere but not as a use of the image. I don't know if this is the correct terminology or not.

There is no need for the majority of these to go to RfD, but they shouldn't be immediately speedy deleted to allow time for editors to catch up. As I understand it this is often current practice anyway, but making it explicit wouldn't harm at all. Thryduulf (talk) 11:41, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I remember one of the devs threatening to block and desysop any admin doing such deletions, so I'm wary to do so. Seriously though, I don't think it's a good idea to delete them at all. There is no way to determine whether some external source (possibly offline?) links to the file, a link we would break by deleting the redirect without any reason as to why we should do so. Those redirects harm no one and there is a reason we do not allow the deletion of redirects per speedy deletion except in few clear-cut cases. Regards SoWhy 11:58, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

New policy proposal: A7: Unremarkable event

I have noticed that there are many A7 criteria for unremarkable people, clubs, musical recordings etc. yet there is not an A7 criterion for an unremarkable event. For example, if someone wrote an article about his mother going to the shops, that could be placed under A1, G2 or G3. But if someone wrote about a siege that happened in the year AD43 for example, but it is not notable, where exactly do we place this article? It wouldn't fit under A1, G2 or G3 (unless the content of the article was against one of these policies) so I am proposing a new A7 criteria for an unremarkable event. The communities thoughts? Osarius : T : C : Been CSD'd? 19:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

There's a previous discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 34#A7 Events, which is at least partially relevant to your question. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 19:11, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
...although, from your example I'm guessing you're referring more to historic events ("a siege that happened in the year AD43"). That would need to go to an AfD in my opinion, as it is not clear-cut enough for a speedy. Do such articles appear frequently? Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 19:20, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Okay, I could write about my best friend, but that would be WP:COI and it would fail A7. But if I wrote about a weekly youth group meeting that my friend goes to, that would have to go through AfD? Do you see where I'm coming from? The person isn't notable, and neither is the event. The same for historical events - in fact the timescale doesn't really matter, it's the fact of whether the event itself is notable or not. I don't see why it would have to go through AfD for the same reason. Sorry if I'm not making much sense. Osarius : T : C : Been CSD'd? 19:28, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
An article about a youth group meeting, with no assertion of importance, probably could be deleted as db-group (A7) since it would mostly be about a group. If I were to come across a new article about an event from the year AD43 such as a siege, I would think it likely that the author was wriitng from sources about an historic event, and sources would need to be sought, from the author or elsewhere. If it was something like "In the year 1015 Joe Schmo sat on a log" then it could be deleted as vandalism. Many new articles about current or future events are overtly promotional and can go via G11. I don't think AfD would be overwhelmed by the remaining ones. Keep in mind that AfD is our default process, not CSD, which is reserved for certain articles that would otherwise overwhelm Prod and AfD. Speedy deletion is not the default. It can give the appearance of having contradictions, though, which understandably can be frustrating for new page patrollers. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 19:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Also, remember that there is PROD to handle stuff that does not meet CSD but would be deleted almost certainly at AFD. Regards SoWhy 20:21, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Not to mention that for something to be remembered from that long ago would mean that someone would have had to think it important enough to record, many other people would need to consider it important enough to preserve, and finally someone from the recent past would have to consider it important enough to cover in some fashion. I am not saying that all these events would pass an AFD but I would consider the fact that the event is still known almost 2000 years later should be enough t survive an A7.--70.24.209.180 (talk) 22:47, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

CAT:CSD

As CAT:CSD is often backlogged, I've been trying to think of a way to streamline the CSD assessment process for admins. I'm not 100% familiar with how articles tagged for speedy deletion appear in the category (I assume it's a non-visible category found in the CSD template). My thought is that instead of seeing a large list of every article nominated for speedy deletion and randomly picking one to assess, we could splitting them into their respective CSD criteria code sub-categories to allow admins to focus on a CSD criteria with which they have the most experience.

For example, an admin who has a great deal of experience in copyright violations can go to CAT:CSD as usual but if the list is very large, they can focus on what they're best at; articles nominated for WP:G12 deletion. Similarly, an admin who has a large amount of experience with music could focus on WP:A9s, an admin who has a large amount of experience with COIs can concentrate on WP:G11 articles, and an admin who focuses on vandalism could focus on WP:G3, WP:G5, and WP:G10.

Ultimately, I doubt this will have a huge impact but as it's not a hard change to make and I can't think of any reason not to, it seems like a good idea to me. Any thoughts? OlYeller21Talktome 19:19, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

This is already done (click on the links at CAT:CSD#Subcategories). Hut 8.5 19:29, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Ah, missed that line. I thought it was odd that something like that didn't already exist. OlYeller21Talktome 19:31, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
You can also see them at Template:CSD-categories. Do you think ones are missing from that list? Regards SoWhy 19:35, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

The reason that this category gets backlogged is that at times the rate at which pages are being added is much higher than the rate at which they are removed. I don't see how changing the way they are categorised or listed will change that: it takes me just as long to check and assess a speedy deletion candidate if I get it from a list just containing a particular category as it does if I get it from a list of all of them. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:29, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Shameless plug As an admin I find User:Ais523/catwatch.js incredibly useful for as OlYeller says, focusing on certain categories. If I had my way I would make sure every admin had this installed for at the very least attack pages.--Jac16888 Talk 21:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Another entirely different way of dealing with the backlog is my new proposal Wikipedia:Tool apprenticeship, which (among other things) can give the delete tool to experienced speedy deletion taggers on a trial basis. Please look it over and give your feedback on the talk page - it's going to RfC pretty soon. Dcoetzee 02:36, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Template criteria

Shouldn't there be a criteria for speedy deletion of templates that basically states: "Creation of content that does not belong in template space", i.e. if someone puts an article in template space, it could be CSDed? Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:24, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

G6 would seem to cover that, as a page unambiguously created in error. I've seen the reverse happen with people accidentally creating categories and templates in mainspace, and G6 worked fine for those (they ended up deleted, and I helped the creators get them into the right namespace). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
What if it was intentional, though? Could you still use G6? Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
I'd say that G6 covers them if they were created in ignorance of namespaces, etc. If they were knowingly and deliberately created in the wrong namespace then I'd tag it as G3 (vandalism). Thryduulf (talk) 17:56, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Re XfD's and G6

Am I correct in assuming that deletion of an entity following an XfD falls under G6? (If the XfD is closed by an admin he can delete the entity himself if that is called for, but non-admins can't). But should this not be clarified? Herostratus (talk) 05:26, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, the deletion is actually covered by the Xfd which should be linked from the log. G6 can pb applied to cleaning up left-overs and we actullay have {{db-xfd}}. For occasional non-admin closes it can be used as well, but closing and deleting contestually is sually more efficient and one of the reasons why preferably admins should close discussions that might result in a delete. --Tikiwont (talk) 09:42, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Oh, OK, I had not seen {{db-xfd}}, duh. Thanks. Herostratus (talk) 19:39, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

G10 for redirects

Hello folks. There is a discussion about how G10 applies to redirects. I'm looking to see if people believe that any disparaging nickname as a redirect is a G10. If so, is it limited to BLPs? Should things like Tricky Dick be a redirect or should they be deleted (or does the target matter, so a redirect to the nicknames of presidents would be acceptable, but a redirect to Richard Nixon would not? Discussion that forms the basis for this question can be found [1]. Hobit (talk) 13:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

  • My sense/opinion is that sourced redirects can be acceptable even if disparaging per WP:RNEUTRAL and common sense and as such should go to RfD rather than the speedy process. G10 doesn't distiquish between BLPs, general biographies or (say) sports teams and so this broad an application of G10 to redirects covers way too much. Hobit (talk) 13:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
    • We need to take in to consideration of the usefulness and worthiness of a redirect. Whether I am a student writing a paper, a history buff, or just curious about this president, how likely is it that I am going to think "hey, I'll get to his page by using "Tricky Dick" in the search box? Tarc (talk) 13:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
      • Possibly not likely, but if you hear someone talking about "Tricky Dick" and don't know who that is, you're very likely to put "Tricky Dick" into the search box. Thryduulf (talk) 14:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
        • I agree with Thryduulf here. The point of redirects is to allow easier navigation for readers and there are many such redirects. Yes, redirects like that might be created for malicious reasons but not all those redirects fit G10. Regards SWM (SoWhy[on]Mobile) 17:47, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
    • G10 applies to redirects because these types sometimes create things like "John is a flaming homo" as a redirect to John Doe. I've seen it happen a couple of times, though of course I'm not going to post them here; it's not altogether common, but it does happen, and G10 tags get noticed more quickly. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:28, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
      • Yes, the point is that G10 applies to pages that serve no purpose other than as an attack, and "John is a flaming homo" is a good example of that. If there is a non-attack purpose, such as with "Tricky Dick" or the "Tony Bliar" that is currently at RfD, then it is not a speedy candidate and it should be either kept or sent to RfD if it's not clear. Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I would think a redirect for any disparaging nickname that is mentioned or discussed in the target article should clearly not be deleted under these grounds. I also think a redirect for a disparaging nickname that is explicitly discussed in several reliable and neutral sources should not be deleted. Beyond that, it may get murkier, although I'd probably side with redirecting any plausible search term, even if it's an offensive slur. Theoldsparkle (talk) 17:57, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
    • I think a little WP:IAR mixed with some WP:UCS would be useful here. Some terms, though disparaging, are historically significant nicknames (i.e. "Tricky Dick"). That doesn't mean that every disparaging nickname or other bogus redirect needs to be kept around, even for the 7 days necessary for a full RFD discussion. If something is blatantly bogus, and over the top, it can be speedily deleted. --Jayron32 01:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
      • I think the question is "where is the bar" between things that should be speedied and things that should go to RfD?". I think "historically significant" would be too high of a bar. I'd argue for "has a reliable source" as a better (lower) bar. If for some reason keeping the redirect around for 7 days was somehow seen as horrible even though it was sourced (and I can easily imagine such a case), a G10 speedy followed by a listing at RfD might be the way to go. Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 10:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
        • If it's not clearly solely an attack page, then send it to RfD. If there is any doubt whether it's notable, send it to RfD. RfD discussions are frequently quickly closed as delete (with the redirects being tagged for speedy deletion or just simply deleted) in situations where it's clear but not clear enough for a straight speedy (e.g. it needs a bit of investigation, or you just want a couple of extra opinions). Thryduulf (talk) 18:48, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Some editors have been using R3, Implausible typos, as a justification for speedily deleting redirects created in accordance with the policy at WP:INTDABLINK. Under this policy, a disambiguation page like Conduct will have an incoming redirect from Conduct (disambiguation). An editor needing to make an intentional link to the disambiguation page can use the redirect, thereby preventing the link from showing up on the lists of pages with disambiguation links requiring repair. The link will thereby also inform users of the encyclopedia that the page linked to is a disambiguation page, preventing readers from being confused. Furthermore, certain templates such as the template for listing multiple species designations are designed to automatically route through such redirects, and deleting those redirects prevents those templates from functioning properly. Because the careless deletion of a "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect can cause unforeseen harm, I request an amendment R3 clarifying: A "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect pointing to an existing disambiguation page is not a candidate for speedy deletion. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

  • Support although I'd change the wording to "This criterion does not apply to redirects ending with "(disambiguation)" that point to a disambiguation page." to make it more consistent with the language used for other criteria. Cases of "Foo (disambiguation)" pointing to an irrelevant disambiguation page and where there is no page disambiguating foos or other suitable target are going to be so rare that RfD will be able to handle them perfectly well. Thryduulf (talk) 11:40, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

If there are no objections in the next couple of days I think the amendment can be safely treated as uncontroversial. Thryduulf (talk) 18:51, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

 Criterion amended: [2]. Thryduulf (talk) 00:40, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:U1 and user talk pages

This page states that WP:U1 is not to be used for deletion of user talk pages. What about where a user talk page only consists of a redirect with absolutely no history? (i.e., because the user has been renamed.) Would it be allowable then? I don't see why it shouldn't be, but can't seem to find the answer anywhere. Robofish (talk) 22:43, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

If a user has been renamed, then it's normally good practice to keep the redirect around as it helps connect the old name with the new. If you think any user talk redirect should be deleted, nominate it at RfD so it can be evaluated. RfD isn't overloaded, there aren't many of these sorts of redirects and deleting them isn't always going to be uncontroversial, so they're not suited to speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 00:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. To clarify, it's the redirect from my old username and user talk page that I'm thinking of getting deleted. I suppose in theory that could be controversial, but I believe it has been done many times before, so I don't think there would be much reason to object. Robofish (talk) 17:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
Whether RfD recommends deletion will likely in part depend on the recency of the move, how long you were under your old name and how active you were, and what if any traffic is still using the redirect. These things will obviously be different in every case, which is why RfD is best. Thryduulf (talk) 17:33, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Adding "deliberate disruption" to G3

Is it worth making it explicit that deliberate disruption, even if not strictly vandalism, is covered under G3? This could be done by changing either the criterion or the disruption. Thryduulf (talk) 18:00, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's needed. If the page solely serves to disrupt, then it's clearly vandalism anyway. If the disruption is not clear enough to be considered vandalism, I don't think it's clear enough for a single admin to decide. Regards SoWhy 18:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
I agree. Deliberate disruption does qualify as vandalism already. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 16:50, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

G11 and plagiarism. (Was: On "making things up")

About this: It turns out that I didn't make up anything; the fact is that WP:Plagiarism already says that plagiarism is a completely separate concept from WP:COPYVIO—which informed editors already know, and which under-educated ones apparently need to be educated about in this policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It's definitely a rude edit summary. At the same time it's not a terrible idea to discuss whether the clarification belongs in the CSD. causa sui (talk) 19:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree, it's definitely not made up but discussion is certainly never a bad idea before adding text to the policy. That said, I'm personally in favor of such clarifications and I'd support adding that text. Regards SoWhy 20:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Myself as well. causa sui (talk) 21:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't find that a helpful addition here where we deal with stuff dumped from a (usually) known non-free source whether attributed or not. As lack of attribution is by itself not the reason for deletion, I tried a different wording, thankfully fixed by Nikkimaria as I already mentally headed her. I've also changed the header. --Tikiwont (talk) 21:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Non-free stuff (copyvios) must be deleted, whether attributed or not. But unattributed free stuff (which are not copyvios) do not qualify for deletion under the copyvios-only criteria.
In short, if you're speedying something under G12, it had better by an actual copyvio, not a non-copyvio plagiarism problem.
The recent changes are okay with me, but I wonder if it would be helpful to link to WP:Plagiarism underneath the wording about failure to attribute the free text. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Do you think there is an actual problem of free text often being speedily deleted? This criterion is only about unambiguous copyright infringement, which already requires that you find a copyrighted source. WP:Plagiarism is an editorial guideline for content writing and for me it would be surprising to get bumped over there.--Tikiwont (talk) 09:29, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Please don't assert what others are thinking of stuff they haven't mentioned. Underneath links can be surprising in general, the place is big and we're talking here about the wording for one criterion. Which links to the copyright policy as it is the relevant one for clarifying the speedy deletion reason G12, as are btw Wikipedia:Patent nonsense, Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes and Wikipedia:Spam in the context of G1, G3 and G11 respectively and each page duly mentions the speedy deletion criterion. As you say yourself plagiarism is not the speedy deletion reason, so I wouldn't find therefore a direct link helpful here. What I want is that the thousands of people dumping copyrighted stuff under stand the Wikipedia:Copyright violations and would add there any clarification needed with respect to plagiarism.
  • Might have guessed that there is an incident behind. As far as I see, the deleting admin didn't consider it plagiarism, so any rewording would not have prevented it, nor can we take care of any actual or presumed confusion as those are only sorted out reading the full policies and discussing them. That speedy deletion was simply procedurally incorrect because there were early stubs to revert to and doubt about a irredeemably corrupted long history are better be sorted out before at the relevant board, the afterwards at AN. What is precisely what CSD G12 already suggests because any detailed discussion about copy right status involving or plagiarism', is beyond it. Once something has been deleted, it is of course legitimate to ask whether to restore and or recreate from scratch.--Tikiwont (talk) 13:16, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

A couple of things:

  1. There was nothing rude about my edit summary. It's merely a warning against making policy on the hoof (as I say) by making a not insignificant change to a rather key policy page without seeking talk page consensus. Any rudeness in this discussion has come from people slinging around accusations that other editors are "uneducated" or "confused" when they are nothing of the sort.
  2. For what it's worth, I fully understand the distinction between copyright violation and plagiarism. But I am unimpressed by those who rely upon that distinction to justify plagiarism. The fact that plagiarism is legal doesn't justify it in any way, shape, or form.
  3. And also for what it's worth, personally I don't find either copyright violation or plagiarism particularly good reasons for speedy deletion. Far better to rewrite the relevant article, than to get rid of it altogether.
  4. As such, I don't personally think that "plagiarism of a public domain source [is a] valid CSD criterion." Personally, I would rather just turn the affected article into a stub. But the point here was that a) restoring the article would simply have given us a plagiarized article, as before; and b) for those who were truly interested in seeing what that article looked like, it was easy enough to seek out the original source from which it had been plagiarized.

HTH. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 09:00, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

  • We have an enormous numbers of articles based directly on text from the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911, with proper attribution, and that material has been an invaluable part of the project. There's also no reason to delete or rewrite these articles (although they certainly need editing). If someone used this source without properly attributing it, the solution would be to attribute it by adding the appropriate reference/footnote/template. Admittedly some public domain sources are less suitable as a source of encyclopedic content, and a rewrite may be justified in these cases. Dcoetzee 12:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • In the case referred to, although some people referred to "plagiarism", it is clear that the deleting administrator rightly or wrongly regarded the article as a copyright infringement. The proposed new wording would therefore have made no difference in this case. However, whatever the situation in that particular case, making substantial changes to the wording of a policy because of just one incident is not generally a good idea. While it is certainly true that many people confuse copyright infringement with plagiarism, I see no evidence that this commonly causes problems with speedy deletions. Unless a particular issue is a frequent cause of significant problems, it is better not to add more wording to cover that issue in guidelines or policies. The steady expansion over time of what were originally a few short and simple guidelines into a large number of long and detailed documents attempting to cover every case and every exception makes Wikpedia increasingly inaccessible and confusing, especially to new users. Unless there is evidence that the plagiarism/copyright confusion is a frequent cause of problems with speedy deletions, better to leave mention of it out. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Automatically generated user pages of blocked users

For an example see User:Wonderweeks. This user is indef blocked for a username violation, and their userpage consists solely of the boilerplate from ACIP. Since the user is indef blocked and the user page contains nothing of substance, it seems like such pages could be deleted under G6 as a housekeeping action, but I suppose we should discuss the matter first. This is something that is happening on a very regular basis, a lot of accounts reported at WP:UAA have the auto-generated userpage as their only edit. Actually it is also worth considering if we should auto-delete these if the account never makes another edit in say, 3-6 months. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What harm is caused by leaving them alone? Monty845 22:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
What harm is caused by leaving the talk page of a deleted page intact? None, but we delete them anyway in the interest of removing clutter that serves no purpose. That is the entire point of criterion G6. Routine housekeeping is not the removal of harmful pages, we have other criteria for that, it is for removing pages of no value that are unlikely to ever be edited again. Like the automatically generated, userpage of a user who is indef blocked and/or never actually edited Wikipedia. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:07, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
Not correct. G6 does not cover talk pages of deleted pages, which is why G8 was created special in the first place. We delete them because they depend on the deleted main page and are useless on their own (which is why G8 does not allow the deletion of talk pages that might still be useful). I'm inclined to agree that the pages you mention appear to have "no value" but it's not clear, is it? For example, what if the user requests an unblock and proves that the reason for their block was incorrect? Instead of deleting such pages, why not replace them with a modified version of the username block template, including a link to revert the addition of the template in case they are unblocked? It would actually be more helpful for everyone since the templated userpage wouldn't be lost and the user in question as well as others can easily see the reason for the block on the userpage. Regards SoWhy 23:31, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
I see no particular advantage in getting rid of these user pages. Also, if we were to get rid of them "in the interest of removing clutter that serves no purpose" then why would that not apply equally to all user pages of blocked users? What is special about ACIP generated ones? Finally, if you really want to get rid of these pages then you can always replace their content with {{indefblocked}}. In fact that could be seen as better than just deleting the page. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Can't say I see that adding an indef blocked template to the page of someone who was blocked solely for their username is helpful either. Well, I was just testing the waters before trying to stretch the definition of G6 a bit, it doesn't seem as uncontroversial as I thought, and I don't feel it's a vital issue so I'll just continue to leave the pages as is. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

G6 requires admin rights, doesn't it?

G6 to reverse a redirect still requires admin rights, doesn't it? I wish one didn't have to run the RfA gauntlet to get such a simple tool. I'd like it to be given out like rollback. If RfA wasn't such a big deal, I'd do it, but I spend all my time editing. Nurg (talk) 03:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the system doesn't care whether G6 is the reason for a deletion you're performing. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 04:44, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, all deletions require admin rights. It's not as if it is particularly difficult to add {{db-g6}} to the page in order to bring it to an admin's attention. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:11, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
But please give a reason, as many G6's are not obvious. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Sub pages of non-existant user pages (G8)

I've just declined a few pages tagged with {{db-subpage}} which were in user space. I don't see a problem with users having sub-pages even if they haven't created a user page. At present G8 is exempt for user talk pages, but doesn't specifically mention user pages. Any objections to me adding this?  An optimist on the run! 18:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

If the user exists, I agree, we cannot assume that they need a primary page to have usable sub-pages. On the other hand, if there's a subpage of a non-existent userspace page, for which a corresponding user does not exist... It's hard to see why anyone would do that on purpose. Jclemens (talk) 18:38, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Agree there's no point deleting such pages, just because someone doesn't want to have a user page doesn't mean they can't have sandboxes etc. User pages of nonexistent users are already covered under U2. Hut 8.5 19:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I meant existing users. I've added it to G8.  An optimist on the run! 20:26, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I would not think three users is even close enough to enough consensus. Perhaps try to get some more users in this discussion? Also, since you proposed the change, I don't think it is good for you to add it, especially only after two other replys. I've undone it as such. You can re-instate it, though I'd recommend you get more people here to generate a better consensus on the subject. LikeLakers2 (talk | Sign my guestbook!) 01:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
It is something already applied in practice and always conceived this way. The fact that the policy did not specifically provide is an oversight when the policy was written. There is clear consensus above for inclusion for what is a long standing practice anyway. I have hence boldly added the clarification to the page. There's enough consensus here to carry it into the main policy page. Snowolf How can I help? 02:05, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
LikeLakers, are you saying we should routinely delete orphaned user subpages without without concent from the users? Unless the page falls foul of other criteria (adverts, attack pages etc.) I don't see how this benefits the project. Snowolf sums it up by saying this is something that's already done. It's not my intention to change policy, merely to clarify it.  An optimist on the run! 06:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Subpages in user space are routinely created - via a page move - if an XFD closes as "userfy then delete". There is no expectation that the primary user page should exist beforehand; but the user concerned will normally exist, because they will be the page's original creator. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:59, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

We need a new category

Noindex-idea taken to idea-lab Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

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

I've recently come across books that haven't been written yet, films that haven't been shot yet, music that hasn't been recorded yet. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 21:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Is it common enough that a CSD category would be worthwhile? And are these always going to be deleted? A film with a notable cast or an adaptation of a popular book might already meet the GNG before filming starts. ϢereSpielChequers 21:23, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
alright... include it in A7. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 21:36, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
It's hard to make a film assert significance or importance. →Στc. 21:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
I think you are kind of missing the point. The criterion are deliberately narrow in their scope. We shouldn't expand that scope to include more types of articles unless it is the case that almost every single time such an article is created it should be deleted without discussion. As WSC commented, it is easy to see how future films or even books could be considered notable even before they are made. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:45, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
I see. This means "Zombiefinger 564X is a film to be released in Malaysia in 2014." must go through AfD. Just making sure. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 21:48, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
PROD it and see if anyone cares or not, or in some cases G3 hoax. On a different note, there are far more WP:MADEUP articles that get unprodded by the creator 6 days in, than works that haven't been created yet. →Στc. 21:51, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
If you believe you can come up with wording that would unambiguoulsy define how you intend to expand A7, present it and we can actually have this conversation. As it stands right now you hav not proposed anything concrete and you have not demonstrated that all such articles should be deleted without discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Just put the word "film" into A7. It already says "doesn't credibly assert notability". How does the Zombiefinger example assert notability? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 21:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
When it comes to films I fear that one persons credible assertion would fail another person's hype detector and adding film to A7 would lead to even more A7 errors than we have already. The test for whether a group of articles should all be summarily be deleted is not that one of that group should go, the test is whether all should be deleted. In that sense my earlier example is more pertinent. No one is disputing that Zombiefinger should be deleted, but there have been films that generated a lot of publicity as early as the casting stage. Would you really have suggested deletion of Gone with the Wind whilst they were still Searching for Scarlett? ϢereSpielChequers 23:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Iron Man (film) was in pre-production for 18 years and was legendary as a film that had been cast and recast again and again and seemed like it was never actually going to be made at all. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
I agree that covering this with a CSD would be good, I fear that trying to find a wording that covers it will be what sinks this, as a claim to significance could be made by most films by just reporting on an unsourced claim that a actor or director with an article is linked in some way to the film. Mtking (edits) 23:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
My main concern is that we're providing a free advertisement and publicity forum for 7 days for any book/film , and to anyone who wants to have a google-link. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I get your point, I really do. It's not a perfect system, but it is designed to avoid wholesale deletions of entire categories of articles based on subjective criteria. Even with the controls we already have mistakes are made, so that's why many of us are very leery of expanding the definiition of A7 in particular is it is already problematic because it is so subjective. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:21, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Free publicity is a problem, but I'm not convinced deletion is the best answer, especially if that risks yet more deletion errors. Better in my view to mark all unpatrolled articles as noindex and just have a different Special:Newpages colour for articles tagged for deletion. A little IT investment, no extra work for us, in fact less work because you will no longer have people marking the same articles as patrolled and also tagged for deletion. Strips away the publicity advantage and with it part of the incentive to spam us. Of course if all these articles about films are written by eager fans that isn't going to dissuade any of them, but if my nagging suspicion is correct that just a few of these are written by studio publicity departments then it might just help. ϢereSpielChequers 00:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
That's indeed a good solution. Could the templates simply include __NOINDEX__? (That is, both speedies and AfD-templates) In fact, I'll your unpatrolled=noindex-idea to the idea-lab right now. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Noindex_unpatrolled_new_pages. Let's talk about it there. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Best not to add it to templates. One of the concerns about any enabling of noindex in mainspace is that it could be used by vandals, making it part of an article being unpatrolled means that you can relatively easily control that. At present I don't think that admins can mark a patrolled article as unpatrolled, if we can I certainly don't know how to. So I think a one way switch would be safe, and linking this to patrolling avoids complications as we'd still have two groups of articles, patrolled and unpatrolled, just that the unpatrolled ones would all be noindex. ϢereSpielChequers 01:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A7 and Mention in independent reliable sources

I think currently, the criteria for speedy deletion are being applied far too easily (yes, I know there is a large group of editors who believe that CSD is much too restricted on the other side of the spectrum). Amongst the problems I think is criterium A7, and I think that one possibility to enforce what I believe it's intended use is (i.e. Pete in math class, the website about my cat, the supermarket in my street, our secret club, this totally cool band that practices in the garage across the street) is to disqualify any article who's subject is mentioned in an independent reliable source, and I'm wondering what others think on this. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:40, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

No. We should not give a free pass to anyone who is listed in the phone book, is pictured in their school yearbook, or receives a passing mention in a news article (e.g. A named witness to an event where the news article provides no information about the subject other than their name and that they witnessed the event the news story is reporting). There needs to be a plausible expectation that enough sourced material to allow creation of a verifiable article exists, not just a simple mention. --Allen3 talk 13:46, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I hadn't thought of the phonebook, yearbook or yellowpages, and those things obviously shouldn't count. What I would like to stress, is that I think it's harmful to think in terms of a free pass. Such articles would still be deleted, but rather per PROD than per Speedy deletion. I'll see if I can dream something up that takes care of a phonebook loophole. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:37, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
No but there is something here worth building on. If we could get the article creation process tweaked so that it prompts people for a source then that might persuade some garage bans to hold off until they've had a gig advertised. Which would at least get rid of the ones that don't get that far. ϢereSpielChequers 15:11, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
When I tag an article for A7 speedy deletion, I write in the edit summary, no reason to believe this could ever meet our inclusion guidelines. Although I've been proven wrong in a couple of occasions, I believe that's the principle that should be applied to A7 tagging. Conversely, I expect a G3-hoax tag to apply to cases where no one would bother with a Google search, with PRODs taking care of cases where such a search was necessary but proved fruitless. Speedy deletion is deletion on sight, that is, for cases where one only has to go with what's before one's eyes. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 16:41, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I also cringe when I see G3-hoax tags on articles that are actually WP:MADEUP violations. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 17:01, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
The problem with no reason to believe it could ever meet WP:N is that that is so subjective. What we are seeing now is that to indicate why its subject is important or significant is that a whole lot of things could fall under that, that shouldn't be speedily deleted. If both the tagging and the deleting admin think that the claims a subject makes is not a claim of importance or significance, then the criterium is met, but there is a lot of room for interpertation there. Speedy deletion was never meant for anything that leaves any room at all for discussion. At least the G3-hoax deletions that are not actually hoaxes are clearly out of policy. The problem with A7 is that it is still open for discussion if the deletion is or is not within the criterium. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:25, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I believe that no matter how we word the A7 criterion, there will always be gray areas. When I say that an article gives me no reason to suspect its topic meets WP:N, that's how I interpret "assertion of importance". That leaves room for assertions which are valid but which the article creator can't back up with references immediately. At least, a PROD or an AfD gives the article creator 7 days to come up with references (10 days in the case of a BLP PROD). Maybe I should clarify my edit summary to state that the article, in its current state, gives me no reason to suspect that such sources even exist (which is actually what I mean to say anyway).
Yes, there's probably some room for clarification of the A7 criterion, but we don't want its wording to become an instruction WP:CREEP either. And I don't want to prevent the creation of articles on notable subjects about which the creator is unable to find sources by himself (and perhaps wishes to let the finding of sources to others). I believe A7 is for those hopeless cases where one sees no reason to bother looking for sources. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 17:41, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Wiki's in general should have very little instructions and guidelines because of the wiki nature that anyone can edit. The idea is you can just be bold, and when people disagree with you, they simply undo or change what you did. Admin actions don't work that way, especially not where there is very little control of what is happening. We all know how few people are involved with any specific speedy deletion. Usually just a newbie who doesn't know the ropes, a new page patroller who tags it for deletion, and an admin who performs it (sometimes not even the patroller), so while I agree on creep being bad in general, the arguments against creep are much less strong in the area of speedy deletion. Some clear and hard limits on what definitely shouldn't be speedily deleted are a good thing, and in case of 'emergency' there is always IAR. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:47, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
My proposal by the way was to have it in addition to the current wording. Stuff with whatever references in an independent reliable source automatically disqualifies. That doesn't mean that things without one always automatically do qualify in this proposal. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Well, sometimes sources turn out to be not so independent, and the reliability of some of them is not always black on white. What of an article on a man with a source from the New York Times, but a closer look reveals that it was merely a Letter to the Editor sent by him? -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 20:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I've had a few dozen of my Letters to the Editor published by the Montreal Gazette, yet if anyone were to use those as the only sources in an article about me, I'd be first in line to nominate the article for an A7 speedy. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 20:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
What is a credible claim of significance can of course be somewhat subjective, but admins are instructed not to delete if they have any doubt. Any experienced admin has seen the case where there was a source of some sort attached, yet the article itself did not even try to explain why the subject was notable, so a blanket exemption for anything that appears to have a source is not a good idea. The current wording is sufficient for any admin with a modicum of good judgement. If there is a particular admin whose judgement in this area is not sound, take it up with them or file an WP:RFC/U. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Local papers with professional staff are reliable sources are they not? I'm happy to use such as sources for "local celebrity - sports star of sixty years ago dies in local nursing home" and update a bio with the obit. But if my paper is anything to go by every sports team, local elected politician, restaurant and quite a few stray cats would suddenly be immune from A7. OK I may be exaggerating about the stray cats, but winner of the local allotment site's annual pumpkin award? OK the article on the grower can still go via BLPprod, but the article on the actual pumpkin would have to go to AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 20:51, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
If your newspaper is like many I have seen in the US, there is a regular column listing selected animals available for adoption at the local animal shelter(s). Thus the line about stray cats (and dogs) qualifying for protection under this proposal is all too true. --Allen3 talk 21:10, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Thankfully that column hasn't reached us, but I've struck that line. ϢereSpielChequers 00:50, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the eligibility of pumpkins would change under this proposal, and might in this case best be deleted per PROD rather than AfD. As far as 'local celebrities' go, I don't think they should be speedy deleted, but always should go via PROD (or AfD if so required). A local celebrity is not in the same league as 'The funny guy who works in the grocery store' which I think A7 is meant to target, and its best to stray on the side of caution. Wikipedia is not going to collapse because more articles are under PROD for a few days. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:23, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Changing the text of A7 wouldn't fix anything. The text is unambiguous now, and people still don't apply it correctly. We just need NPPers and admins who are willing to follow the standards rather than make up their own personal standards on when to speedy delete articles. After all, speedy deletion is not the only deletion method, and if it doesn't meet A7 it isn't the end of the world if it waits through WP:PROD or WP:AFD. We just need people to stop misusing it. It is a good speedy criteria, for deleting articles about the kid sitting next to you in chemistry class. It just needs to be used the right way. --Jayron32 18:43, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
The phrase " "no reason to believe this could ever meet our inclusion guidelines. " is indeed usefull, and I use it all the time for deleting expired prods--It is a very acceptable reason for deletion by prod or AfD. It is not however one of the speedy criteria. Any mention of notability in the speedy criteria has long been objected to, in order to keep the concepts apart. I recall that in my first year here, I proposed a wording for A7 that included that word, though only in the sense that anything which gave an indication of notability could not be deleted at a7 , and it was explained to me by the more experienced people here that even using it in that exclusionary sense would cause confusion. The general principle is that passing a7 does not require notability, or even the prospect of notability, just some indication of importance. No admin is qualified to make an absolute judgement of non0-notability without a suitable search to see if it might meet the GNG--no matter how much I may be convinced that they will be no significant references, I cannot know this unless I try. If an article is proposed for deletion on that basis, there needs to be a chance to show it does in fact meet the notability guideline. If anyone is speedy deleting on the basis of that phrase, they are not following the guidelines, and I regard it as a clear enough error that I shall revert or bring to Del Rev any such deletions I see, as being without basis in deletion policy, unless it is obvious that they also fulfill one of the actual speedy deletion guidelines. (I am not so quixotic as to revert over a mere error in the choice of words, and knowing Blanchard to be sensible, I suspect his speedies on that basis would also fail the true a7 or another criterion). But that wording sends incorrect messages to the new users and will confuse them, and I think should be avoided.
In the other direction, I agree that the presence of a reference does not save from speedy deletion. An assertion that one is a member of one's high school sports team, even if supported by a local listing, is not to me a credible assertion of encyclopedic importance, in the sense that nobody who has any understanding of Wikipedia could think it suitable as an encyclopedic article. (If someone is asserted to be a school sports champion, that could be a plausible good faith belief that such was encyclopedic, although we have almost never held such to be actually notable, and I would change a speedy on such an article to prod. Question of referencing do not belong at speedy. DGG ( talk ) 09:56, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
The thing is, even the word "importance" leads to confusion, especially among new editors. Many times, I've tagged articles on small charities for A7 speedies only to have the author protest that the goal their charities intend to achieve is important. (In most cases, new editors don't read edit summaries, they don't even know how to display them. All they see is the A7 tag itself.) The frequency of such occurrences prompted myself and a couple of other editors to co-write the WP:NOBLECAUSE essay.
What I don't want to see is an editor working hard to make sure a new article will get past A7 speedy only to be later deleted on a snowball AfD, thereby making all the work subsequent to the initial A7 tagging pointless. That's why, even though there's a difference between notability and importance, I point out right away to new editors that an article's topic must meet our notability guidelines if it is to be kept in the long run. This is not to say A7's strike zone should be expanded, as such comments that I make are not meant for reviewing admins to consider. Rather, I want to point out to a new editor that any work on a certain topic might be in vain if the topic doesn't pass our inclusion guidelines, and that's why I point to the inclusion guidelines right away. I try to limit A7 tagging to obvious cases that give me no reason to bother looking for sources (not for cases where I do look for sources but find them wanting), and in fact I often go ahead of administrators declining the not-so-obvious A7's of other patrollers, often converting those to prods. But even then, there will always be gray areas, especially with regard to {{db-corp}}.
Also, and this might make me sound like Captain Obvious, but no article topic should pass on notability yet fail on A7-defined importance. That's why, no matter how separate we want notability and importance to be, they will always be somewhat related. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 17:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
As a practical matter, I've always found the "assertion of importance" language problematic, in that many new articles include an implied assertion of importance that one outside the topic area might not be able to recognise. This is the argument frequently invoked to avoid further expansion of A7, but it applies even to the items already listed: for example, if an article about an American football player says he "scored three touchdowns in one game," or an article about a software developer says he "worked on over 15 industrial software projects," is that an indication of importance? Or is that entirely unremarkable? Is it significant that someone is "the first black player on team X"? Maybe, if it's from a historically racist area and represents an advance in race relations. But assessing such things is impossible without adequate background and context. Dcoetzee 05:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Fanfiction

Is there no criteria for fan-made fiction or characters like The Marauder (Revenant)? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 03:03, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:CSD#A7. If it is published online, then it is a webpage. That should cover it. --Jayron32 03:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Unbelievable! "The Marauder is a character from a fictional fan story"? And that shit has been sat here since June 1. I've deleted it as taking the absolute piss, and please, if there is anything similar, tell me so I can nuke it--Jac16888 Talk 03:41, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Hm.... maybe it could be a G3 hoax? →Στc. 03:44, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
On what basis does a fictional character qualify for A7? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
The words "web content". The character is part of a web publication. Ergo it is content published on the web. Ergo, it is web content. Ergo, a7 that shit outta here. --Jayron32 03:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Pardon me if I don't share your enthusiasm, but nowadays everything can be found on the net. Can you show me where the article identifies the Marauder as web content (i.e., something that exists only on the web)? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:54, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
If you would care to start a thread at WP:DRV I would be glad to carry on a more indepth discussion over this specific article. --Jayron32 03:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Are you drunk, or are you always such an ass? — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:59, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
Neither. This venue is not the appropriate venue to discuss the matter of undeleting an article. WP:DRV is. If you would like to civilly discuss undeleting this article, I suggest we carry on the discussion at WP:DRV which is the appropriate venue. I'll note that you, and not I, started name calling and accusations of impairment. I offered to continue this discussion with you, and you responded by calling me a name and accusing me of being drunk. I don't think that is a particularly productive way to carry on a discussion. --Jayron32 04:02, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry for the insults. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:09, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I guess we can open up an RfC on what makes for an A7. DRV is the wrong place IMO because no one is arguing that we should have the article. Rather there is an argument that A7 doesn't apply to characters. Hobit (talk) 06:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
    I don't think we can make a blanket statement on which characters. Some characters (those from published works, notable TV shows, etc.) would require discussions. Those which exist as web content can be deleted per A7. If web content doesn't mean web content, then perhaps we need to deal with that issue. --Jayron32 06:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
  • DRV is the right venue to review deletions. The thrust of the nomination might be that such broad interpretation is generally a problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:48, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
WP:IAR. →Στc. 08:14, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
IAR is not a criteria for speedy deletion and should never be used as such. IAR is only for actions that uncontroversially improve the encyclopaedia, the criteria for speedy deletion list the only circumstances in which speedy deletion is uncontroversial, therefore deleting any page that does not meet the CSD criteria is controversial and thus, by definition, not eligible for IAR. Thryduulf (talk) 09:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
The "web content" provision of A7 has always concerned me, though I recognize its practical usefulness. Some fiction and similar material on the web is notable--I am thinking of some web comics as the obvious example. I see no way an individual admin can determine whether some such material , that they happen not to be familiar with, has a claim to possible good faith importance. The practical usefulness comes from the undoubted fact that by far most of it is not notable, but the criterion could be used to exclude material regardless. DGG ( talk ) 09:31, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
IAR is a perfectly valid basis for speedy deletion though it should be used rather rarely and with caution. It is used every day, by name or not. I am not going to elaborate because you've said exactly the same thing before and I've disagreed in exactly the same way before and we've both elaborated thereon before (here see also here), so doing so again would not be useful but such a thoroughly incorrect statement cannot sit there unchallenged as if it was true.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:46, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this discussion for real? The entire article was about a character, apparently from this (yes, it's a dead link) fanfiction. In other words, somebody was reading comics and decided to invent their own, and post it on Wikipedia. Where it has sat for 6 months. As I said above, the first line was "The Marauder is a character from a fictional fan story, based on the characters of D.C. Comics." followed by a list of powers, weaknesses and equipment. And there is this, part of what was posted on the article talk page by the article creator "I have created this page for my readers to find out infromation about the main character, and so they can see his powers and limitations." Please don't tell me that anyone here, admin or otherwise, believes it should have existed for a minute longer. --Jac16888 Talk 11:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

It was here for 6 months and I think it got copyedited. I think that anything that self-identifies as fan-fiction should have to defend itself, so if it doesn't say why it is even slightly important in the text it should be fair game. Although it would be nice if a criteria clearly covered that. I was tempted to simply use {{db}}, but I was surprised that I couldn't find the right criteria. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 11:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we should have had an article on it, but it was not libellous, a BLP violation nor otherwise actively harming Wikipedia (e.g. nobody has suggested it was a copyright violation). Therefore leaving it for the short time required for a PROD or AfD to delete it would have been far less disruptive than speedy deleting it outside of process (which does harm Wikipedia). I agree that fanfiction, defined properly, would be a good addition to A7, but until such time as it is added, then it cannot be speedily deleted. Such a definition of fan fiction would, to be workable, need to determine such questions as whether the series it is based on being notable is an assertion of notability - off the top of my head I simply don't know the answer to that question. Thryduulf (talk) 15:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
If you want to restore it so you can let it sit for another week or go through an utterly pointless AFD for it then by all means be my guest, although I would seriously question your judgement for doing so. My deletion did not harm Wikipedia, it improved it, having such an article for even a week is an embarrassment to the project, let alone more than 6 months. Anyway I would argue that a fanfiction character such as this does fit under web content (a character in a no longer viewable story posted on fanfiction.net, created by the author for his fans, with no content except a character description) although I would have deleted it anyway, and should I see another article like it tomorrow I will do the same.--Jac16888 Talk 15:23, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't normally monitor this page, but. as DGG points out, there is such a thing as notable fan fiction, and the characters in it might be notable. Perhaps a modification of the {{db-album}} criterion would work. As a possible start, an article about a character can be speedily deleted if it does not make a (credible) assertion of importance or significance, and there is no Wikipedia article about the publication(s) (if named) or the author(s) (if named)? (That's three required characteristics.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:44, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
And, for what it's worth, a Usenet newsgroup is not exactly on the web....perhaps {{db-web}} should be expanded to include other non-notable online content. There could be other online-only content which isn't on the "web". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Let's ignore the specific page people are talking about. Look at the criterion itself. It lists specific types of subject, and requires that, to avoid speedy deletion, articles on those subjects present a prima facie indication of significance, to a lower standard than that required by notability. By my understanding of the rationale for this, it's because those types of subject are rather numerous - people, individual animals, organisations, and web content. Those are all either inherently numerous, or have a very low threshold for creation. So, why should 'fanfic' in general be included in that? The rule as it stands will cover online fanfiction, but not fanfic that only exists in a 'zine. Does it cover elements of the online content? That's a subtler question, but I would assume it would. However, what's a bigger question to me is, why do we have such a wide grouping in that as "web content". Quite apart from the (possibly unintended) fact it places the web under a stricter spotlight than the rest of the internet, do we really mean that absolutely everything online should have this presumed lack of notability? It is on;y a prima facie claim that's required, of course, so all an article needs to say to force an AFD, according to the rules, is make a claim that it has some significance - no sources or real evidence needed. This is important, of course, as requiring full evidence immediately at article creation is a ludicrously high bar. SamBC(talk) 18:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

the justification for A7 is not that the articles are numerous, but that many articles of the class are so clearly inappropriate that a a single admin can be sure of it. Of the several hundred articles on people introduced each day, from 50 to 100 are ones for which nobody who understands what is meant by an encyclopedia could possible think important enough--and for many of them, the articles are clearly not submitted in good faith. The sooner such utterly impossible articles are disposed of the better. For organizations such as clubs and companies and musical groups, likewise. For individual animals, not so many, but some are very easy to tell. And there are many such on web content of various types. Many are the sort of YouTube postings that are really unmistakable. But the problem with web content ones is that many of them are not unmistakable, and for some, it's hard to tell, because what might seem to me and many individual admins as exceedingly unlikely content on the web, sometimes is in fact notable enough for an encyclopedia of our sort. It's a much less defined category, and we're more likely to make errors. As a similar situation, experience has shown that for many type of articles about fiction, naïve articles showing very little are often written about books that are in fact notable, but so far these have normally been conventional books--and we therefore exclude such articles, so people can sort them out while they're on prod. Most of the articles about web comics and the like I've seen on speedy a7 show on their face indications that they can not be possibly important, and I have no hesitation in deleting them. But in the absence of such signs, we really need a check by the community. I rather like Arthur Rubin's suggestion as an indication--except that really naïve people sometime write on characters who in fact do turn out to be notable even though we don't have the work. But I think it's rare enough that this might be a usable criterion. DGG ( talk ) 01:27, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
The sensible change, then, wouldn't be to single out fanfic in any way, but to say that elements within web content are covered under web content. I think singling out fanfic would not only be tilting at windmills, but tilting at the wrong windmills. SamBC(talk) 13:43, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Fanfic has to be decided on a case by case basis. My Immortal (the fanfic, not the Evanescence work) could be considered notable enough for an article, so we can't say that all fanfic is by default non-notable. Even things like A Very Potter Musical could be considered fanfic. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Surely fanfiction that shows "no indication of importance" is no more or less justifiably deleted than a person or company? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:54, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Fan fiction would fall under WP:MADEUP. PROD or AFD are more suitable for such things, being made up (and not an outright, obvious hoax) is specifically not a valid reason for speedy deletion. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Although I don't disagree with the deletion in this case, I can't condone the attitude that any article on a work of fan fiction or a character from it automatically deserves unilateral deletion. At least one article on a work of fan fiction was kept in a deletion discussion, which ought to rule out a speedy deletion criterion (although it was later merged). We have extant articles on Another Hope, The Enchanted Duplicator, Time's Champion, etc. I'm willing to accept A7 deletions of web-published fiction that doesn't indicate why it's important, but let's not get overzealous. There is no need for a general criterion here. Dcoetzee 05:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: New CSD for WP:WEBHOST violations in-userspace

At AN/I there was a recent discussion about a user who had userspace pages hosting an off-Wiki project. The user had no meaningful contributions related to building the encyclopedia. It was suggested that the user be indefinitely blocked because the volume of MfDs to delete these pages are disruptive, which got me thinking:

  1. We have a lot of MfDs for WP:WEBHOST violations in-userspace.
  2. These MfDs, to everyone's knowledge, never close as keep.
  3. Many administrators have taken to WP:IAR deletions rather than waste MfD's time.
  4. Where the page does make it to MfD, they are often WP:SNOW closed as delete.
  5. Those out of process deletions have met with no controversy whatever.

With those points in mind, I think we have something ripe for a new CSD. I understand that the CSD cabal can be very picky about narrowly wording the criteria and I am not attached to any particular way of putting it. Since I don't know what makes CSD happy I'm tempted to hold off and let others draft something, if they agree that a CSD is necessary, rather than propose something to be shot down. Thoughts? causa sui (talk) 18:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

What about the following:
  1. Pages that are an attempt to use User space as a web host,
  2. in the creator's own User space,
  3. with no substantive contributions from others,
  4. where it is not plausible the content could ever be moved to another name space even if improved,
  5. and there is no way to plausibly claim the content could be used help improve the encyclopedia.
  6. A page about the editor, their editing, other editors, or anything else that relates to Wikipedia does not qualify under this criterion.
Thoughts? Its certainly better to have a CSD criterion then to continue with frequent out of process deletions. We just want to make sure the criterion is not broader then the content being IAR/SNOW deleted.Monty845 18:54, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Can you add in there a page that has not been edited at all within 6 months (or longer)?--v/r - TP 20:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
If I understand you right, you are saying that we should speedy these pages if and only if they have not been edited in 6 months. That would defeat the purpose of the proposal, which is to relieve MFD of the burden of rubber-stamping deletions of userspace pages that are actively maintained but transparently and completely unrelated to building the encyclopedia. causa sui (talk) 21:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
Noooo, not at all. I'm saying that a page in userspace that appears to be a WP:FAKEARTICLE, has been stale for 6 or more months, and does not appear to meet notability guidelines should also fall under the proposed criteria. This should be especially true if the article was userfied after an AFD or DRV or per WP:REFUND and has no improvements after 6 months. These should be additional criteria to the above.--v/r - TP 22:38, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposal by MER-C

  • Any userspace draft unedited by the user in question for X and either meets the speedy deletion criteria for an article or was userfied as a result of a deletion discussion, deletion review or request for undeletion.
  • Any userspace page unedited by the user in question for X that serves no conceivable Wikipedia-related encyclopedic or collaborative purpose. A page about the editor, their editing, other editors, or anything else that relates to Wikipedia does not qualify under this criterion.

How about these? I suggest X = 6 months. MER-C 03:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

  • Weak support. Looking at the new CSD criterion criteria, "Weak" as I'm not entirely sure that the application is so frequent. But it is not infrequent. Also, I think I remember some contests. However, the contest is has not been over whether notwebhost material may be kept, but about a clumsy labelling of disagreeable material as notwebhost infringing.
It would have to be clear that NOTWEBHOST speediable content must be undoubtably unrelated to the project. Unrelated to any past, current or potential article. Unrelated to any project process. Unrelated to any editor, group of editors, editor actions, editor behaviour. Unrelated to any external perception of the project. Some of these things users have found offensive and tried unsuccessfully to have them deleted per "NOTWEBHOST".
I'd want to restrict this to pages created by WP:SPAs, aka non-serious contributors.
I wouldn't worry about length of inactivity of the page. Speedying NOTWEBHOST pages will be most applicable to new pages. We see quite a few very non-notable games results in userspace. Mer-C's "X" should depend on how obvious the case or intent is. This criteria should only apply to obvious misuse, and X might vary from 5 minutes to 1 week, depending on obviousness. Where obviousness is low, just take it to MfD.
No FAKEARTICLE should be speediable. If someone could think it could be the making of an article, then maybe it could be. This would not be uncontestable. We also have a lot of confusion over what FAKEARTICLE means.
This should not cover forgotten userfied material. Userfied material is surely project related and there would be no fear of geniune abuse. Old userfied material should be deleted perhaps as a variation of G4 or U1 (implied U1 where the user is long inactive).
This would be a G criterion. There are many places to hide material. Putting notwebhost stuff in userspace is just what good-faith newcomers do. The reason we don't see more sneaky NOTWEBHOST abuse is, I guess, because once you realise what you are doing, you are clever enough to find an alternative outlet. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as worded. In some cases established contributors create "fun" pages in user space that contribute directly to community-building and interactions among editors, who later form collaborations on important work. Deleting these would be akin to having a "no office parties" rule in a physical office. I would only consider a criterion that narrowly applies to content that is clearly intended for an external (off Wikipedia) audience, as this is the true intention of NOTWEBHOST. Dcoetzee 12:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
How is your objection not covered by "Pages that are an attempt to use User space as a web host"? JamesBWatson (talk) 13:03, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Support, except that I would drop the words "with no substantive contributions from others". Sometimes we have a group of two or more editors who appear on Wikipedia to collaborate in using Wikipedia as a web host for other purposes, and I don't see why the fact that more than one person is involved in this misuse should invalidate speedy deletion. I don't support including material just because it has been around for a time. If it is unambiguous use of Wikipedia as a free web host then how long it has been here is irrelevant: it should go anyway. If, on the other hand, it is not unambiguous use of Wikipedia as a free web host, then it is a different issue, and it would not be helpful to combine two different issues together in one CSD. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:03, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This looks reasonable, until you see the WP:FAKEARTICLE comment above. Fact is, we've seen abuse of A10 to delete things that were never in scope, and this is even more ripe for abuse. Until we have agreement that userspace drafts of Wikipedia content that don't violate G10, 11, and 12 are perpetually and totally immune from speedy deletion--that is, an MfD must examine each such case--I cannot support this. Jclemens (talk) 14:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Suggest focusing on WEBHOST I drafted my proposed rule to intentionally not address the FAKE/Stale article issue as I think it is a much more complex question, and if it is suitable for a CSD criteria at all, there would need to be a substantial discussion about just what qualifies. A criteria specifically addressing webhost seems much more straight forward. Please don't bog down the discussion about a webhost criteria with other userspace material that may be more controversial to delete. Monty845 17:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Fails point #2 from the top of this page, "Uncontestable: it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully." It is quite easy to imagine things deleted under this criterion that would not be deleted if they went to MFD. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Noting also some false assumptions made at the start. I would, moreover, note that setting 6 months as a minimum before deletion is likely reasonable. I see no reason in any case to deliberately avoid MfD. Collect (talk) 15:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal by causa sui

I think what I'm going after may have been misunderstood and this is getting a bit derailed by stuff unrelated to the original concern. So I'll try my hand at this after all, if nothing else to get discussion back on track. Again, I'm not used to the standards of the CSD cabal so please see this as a very rough draft open to severe revision if necessary to bring it into sharp focus.

  • Any page in userspace that:
    1. Serves no discernible purpose conducive to improving or maintaining Wikipedia, and
    2. Is used or intended to be used only by audiences outside of the Wikipedia editing community.

I think these are the critical aspects of a WP:WEBHOST violation. I also think that the "office party" objection should be satisfied here since "fun" pages (like BJAODN, WP:LAME, other humorous entries) are clearly for on-Wiki consumption and use by Wikipedia editors.

Further, the standard that the encyclopedic purpose should be merely discernible is very low, though I'm not sure this is the best word I could have chosen. What I'm going for is some kind of very low standard where the sysop who comes across the page has to ask him or herself "Is there any conceivable encyclopedic purpose to this page?" before speedying it. If you can't think of one, then it's best not to waste Mfd's time. Thoughts? Improvements? causa sui (talk) 00:56, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I would sharpen the focus with stronger emaphasis on meeting *all* criteria, with the additon of point 3
Any page that meets all of points 1, 2 and 3 as follows:
1. Serves no discernible purpose conducive to improving or maintaining Wikipedia;
2. Is used or intended to be used only by audiences outside of the Wikipedia editing community;
3. Is the product of an non-contributing WP:SPA or a long inactive account
As above, I can't imagine why such a page outside User_talk space should be exempted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Yeah that seems good. Outside userspace, almost everything would be covered by another CSD. Or are you pointing out that if someone did Portal:My personal website we'd have to MfD it because of the "userspace page that..." language? causa sui (talk) 07:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Or Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Bloxorz cheats, now at MfD, for example. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
This seems reasonable. We can always drop the userspace qualifier later if significant amounts of webhost material find their way into other namespaces. Actually, we need all namespaces to nuke any locally uploaded files that may accompany said userpages. MER-C 12:18, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
The three conditions above look good to me. :-) Dcoetzee 04:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I can't see the reason for number 3. If I decided, as well as my contributions to the encyclopaedia, to also use a few Wikipedia pages as my own personal web space on the side, would that somehow be alright? This reminds me of a discussion some time ago as to whether people should be allowed to use Wikipedia to play the game called "hidden pages". In that discussion it was seriously suggested that people who were active contributors to the encyclopaedia should be allowed to have "hidden pages" and others shouldn't. Nobody gave a clear indication there as to why it was permissible for established users to use Wikipedia for purposes other than constructing an encyclopaedia, and nobody has (as far as I can see) given any reason at all here. I prefer causa sui's original version. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
The decision about not allowing regular contributors to have hiddein game pages was a clarification of policy, but was certainly not an expansion of WP:CSD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
I could be shooting myself in the foot here, but based on what you're saying, the "hidden pages" game would not fall under this CSD since it would be for use within the Wikipedia editing community. Perhaps you would prefer that the second point was dropped as well. But since that might also cover WP:BJAODN and the like, I'm not sure I would be comfortable with it. In my anecdotal experience, 99% of real WEBHOST violations are written for people outside Wikipedia only, and of those, 95% are by accounts with no other contributions. My first choice is the one I originally proposed, but for political reasons, I would also prefer that we get the more restrictive version into the CSD rather than nothing at all, if it comes to that. Either SmokeyJoe's or my version will cover the vast bulk of cases unambiguously, and for the borderline cases, we have MfD and even IAR. causa sui (talk) 18:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
I still feel it is far to subjective. Specifically, criterion 1 is too open to interpretation. Also criterion 3 seems kind of punitive. We would let an active user keep a page that violates WEBHOST but not a less active one? What if they come back after the page is deleted? Do we then have to restore it because they are now active? I believe this exactly why reasons based on any portion of WP:NOT tend not to get approved for CSD. Pages like this need to be discussed before deletion, even if the user who created them is long gone. That way, deletion is not based on one admins interpretation but on consensus. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Referring to the points I made above, I think we already have a good consensus for this based on practice, and I've never heard of an admin speedying a webhost violation and getting challenged on it. It seems that we all know it when we see it, just like with the existing criteria. On the specific wording, it can't be seen as more vaguely worded than, say, G2. How do you know that the page was created to test editing functions? Well, from experience and precedent I suppose, which we have plenty of with webhost violations too. On point #3, I have no particular affinity for it and tend to agree with James that vested contributors should not get special treatment here. Still, do you have a suggestion for another way of getting at it? causa sui (talk) 19:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Frankly, I think MFD can handle it. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
In answer to causa sui, I wasn't suggesting that hidden pages would fall under this proposed criterion, I was just saying that the suggestion of exemption for editors with other contributions was similar in the two cases. In answer to Beeblebrox, I don't see point 1 as any more subjective than most of the existing CSDs. How unambiguous does "unambiguous advertising or promotion" have to be? How similar does "essentially the same content" have to be? How implausible does an "implausible typo or misnomer" have to be? And so on and so on, not forgetting A7, the most undefined of them all: there is no definition or guideline anywhere as to what constitutes an indication that a subject is "important or significant", and in my experience there are about as many shades of opinion on that among administrators as there are administrators. Admins are entrusted with making subjective judgements of this kind on most of the speedy deletion criteria, and I don't see that as any more problematic for the proposed new criterion than for existing ones. On the other hand I do agree with Beeblebrox's comments about point 3, and I also wonder how much other editing would be required to be allowed to keep such pages. My WEBHOST page is flagged for speedy deletion, so I quickly make a few trivial edits to other pages, and now the speedy deletion criterion is invalid, so I can keep it. Or perhaps it is deleted, so I quickly make a few edits and recreate it. However, I don't see why Beeblebrox's concerns lead to the conclusion that "pages like this need to be discussed before deletion": they seem to me to lead rather to the conclusion "point number three is inappropriate". Quite simply, why should the issue of whether a particular page can be speedily deleted depend in any way on other, unrelated, edits on other pages by the same person? A page should be considered for deletion on its own merits. Finally, in answer to Beeblebrox's latest comment, yes, MFD can handle it, and at present is doing so, but it wastes time there, and speedy deletion of these pages would release editors' time for other, less unambiguous, cases. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:52, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
"how much other editing would be required to be allowed to keep such pages". No amount of edit will allow an editor to keep NOTWEBHOST violating material. The question is only whether it is speediable, or whether an MfD is required. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:07, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I would oppose this new CSD without point 3. Without it, I predict that it will be used to bully, or be perceived as being used to bully. The Geo Swan subpages come to mind. If an editor is active, they should be first approached. If they contest, then the deletion is not uncontestable. It does no harm to have an MfD where a user is in active disagreement with the application of policy. With point 3, it guarentees that it is only used for non-controversial cleanup. If point 3 applies, it is silly to ask for a formal MfD discussion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
(a) "No amount of edit will allow an editor to keep NOTWEBHOST violating material. The question is only whether it is speediable, or whether an MfD is required." Yes, I know that. I was simplifying a bit. However, the essential point remains: how much other editing is needed to avoid speedy deletion?
(b) "I predict that it will be used to bully." Why? And if it does happen, then why is that any worse for an established editor than for a newbie without other contributions?
(c) "The Geo Swan subpages..." Never heard of them. Can you give a link?
(d) "If they contest, then the deletion is not uncontestable." Are you confusing speedy deletion with PROD? There is nothing at all in speedy deletion to say that it can't happen if the author contests it: on the contrary, that happens all the time.
(e) "It does no harm to have an MfD where a user is in active disagreement with the application of policy." Yes it does. It wastes a lot of time.
(f) "With point 3, it guarentees that it is only used for non-controversial cleanup." Why? Is there some reason why the policy against using Wikipedia as a webhost is controversial if applied to users with other contributions? If so, I don't get it. It seems to me that doing so is uncontroversially unacceptable for anyone.
(g) One other point about this. In practice, the question would never arise with most established editors with constructive editing, as they don't abuse Wikipedia as a web host. The trouble would come about with the small number of awkward pigheaded editors who manage to go on for years, being disruptive and uncooperative, but just about manage to avoid being banned or indefinitely blocked. Such people invariably come up again and again at ANI, RfC, etc etc, and waste a huge amount of everybody's time. Letting them make us spend our time arguing about whether to keep their useless crap that is nothing to do with Wikipedia or get rid of it is just one more waste of our time. Admittedly, a small waste of our time compared with the other ways these people waste our time, but to have a special clause in a CSD specifically to let them do so seems to me crazy.
Having said all that, I do agree with causa sui that, although I prefer causa sui's version, I would (reluctantly) settle for SmokeyJoe's version, if consensus could be achieved for that but not for the better version. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:10, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
If I may (letter) your points to make clear what I respond to when I respond to some of them? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I think the point about "active disagreement" is for situations where user:A has a subpage about which user:B can determine no purpose conducive to improving the encyclopaedia, but which user:A believes does help improve the encyclopaedia. This is a situation that requires evaluation of the arguments, and so an MfD. Without point 3, the page could be speedily deleted before user:A has had a chance to respond if the first admin to see the tag also cannot see its benefit without explanation. Any user who has either a proven track record of interacting with other editors (usually by responding to talk page messages) or is too new to have such a track record (WP:AGF) must be given the opportunity to defend a page in their userspace that does not fall under an existing G or U speedy criterion. See my proposal below. 13:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
(a) Any sign that the editor is or maybe a productive member of the community of editors should prevent the speedy. If an active editor needs some education, use MfD. Speedying should be for cases where the editors are either clearly not here any more, or clearly not here to contribute.
(b) Because an admin, tired and exhasperated, convicned that an editor hand his subpages are a waste of time, will be tempted to act based on points 1 & 2, even though the issue may be contestable. Genuine newbie's and their pages should be subjected to this, in the first instance.
(c) here. "no discernible purpose". They were already rejected for mainspace. "Is used or intended to be used only by audiences outside of the Wikipedia editing community". Geo Swan stated that external incoming references were a top reason, someone could easily decide that this was his only reason. I am quite sure that these pages should not have been speedy deletion candidates, as their deletion was contestable, and speedy deletion would have been a confrontational dismissive insult to a valued editor.
(d). By "contest", I mean contest with reasonable argument that is at least partially persuasive. To contest an election means to seriously try and to attract significant votes. To formally stand, but not campaign, is not to "contest". To winge, to make loose complaints, to make no substantive argument or reference to documented policy, or to launch personal attackes, is not a valid contest of a deletion. PROD does not require a substantive "contest" According to this definition of "contest", do you speedy delete contestable pages? Not that "uncontestable" is a reqired criteria for now criteria.
(f). Yes, I think is it always controversial to say that an established and actively contributing editor is abusing the project. In such cases, use MfD. We do not see many of them, and they do not result in SNOW delete.
(g). As per (f). Few such cases come to MfD, and masses of pages can be covered by a single nomination. Speedy deletion should not be used in place of dispute resolution, though MfD sometimes is. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:45, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Speaking only to the GeoSwan pages, it looks like they were all deleted at MfD. We might disagree with MfD's decisions, but a 100% delete rate is a pretty good indicator that a CSD would be useful. causa sui (talk) 20:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the GeoSwan subpages are a good case to consider when considering your suggested CSD with or without my point 3 (in some form). The subpages were deleted. I don't think anyone disagrees with the decision to delete. I think that as soon as someone took attention to them, adn given their quantity, age, and nature, they were doomed for deletion. The question is: "When and how?" With your suggested CSD criterion based on your two points, User:Fram would have been allowed to have summarily deleted them all. I would like to see that, becasue it looks like Fram then wins a dispute over Geo Swan because Fram has access to administrative tools. The MfDs took up a fair bit of time and space, but I think that's the procedure, where nominator and defender have equal standing, that should be followed when a serious wikipedian is involved.
  • Would have you speedy deleted the Geo Swan subpages?
  • Do you disagree that there are administrators who would have deleted the Geo Swan pages, even if WP:Involved, because policy explicitly allowed for it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:21, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposal by WereSpielChequers

We need something between the summary deletion that CSD involves and the consensus discussions of MFD. I appreciate that MFD regulars want certain unlikely to be contentious deletes to skip the full MFD process, but I'm not seeing a need for the speed with which speedy deletion operates. So as an alternative I would propose that we extend the prod process into userspace, though only for certain tightly defined groups of articles that would be unlikely to cause discussion at MFD. ϢereSpielChequers 07:54, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but I think you have missed an essential point. Assuming your suggested Userspace-PROD-equivalent works just like a PROD, then if the user objects we have to go to MfD anyway, whereas if the user doesn't object to the deletion, then presumably they wouldn't have objected to a friendly talk page message suggesting deletion, so either way we don't need another method of deletion. I also personally would prefer to avoid introducing a Userspace-PROD-equivalent for another reason. Having four different methods of deletion is highly confusing for newcomers, who often get lost among the apparently arbitrarily different rules. (e.g. anyone except the author can remove a CSD tag, anyone including the author can remove a PROD whenever they feel like it, anyone can remove a PRODBLP but only if they add reliable sources, nobody can remove an AfD notice. Many times I have seen good faith newbies do with one of these deletion tags what they have been told to do with another, only to get a slap on the wrist for it. Nor is that the only way that they can get confused.) Introducing a fifth method of deletion is something I would very strongly oppose. Even extending the use of an existing method (PROD) into a different user space without in any way changing it would to some extent increase the possibility for confusion, but that is not what you are proposing. You say extend the use of PROD "only for certain tightly defined groups of articles that would be unlikely to cause discussion at MFD", which is significantly different from the existing PROD, as that can be used for any article that anyone thinks should be deleted. Whatever we chose to call it, a Userspace-PROD-with-conditions-attached-to how-it-can-be-used would be a fifth deletion process, with a new set of rules to add to the already grossly excessive baggage of rules that confuse newcomers. So, I fully understand your suggestion, and have every sympathy with your motivation in making it, but I think it would not be helpful. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
If a user is going to object to the deletion of one of their own userpages then unless it fits one of the existing CSD criteria such as G10 I'd rather give them their say at MFD than it the subject of summary deletion. I respect what you are saying about the complexity of the deletion process, but I don't see that extending prod to certain types of userpage would be any more of an extra complexity than creating an additional CSD criteria. Unlike BLPprod these prods would be disputable in the same way as other prods and be of the same duration as other prods. In practice the group of pages that I would expect to see go this way would largely be ones where the editor is absent or uncommunicative. So the process would either be a polite note followed a few days later by a userspace prod, or if the editor appears long gone then simply a userspace prod. In either event if the user or anyone else objected the matter could easily be taken to MFD just as disputed prods can be taken to AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 13:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose any introduction of a PROD like process outside article space. This has been proposed and rejected times before. PROD assumes watchers and traffic. It is not reasonable to assume that non-article pages are well watched. There is too much danger of this turning into delayed CSD without controls. Also, this speedy proposal is supposed to make clear cut (SNOW when listed) cases easier. A non-contibutor's role playing game records, for example. If it obvious and uncontestable, an admin should be able to delete on sight. If it is not obvious or not uncontestable, then take it to MfD. MfD lasts a week, and sensible nominations are easily dealt with. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:51, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that article pages are well-watched either. Most pages tagged for PROD are either new or very obscure and are unlikely to be watched by active editors. What scrutiny PRODs get mainly comes from people patrolling CAT:PROD. Hut 8.5 12:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
Correct. We know that there are very large numbers of unwatched articles in mainspace, a couple of years ago someone produced a listing of thousands of unwatched BLPs. The effectively unwatched list is impossible to measure, but will be much higher as there are lots of editors who only edit sporadically and are unlikely to fully check their watchlist, plus of course editors like myself whose watchlist has long exceeded my ability to fully monitor it. I would be opposed to a blanket introduction of prod into userspace, but if the only arguments against a selective introduction are that it is a perennial proposal then I suspect this is one of those perennials whose time has come. ϢereSpielChequers 21:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposal by Thryduulf

This is a modification of Causa Sui's proposal above:

Any page that meets all of points 1, 2, and 3 as follows:
  1. The page serves no discernible purpose conducive to improving or maintaining Wikipedia or another Wikimedia wiki;
  2. The page is used or intended to be used only by audiences outside of the Wikipedia editing community Wikimedia community;
  3. The author has not responded within seven days of being notified on their user talk page.

Even if the author does not respond, any other editor may have explained it's purpose in the meanwhile so it should be required of the reviewing admin to check that there is still no relevant purpose discernible after the 7 days. I can't come up a good way of explicitly saying that any editor is free to add this explanation at any time during the 7 days, but I feel it needs to be said on the CSD tag and maybe also in the criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 13:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I would like "Wikipedia editing community" to be replaced by "Wikimedia community". I can't think of examples off hand but I hope you can concede the possibility that there could be pages in userspace that serve either to reassure readers of the bonafides of one of or writers, give advice to readers or which technically should be transwikied to Commons or Meta. Otherwise happy to support this as effectively prods like my proposal above. ϢereSpielChequers 16:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Good point, and done; I've also expanded the first point slightly (pages designed to improve other wikis possibly should be transwikied, but certainly shouldn't be speedy deleted). Do you think that it needs to be explicitly said that outreach to potential new contributes is a purpose conducive to improving Wikipedia? I'd hope it doesn't. Thryduulf (talk) 16:22, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. It would be nice to think that outreach activities would be safe, but I stopped thinking of anything as safe from the deletionists the second time I declined a speedy on a member of the Beatles. However I'm not convinced that long lists of things that explicitly shouldn't be deleted are the way to go as that overcomplicates things and risks an attitude of if it isn't explicitly protected it must be fair game. ϢereSpielChequers 15:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Agree with generalising "wikipedia" to "wikimedia". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Disagree with requiring a week of non-response. This is what MfD does already, and this defeats the purpose of the proposal. If the editor made only edits to the NOTWEBHOST violating page five years ago, over a 2 month period, what is achieved by posting a message on their talk page, waiting a week, and then applying the new CSD tag? This is just more work for the discoverer than the current MfD process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:57, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
    • I was meaning place the CSD tag, and a note on the users talk page, wait 7 days, delete if the purpose is still not discernable. This is what happens currently with images (e.g. F4, F6). Thryduulf (talk) 01:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
      • So, the tagger doesn't have to hang around and come back in seven days? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:37, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
        • Correct. After 7 days it appears in the csd category (using the same template magic as F4, etc) and a patrolling admin checks to see if it meets the criteria. If it does it gets deleted, if it doesn't it doesn't. Thryduulf (talk) 09:15, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
          • I'm not as familiar with file deletion procss so let me see if I'm understanding how this process would work. Suppose I come across a userpage while doing RCP. The page and its history are nothing more than a bulleted personal task list ("pick up the groceries" etc) edited by one account, and that account has no other contributions. So it's a poster child for this new CSD. Under your proposal, even if I'm an admin, I tag (not speedy) the page under the new CSD. Included in the template is a timer. The user himself cannot remove the template (per the prohibition against removing a CSD template from an article the user created and may be reverted by SDPatrolBot etc). But it does give the user seven days to explain why the page shouldn't be deleted. After seven days, the page goes into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion where a(nother?) sysop will review the page, verify that it still meets the criteria and that no persuasive rationale has been provided, and delete it. Do I have this right? causa sui (talk) 18:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I am leaning straight support, but would fell better if it were clearer that this speedy criterion were worded so as to make it clear that it is not intended to be used on the userspace of regular contributors (such pages should go to MfD). I sort of fear that as worded this could be used against a regular who has just started a holiday break. On the other had, it shouldn't be necessary to precisely address every form of bad faith deletion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't object to an RfC, and I completely agree that it shouldn't be added on Christmas Day. Even though you say your support is "leaning straight" you do raise concerns and its worth spending the time to get things right.
    Regarding the userspace of regular contributors, hmm, we don't have (afaik) a standard definition of a "regular contributor" or anything similar so we can't just reference that. Any definition therefore would probably therefore overwhelm the criterion, so perhaps making that part of the guidance rather than the criterion would be best. The holiday break could be easily solved by making it a guaranteed restore at DRV, with no prejudice to an MfD, if the user made no edits to Wikipedia during the 7 days and a credible explanation of purpose is given (i.e. one that if given during the 7 days would have meant it didn't meet the speedy criteria). If they did make edits during the 7 days then the restore would not be automatic but DRV should restore if their edits indicate that they weren't able to adequately respond (there could be many reasons for this, so it needs human judgement). Thryduulf (talk) 02:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm glad to hear this won't die on the vine. We may have a couple issues to discuss yet. For one, I'm with James B Watson - I don't know why exceptions should be made for vested contributors, or why anyone should be keeping WP:WEBHOST violations in their userspace. That's on top of Thryduulf's perceptive concern about whether we could nail down an effective definition. At the same time, such a tiny fraction of not-webhost violations are made by established contributors that if such a definition couldn't be found, the CSD would still be beneficial enough that I'd support adding it, though I'd prefer we didn't make exceptions for anyone. All userspace pages should be at least in some way related to improving Wikipedia or aiding the community, including humorous ones, no matter whose userspace they're in. causa sui (talk) 21:55, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Causa sui, as above, I think the WP:Vested contributor thing confusee the OK/Not-OK question with the speedy/MfD question, and i think it quite reasonable that a vested contributor be given the extended courtesy at MfD in even the worst cases, and fear this criterion without condition 3 opens the door to use of administrative tools to win arguments in a small number of cases. I agree that pages that meet the three conditions always result in SNOW closes, and dispute that pages that don't meet condition 3 do. I think we are much more likely to make progress here if you answer my questions of 22:21, 19 December 2011 (UTC). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry for the late reply. I really am not familiar enough with the GeoSwan case to feel like I can authoritatively comment on it. As I recall, my impression from reviewing the userspace articles and the MFDs was that they should have been deleted and this CSD would have saved MFD a lot of time. It's a case that possibly deserves more scrutiny for political reasons (not wanting to stomp on anyone's toes), but given that MFD found the right result and this CSD wouldn't have led to anything differently than what the community wants, I think the benefit of catching all the more blatant WEBHOST violations in a CSD is well worth it. causa sui (talk) 19:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
  • It's the possible community-political damage that I worry about, if admins start to speedy delete (ie use there technical privileges) to enforce their understanding of policy over other editors. I also think that the few WEBHOST violations are by regular, genuine contributors. The Geo Swan pages were a difficult issue, but I think difficult things are better done openly. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I would much rather abandon this concept of an "inactivity" criterion in favor of the earlier one based on single-purpose accounts. It's simple enough to check a contributor's history to see if they have any useful edits outside of their own user space, it would handle most cases, and we'd avoid the peril of penalizing vacationing regular users. Dcoetzee 05:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Cross-Wikipedia redirects

I came across Pierre Trémaux while going through CAT:CSD; it was tagged for A3 because the entire content is

PIERRE TRÉMAUX in Wikipedia France: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Tr%C3%A9maux

Is A3 really meant for this? It seems to me to be an attempt at a redirect, and I'm not sure whether to convert it into a soft redirect (I don't remember seeing anything at en:wp that's comparable to TT:DYK) or to treat it as an A3 candidate. Nyttend (talk) 15:11, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, the Tatar Wikipedia deleted their DYK article. I don't remember seeing any soft redirects in mainspace that work like the soft redirect at Wikipedia:The Wrong Version. Nyttend (talk) 15:13, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Soft redirect does recommend that soft redirects to foreign-language Wikipedias not be created. I suppose we could add them to some CSD criterion. Hut 8.5 16:07, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
It's a guideline to which there are many exceptions. sometimes the information there is obvious enough that it is helpful. Sometimes it's so excellent an article that someone may nonetheless want to see it & translate it. And sometimes, as was in fact done with this one, it showed so obviously the need for an article that a stub was made, for further expansion. They need to be examined, preferably by someone who does know the language at least a little, not removed indiscriminately DGG ( talk ) 01:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
I know some administrators who would treat a page like this as a blank page, however when one comes across a page like that, the procedure laid out at WP:TRANSLATION should take precedence. Write a stub (Google Translate might help) then add the template {{Expand French}}, and then you're done, basically. Of course, if the article is under a deletion process in the foreign-language Wikipedia, the outcome of the deletion process there should be monitored, but we should keep in mind that while all Wikipedias have fairly similar notability guidelines, the speedy deletion criteria differ from one language to another; for example, the Dutch Wikipedia has no speedy deletion process in place, while original research is explicitly stated as a speedy criterion by the Spanish Wikipedia. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 01:36, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Clarification of F4 criteria

Is the purpose of the F4 criteria to delete media files where there is insignificant information to verify copyright status? If so does the wording need tightening? Dpmuk (talk) 08:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

This has come about following discussion with User:Fastily over File:CongSpaceMedal.gif. They insist that as the file has no source information it can be tagged with {{di-no source}} and so is eligible for F4 deletion. However the file is PD regardless of the source as the medal itself is clearly a work of the US government (and so PD) and a 2D representation of it (nearly certainly) lacks the originality to be protected by copyright. This is probably not the best example as the image is no longer used and because it relies on a) the fact that the medal itself is PD and b) the lack of originality. But to use another, better, example an image containing just a textual logo is always going to be not copyrightable irregardless of a source. Now the lack of a source may cause other problems about verifying the accuracy of the image but, drawing a comparison to articles, this isn't a reason for speedy delete although it may be used in a normal deletion discussion. It also seems obvious to me that the intent of F4 is to deal with copyright concerns and that it shouldn't be used for other problems. I therefore purpose that the start of the description sentence be modified from "Media files that lack the necessary licensing information" to "Media files that lack the necessary licensing information to verify copyright status" to make it clear that this criteria only deals with copyright concerns. Dpmuk (talk) 08:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Question given you say that File:CongSpaceMedal.gif is a bad example, and given you admit that the lack of a source means we can't verify the accuracy of any produced image, is this a solution is search of a problem? Can you give one instance that's not hypothetical - or even a hypothetical one where the lack of verification wouldn't be a deal breaker anyway. I can't see the need at all for this.--Scott Mac 09:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, when I said "bad" I meant more "not good". In my eyes it's still a valid example, I just give another example to make my point clearer. In the CongSpaceMedal one we may be able to supply a reliable source to verify accuracy (e.g. a copyrighted photo, a design with colours marked but not actually in colour) without being able to supply the source of the image and it's the later that I believe {{di-nosource}} refers to. I suspect I could have found a source for WP:V for CongSpaceModel but probably not the source of the image. Also if a uploader didn't give a source it would seem somewhat dishonest just to, for example, use as the image source a logo of a company from their website, if that's not where they got it from but that source could be used for WP:V. In short the source referred to by {{di-nosource}} and the source for WP:V need not be the same thing. Given that we don't speedy for lack of verifiability I think this changes makes thing clearer especially in light of the general principal that speedy delete criteria are construed tightly (so as to make sure the will of the community is being followed) and this simple clarification would help in that. Dpmuk (talk) 15:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

User talk pages with trivial history

Currently pages in User_talk: are specifically exempted from U1 or G7. I propose that pages in User_talk: be eligible for speedy deletion at the request of that user if the history contains no substantial (i.e. talk-related) content. This would include, for instance, redirects. —Ashley Y 11:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, the only reason i can imagine a user talk page being a redirect would be if it was a talk subpage which can be deleted if the page is it discussing has also been deleted, or if it was an alternate account, in which case the redirect is serving a useful purpose. So either I am not seeing the point or we don't need this. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:06, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Talk pages of user subpages that are deleted (speedily or otherwise) are already deleted per G8. User talk pages and talk pages of user subpages that are presently not used as talk pages (e.g. they're redirects) don't need deletion if the aim is to use them as talk pages as any editor can remove a redirect, and in most cases keeping the history will be beneficial. User talk pages used for talk purposes (which isn't always easy to define) should not be speedy deleted. User talk pages never used as talk pages are subject to the general criteria as well.
Given all of the above, I find it difficult to imagine that there will be many situations where deletion of the talk page of a user subpage is always going to be uncontroversial and where it is not covered by other criteria already. Thryduulf (talk) 21:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
No, G8 (like U1 and G7) specifically excludes user talk pages;
"This excludes any page that is useful to Wikipedia, and in particular deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere, user pages, user talk pages, talk page archives"
This is the problem. —Ashley Y 02:43, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Ashley Y that therer is a problem. G7 should readily apply to any page where there is no non-trivial contribution by others. This should equally apply to subpages of the usser talk page. There need only be care with the main user talk page, and destinations of page moves of the main user talk page (which I don't believe are technically limited to user talk space). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:06, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
I think that the problem is with a lack of clear terminology. I am distinguishing "user talk pages" from "talk pages of user subpages", even though they are in the same namespace. User talk:Thryduulf and User talk:Thryduulf/archive1 are examples of user talk pages, and they are not subject to G7 or G8. User talk:Thryduulf/riddle and User talk:Thryduulf/rail accidents toc are examples of talk pages of user subpages that would be deleted per G8 if the associated user subpage was deleted. While this could be clarified, I'm not seeing a need to expand the scope. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
One of the preconditions for expanding the criteria ia that the incidence of such issues must be frequent enough to warrant specifying such pages for speedy deletion. I don't believe this suggestion meets that requirement. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
It may not be frequent, but there is certainly no reason to force such uncontroversial deletions through MFD. (Note that most admins appear happy to delete user talk subpages with non-talk content when tagged with db-userreq - I know of at least one where this occurred, regardless of what this policy says. We probably ought to update this to reflect the status quo, even if it is just a footnote.) — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Beeblebrox, these objections are unexpected. Do you really think that this deletion (citing U1) was improper.
  • This is not an expansion of CSD. Speedy G7 deletion of single author trivial pages was always the norm. At least until 10:50, 27 May 2010. G7 never applied to real talk pages, because real talk pages have multiple authors. The problem would seem to be that the entire user talk namespace should not be assumed to contain exclusively talkpages. An also, talk pages can be found in various namespaces, if one assumes the definition that a talk page is a page on which multiple editors talk to each other. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe I said or even implied that any specific action was improper. What I did say is that I am having trouble seeing any demonstrable need for the changes being proposed here. In the example you provided it seems clear that the user was moving the page repeatedly and was a bit confused. Squeezing that into the definition of U1 is reasonable, but G1 would cover it as well as it is routinely used for cleaning up these types of messes where someone has obviously just had a bit of trouble figuring out what to do. As is obvious from the confusion in this thread, wording would be very important if we were to decide to codify this sort of thing, thus making the criterion longer, more confusing to newbies, and, per WP:CREEP less likely to be followed anyway. So, it's not that I think the case you present is wrong, I'm just not convinced there is any real benefit. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
The obvious proposal is to take the g7 wording back to the then longstanding version changed late May 2010. The change was undiscussed CREEP with this silly implication. G7 obviously can't apply to a genuine talk page, so this would be a simplifying move back to common sense.
What you seem to have said is that you don't support deletion of trivial user talk (but non-genuine-talk) pages under u1/g7. Do you dispute that such deletions are often logged? If so, then either you consider CSD to be loose or many admins need re-education? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:17, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
Joe, I usually find you to be a thoughtful and careful commenter even when I don't agree with you, but this is the second time in the last few weeks that you seem to be replying to my remarks without having read and understood them. I don't think I am being at all unclear, indeed I am most often criticized for being too direct, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Once again, I am not saying such deletions are wrong, I am saying I don't see any pressing need to codify something that seems to fall within admin discretion under the general idea that policies be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. That is all I am saying, don't look for any subtext to it because it isn't there. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
I certainly read your remarks, and certainly agree that I did not understand them. They confused me, and that is why I directed a specific question back to you. You have largely clarified. My position is that any speedy deletion that is performed with any regularity needs specific description so that the general editor can understand what is going on. (Quiet sensitiviy-related deletions citing G6 are an exception.) --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:23, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
  • This is the change that I think is required. WP:DELTALK does not apply to pages that are not talk pages, which includes copy-paste archives and other random things that users sometimes create. WP:DELTALK applies to pages contining the history of edits by other users, pages for which it is more than obvious that G7 would not apply to. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
That edit not only made the G7 criteria more vague, it also introduced a grammatical error into it. What is "the user talk page"? That could mean anything. It could mean "any page in the User Talk namespace", it could mean "any root page (i.e. non-subpage) in the User Talk namespace", it could mean "any page in the User Talk subpage that is generally being used as a traditional User Talk page", etc. If you're going to add an exception for certain types of user talk pages, then you have to spell it out crystal clear, like it's a constitutional amendment. I'd strongly recommend reverting that edit and collaboratively coming up with a better alternative here before changing it again. —SW— yak 02:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I don’t think you can honestly misinterpret "the user talk page", but do improve the terminology if you can.
This is not creating an exception, it is narrowing an exception. The sentence in question excludes certain single author pages from otherwise G7 eligibility. I contend that this exclusion is unnecessary and creates complication if it is read as excluding the entire usertalkspace, and it demonstrably (see above) requires admins to use common sense to ignore the silly letter of policy to delete obviously speediable pages. And if it is complicated, why not remove the sentence entirely. What was the problem in May 2010 that requires James to add it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I would hope it is obvious what user talk pages need to be kept, and which can be deleted. I don't think I have ever been unsure if a user talk page should be deleted, it either obviously should, or obviously shouldn't. Do we really need to write down a rule for something so simple? Prodego talk 05:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think the 10:50, 27 May 2010 edit does any good, and it does bad in causing trivial usertalkspace pages to go to MfD. It is more than obvious which talk pages need to be not speediable; there was a bright line G7 test: “Does the page history show multiple authors”. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying I disagree with either of you, I'm just saying that if you want a rule to be followed, it has to be stated explicitly. CSD rules are notoriously specific, and this one shouldn't be an exception. Vagueness invites misinterpretation, and "the user talk page" is extremely vague. Why don't one of you lay out exactly which pages in the user talk namespace can be deleted and which can't, and then we can find a way to amend the wording without adding 3 paragraphs. —SW— confer 15:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Let's try this on for size:
  • User talk pages which are either a) the main talk page for a user or b) archives of said page should not be deleted via U1.
  • Pages in the user talk space which are created when the user creates a userspace subpage (such as a userspace essay, a draft article, or a userfied article) may be deleted via U1.
This means that pages in the "User talk" namespace which are records of communication with the user in question should be preserved, but pages in the "User talk" namespace which are actually just the discussion pages of other things may be deleted. That should be the intent of U1. Preserving the talk page of a deleted userspace draft, simply because it exists in the "user talk" namespace is the most rediculous WP:BURO issue, but if we must clarify, I think this captures the distinction. We should be able to delete pages in the user talk namespace which are not actually user talk pages. --Jayron32 18:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I think that makes a lot of sense. Now to just boil that down to a sentence or two. The current wording is "Note that this does not apply to user talk pages, which are not deleted except under very exceptional circumstances: see WP:DELTALK." Perhaps that could be changed to: "Note that this does not apply to user talk pages which serve as the main talk page for a user (or archives thereof), which are not deleted except under very exceptional circumstances; see WP:DELTALK. Other pages in the user talk namespace which are not significant records of communication with the user (i.e., talk pages of userspace drafts) can be deleted under this criterion." Any objections or suggested changes? —SW— comment 22:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
It is reasonable to speedy G7 delete personal copy-paste archives. Some people make topic-threaded archives. Some people selectively archive. Some people make copy-paste records of very specific threads. Some people do not archive and point out that the real archives are available by searching the history. Some of these things tend whimsical and may be later found to be more trouble than they are worth, and there is no reason why these copy-paste archives, which are only authored by the user or a bot should be set in stone.
Page-moved archives are completely different. These carry the history of talk posts. When the talk page is moved, the new talk page starts a fresh history starting with the default redirect. This fragments the history of a user’s talk page, which I don’t like, some users have been doing it for a long time. These page-moved archives should not be deleted just as the main user talk page should not be deleted.
The discriminating difference between these two cases is nothing more than the contribution history of the page. If there is a sole author requesting deletion, then it can be deleted. If there are other substantive contributors, then it can’t under G7. Intertwining WP:DELTALK with G7 is completely redundant. The pre-May 2010 version was fine. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:17, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
If I understand you correctly, I do agree with you partially. If we got rid of everything talking about user talk namespace and just said that any page where the only substantial content was added by the author can be deleted, it would be more precise and efficient. On the other hand, I don't think it hurts to remind people that users' main talk pages shouldn't be deleted. —SW— gab 15:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Multiple reminders become "bloat". We already have WP:DELTALK at WP:UP. It is clear. If more reminder is needed, I'd think it would go at at WP:CSD#U1, which has "(but not user talk pages)", which is easily read as "not talk pages" as opposed to "not anything in usertalkspace". G8 approproately excludes user talk pages. But why such a big reminder at G7? How often have people tagged genuine user talk pages with {{db-g7}}? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:26, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

CSD A7 needs to expand to products

We need to expand CSD A7 to include products or we need to create a new one specific to them. I have seen too many products listed that have to go to AFD because no cat exists for speedy. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

It would correspond to the AFD "Organization, Corporation, or Product" category. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:42, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Good luck with that. I personally agree with you, but this has been brought up, literally, dozens of times and a set of criteria that is narrow enough to soothe the CSD-hawks, but broad enough to be useful has never been found. I encourage you to write a set of criteria though, and post it here for discussion. Livit⇑Eh?/What? 22:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Then create one specifically for non-notable products. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Notability is not something to decide at CSD. If notability is in dispute then you need to take it to AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 22:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
This is one of those areas where historically the difficulty of drawing a clear line between obvious deletes and ones worth researching has prevented us from creating a speedy category. We don't want to simply make products liable to speedy deletion because we don't always want to delete such articles. Drafting a criteria that won't give us another load of CSD tagging errors will not be easy. But also I would suggest some quantification is needed; On an average day how many such articles are clear deletes at AFD? ϢereSpielChequers 22:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
  • If the company has an article, the product can always be redirected to it. There may be products so insignificant that this course is better not pursued, and there have been some AfD disputes which the possibility is ignored, but WP:Deletion policy is clear about the alternatives to deletion--this would always at least be worth considering. . Thus, previous proposals of this nature have always limited it to instances where there is no article on the company, drawing analogies to A9 for recordings. But the analogy is limited: even restricted in this manner, there are hundreds of thousands of notable companies about which there is no Wikipedia article, but where one could be written and would probably pass at least speedy; for musical artists, at least for current popular music in English-speaking countries, the field is close to exhaustively covered. Thus, we would have to know both that the product could not reasonably be notable, and neither could the company. This is asking too much, and subject to error. Products, are of very disparate types, and any given admin will be totally unfamiliar with most of them. It's easy to respond that an admin shouldn't be deleting where they are unfamiliar, but if a person are unfamiliar enough, they won't even know. I thought before coming to Wikipedia I was reasonably familiar with a great many things about which I've certainly learned otherwise. It's just not safe. The better course is to use PROD, and see if someone rescues it by at least redirecting. If it is truly unimportant, it'll be gone in a week. This is soon enough, unless it's blatant advertising, and for that we have G11. DGG ( talk ) 01:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I oppose this CSD, largely on the same basis as the second part of DGG's argument. (The first I don't think is valid, losing a possible redirect to a company on which we don't yet have an article isn't losing much at all, and no information whatsoever.) A7 was largely created for a vast number of articles that said no more than "John Smith is the headteacher at St Some-where's Academy", which were mostly obvious slam-dunk deletes, and would clog up AFD. The downside is that the subject could be notable, and the creator has simply neglected to tell us why - but that's going to be seldom, and (if we discover it) the article can be recreated. Products are different. Sure, we get a great deal of non-notable products, but we don't have a whole class of them where the non-notability will be evident at a glance (with 90% reliability) - therefore, as long as we allow articles on products, pretty much each one needs assessed. Sure there may be limited cases "A Tifty Sandwich is a product made solely by one local baker in Hackney (employees 3)" where one could say the non-assertion of notability is obvious - but this is going to be rare, and creating a CSD for it would give too little gain.--Scott Mac 01:27, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Ikhlaq ahmad - help

Came across this page. Somehow feel that it deserves Speedy Deletion. Will it be {{db-person}}? The user created his own page. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 16:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I gave it a nudge—CSD:A7 applies... if not, there is also a BLP PROD tag on it a previous editor added. Livit⇑Eh?/What? 19:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! Btw, is this the right forum to suggest article pages that supposedly should be deleted? Asking because i have few more such. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 14:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Here is fine; you're pretty much guaranteed to get a reasonably quick response. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Extend G3 to include some patently obvious OR?

The following was inspired by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Awks as forks. Articles created by the enthusiastic inventors of some game, theory, neologism, or such, end up at AfD and are inevitably deleted as being entirely non-notable and unverifiable, having been made up one boring day in school. Typically, the article creator admits this is original research (as in "The one and only original Theory of Contradicted Contradictions was invented by Anthony A. Aardvark last Wednesday and is now revealed to the world.") A few examples, randomly picked from dozens of similar cases just for January 2006: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pissboy World Cup, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FUROBIKE, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spoz, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gentlesir, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dewarneb, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Noobing, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darby's law. Is there a point in going the full AfD debate for such things? Let us extend G3 to include such patently obvious OR that exemplifies what Wikipedia is not for and doesn't stand a snowball's chance to survive in AfD Hell.  --Lambiam 10:46, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I have in the past suggested a separate criterion that would covers some of these, but not couched as blatant OR which is a formulation I don't think this could work with as an extension of any existing or new criteria because it is far too susceptible to false positives. Anyway, we could never add anything like this to G3 in particular because that is for vandalism. Vandalism's defining characteristic is that it describes edits done in bad faith; edits that are intended by the person to cause harm. Yet, the examples of types of pages you imagine this to cover are often done in ignorance but not in bad faith at all.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
OK, so what about a new A11? For the rest, I see no material difference between the kind of articles I'm targeting and those targeted by your earlier proposal. As to the risk of too many false positives, I didn't write "all obvious OR", but "some patently obvious OR" and "such patently obvious OR", covering those cases in which the article creator essentially confesses that they are describing their own invention. The exact formulation to best describe this clearly is open to debate as always, but I think the intention is clear enough.  --Lambiam 14:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
There is not too much of this so prod will do. If the content is harmful it can be blanked, and if it is very harmful G3 would probably apply anyway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

U4: Blatant personal information

Here's an idea for a new criterion:

Criterion

U4: Blatant personal information

This includes user pages containing direct information, easily identified indirect information, information about other people, and user pages mainly intended to share personal information. This does not include personal information put in userboxes, opinions such as favorite color and least favorite days, or nonsensical personal information.

Templates: {{db-u4}} {{db-pinfo}} {{db-information}} {{db-otherperson}} {{db-direct}} {{db-easyindirect}} {{db-pinfoonly}}

Discussion

Nominator's rationale: User:3.14159265358pi was at one time deleted by Σ because of personal information. --99.163.124.116 (talk) 01:43, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

  • Agree. I'm pleased that it has been a long time we last say an MfD nomination "this child may have revealed personally identifying information, his routine travel activities and his parents' bank account details". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Agree as well. And noting that c.v.s are part of a normal user page allowance for active editors. Collect (talk) 13:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes don't have a criteria for this as it makes it easy to collect this information, when in fact we are trying to stop it. When I delete this sort of stuff I will use a reason like A7 , after all a kid writing about themselves is very likely an A7 candidate. This is so as not do single it out for interest. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree. I'm not generally in favor of appealing to IAR for a specific type of situation, but here let's do it. We need to get rid of these pages speedily upon their discovery, but it would be virtually impossible to write a criterion that includes all good candidates and excludes all bad ones: unfortunately, this is an I-know-it-when-I-see-it situation. Moreover, Beeblebrox has a good point: because these pages are deleted because publicising them would be potentially harmful, tagging one with {{db-u4}} would exacerbate the problem that the tag is supposed to aid in solving. If you find such a page, please notify an oversighter privately (note that Beeblebrox is one of them) if any are active, or notify an active admin privately to have it deleted and then send an email to Special:EmailUser/Oversight. Nyttend (talk) 00:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Maybe we should put it on this page anyway. For example: U4, obvious personal information...do not tags articles meeting this criteria, instead send an email to Special:EmailUser/Oversight. In this way, it's still a criteria for speedy deletion, but it's not listed in any category or noted on the page. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 06:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
    • I think a better way to go about that would be "G13: Articles requiring Oversight." with the same "do not tag articles..." proviso you use. We could have a {{db-g13}} template, but which just produced a big box saying "DO NOT SAVE THIS PAGE" and instructions to email oversight. I think (but don't know for certain) that an edit filter could be set up that prevented an article that contained the wikitext {{db-g13}} from being saved. Thryduulf (talk) 16:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Ummm, if we don't want people to do it, then we really shouldn't create a template for them to attempt to do it with -- just tell them to email Oversight and don't confuse them with a template-that-we-don't-want-them-to-use. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Can A10 ever legitimately lead to deletion?

A10. Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic.

Would this criteria ever lead to deletion? It seems that pretty much every single case should be changed to a redirect. The criteria does state that the article title must not be a plausible redirect for this to apply, but doesn't the simple fact that someone duplicated a topic make it a legitimate redirect? As an unlikely example, if someone created an article at Danzig, it should be redirect to Gdansk, not deleted. So, it seems that this criteria is more of a speedy redirect rather than a speedy delete. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 06:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, often. You're forgetting a few very common titles that A10 can target which are unneeded or implausible for anyone to search for. Titles are case sensitive for creation purposes but not by one's ability to find them using search or go. Thus, if someone searches for john cleese they will land at John Cleese, but there is no need to have a redirect from john cleese. Another common one: Parenthetically disambiguated title when the subject already exists at an undisambiguated name. Such titles are quite implausible search targets: no one looking for John Cleese is typing John Cleese (actor) into a search. Then there's titles in quotation marks, highly idiosyncratic descriptive titles, nonsensical titles, and those that have nothing to do with the subject at all (e.g. "my sandbox") to name a few.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
In the case of john cleese and John Cleese (actor), these should be made redirects to ensure a well-meaning user doesn't do this again in the future. So, I guess this just leaves ludicrous titles. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
My favorite A10 (which also resides at WP:DAFT) is Beer belly causes, so yes, sometimes A10 is quite useful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい)
Here's one I just came across: Bhakti Charu Swami association websites, which was wrongfully tagged as an A7, but both A3 and A10 legitimately apply: it's nothing but a list of external links. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 06:13, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal - A11: Expired BLP PRODs

More of a procedural one this one. Expired BLP PRODs may be deleted without further notice (assuming nothing's been done to fix the problem). I propose that these are automatically tagged as speedy delete, to put them into CAT:CSD (through the template), rather than having to check a separate category. Obviously admins deleting pages would have to make the same checks. This could also be extended to expired PRODs, but I suspect that might be more controversial.  An optimist on the run! 18:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Are there lots of BLP PRODS lingering after they have expired? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying there are. I'm just looking at a way of making it even more efficient.  An optimist on the run! 19:02, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Why would we put prods into csd, they are two entirely seperate deletion procedures. Seems pointless & confusing, and there is already a link to expired prods on the cat:csd page--Jac16888 Talk 19:08, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree. No need to have a speedy deletion for that. If anything, G6 would already apply to this kind of situation. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 00:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough - I'll file this in the it seemed like a good idea at the time drawer (I must admit I hadn't noticed the link to the expired prods cat from the csd cat before).  An optimist on the run! 07:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Blanchardb. Any non-CSD type of deletion that's been delayed for some reason or another is a good candidate for G6. Nyttend (talk) 00:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Imaginary problem, and unnecessary complication Expired prods are deleted already if nothing is done to fix the problem. G6 is not needed to remove them: deletion as a expired BLP prod is enough of a reason, and there is o point in listing them in multiple places. I normally check myself, to make sure that nothing obvious is missed, before deletion, but I'd do that even if they showed up on speedy. I think that's the usual course. I know some admins delete expired prods without checking, but I think that's bad practice and should not be encouraged. I ptrol these fairly regularly, and I don't think there have usually been a backlog here--there may have been some recent exceptions because of the blackouts, or holidays, but it never gets more than a day or two. DGG ( talk ) 02:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Agree with DGG. Stifle (talk) 16:56, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

T3

T3 states:

Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, i.e., orphaned, deprecated, substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template, may be deleted after being tagged for seven days.

{{Db-t3}} states:

...a template that is not being employed in any useful fashion, and which satisfies one of the following conditions:

  • It is a substantial duplication of the template, or
  • It is a hardcoded instance of template, where the same functionality could be provided by that other template.

So which is it, conjunction ("or") or intersection ("and")? And could we have whichever one is in the wrong corrected so as to avoid this confusion. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 07:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

There is no contradiction, just different ways of saying the same thing.
  • The T3 criteria is saying "templates not employed in any useful fashion", and then defines the two situations in which templates are not employed in a useful fashion may be speedily deleted. i.e. articles in sets A and B or sets A and C may be speedily deleted: (A+B) or (A+C).
  • The T3 template is saying the same thing in a slightly different way, by defining the two situations in which a template that is not employed in a useful fashion may be speedily deleted. i.e. articles in set A that are also in set B or set C: A+(B or C).
I do agree though it would be better if they used the same phrasing, and my personal feeling is that the template uses the clearer wording. Thryduulf (talk) 16:39, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Celebrity Cricket League and G4

Reason G4 is being used to repeatedly delete articles about the 'Celebrity Cricket League', which is into its second season at various locations around India. This seems a bit bizarre and technically incorrect. I'm wondering how to resolve the situation. The original AfD discussion took place in June 2011, when the League was a new thing. An article named 'Celebrity Cricket League 2012' was deleted after a second AfD on 14 January 2012.

I put an article called 'Celebrity Cricket League' through AfC last week. There is plenty of news coverage about the event, it evidently passed WP:GNG. I was surprised when it was deleted on 22 January for reason G4. Surely we're not saying because something was not notable in June 2011 it can never be notable? Is there an appeal process? Sionk (talk) 16:52, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Do you think there is anything new here in this article that wasn't in there at the AfD? It appears the article was deleted because the subject wasn't notable enough—is there evidence that it is notable that wasn't in the article before the AfD or at the AfD itself? If not, I don't see why G4 doesn't apply. Yes there is an appeal process: deletion review. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:13, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Content forks created to evade protected pages

Yesterday, I speedy deleted a content fork article that was blatantly created to evade protection on an article under an edit dispute. This scenario seems to be not explicitly addressed on CSD, so I cited WP:IAR/CSD G3 instead. I know this case may seen rare, but should we add a new rule for this, or this seems too instruction creep?

G13. Content forks blatantly created to evade protected pages under editing disputes.

Note that this suggestion would be under the "General" section instead of the "Article" section of CSD because editing disputes and full protection also happens on templates, portals, and other namespaces. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (talk) 18:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see any IAR here. Blatantly creating a fork to evade a protection and thus dispute resolution sounds like a clear-cut case of vandalism to me, so G3 already covers that imho. Regards SoWhy 19:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I would imagine the titles of most of these would be sufficiently similar that redirection and protection would be a plausible alternate to deletion. In the cases where deletion must occur, it would probably be covered by the existing CSDs anyway. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with the above, content forks are redirected and protected as standard procedure. No need for a new CSD. Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
  • A content fork that is "blatantly created to evade" a Wikipedia policy is already speedy-deletable under criterion G3 (vandalism), though a redirect back to the original article is often the better solution. Regardless, there is no need for a new criterion. Rossami (talk) 18:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Speedy delete for redirects to pages that don't cover the topic

These are pretty common and a total pain - the option is to go through the process of creating an article, or the whole deletion rigmarole. Proposal allow speedy deletion when article redirected to contains no (or very limited) coverage of the topic being redirected. A red link is better.

An examples included http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alusuisse&oldid=223495873 , http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GE_Jenbacher&oldid=289055786 - they redirected to pages that tell nothing about 100+ year old companies (now fixed), also see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lawson_Mardon_Group&action=historysubmit&diff=476480632&oldid=275489130 - the only clue to why it was created is in the edit summary - these are complete unhelpful, and a facility should exist for speedy deletion.

eg "R4 - redirect to article with no relevant content, and no significant content in page history" (ie never had any text in it)

would someone help with this . thanks.Mddkpp (talk) 17:41, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem with that is, sometimes a term is well-known enough that it would make a plausible search term but does not meet Wikipedia's notability or verifiability guidelines to make it onto the target page. Also, "no (or very limited) coverage" is an overly broad definition. Articles on non-notable songs are regularly redirected to the article on the album, even if the album article only mentions the song once in a track listing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:27, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not talking about non-notability issues - what I'm talking about is people who create redirects to articles that don't cover the subject. eg see Lawson_Mardon_Group - it's not even in the text on the target page/
The example of say a redirect from a song on an album to a page on the album that contains a track listing is a valid redirect as far as I'm concerned - that helps people when the search - as you know.
It's crap like Lawson_Mardon_Group I want to get rid off not useful stuff.Mddkpp (talk) 19:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
No, this should not be a speedy. Redirects that are not obvious to an outsider, or even not mentioned on the target page, still may be of value to readers. A discussion is the more appropriate venue to hash out why that redirect exists, what utility it might serve, etc. Jclemens (talk) 21:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
In addition to what Jclemens said, the target page may have a history that would need to analyzed to determine what is limited, hardly easy to define. Not sure if you are actually familiar with WP:RFD, that page also contains useful considerations about whether or not to delete a redirect.-Tikiwont (talk) 21:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Another possible issue could relate to removal of relevant info from the article via vandalism. For example someone once removed a section about the fictional character Danzo Shimura from the Naruto Character list and it was not detected for nine months. He was mentioned in a few other sections but if for example he was not someone could mistakenly delete the Danzo redirect thinking that it had no relevance to the list. A few years back there was also a removal of the section of another character from the series Neji Hyuga and that could have created problems for Neji which at that time was a redirect to the chaacters section on the list.--70.24.208.34 (talk) 02:53, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to prevent SEO spamming of Wikipedia

You should add that user pages which are excessively linked to by blogs and appear to exist solely to be used for search engine spamming in user talk space such as this page should be treated as WP:BLP issues and deleted on that basis [3]. Many SEO groups who promote deragatory content can and do use wikipedia user pages which are not normally visible to search engines and can link to them through SEO. Any user talk page which appears in googles listing should be treated as BLP and deleted to protect the user and wikipedia, and to prevent misuse of the site for spamdexing. This page has 181 links from external sources whose sole purpose is to promote derogatory content and is exposing an innocent user of wikipedia by promoting this page above even facebook entries. 69.171.160.168 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC).

  • Please clarify what are you talking about. The example you cite (User talk:Werdna) has a normal and legitimate number of inbound and outbound links. I find none promoting obviously derogatory content or affecting this user. [4]
    Note: Even if there were illicit inbound links from outside Wikipedia, that would not be a reason to delete a Wikipedia page. There is nothing stopping malicious users from linking to your (or my) page either. Deleting the target page punishes the victim, not the troublemaker. If a user did feel so affected, however, he/she can request help - there is no need for a new CSD criterion. Rossami (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
This is (see ANI) almost certainly a sock of Jeffrey Vernon Merkey. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Does an aticle have to be tagged to be deleted?

Hi there, new admin here, probably a stupid question - does an article have to have been tagged as a CSD candidate before being deleted, or can I delete ones I come across if they meet the criteria? GiantSnowman 14:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  • You may speedy-delete an article that clearly meets the CSD criterion but, especially as a new admin, it is often a very good idea to tag it and let a second person verify and confirm your tagging. Patently obvious vandalism should be immediately deleted but some of the other cases are ... not so clear all the time. Rossami (talk) 14:24, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Just as I thought, thanks - the only ones I've done so far have been deleting recreated articles created by a blocked user who is now creating sockpuupets. I will tag any I see until I get more confident. Thanks, GiantSnowman 14:26, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
No one would object if you zapped a copyvio on sight either, but otherwise what Rossami says. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:30, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Rossami is correct. If you are sure it should be deleted, do it but leave the user who created the page a message explaining why you did it. If you are not sure, tag it and notify the user instead. Regards SoWhy 17:50, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Meanwhile, if you do delete without a prior tagging (or where the user was never warned by the tagger, or were warned but you delete on a different basis) be aware of the (BASIS)-deletion-warn, warning series. See Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace#deletions. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:35, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

New proposal - lack of inline referencing

Lack of inline referencing is a bit of a proxy indication of whether an article is speedily deleted. There are exceptions of course, such as new disambiguation pages. At present we keep unreferenced articles, except for BLPs which go off to become a BLPPROD. I would like to see a harder line taken on all articles that need references. The onus should be on the article creator to supply sources otherwise we will carry on with keeping unsourced articles cluttering up maintenance pages and dragging the quality of WP down - not to mention the time wasted by editors in fixing it all up.

I would like to propose a new criteria whereby if any new(update) article does not have any inline referencing it can be deleted.

I am surprised that WP decided on the BLPPROD procedure after the Seigenthaler incident rather than creating the speedy deletion criteria that I am proposing. We have to be especially vigilant with BLPs. They are common new pages and if not referenced the contents is harder to verify. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

  • This has been proposed often before and always rejected. There is no requirement in policy that articles must have inline references - they are only required for quotes and things that are challenged or likely to be challenged. So, since there is not even a rule that inline references must be included, it would be strange to delete articles for not following that nonexistent rule. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:00, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Yeah, this is entirely a non-starter for the reason listed immediately above. Jclemens (talk) 00:02, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I've noticed that the people who prod and speedy can't tell parenthetical or within text, "As Johnson says in his Dictionary...;" and have great trouble with general references already; resulting in inappropriate and rude deletions. I wouldn't trust them with carte blanche. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This is a very bad idea for many reasons. At the top of this page are several general principles that all speedy deletion criteria should meet, one of which is that everything (or almost everything) that can be deleted under the criterion should be deleted. That isn't the case here: an article which is sent to AfD lacking sources is not going to be deleted for that reason if someone can find a source. There is no policy or guideline which specifies that articles lacking sources should be deleted. If the article cannot be sourced that's a different matter, but the question of whether sources exist on a certain topic is too subjective for speedy deletion. We only bypass this principle in the case of BLP PROD because many editors believe those articles are actually harmful, that's not the case here. I should also point out that this proposal would result in the more-or-less immediate deletion of 230,000 articles, the vast majority of which are encyclopedic. (For comparison we only deleted about 260,000 articles in the whole of 2011 and the most frequently used deletion reason accounted for about 70,000 of them.) Hut 8.5 11:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
    • I only meant the proposal to apply to new articles in the same way as BLPPROD. The existence of the 230,000 unreffed articles is another reason for my proposal. Note that some of them date back to 2006 and every subsequent month adds another couple of thousand articles. The rationale of my proposal is to avoid the waste of time with PRODs and AfDs. We should make the article creator responsible for supplying refs. Editors are busy enough running around fixing up stuff that is already on WP without having to sort out the daily flood of new articles. I could paraphrase Thomas Watson of IBM and say "I don't think there is a need for more than 4 million articles on WP".joke -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:51, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
      • AfDs and PRODs are not a "waste of time" in this case. This proposal would make sense if being unsourced was a reason for deleting something and AfDs of unsourced articles always resulted in deletion. However being unsourced isn't a reason for deleting something and these AfDs do not always result in deletion. Deletion is for problems which cannot be fixed at all or which would require a complete rewrite to fix. Being unsourced is in the vast majority of cases a fixable problem and in any case we don't delete articles with fixable problems just because no-one has bothered to fix them yet. Hut 8.5 21:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
        • I did not imply that PRODs and AfDs were always a waste of time. Sure, being unsourced may be fixable but the onus should be on the editor who created the article - not on everyone else. Alternatively the new article can be shoved into project namespace so everyone can work on it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
          • Being unsourced is, in the vast majority of cases, a fixable problem (and in any case it would have to be an unfixable problem in the vast majority of cases to justify a speedy deletion criterion). The fact that an article has a problem isn't a reason to delete it, even if the creator should have created the article without this problem. This isn't merely an issue with sourcing: we don't delete articles which are uncategorised, don't have links to other articles or which have NPOV problems etc, even though the processes which deal with such articles are usually heavily backlogged. Fixable issues are only considered justification for deletion when the article is being actively harmful, such as in the case of problematic BLP content, and content which is merely unsourced doesn't fall into this category. Hut 8.5 22:53, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
            • Yes, it may be a fixable problem but the onus should be on the editor who created the article. They wrote it so they must have sources so they should add them to the article. Your comments about uncategorised, orphan, NPOV articles is a red herring. My proposal is specifically for new articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:04, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
              • How are they red herrings, exactly? If an editor creates a (new) article which has NPOV problems, isn't categorised, isn't wikified, or is an orphan, then surely by your reasoning we ought to delete the page - after all the editor who created the page should fix the problems themselves and deleting new pages with these problems would help people trying to clear backlogs. Yes editors are expected to include references when they create articles but that doesn't mean that if they don't do so the page should be deleted. This is a wiki. Pages are not expected to be perfect and if a page has a problem which needs fixing then fix it. If it can't be fixed or we cannot wait for it to be fixed, then - and only then - can the page be deleted. What you're proposing here is a fundamental shift in that longstanding principle. Hut 8.5 00:51, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • What Hut said. There is a vast difference between being sourced and being sourcable. Failure of the latter is a reason to delete, failure of the former is evidence of need to improve the article.
    By the way, thank you for striking the part of the proposal that explicitly required all sources be included in-line in the first version. The choice of putting sources as in-line links versus links at the bottom versus within the text itself is purely a style choice and has nothing to do with the reliability of the source or trustworthiness of the content. Requiring new users (and even experienced editors) to become expert at the arcane formatting of in-line links is an unreasonable standard. Some editors find that format very easy, others would rather poke their eyes out than deal with that trivia. The power of a wiki is that volunteers can all contribute what they like, knowing that other editors with different expertise and preferences will continue to help move the page forward. Rossami (talk) 17:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Why does the deletion of articles for lack of references (as opposed to BLP or copyvio problems) have to be speedy? I have seen no reasons for speed, and if the intent is to encourage sourcing then ample time should be allowed. WP:PROD seems quite adequate. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
    • As I stated in the intro: to improve WP, to stop time wasting, and to avoid another Seigenthaler incident. PRODs take too long. By the time we get around to deleting an expired PROD a dodgy WP article would have made news all round the world. And come to think of it why should we clutter article namespace with PRODs? Why not shift them to user or project namespace where thay can be worked on at leisure? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
So if the article on coal balls was created in the state it currently is, but without references, you would speedy it under the pretext of preventing another Seigenthaler incident? →Στc. 21:18, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
That is an unreasonable and hypothetical question so I will not grace it with a direct answer. If such a long and detailed article was created without references, and in the unlikely event that it did happen it would be a suspected copyvio or it will go to AfD, tagged with a stack of maint templates, hang around for many years and eventually it might become a respectable article. With my proposal the onus is put on the author to give sources. A much better idea all round. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Piling on, per what so many others have said, this is not a necessary or desirable criterion and contrary to the purpose of speedy deletion, which is to remove irredeemably bad articles, not ones that just need a bit of work. AsI explained to the user making this proposal just a week or so ago, perfection is not required at the instant an article is created, and many fine articles started out as unreferenced sub-stubs. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Yeah, bring it on!! I like a bit of the old argie-bargie!! What I am suggesting is a method to remove the bad articles. We will not improve WP if we only remove the "irredeemably bad articles". As for the Gajendra Ahire article which I had twice put up for a speedy, it is now sitting around as a BLPPROD. It is the very thing that supports my proposal. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:29, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
      • I fail to see how that supports your case; your new CSD template could have been remoed just as easily as the other two. Oh, and I've had to remove the BLPprod, as it contains one reliable source. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 20:52, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
        • But the speedy template will have to be removed by an administrator. And if the article does not have any references the admin will have to delete the article. One less poor quality article that all other editors don't have to deal with. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:04, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
          • No, actually, any editor in good standing other than the primary author can remove a speedy deletion tag. Jclemens (talk) 21:10, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
          • (edit conflict) So you're proposing new rules for this new criteria as well? Nolelover Talk·Contribs 21:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
            • Not sure what you mean. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
              • I was referring to the rule that any editor can remove the speedy tag except for the creator, which I guess you were unaware of. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 21:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
                • I think Alan meant is that noone will remove it if it's correct - that's most likely true but not the point. The point is: both speedy criteria and BLP-PROD can be removed by editors if they believe that they do not apply.
                  That said, one should keep in mind that removing BLPs without sources is exactly why BLP-PROD was created in the first place - as a compromise and explicitly not as a speedy criterion. Since there was never any consensus to speedy delete BLPs without sources, proposing to delete any article without sources is unlikely to gain consensus - as this discussion shows. Regards SoWhy 21:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
                  • Consensus can change. Consensus is only a snapshot at one point in time by one group of people. I have yet to see an argument against my opinion that my proposal will improve WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
                    • I didn't realize you were still waiting for that, so here goes: many good articles would be lost, edit wars would occur between overzealous taggers and others who invoke IAR and common sense, and newbies would be lost (not the newbies who spam their company info over and over, but the good-faith newbies who have always believed that if they post a one line stub on a new medical condition, someone somewhere will add to it). Nolelover Talk·Contribs 23:06, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
                      • I have been busy fighting spurious and fallacious arguments! What you mention happens anyway. I would argue that my proposal will drive away bad editors and bring in new ones - ones who see that WP is making attempts to become more robust and more accurate. There are sufficient warnings and sufficient methods for an editor to create a decent article so there is absolutely no reason for some of the rubbish that we see at WP:NPP. An editor can create an off-line draft, a user namespace draft or use WP:AFC. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

You don't seem to even realize that what you are proposing is a radical departure from traditional purpose of speedy deletion. Look at the top of this page, point #2 for new CSD proposals: "it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion." Many unreferenced articles get improved during the course of an AFD and are kept, so there is no such precedent that would justify overturning the fundamental purpose of speedy deletion, which is to quickly remove hopeless articles. The other processes for more marginal or debatable cases deliberately take longer so that articles are given a fair chance at being improved up to WP minimum standards. You would need a much bigger forum than this talk page to affect such a substantial change to the purpose of CSD, which it is now clear you have an rather incomplete understanding of anyway. Your proposal has clearly been rejected, I suggest you find a better use for your time and/or come back with a proposal more in line with what CSD is intended for. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

  • Less of the patronising tone please. I realise that I am suggesting a departure from what is "traditional" (BTW I dont know of any traditions in real life that needs to be kept). Whether it is radical is a matter of opinion. I am tiring of the beating my head against a cyber brick wall. I seems impossible to change the status quo in order to improve WP. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
This isn't a case of institutional inertia blocking a new idea, it is a case of a proposal so grossly out of line with what CSD is intended for that literally nobody has as yet shown the slightest agreement with either the proposal itself or the stated reasoning behind it. Things can and do change here, but if you want to make a change as fundamental as this one you need a very compelling, quantifiable reason to do so. Not seeing that here, and apparently neither is anyone else. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:54, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Re:Your cmt right above Beeblebrox's outdent: Sorry, but I simply don't agree with you (and given that not even BLP's were allowed to be speedied, I don't think many others do either) so I'll close with this: "bad editors" are not the ones creating one line stubs on topics that cannot be deleted via another CSD category. I agree with you about the...err..."trash" at NPP, but your proposal would simply remove many of the few decent ones submitted there. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 00:00, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
(In response to Alan's response to me above) Yes, consensus can change but (and that's the important part) you need to make a convincing argument why it should. And that would have to be one that would not only convince everyone who previously opposed speedy-deleting BLPs without references but also those who supported it limited to BLPs only. So far I (and apparently almost everyone else here) does not think your argument is solid enough. I understand that you believe it to be convincing but since you don't seem to have convinced anyone with it, you might want to reconsider whether it's really as convincing as you think it is. I'm happy to change my mind when someone shows me that my ideas are stupid (and I assume most people here think the same) but so far I have to agree that your proposal will be more harmful than good to the project. Regards SoWhy 09:41, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose the problem in the Seigenthaler incident was that someone introduced false information into the pedia. Some people have jumped from that to the assumption that reducing the amount of unreferenced information will protect us from having false information in the pedia. There is an alternative theory that the more bitey we make our processes the more retaliation we can expect. My preference is that we keep our systems as non-bitey as possible, and that we focus on problematic areas such as contentious BLP statements, death anomalies and information sourced from partisan sources. If we really want to reduce levels of vandalism in the pedia all we need do is introduce flagged revisions and at least make sure that every edit by a newbie or IP is looked at at least once..... ϢereSpielChequers 17:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Another question. If the intent is force editors to cite sources from the start, are there possibly other ways of doing that short of threatening speedy deletion? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
{{unreferenced}} doesn't "force" it but points put the problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose It is a bad idea is as well stated by Hut and Rossami. It is not a good idea to chastise new editors by immediately deleting their work. Far better is to advise them on the importance of verification and to allow the Afd process to work, if appropriate. I have been looking at the list of unreferenced articles from October 2006. Of the first six that I looked at, five had good, easily found, references. (I admit that I avoided looking at the song titles and the Lusophony Games.) One article was more difficult, and I had to add a brief "History" section to get a reference that would apply well. But, if we have outstanding unreferenced articles from October 2006 for which it is easy to find appropriate citations, then finding those citations must not be a priority for Wikipedia editors. If any of you believe that this is a problem, I suggest that you fix a couple of those unreferenced articles. Many hands make light work. --Bejnar (talk) 08:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

A question about G7

G7 currently reads:

G7. Author requests deletion. If requested in good faith and provided that the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author. (For redirects created as a result of a pagemove, the mover must also have been the only substantive contributor to the pages prior to the move.) Note that this does not apply to user talk pages, which are not deleted except under very exceptional circumstances: see WP:DELTALK. If the sole author blanks a page other than a userspace page or category page, this can be taken as a deletion request.

However, as a former new-page patroller with about two years of experience, I can tell you that this is almost never the case. In those years that I was a new page patroller, I think I didn't encounter a single instance where the blanking of the page appeared to be a deletion request. In fact, when they did blank the page, it seemed to be for the opposite reason: they wanted to save the article by removing the CSD tag (by blanking). So why can blanking by the sole author be considered a deletion request? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 08:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, I've certainly marked articles as G7 in the past where it was clear that the reason for the blanking was that the creator wanted the article deleted. Indeed, it isn't a rare occurrence, and many new users seem to think that by blanking the article they are actually deleting it. It's not difficult to find cases where blanking is done to try and get the article deleted, after a few minutes searching I found Freedom, Inc from a couple of days ago. - Kingpin13 (talk) 08:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
But usually when this happens, it was already tagged under a different CSD tag, right? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:19, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Not always but often, yes. But in most of those cases, it's usually correct to assume that they wanted to delete the article because they felt intimidated by the deletion tag or because they were informed that their page is not within our guidelines and they wanted to do the right thing. For me it's a part of AGF to assume the latter if I have no reason to believe otherwise. Regards SoWhy 09:30, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that many editors understand that there is a difference between blanking a tag and blanking the whole page. Blanking the very work you are trying to save seems like a very odd error to me. I've deleted lots of G7s and I've never had an editor come to me and say they just blanked it so they could start again and they didn't meant to get it deleted. I have declined a G7 where the author blanked, someone tagged it G7, the author then replaced that with a revised version of the article and the tagger restored the G7 tag. But thankfully such incidents seem rare and are best dealt with by declining the speedy. ϢereSpielChequers 19:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
When a blanked page is tagged G7, the reinstatement of the article in a "revised" version is a strong assertion against the G7 speedy, though other criteria might still apply. However, we need to wait for the article creator to reinstate the article after the G7 tagging to see that indeed G7 does apply. If no action follows the G7 tagging, then it's a clear-cut G7. Otherwise, nothing prevents the article creator from resurrecting the article, and since no talk page message is issued for a G7 speedy, the creator might not even know that someone manually deleted his article. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 15:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

F7

Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image and tagged with {{di-replaceable fair use}} may be deleted after two days, if no justification is given for the claim of irreplaceability. If the replaceability is disputed, the nominator should not be the one deleting the image.

What number of days is an appropriate delay if a justification is given for the claim of irreplaceability and the replaceability is disputed? If the answer is still two days, I suggest writing this more clearly as:

Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image and tagged with {{di-replaceable fair use}} may be deleted after two days. If the replaceability is disputed, or if justification is given for the claim of irreplaceability, the nominator should not be the one deleting the image.

If the answer is seven days, I suggest writing this more clearly as:

Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image and tagged with {{di-replaceable fair use}} may be deleted after two days, if no justification is given for the claim of irreplaceability. Otherwise they may be deleted after seven days, and the nominator should not be the one deleting the image.

Regards, Martin (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Came looking for a criterian, didn't find it (turned out to be R1/G8)

Earlier today I discovered a redirect page whose target had been deleted (Southern Border (disambiguation)). "Surely," I thought, "there must be a speedy deletion criterian for this." So I came and looked. I found the section on criteria for Redirect pages. I noticed that there was no "R1" and wondered what it might have been. I was puzzled to find that nothing seemed relevant to the "deleted target" scenario. I checked the "invalid criteria" section to see if maybe R1 had previously been relevant, but had been stricken from the list of acceptable criteria. And then I had used up all the time I had to wonder about it, and I went ahead and put the page on RfD using Twinkle. Only after an administrator closed it speedily and cited G8 did I figure out what had happened. I see a lot of past discussion about this, so I can only assume that the current state of affairs reflects consensus. However, I will just say it would be a lot easier for someone in my position if the Redirects section could include some sort of explicit statement like "R1 depricated; see G8". At least then I'd have known where to go looking. Just one guy's two-cents' worth. --Rnickel (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

We already have that information; it's in the "Deprecated criteria" section. I've gone through the existing criteria sections and added a little thing for each repealed criterion: "[criterion name]. Repealed; see the deprecated criteria section below." Nyttend (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Outstanding! That would have helped me a lot to find what I was looking for. Thank you very much. :-) --Rnickel (talk) 17:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Unbundle delete for some U1 and G7s

Watchers here may be interested in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Allow_any_logged_in_editor_to_delete_their_own_U1_and_G7_cases it is similar to a proposed change from some time back that I think got consensus but would have required a bot. ϢereSpielChequers 21:29, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

(I am over 30k) How to use a speedy template?

I am over 30k edits, and still I have to search at least two pages to get a speedy template right. Why cannot I find the procedure & templates in a single page? WP, stop telling me I am stupid. -DePiep (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen WP:FIELD? →Στc. 22:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
You mean: search three pages to get a speedy? No I haven't. -DePiep (talk) 22:25, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
May I suggest Twinkle? It gives you an easy dialogue box on the page from which you can select the correct template, which is automatically added to the page. That's assuming of course that you have a basic grasp of the different criteria and can remember which one goes where with a one line description...very useful for me. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 22:28, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Of course you may suggest Twinkle. And I decline the suggestion right away. I know you are in (A)GF, but this is not what I asked for. WP:SPEEDY should do the job, in single page. Is not TW an outside thing? Like AWB, HOTCAT, and every other app while I ask for a basic thing: how to do a speedy? The SPEEDY page cannot explain how to do a speedy? -DePiep (talk) 22:52, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Oh in that case I completely agree with you. The only policy-based page that is concise and informative enough for me is WP:VRS. I just wan't sure if you were looking for the template names, which Twinkle easily provides. Nolelover Talk·Contribs 02:12, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
Never saw VRS, but usualy I look up WP:42. Or WP:UAUQLUE, as I remember it by easy mnemonics. Still, after some deep thinking, there is nothing speedy in there. -DePiep (talk) 02:45, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
What is wrong with the instructions at Wikipedia:CSD#Criteria? Assuming you know how to place a template on the page they should be clear enough. Yoenit (talk) 15:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The History of G7

I researched the history of G7 as part of deciding how to vote in a recent DRV. Because some might be inclined to do the same in the future, I'm posting this on this page to save those users the trouble. Of course, there are probably some regular readers of this page who will enjoy reading this anyway. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 03:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Ratification and early development of G7 (2005-2006)

G7 was not one of the original criteria for speedy deletion. It originated as one of many potential criteria proposed for addition in January 2005. Of those, only three – the items which would later become G7, A3, and A4 – were ratified by the community. G7 was ratified by a vote of 156-21. The newly added criterion provided for the deletion of:

Any article which is requested for deletion by the original author, provided the author reasonably explains that it was created by mistake, and the article was edited only by its author.

On January 16, 2005, SimonP did the honors of adding the three new criteria, including the earliest version of G7. Our understanding of G7 can be informed by some of the instructive comments which were made around the time of the vote.

  • MarkSweep wrote, “If you see a valid article listed for speedy deletion, you can try to prevent its deletion by editing it (it may still get deleted for unrelated reasons). Also the original author nominating it is supposed to 'reasonably [explain] that it was created by mistake'. Ideally, trying to explain that a perfectly valid article should be deleted would not come across as a reasonable request, so it cannot be deleted under the proposed policy item.”
  • Dori wrote, “This is a matter of courtesy. Even if the article is perfectly good, if no one else has edited it, and the author regrets his decision to put it here, we should honor it. It's just a matter of being a good host of information. People should want to contribute here, it should not be trap of any sort. Once someone else has contributed to it, even if to correct a single spelling, then we can no longer delete it as a matter of courtesy. It doesn't have anything to do with 'owning' it. The author has the copyrights. Due to the GFDL we are legally OK with keeping it. I argue that it would not be morally OK.”
  • Thryduulf noted, “If someone else was going to add something to it, they can recreate it themselves.”
  • Skysmith explained, “If the writers realize their mistakes and want them corrected, all the better.”
  • Isomorphic noted, “Of course, we are not obligated to delete an article just because the author requests it.”

As these comments demonstrate, the crux of G7 when it was ratified by the community was the “mistake clause,” which read, “provided the author reasonably explains that it was created by mistake.”

Even in 2005, there were already complaints about the CSD being too byzantine. On November 24, Radiant! removed the mistake clause as part of his broader attempt to make the entire policy page simpler. There was a thread on the talk page about his changes, but it did not include specific discussion of the removal of the mistake clause. On December 20, 2005, David Levy restored the mistake clause, “the lack of which changes [the criterion’s] meaning to something radically different than what was intended.”

On January 9, 2006, R3m0t added a blanking provision to G7 for the first time, after this talk page discussion. This marked the end of the early development of G7; it would be static, with both the mistake clause and the blanking provision intact, for over a year.

Major changes without discussion (2007)

On February 11, 2007, Steel significantly changed G7 by removing the mistake clause. Steel did not explain or discuss this edit anywhere on-wiki, nor was the edit prompted by any on-wiki policy discussion that I can find.

I looked at Steel's deletion log to find an impetus for his edit. On February 11, 2007, he deleted the following pages under G7:

  • 19:17, February 11, 2007 Steel (talk | contribs) deleted "Eric Grete" ‎ (CSD G7)
  • 19:19, February 11, 2007 Steel (talk | contribs) deleted "Greenfield school" ‎ (CSD G7)
  • 20:22, February 11, 2007 Steel (talk | contribs) deleted "File:Antigay.png" ‎ (CSD G7)

That last one preceded his edit to WP:CSD by only 13 minutes, making it the likeliest candidate. As best as I can tell without the ability to view deleted edits, the image was associated with a userbox which Steel was also deleting. At 19:49, he deleted Template:User homophobia under T1, “divisive and inflammatory.” He informed the userbox’s creator, User:PatPeter, of the deletion, prompting a hostile discussion. It appears that PatPeter recreated the userbox in his userspace (at User:PatPeter\User homophobia); Steel deleted it under T1 at 20:08. It appears that PatPeter then recreated the userbox a second time in the same location. What happened next I cannot say without access to deleted edits; however, at 20:22, Steel deleted the userbox under U1 (user request) and the associated image under G7. It’s possible that PatPeter tagged the pages for deletion; it’s possible that he blanked one or both; and it’s also possible that Steel interpreted this comment as a request for deletion. Regardless, after these deletions, Steel made no further edits and took no further admin actions before making his edit to WP:CSD. So why did he make the policy edit? My educated guess is that the file he had deleted did not strictly meet G7 because it was not “mistakenly created,” so he sought to change the policy so it would be less restrictive. His edit was not reverted, and thus it became ingrained in the policy.

On the next day, February 12, 2007, Ais523 added to G7 a requirement that deletion must be requested “in good faith.” According to his edit summary, he did this “to address the reason why the bit just removed from G7 was there in the first place using a different method.” It does not appear that this was discussed, but it was not reverted and thus became ingrained in the policy. It’s safe to assume that “in good faith” was meant in the standard Wikipedia sense of the phrase, i.e. without malice towards the project.

In a brief April 2007 discussion, an editor expressed concern about the removal of the mistake clause. Two administrators responded, indicating that they had no problems with the “in good faith” wording.

Exceptions to G7 are carved out (2008-2010)

Without the mistake clause, G7 was at least technically far more expansive than it had been when the community ratified it. In the period 2008-2010, five exceptions were carved out of G7.

  • On July 24, 2008, Rossami added an exception for redirects created after page-moves.
  • On August 9, 2008, Ned Scott added an exception to the blanking provision for pages in userspace, in the wake of these two discussions.
  • On November 20, 2009, Dank added an exception to blanking provision for categories.
  • On December 12, 2009, Davidwr added an exception to the entire criterion for articles with other substantial contributors to the associated talk page.
  • On May 27, 2010, JamesBWatson added an exception to the entire criterion for user talk pages.

During those years, there were a few discussions on WT:CSD which provide important clarifications of G7:

  • November 2008: A group of administrators concludes that admins can decline to delete under G7 articles which were not contributed to Wikipedia by mistake. They extend this principle to allow the undeletion of articles which were previously deleted under G7, upon request of a potential contributor to the page.
  • February 2009: There is a general sentiment that G7 should not be used in instances where deletion is contested. However, the examples used in the discussion are bad-faith requests, so the problem of contested good-faith requests is not really examined here.
  • March 2009: Again, there is some sentiment that G7 deletions are a “courtesy” that does not have to be extended to contributors. However, the ethical problems with “forcibly tying [a contributor] to a biography unwanted by the subject” are raised, and some editors acknowledge the appropriateness of deletion in such cases.

Since 2010, G7 has been more or less static.

TL;DR

The original intent of G7 was to allow contributors to request the deletion of pages they created but now regard as mistakes, and even though that clause was removed from the criterion in 2007 (by a single administrator, without discussion or explanation), it’s still an important undercurrent running through our understanding of G7. If an editor adds an article to Wikipedia and comes to regard that as a mistake, administrators are encouraged – but not obligated – to kindly extend them the courtesy of deleting it. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 03:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Office actions listed twice?

Since office actions are the basis of the G9 speedy deletion criterion, why do we list them in the intro as a method of deletion besides CSD? Nyttend backup (talk) 05:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Good question. It didn't even make sense since the section is headlined as a list of non-speedt forms of deletion. I have boldly removed, added in sticky prods in its place since that appears to belong on that list, and took the opportunity to list all the deletion discussion individual pages in short form next to the entry for deletion discussions.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:06, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Personally I think we ought to remove G9 instead. Office actions are performed under Foundation-backed WP:OFFICE, not the community's speedy deletion process. G9 might have some value as an explanatory device for office actions, but the Foundation never reference it in deletion summaries (they either link to WP:OFFICE or state that the deletion is being performed under a DMCA request). Hut 8.5 10:38, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
Probably G9 should be changed to "recreation of content previously deleted via office actions". This concept is similar to G4, though office actions (as I get it) are not the results of prior publicly accessible discussions, so adding them to G4 would dissolve the original idea. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate CAT:CSD subcategories?

CAT:CSD has links to the following categories:

Why do we have both? Seems that the first could easily be merged into the second, but I don't want to cause confusion with a CFD if there's an obvious reason that I'm overlooking. Nyttend (talk) 13:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

They differ in criteria: the first is G7, the second – G5. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Huh? Neither one has anything to do with uploader-requested deletion or deletion because of creation by blocked/banned users. If you mean F7 or F5, the two categories have equal effects: either way, the images have been tagged because they have old versions that haven't been used for at least a week. Nyttend (talk) 13:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it was a typo. Anyway, it may make sense to keep 1:1 category:criteria ratio. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

G6 question

Do we normally delete the subpages of an editor that has been indefinitely blocked? See User:TBrandley/Disney Channel (Kazakhstan)‎. GB fan 03:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Drafts from sockpuppets can be deleted under G5, but besides that I don't think so. After all, indefinite =/= infinite. Have you asked Fastily about this deletion? Yoenit (talk) 08:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
No I hadn't asked, because when I asked it hadn't been deleted yet. I had declined it once before basically saying the same thing as indefinite =/= infinite. The nominator then relisted it the same way so I asked here if that was normal protocol because I had never seen it before. Fastily must have deleted it between me asking and you answering. GB fan 14:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Just so others know what I am talking about, it was nominated G6 with a rationale parameter of "Userspace of a blocked user". GB fan 14:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
My guess would be that, in this case, it was deleted as a violation of TBrandley's unblocking conditions. He had agreed not to create any more articles or redirects until April 4th, but went on to create several in the last few days. It probably should have just been tagged G5, but that works all right. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
He agreed to stop creating articles and redirects yes, but I can't find anything forbidding him from creating subpages, so I don't see how G5 is applicable either. I have little doubt the page was useless, but in that case it should be deleted under wp:IAR rather than a random criteria. Yoenit (talk) 17:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

OK, reset and try asking this a different way. The question is: Does is G6 apply to the subpages of an indefinitely blocked user. That was one of multiple pages that were tagged with G6 along with the rationale "Userspace of a blocked user". The ones I saw were all from the same user but it just brought up the question. That one page was just an example of what I saw. All of these were tagged the same way.

Extended content

The pages that aren't deleted were redirected to User talk:TBrandley but everyone of them were tagged at least once with G6 and the rationale that they were subpages of a blocked user. The question I am asking is not about these pages or the other people involved in this. The question is about the criteria and the process. Does G6 apply in general to the subpages of blocked users? GB fan 14:41, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Why are schools exempt from speedy deletion?

From time to time I come across articles about schools that are clear copyvio or a clear advertisement. Still they can't be speedy deleted? Why is this? Night of the Big Wind talk 12:04, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thats not the case. Schools are exempt from speedy deletion criteria A7, if they meet other criteria they can be deleted under that, especially if its a copyvio--Jac16888 Talk 12:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Almost all my speedy deletion requests regarding schools are turned down, even whit other criteria as reason. Effectively, they are protected for speedy deletion.
But it still leaves the question, why are they exempt from A7? Night of the Big Wind talk 12:19, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Well then the editors who declined those speedy deletions were incorrect, if there are any copyvios that weren't deleted I suggest you retag them rightaway. As for A7, have a look throught the archives of this page, [5]--Jac16888 Talk 12:29, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
A quick look echoes the opinion of Wikiproject Schools, who desperately try to protect school articles from deletion, no matter how bad and unsourced the articles are. Still, it makes no sense to exempt school articles from A7. A statement as "The idea is that simply being a school is good enough to no longer make A7" sends me the shivers over my back. Night of the Big Wind talk 12:36, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I suspect this has been discussed many times before, but you're free to bring it up at WP:VPR to get it changed--Jac16888 Talk 12:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
@Night of the Big Wind. You may be approaching this from the wrong angle. Remember deletion is not for articles that can be improved by normal editing. If your concern is with articles being kept "no matter how bad and unsourced the articles are", you need to try sourcing them. Those that you can source will no longer be unsourced, those which you can't find sourcing for can be uncontentiously deleted by prods. ϢereSpielChequers 00:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
The reason schools are exempted from A7 (though not the others) is simply that the community remains conflicted on whether schools are inherently notable. If you look at the guidelines at the top of this page, you'll see the admonition that a "it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus." When school articles are proposed to AfD on the grounds of notability, they are sometimes deleted and sometimes not depending on circumstances. That diversity of result says that we can not rely upon the rule for a speedy-deletion criterion. Personally, I agree with you that schools should be held to the same standards as any other organization. The community has not yet reached consensus on that point, though. Rossami (talk) 13:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
There is another reason. Usual practice in the case of non-notable schools is to merge and redirect to the article on the school district or the place where the school is located rather than just deleting the article. The speedy deletion process can't do this. Hut 8.5 13:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
The points of Common Outcomes and "inherently notable" are under fire by now. I am just trying to close an RfC on WP:VPP, dealin with the notability of school. Very frustrating, because the nay-sayers only showed up at the point that we had the idea something serious could be achieved. Your comments make one thing clear: without a breakthrough on the notability guidelines, no change in the A7-policy is on the cards. Strange, because I always had the idea that guidelines would be set by the community, not by a single project. Night of the Big Wind talk 13:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
CSD should not be used for anything that has even a slight chance at being notable, schools or otherwise (barring, of course, that other CSD criteria don't apply).
The logic, however, is that if there can be a change to affect the notability of schools elsewhere (basically removing the OUTCOMES bit), then I would suspect that this must necessitate the change here at A7, since the exemption right now points back to OUTCOMES. --MASEM (t) 14:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

NOBW does have a point. As the rules are currently written I could build a shack in my brother's back yard, call it "The Ritzman School of Hard Knocks", write an article about it and it wouldn't be subject to A7. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 19:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Situations as blatant as that one are the reason why we have IAR. (In fact if you were to write an article about this shack which did not claim it was an organisation it wouldn't be subject to A7 anyway.) Hut 8.5 23:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I would think that the above example is G3-able. →Στc. 00:29, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Even without IAR, in the most extreme cases, the article can and sometimes has been deleted for no encyclopedic information, or lack of context if we cannot tell where the school even is. And many of the weakest articles are good G12 copyvios. I am perhaps the most inclusive admin on schools, but I delete in those sort of situations. DGG ( talk ) 07:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Books. Again.

Yes, I've read the archives, and I understand the arguments for keeping books out of A7 and/or A9 (basically, it's harder to tell from a book stub whether or not notability is met, so we give them the benefit of the doubt - which is sensible). However, I propose that we consider creating a new criterion, or adding to an existing one, to allow the deletion of self-published books with no claim to notability. With the ready availability of ebook publishing through such services as CreateSpace, literally anyone can publish a book and make it available on Amazon or elsewhere. The growing popularity of these and similar services for print (such as Lulu and XLibris) mean that more and more fledgeling authors are looking to promote their work online; Wikipedia seems to be a popular place to do this. A few self-published books are notable and get articles; however, the vast majority get taken to AfD and deleted under WP:NBOOK (usually after having had a PROD tag removed by the page author).

Having a speedy deletion criterion for self-published titles with no claim of notability would reduce the workload at AfD whilst avoiding books that have been published by actual publishing houses (which, even if sources aren't readily apparent, are at least likely to have been given marketing support and had review copies sent out, meaning sources may exist). Checking whether a book is self-published or not is the work of moments via Googlebooks or Amazon. I would suggest exceptions for titles which have a claim to notability in their text (similar to A7); books self-published by notable authors, or that claim to have generated controversy or other newsworthy attention would not be covered.

If there is support for this, I'd be happy to draft text for the criterion. Thoughts? Yunshui 雲‍水 15:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Most of time it is not obvious whether a book is self-published or not, so we would need to maintain a list of self-publishing publishers as well, which seems a bad idea for a speedy deletion criteria. Secondly, I am not convinced we really have that many articles on selfpublished E-books. Could you link to some recent AFD's for such books? Yoenit (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
Here are a few I found through searching:
I'll grant that it isn't always easy to establish whether a book is self-published or not (being in the book trade does give me an advantage in terms of personal knowledge), but aside from setting up a personal publsihing company, there are really only a few major places to go: Createspace, Lulu, Authorhouse and XLibris are far and away the most common, so the proposed guideline could be made to cover just these four. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:45, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
If this goes through, add Gyan to that list; we run into that a lot in Indian articles, especially on castes. Besides being self-published, they tend to be copyvios of other self-published works as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:09, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
That's quite a list. But the first is from 2009 and the second from 2008. If you need to go that far back to compile such a list then I'm not convinced this is a common enough occurrence for such a complex addition to speedy deletion. A once a month scenario where we get a clear decision to delete, belongs at AFD not CSD, AFD can easily handle a deletion a month where the article is on a self published book. Its not as if these are going to be contentious AFDs, or that anyone will be paying spammers to market such books. Also notability is an AFD matter, not something that should be decided at speedy deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 22:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Sorry about that. Rather than go back through AfDs day-by-day and entry-by-entry (which was the only other way I could think of to compile such a list of specific AfDs) I just ran searches on "~Lulu" and "~CreateSpace" in Wikiproject space. Foolishly, I made the assumption that results would appear in date order, so didn't check the dates; evidently they do not. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:25, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
No problem. If these were easy to identify and there'd been this sort of number in the last two or three months (or to make things easier half a dozen in the last fortnight) then I'd be more willing to be convinced that this is frequent enough to be worthwhile. But speedy deletion is already very complex, and for it to be worth making it more complex we need a small rule change that prevents a lot of clearcut AFDs. ϢereSpielChequers 11:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
  • I have always opposed adding an equivalent of A9 for books, but i think self published books might be an exception. I think the number of these submitted here is very likely to increase, and is already enough that a criterion would be useful. I would make the criterion Self published or by a vanity publisher, by an author who does not have a Wikipedia article, none of whose books have ever been published by a conventional publisher, & where there are no references to reliable sources for independent reviews. The only case I can imagine of such an article being kept is where there are in fact reviews, but the author of the article is not aware of them. This is often the case for naïve articles on childrens' books and the like, written by children who do not know to look for reviews, but will not be the case for a vanity publication. In this connection, when using A7 on an author, the assertion that someone has published a book is a reason for possible importance that defeats speedy, except where the book is self published. When the only book or books are self published I always use A7, & I cannot remember any such deletion being successfully challenged. As the book is likely to be even less notable than the author, I think this criterion is a safe one. DGG ( talk ) 07:53, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Add __NOINDEX__ to all speedy templates

I wouldlike to see __NOINDEX__ added to all of the speedy templates. Google, and maybe other search engines as well, are quick off the mark at finding a new WP article. I have seen them turn up in google search results within minutes. Adding __NOINDEX__ to speedy templates means that visitors who come via search engine links will not see half-baked articles and often outright rubbish. Article marked with a speedy deletion tag can sometimes hang around long enough to be chanced upon. Once the speedy tag is removed the article is then visible to search engines. Sounds like a nice idea to me... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:20, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a decent idea. (Though I'm open to other perspectives on this.) I think Template:Under construction might be another one for this. - jc37 01:04, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I proposed this some time back and it was explained to me, here, that the NOINDEX function is disabled in the mainspace so we can add it all we want but it won't function. It's possible the technical barrier has been removed, but I thought I'd provide the benefit of past discussion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Looks like that barrier is removed. See Wikipedia:NOINDEX#Individual_pages_2. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

This has already been done, on {{db-meta}}. →Στc. 08:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Great, so why aren't articles with the speedy templates put in Category:Noindexed pages? Is the noindex done but not the categorising? Which is fine by me. As long as the articles don't get picked up by the search engines. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Noindex doesn't work in mainspace, as there are many ways malicious users could use it to screw around. There may be a way the devs can get it to only work in certain circumstances, but it doesn't now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I'd be uncomfortable with this, not least because if an article gets tagged G10 and blanked I would prefer that mirrors picked up the tagged version rather than kept the attack. My preference would be that all unpatrolled pages are noIndexed, yes that would require a change in policy to allow NoIndex in mainspace, but I think that would be a good change, and as long as we kept it to unpatrolled=noIndex then it would be hard to game. ϢereSpielChequers 18:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
I like the idea of unpatrolled=noIndex. What happens after the 30 day limit on the patrolling? Does the unpatrolled status drop off (and therefore NoIndex)? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
We've been discussing it in the context of the new tool being developed for newpage patrol. The idea is that either the 30 day limit would go or it would become 60 days. If the latter then logically they should cease to be noIndex at 60 days, we may not have spelled that one out, but if we haven't done that we'd have some mainspace articles that are noindex without anyone having a way to spot or change that. Related to the NoIndex until patrolled idea is that you would no longer patrol articles when you tagged them for deletion, tagged for deletion would become a third colour along with yellow and grey. So the attack pages and so forth wouldn't be picked up by search engines and mirrors during their time at cat:Speedy ϢereSpielChequers 12:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Given the fact that the vast majority of valid CSDs are deleted within minutes, and we have no information or guarantees on how quickly a search engine may notice the removal of a no-index tag (If search engines take their time try try to reindex a page which have been explicitly marked to be not indexed, all you need to do is to CSD tag a popular page to remove it from the world), I don't see that this proposal is a net positive. henrik•talk 18:59, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Sigh... More complications because WP is too easy to edit for the vandals, and the bad editors, and the good faith bad editors, and the mischievous students... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The timing is pure serendipity I think but check it out: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/NOINDEX.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:02, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Question about G12

Criterion G12 says to delete:

"Text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving."

An article I created, X Lossless Decoder, which was a lightly edited version of this GFDL'd article, was speedily deleted (I didn't know GFDL content wasn't allowed, and still don't quite understand why it isn't, but that's a separate issue). So, unless GFDL is not considered a "free license", either the wording here needs to be changed or that wasn't a case for speedy deletion. Which? False vacuum (talk) 00:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The wording definitely needs changing. I'd agree that GFDL is a free license but we can't use material that is only licensed under it, or indeed several other free licenses. I'll go and boldy change it as it is clearly currently wrong. Dpmuk (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, that's an answer. And a very efficient edit, too. False vacuum (talk) 04:42, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
For future reference, Dpmuk added a link to WP:Compatible license, which redirects to WP:FAQ/Copyright#Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?. Flatscan (talk) 05:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

AfD redirects and G4

Please leave in the note that redirects are not deletions. This point is often confused. Jehochman Talk 21:26, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree. It's not overkill to clarify something that editors are "getting wrong" on a regular basis. Jclemens (talk) 22:29, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
[G4] also excludes content which was redirected or merged after a deletion discussion, undeleted via deletion review, or.... I thought that if the article was redirected, then it is no longer "sufficiently identical" to the revision that was taken to AfD, and thus not able to be deleted as G4. →Στc. 23:14, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
This edit seems to stem from WP:Articles for deletion/The Shrike (2nd nomination). The previous AfD WP:Articles for deletion/The Shrike was closed as redirect without deletion. Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
That is not necessarily the case: delete and redirect is both a deletion and a redirect. I know that there's disagreement over whether deletion should be used before redirecting, but that is a separate issue. I think the addition is redundant to the base criterion, "deleted per a deletion discussion." Flatscan (talk) 05:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Deletion before redirection as an AfD outcome serves one of two purposes:
1) If the content is unacceptable and shouldn't remain accessible to non-admins (BLP, copyvio, promotion, attack), then deletion is protective.
2) Otherwise, it's simply a way of preventing non-admin editors access to not-currently-meeting-standards content. If the issue is people keep undoing the redirection, that's what (semi-) protection of the redirect page is for.
Needless to say, I think option 2 is far more common than 1, and redireciton without deletion is more appropriate in those cases. When I saw old, previously deleted yet inoffensive redirects like that, I used to go through and restore the history under the redirect, just in case someone feels like sourcing and expanding the content. Haven't done it in a while, but would be happy to do so on request... Jclemens (talk) 07:05, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
We discussed a piece of this issue at User talk:Flatscan/RfC draft: Restoring to merge after deletion at AfD. If you would like to deprecate delete and redirect except in those limited cases and permit unilateral restoration under redirects, I can dust off the draft for consideration at WT:Articles for deletion. Both deletions and restorations under redirects are being done, as of a few months ago. Flatscan (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
How often is G4 incorrectly invoked for an AfD closed as redirect or merge? I agree that users conflating discrete outcomes is disappointingly widespread, but I don't see it as specific to G4. I suggest publicizing WP:Guide to deletion#Recommendations and outcomes. Flatscan (talk) 05:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Seeing no responses, I reverted to the stable version. I am open to adding something like "merge, or redirect without deletion" to the existing footnote. Flatscan (talk) 05:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

F9

Is there any reason why F9 exists as separate criteria and why it couldn't be unified with G12, and than F9 depracated? Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talkabout my edits? 15:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

uh... good question. They have a unified user warning ({{Nothanks-sd}}) and the textual differences are minor, so I don't see why not. The only problem is that the wall of text below G12 on this page will become even bigger. Yoenit (talk) 15:27, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
It would seem that one of the original reasons for G12 was actually images (see the talk page "discussion" that led to this). It was later split per this discussion. I've got to say that I've often thought them redundant and indeed it has made me cautious about tagging things as F9 as I normally work in the text world so wasn't sure if there was some important difference I was missing that meant that F9 was a separate criteria. They also both placed content in CAT:CVSD. Dpmuk (talk) 18:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Image deletion & article deletions are different. and usually worked on by different admins. In particular Article G12s require a different set of judgments about whether there is non i fringing content of an opportunity for stubbification, none of which is present with images DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
G12 and F9 already use the same speedy deletion category (Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations), so I don't see how a merge would affect that in any way. Yoenit (talk) 13:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
One of the primary reasons for the difference is the complexities of fair use rules which exist for files but not for non-file namespaces. We can host exclusively unfree content on a file page; this isn't the case for any other namespace (textual fair use is never its own page). We also have an entirely different licensing system for the two; text added to Wikipedia is automatically assumed to be GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0; files uploaded must be explicitly given a license and source - there are a number of different processes for handling incorrect licensing issues (in total, I count 10 different processes at C:SD, as well as WP:PUF and WP:FFD). That said, I entirely support deprecating F9 and merging it with G12, so long as we definitely keep F9's caveats intact. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

R3 and page moves

Redirects after page moves are routinely kept in WP:RFD, and this criterion becomes frequently used to nominate for speedy deletion the redirects created after moving pages from WP:MOS-incompatible names. Thus I propose to change the phrase "This criterion also applies to redirects created as a result of a page move of pages recently created at an implausible title" to "This criterion does not apply to redirects created as a result of a page move of pages recently created at an implausible title" in order to send all these redirects to WP:RFD for proper discussion. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

The reason that it applies to recently created pages that were moved is because a startling number of articles are created at absolutely hideous titles. Two such examples in my move log are BANURI VILLAGE (HIMACHAL PRADESH) and Dr. David A. Geller, MD, FACS (these are demonstrative, not exhaustive). Another is Who was the first lady judge of punjab and haryana high court at chandingarh (the page it was moved to was BLPPRODded, but could potentially become an article at some point). In all three cases, articles were created at those titles and someone had to move them to something reasonable; none of those are even remotely helpful (and the last one is even at WP:DAFT). Even beyond those, there are plenty of instances where articles are created with quotes in the title, with some sort of weird typo (I remember one which had w0hen instead of when), with foreign language and Latin characters put together, or missing a space between a letter and parenthesis; those are routinely deleted per R3, and a quick glance at my move log from when I was on the non-admin side of NPP will give you plenty of examples. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Unfortunately, I have just as many examples of bad R3 nominations (many of which are not being properly vetted by the deleting admins). For example, the current wording is incorrectly baiting editors to tag and delete a redirect under R3 because the redirect was "recently created" by the pagemove process despite the content having existed at the old title for several years. And while I agree with the implausibility of most of your examples, we have debated and kept several meeting your descriptions if they were not harmful - typos that appear implausible to you (and sometimes to me) turn out to be entirely plausible to users of alternate keyboards, for example.
If the R3 criterion had been proposed today, I seriously doubt that it would be approved. The term "implausible" is too open to interpretation and is not leading to nominations in which "most reasonable people should be able to agree whether an article meets the criterion." Rossami (talk) 22:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that R3 is frequently misapplied. Maybe we can make it clearer. Would it help to expand the criteria with something like "does not apply to redirects created when established articles are moved"? - Eureka Lott 22:44, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Don't think so. If the title is really implausible, it can be nominated for WP:RFD and will easily pass away in 7 days. In cases of WP:RM such decisions are even easier to make as the RM discussion already reveals some of the arguments. The problem is that we can't control bogus R3 application cases, so it is by far easier to send everyone to WP:RFD then picking a clear wording and watching its usage. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:54, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
As one of the normal RM closers, I will say that I don't always remove unlikely redirect pages. There is enough work fixing templates, and not free files and other cleanup. Also the inbound links can take a while to clear so at the time of close it is difficult to determine if the redirect should remain. So a review after allowing a day or more for cleanup would seem reasonable. But a default keep of all of these does not seem reasonable. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:21, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I see three legitimate uses for R3 after page moves:

  1. If the page was moved to the wrong title accidently (for example, Wikipedia:Social Media and Television).
  2. Viable articles recently created under extremely bad titles (examples given above)
  3. Meaningless filenames (for example, File:H65446wecdp.jpg).

Examples of R3 being misapplied are easy to find, see for example the logs of Iraqi revolt against the British, Misinformation and rumors about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Lamina emergent mechanisms (LEMs). Clearly some admins are ignoring the "recently created" clause completely. Yoenit (talk) 09:40, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the criterion is being misapplied wildly, and even some of the examples you draw above may be worth keeping under certain circumstances (off-site linking, establish use patterns, etc.). Effectively there is no proper way to decide on whether such redirect should be deleted or kept without having the clean at least month-long stats. Given the ease of misapplication of criterion, I still think that forbidding the speedy deletion of the redirects after move is the best solution. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
  • redirects are cheap and it is very difficult to identify redirects which no-one is going to find useful. Obviously redirects to pages deleted on notability grounds can go, and redirects where the creator made a typo and is asking for it to be cleaned up. But many redirects are deleted quite unnecessarily. There is also the problem that many redirects result from people correcting newbie errors, and if such redirects go then the newbies my think their creation has been deleted rather than merely renamed. ϢereSpielChequers 14:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Given the number of times that CSD#R3 is properly applied compared to the number of times that it is mis-applied on any given day, I would rather see the criterion deprecated altogether. The increased load to RfD would be manageable. Failing that, I think we need much clearer wording such as
R3. Implausible typos
Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. Implausible redirects are ones that no reasonable, good-faith editor would knowingly create or support. Redirects from apple to orange or from profanity to US President are implausible. Redirects from common misspellings or misnomers, some redirects in other languages, redirects ending with "(disambiguation)" that point to a disambiguation page or redirects which bring a pagetitle into compliance with the Manual of Style, on the other hand, are are not implausible. This criterion may also apply to redirects created as a result of a pagemove but only if the moved page was itself recently created at the implausible title. "Recently created" is measured from the creation of the title and is generally understood to be the last few hours or days at most. Pages with history (articles or stubs that have been converted into redirects) are ineligible for this criterion.
It's a lot longer than I'd like it to be and deprecation would be easier but I think that wording would clear up the worst of the confusion. Rossami (talk) 02:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I wouldn't oppose such explanation. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 06:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Are there any objections to the proposed rewrite? Rossami (talk) 21:53, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't think the "Redirects from apple to orange or from profanity to US President are implausible" sentence is needed. I.E. it doesn't clear anything up (and indeed those examples could be considered vandalism). Thus, I suggest dropping it.--ThaddeusB (talk) 23:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
As I said above, I think that R3 should be changed, but your proposed wording probably is too inflexible. An example: Fausto Carmona yesterday was moved to Roberto Hernández (baseball, born 1980). The editor making the move at first accidentally moved the article to Roberto Hernández (baseball born 1983), but rectified his mistake within a minute. I deleted the misleading redirect under R3, and it existed for less than half an hour. We need to retain some flexibility for administrators. - Eureka Lott 23:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
I do not think that the proposed wording gets in the way of situations like Roberto Hernández (baseball born 1983). As you note, content was only at that title for one minute and the title was deleted in less than 20 minutes. That clearly meets the definition for "recently created". The point of the clarification of the recently-created clause is to make clear that it's about titles, not about content.
That example also met even the strictest definitions of implausibility - the clearest evidence is that the page mover identified and immediately self-corrected the move. It's not the vandalism of profanity to US President but it is the self-evidently different content of apple to orange. I say self-evidently because his correct birthyear was shown in the article. Had the birthyear in the moved title been correct, it would have had to be a different person.
But maybe I'm missing something. What interpretation do you see that would get in the way of deleting that particular example? Rossami (talk) 04:18, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Your proposed change says that it "may also apply to redirects created as a result of a pagemove but only if the moved page was itself recently created at the implausible title." Even though it only existed at the deleted title for one minute, the article was created in 2005. Under a strict interpretation of your wording, the page would be ineligible for speedy deletion. - Eureka Lott 13:54, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
How about "but only if the moved page was itself recently created at or moved to the implausible title". Yoenit (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
I see the problem now. Yoenit's fix seems to resolve it. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Any additional thoughts? Are we ready to make the change yet? Rossami (talk) 13:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Clarification of A3

A3 includes, "Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria." I don't understand: if the page has only an infobox, how could it meet other criteria? And is that supposed to mean other A3 criteria or other non-A3 criteria? Please clarify. —teb728 t c 09:25, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the point of this sentence is to say that an article which only consists of an infobox is not eligible for A3 just because it only consists of an infobox. People do sometimes nominate articles consisting of just an infobox for deletion under A3, even when the infobox contains meaningful substantitive content, because they think that the lack of non-infobox content makes the article eligible. Hut 8.5 11:00, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Pages which have survived deletion discussions

This edit a few months ago sneaked through a significant change to the policy: instead of saying that a page which survived the most recent deletion discussion cannot be speedily deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations, it now says that such pages should not generally be deleted. The edit summary for the change says it was made as a result of this RfC, but this particular aspect of the change was not part of the proposed wording in that RfC (or even mentioned there) and it doesn't seem to have been discussed on this page. Speedy deletions are supposed to be uncontroversial, if a page has survived the most recent previous deletion discussion then its deletion is at least somewhat controversial and individual admins should not be allowed to overrule the community. I propose we change the lead back by removing the word "generally". (There is some related discussion here).) Hut 8.5 10:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

  • I agree completely - having 'generally' there just invites abuse.--Michig (talk) 10:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support: I see neither sense in this change nor consensus behind it. I wanted to start a discussion on actually setting a timeout that would discard the previous deletion discussions. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support revert of change. I see no consensus for the addition of the word "generally", and we get enough abuse of CSD already without inviting more. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support – Because there are few checks and balances on speedy deletions, CSD is one of the few areas of policy where the community has continuously supported tight, restrictive wording; throwing the word "generally" in there is not in keeping with that. Paul Erik (talk)(contribs) 11:17, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support removal of generally, and that the additional language added directly to G4 be changed to a footnote, as I originally suggested at the RFC, which appears to have been what was agreed to and expected by others.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:59, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Per above. There was no consensus for this particular change and if it were discussed, I'd strongly oppose that wording for the abuse it invites. If a page that previously survived XFD should have been deleted, that's what DRV is for. If consensus has changed in the mean time, then it should be rediscussed. There is no possibly scenario I can think of in which a previously kept page now qualifies for speedy deletion (with the exception of G12 of course). As soon as the community decided to keep something, it's no longer in the hands of any admin to decide otherwise. Regards SoWhy 12:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per above. Rossami (talk) 13:27, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support I have seen articles be speedied despite having previously survived an AFD, but I can't remember seeing one that was correctly speedied despite surviving an AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 13:38, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per above. BOZ (talk) 14:53, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

 Done. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 16:12, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Clarification on F2

I think we need to clarify WP:CSD#F2. Currently it refers to "description" pages for Commons images, but clearly it doesn't refer to all description pages, as CSD#F8 clearly states that some content must be undeleted after first deletion. The question: does that refer to interwikis and categories? I see it happen a lot that a description page with just a category is listed for deletion under F2, but I don't know if it applies. We should state explicitly what is included and what isn't. Therefore I propose F2 should read as following:

F2. Corrupt or empty image.
Files that are corrupt, empty, or that contain superfluous and blatant non-metadata information.[8] This also includes image description pages for Commons images.
  • If it is a description page for a Commons file that consists entirely of categories and/or information not relevant to any other project (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), it should not be deleted.

I don't much care about whether or not categories is in the final version; I just would like some clarification. Magog the Ogre (talk) 03:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

If this conversation sits here much longer, I'll take the silence as lack of disagreement and I'll just change it. Magog the Ogre (talk) 21:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Article history and A3

Hi, I just proposed a change to A3 to clarify it shouldn't be used when there is content in history. This was reverted with a note that all speedy deletion criteria are invalid if somewhere in the articles history there is a good version. This seems sensible to me, yet currently this isn't specified on the project page, and criteria G1, G10, G12 and A10 name them explicitly. Would it be a good idea to include a blanket statement in General and Article, or on the project page to indicate it doesn't apply and remove them from the individual criteria? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:13, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, WP:CSD#Procedure for administrators says that admins should "[...] check the page history to assess whether it would instead be possible to revert and salvage a previous version [...]". I reverted your addition because I don't think there is reason to add something that is already a general principle to every criterion individually. I think the current inclusion in the criteria you mention is due to historical reasons only. I would support including a clarification in the introduction and removing the superfluous mention in G1, G10, G12 and A10 though. Something like "Users should not tag pages for speedy deletion if there is a version of the page that can be reverted to that does not meet any criterion for speedy deletion; likewise, admins should not delete pages where reverting to a prior state is an option." should do the trick. Regards SoWhy 16:52, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Huh... I wonder when that changed. The page used to be explicit that both the current content and every preceding version had to qualify for speedy-deletion before CSD was allowed. (That's not to say that every version had to qualify under the same criterion - a vandalism page overwritten with A7 content is still speedy-able.) We should make that explicit again here. Rossami (talk) 17:21, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Something like this?
I would prefer this version. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:58, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

BTW, may be Procedure for administrators should note that if a revision that doesn't qualify for speedy deletion is found, all the newer revisions still should be deleted? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:58, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. If there is no harm in keeping the revisions that meet speedy deletion (!= the same as all newer revisions), just reverting to the old version is usually enough. In fact, if the revisions in questions ought to be deleted, they have to qualify for WP:REVDEL imho. Admins are not expected to selectively delete revisions that meet any CSD using REVDEL, so they shouldn't do it just because it was tagged. As for the wording, I don't like your wording nor Martijn's. Imho, it should mention that the revisions are not eligible for any criterion (your wording sounds as if the same criterion has to be met) and that people should revert to the old version instead. Regards SoWhy 21:18, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I decided just to kick it off with an edit, edit away if you don't like something. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I prefer the wording from 2006 or even better from 2004 which read
Always check the page history first to see if any previous version can be restored, such that deletion is not necessary.
Those versions were more positive in tone - "here's something you must do" rather than "thou shalt not". I like the 2004 wording better because it put the burden on everyone - adminstrators to check history before deleting but also regular editors to check history before tagging. Rossami (talk) 22:15, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't mind the current revision, but like to note I'm firmly in the 'whatever, as long as it is clear that pages with valid history are ineligible' camp. If you feel another wording would be better, I believe {{sofixit}} would firmly apply here. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:24, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

G7 as evasion of G4

Suggest that G4 (Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion) be extended to incorporate articles that were deleted under G7 (Author requests deletion). Alternatively, G7 cannot be user on 2 substantially similar articles (but is that really checkable?). In the case of Robert Young (Pro Cyclist & Triathlete) we are currently in the 4th incarnation of an article on a sportsman who fails any notability standard, but for whom the various guises of the creator responds to the inevitable AfD listing by blanking the article, then re-creating it with a slightly different disambiguator a few days later. Thus AfD, and the threat of speedy deletion of a recreation under CSD G4, is evaded. This loophole should be closed. Kevin McE (talk) 09:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Simply let the AfD play out—don't accede to a G7 request either explicit or by blanking, which is what is happening right now at the current AfD. The situation is uncommon and for that reason I don't see any need to consider changing any criterion to address it.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:27, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree: although I don't see it anywhere in WP:AFD, the {{afd1}} template says "the article must not be blanked... until the discussion is closed", and that is good enough justification to revert any blanking and decline any G7 while the AfD runs. There might be situations where it would be sensible to accept a G7 and close the AfD on an IAR basis, but there is no need to do that if it seems to be being used to evade scrutiny. JohnCD (talk) 09:44, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Indeed. We can even let the AfD run its course if the article is G7'ed halfway through the deletion process too; I don't know of any rule that disallows that, and if there were, we can safely ignore it, because it would be a bad idea to follow it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Agree. A call for G7 (or U1 at MfD) should be taken as a highly significant !vote, and not be allowed to sidestep completion of a community judgement. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:44, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Just let the AfD run its course; the advantage of using an AfD in a case like this, is that subsequent re-creations can be treated by G4. The G7 suggestion should just be treated as a !vote for delete. DGG ( talk ) 04:43, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
  • I was thinking about this thread when I closed this AFD. I think what I will do in cases like this is reopen and relist the original AFD and let it run its course. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:00, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
  • You're probably right and I might have if the 2 delete !votes weren't "per noms" but this way if someone writes a new article that is "referenced" and "accurate" (the nominator's concerns) it won't be subject to G4. In any case I'm watching the red link and if it's recreated in the same state that it was nominated in, I'm going to break out the NUCLEAR TROUT. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

On A9

A9 seems oddly specific, and seems like it was just created to combat people using Wikipedia to promote their garage band. Shouldn't this rule apply to any work of art? --WikiDonn (talk) 17:17, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

CSD criteria are deliberately specific, and shouldn't be construed broader than the letter. Is there an actual need to have a possibility to speedily delete other works of art? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
I think you hit the nail on the head. Many new editors write about their favorite band (or their own band), and then they start writing articles about the band's records. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 17:23, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
If I recall correctly A9 was created with the thought that if a band is non-notable, it is unlikely that its musical recordings will be notable. →Στc. 20:02, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that's correct. Which is also the reason why it does not cover any other works of art. Regards SoWhy 20:05, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Old IP talkpages

One of the problems that we are building up over time is an accumulation of IP pages with warnings. This doesn't matter for userpages because the user page should relate to the same person, just maybe a decade older. But IPs get reassigned, and a page full of warnings from 2003 isn't likely to be relevant to an editor on that IP in 2023. I had thought that we were deleting some of the old and out of date IP talkpages, but it doesn't seem to be under any of the codes. Is this an acceptable use of G6? I was thinking maybe we should courtesy blank some of them, but presumably that would result in a "you have messages" bar going to the current user of that IP. ϢereSpielChequers 16:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, minor edits from accounts with the bot flag don't throw up the orange bar. Couldn't that be a way to blank some of these? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ron Ritzman (talk • contribs) 18:13, 7 April 2012‎
See also: SharedIPArchiveBot. →Στc. 07:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with G6 deletion of stale dynamic IP Talk pages - we don't need them for anything, and all they do is confuse newcomers reusing the same IPs. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

This request is coming over and over (please see the archives). There is a bot going around to archive them (SharedIPArchiveBot). There is absolute no reason to delete these pages, deletion does hide in some cases important tracks in vandal fighting, or important discussions which nonetheless were blanked. Deletion of talkpages is certainly not non-controversial - admins have been blocked for this. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, if they get archived, that's cool - but I do see a very big difference in importance between registered user ans static IP talk pages, and dynamic ones (though I guess the latter can be useful for investigating disruption from IP ranges). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:22, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Things that I encounter include that I find an IP spamming a certain link. Sometimes, another IP has already been warned repeatedly that their link-additions (of exactly the same link) are considered spam, and have been told what would be the following steps. Since it is very likely, that both IPs are related to the same 'organisation', and often are the same physical person (in the best case, they both work for the same company, and the manager who suggested the first employee to spam the link did not tell that to the manager of the second employee - so maybe the second employee was not aware of the earlier spamming), I dare with the new IP to start immediately with stronger warnings (even if they are two independent employees of the same company, so not meatpuppets in a strict sense of the word, it is still company responsibility that they do not spam). If I find several {{uw-spam4im}} in series of some time ago, I will now issue a {{uw-spam4im}} immediately (or even blacklist) - if I can't find those I would start from the beginning. Also, that several such warnings to different editors have been issued at some time is used as evidence that blacklisting was the only option. When such talkpages were deleted, one loses the easy access to such tracks, and might start over (and the link may escape a well due blacklisting ..).
Although I would not object to deletion of talkpages of editors who were only warned for petty vandalism, there the problem is that quite often people revert spam and warn with the vandalism templates ({{uw-vand1}}, e.g.) - still those editors should see that as a warning that the edits they perform are not wanted, and a follow-up vandalfighter may use that as a reason to start higher.
Then you have the problems with editors removing warnings, but those are still found in the old revids of a page. If I feed you a list of 20 spammers, and you have 20 redlinks, you'd take a long time to find whether these spammers were warned before - with blanked or archived pages that goes already much faster (and one does not need an admin bit for that action, do note also that many of the cross-wiki active vandal fighters are not admin here).
All in all, some of those IP talkpages with warnings may be of interest, and it would take quite some work to see which ones. Quite some are related to petty vandalism and those are generally useless in the future (but as you said, IP-range vandalism might those also interesting tracks). Others are generally quite useless edits to talkpages and those could also be deleted. But it takes a lot of common sense to see what can be deleted and what not. One admin recently did a short run of deleting 20-25 pages, of which I immediately undeleted one since it did relate to a quite recent spam case, and 10-11 after a short discussion since I felt that they were not non-controversial deletions. I would therefore not delete lightly delete user talkpages under CSD criteria .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
But how many years would you go back and still find old IP messages useful? Three? Four? I'm certainly not interested in getting rid of such pages if they may be useful, But surely there is a number of years after which we can agree that such things are stale and best archived or deleted. If we have a Bot doing this uncontentiously for shared IPs after a matter of weeks, then surely after some period of years we can do the same for IPs that are not tagged as "shared". ϢereSpielChequers 12:14, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Yep, I can see there are good reasons for not deleting, and I agree that bot-archiving is the way to go. But I also like the idea of archiving very old IPs not marked as shared too - the vast majority of even "static" IPs do eventually get re-allocated, even when one doesn't (eg a company address), there's a good chance it's a different person using it now. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:20, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
WereSpielChequers, I have seen links being blacklisted after massive sockpuppetry by users, which were over a year later de-blacklisted (by an unknowing admin who needed one link on the site), resulting in a restart of sock-spamming only a couple of weeks later. Spammers make money with their links - that is a massive incentive to do it. There is no real gain in deleting these pages, it does not free serverspace, it might take away some 'you have new messages banners' (if that IP was indeed never used in those years to browse Wikipedia). And that while there may be some cases where there is interest in that old data. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:19, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Hi Beetstra, I'm not trying to hide messages that are recent enough to be relevant. The gain is that the current user of the IP probably has nothing to do with warnings from many years ago. So getting rid of such old warnings may make the site more attractive for potential IP editors. I'd be happy to exempt IP pages with spam warnings or put the test at a long enough time period that spammers would have lost patience - Would you be concerned if this was only being done to IP pages that had not been edited in two years? Or if we had some formula such as "no talkpage activity for a year and no spam warnings for more than four years? ϢereSpielChequers 14:04, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
No, you'd have to exempt spammers, not talkpages that have a spam-warning on it (see above). And if the messages are archived, then they are not bothering a new user. However, even if they are three years old, those messages may be evidence for e.g. blacklisting, or may be a reason for blacklisting. And note, spam is an example, there can be other reasons as well. Believe me, even deleting talkpages older than 5 years will result in cases which should not have been deleted because there is information there that is needed. And on top of that, it does not gain a lot, especially not when the page is already archived and replaced with a suitable, general template. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
Oh, and spammers don't loose patience ... they earn money with it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:09, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
OK so can I take it that you'd be OK with extending the archiving from shared IPs to all IPs, providing we don't actually delete warnings? ϢereSpielChequers 14:38, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
GOOD GOD DO NOT.
Do you all have any concept of the size of the English Wikipedia's database at this point? Over 64GB of uncompressed wikitext! That archive bot just creates an additional page for every single IP talk page. You're quite literally suggesting making the problem twice as large as an effective solution. The answer is to delete the pages. End of story.
Dirk has been going on about the spam problem for years, but it's a red herring in the context of this discussion. Over ninety-nine percent of these IP talk pages have nothing to do with spam (or any pattern of behavior) and can safely be deleted. I know this from sampling. Dirk knows this from sampling. It's completely outrageous that a vandal edit five years ago still warrants a separate user talk page that will be kept around indefinitely. It's patently absurd to suggest that it should now have two pages devoted to it. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
MZMcBride, yes, but get to a good and strict set of rules. I've seen an admin doing 25 deletions a couple of weeks ago - one was an active ongoing case of spam. 10 of them contained discussions where the editor was in an active discussion. I doubt if you get to 99%. You have to get the rules for deletion to a strict set, and I doubt that you can do that with a speedy. I am fine with the deletion if there is a strict subset, but look further than only spam pages. And I tell you, deletion of certain of these tracks does hamper our efforts. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:38, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I encourage everyone to look through Wikipedia:Database reports/Old IP talk pages. Sample the collection and see what percent of these pages need to be kept. Does someone adding this vandalism really need to have an IP talk page forever? This is insane, and of course the database report only shows the tip of the iceberg. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of pages like this. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

If that was a userpage for a registered account then I'd not lose sleep about it being there indefinitely. But IPs shift so the someone who has that warning now is unlikely to be the same someone, and yes I agree that such talkpages should go, and whilst we need safeguards to keep track of spammers do we really need three year old talkpages of warnings for juvenile vandalism? ϢereSpielChequers 15:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on the deletion of IP talk pages that contain nothing but very old warnings, except for:

  1. Their speedy deletion should be authorised from WP:CSD (not WP:UP, or anywhere else);
  2. There should be a new criteria, not G6, because G6 is already very broad. If G6 were to cover old talk pages, I expect some will believe that G6 can cover nearly everything.
  3. "Old" would need a precise definition. I would be confortable with "one year of no edits from the IP since the warning". (If the IP is editing, replace the old warnings with a welcome).
  4. There seems to be a case for the deletions/blankings to depend on the warnings. High level spam warnings seem to have more historical interest. On this point, should the highest level of spam warning call for inclusion of the name of the current owner of the IP? I also guess that the historical activity of the IP is an important factor. If the IP inserted a hundred spam links, I imagine that records would be useful. If the IP made a few isolated vandalism edits, long term records seem of less value. If the IP appears to be a static IP associated with a company, I'd want to keep the records. If the IP belonged to a library or school, years old warnings will be of little continuing value.

As per Dirk, I am not convinced of the need. Are there so many that there is an actual, described problem? Why is bot-blanking not sufficient?

I really do not see the point of archiving (copying than blanking). I thought a starting point to the logic here was that the warnings are not associated with the current owners of the IP. If so, what is the purpose of the archive in addition to the talk page history? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. I think we need to get back to the reason we are here which is to build an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not an experiment in permanently archiving IP talk page warnings. To this end, I have personally blanked tens of thousands of IP talk page warnings, or at least replaced them with the "older warnings" template. However, to the extent that I have seen many thousands of pages consisting of nothing but one or two warnings from 2005 or before, for pages that have never been blocked or identified as shared IP addresses. I think the most sensible practice is to delete such pages outright, and there should be no procedural impediment to doing this. bd2412 T 22:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Archiving to a subpage makes no sense here (and actually makes the problem worse, as discussed above). Blanking the page is a step in the right direction, but what I think people fail to realize is that keeping these pages around does have an actual cost. If this were a few hundred pages, it would be negligible. But we're talking about hundreds of thousands of such pages. The people working on database dumps most certainly notice these pages. It's simply good housekeeping to delete these pages after a specified amount of time, with no recent edits from the IP, etc. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:59, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hundreds of thousands of such pages impacting people working on database dumps sounds a fair reason to delete instead of blank. I have started a draft criterion page here, & see below, for others to edit directly: --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:25, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Draft Old IP talk page criteria

Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Old IP talk pages
Deletion of Old IP talk pages

An old IP talk page must not be speedy deleted under this criterion if:

  • The IP has been active in the last 12 months;
  • There is non-templated, human-to-human, correspondence in the talk page history;
  • There is a record of a level 4 warning in the last 5 years or there is a record of a level 3 spam warning ({{uw-spam3}}) in the last 5 years

Other old IP talk pages may be deleted.

Special cases may be taken to WP:MfD for discussion
Note that a warning may be WP:REMOVED once the user has read and is aware of its contents

I have some qualms about the proposed criteria. Many of the oldest IP talk pages pre-existed bots and warning templates, and consist (or consisted before blanking) of nothing more than an editor literally saying, "Hey, you, stop vandalising". Even human to human contact, even a short conversation, is not worth preserving if it is several years old and represents the only activity relating to that IP address, for precisely the reason that IP addresses are dynamic, and can not be presumed after several years of complete dormancy to have any connection to the person whose activity prompted the original message. It would probably be useful to get a list of IP talk pages indicating the date of the last editing of that page, last activity by that IP, and last warning or block (if any). If we can find common patterns, we can craft a policy specifically addressing what those patterns show. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider "Hey, you, stop vandalising" on its own to be human-to-human contact worth preserving, but getting into this sort of detail will cause the criterion to fail new CSD criterion #1 "Objective" (top of this page). Possibly an important factor is whether the IP ever signed their talk page. I would recommend beginning cautiously. Start with the deletion of IP talks pages on a tight criteria, and then see how many are left. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:10, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I agree that it makes sense to begin with tight criteria and knock out what fits there (which will be, obviously, the least worthy of preservation); I think we still need data to generate metrics, and that the measuring stick should be the length of inactivity on the page, and of the IP. bd2412 T 03:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
If the IP ever made constructive edits that stuck, and the IP contributed to its own talk page, then I don't think the talk page should be deleted, ever. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:59, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Yea, I don't follow what the problem is, here (Sorry, I probably missed this somewhere up above). What's wrong with simply blanking the page?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 05:24, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
A single piece of vandalism five years results in a talk page that exists forever. These pages don't need to sit around indefinitely. They serve no purpose and can create problems when there's such a large volume of them. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
MZMcBride - I do not have a problem with simple vandalism. The problem that I have with it is that this is very, very difficult, if not impossible, to write down as a speedy-criterion. I know that the larger volume of these pages are either 'hi, I exist' edits to talkpages, or single on-off warnings for poop-vandalism. Those can be deleted. I only object to the deletion of those talkpages which are related to any form of systematic vandalism (and spam is the easiest example of it). That makes these deletions controversial. Although that the error rate on blind deletion of every talkpage of any IP that has not been used for longer than 1 year is relatively small (I guess in the order of 1-2%) .. it is that 1-2% that makes me uncomfortable to have it as a speedy. And do note, I know that ~75% of the talkpages of IPs with a spam warning are actually more of the type 'no, your YouTube link is not necessary here' .. and even those could go. I do see that these pages can go, but there is a small, though significant and necessary, percentage of pages which should not go. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:10, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
It seems we overlapped in posting replies. :-) I just posted below. I think you may be right about articulating this as part of the speedy deletion criteria. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:12, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I still disagree. The point is not who is now on the page, the point is the editor that was using the account. And the point is not that the editor has a spam3 or spam4 on their page. 10 spammers with a spam1 on their page are also a reason to blacklist, and 10 spammers with a vand1 on their talkpage are also a reason to blacklist. Also, an IP shifting copyvio vandal is also a reason to have higher sanctions (which need to be visible for transparency), same goes for a NPOV-vandal. 12 months is not enough, spammers are sometimes active for years, spammers come back soon after years long blacklistings are undone. These tracks are necessary for a plethora of reasons. You are also ignoring all users who have a block-log, which are also cases which may return and which are getting hidden by deletion. Deletion is harming more than that it would help. If people are loading the database, they can ignore talkspace, or can run a deletion script on their resulting database, but I, still, strongly object to deleting any talkpages with warnings where the warnings are for spam, npov, copyvio, coi or any other form of non-petty-vandalism-vandalism, whether after 5 years, even after 15 years. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:33, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe this almost amounts to creating shrines for vandals. In a lot of cases, you can see every contribution made by the IP address and evaluate based on this. If the edits are clearly simple vandalism, does the talk page need to exist forever? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
No. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:10, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Blank as absolutely necessary, I suppose, but talk pages shouldn't be speedied. - jc37 05:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
    Why's that? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
    I think deletion of a talk page should always require discussion, unless privacy/blp issues necessitate it.
    I understand you're trying for WP:DENY, but I've always been of mixed minds on that. We should have a way to retain the history for future reference, without setting up "shrines", as you call them. And so to me, deletion would seem to be counter-intuitive. And at the very least should need a discussion first. - jc37 06:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I would be very, very comfortable with a replacement of the contents with a kind of welcome template, telling in a small text at the bottom that there is data in the history of the talkpage for those who are interested in the data. I even would not care if that is done after 30 days of inactivity from the IP / 30 days after the last edit by the IPto the talkpage of the IP. But I have no faith in having speedy criteria for the deletion of these pages. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:41, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy with that. My preference would be after a somewhat longer period, I think my home IP is often stable for a year at a time, whilst when I use mobile broadband I suspect it is very unstable. So blanking a stale IP talkpage and replacing it with a welcome after a couple of years inactivity would make sense to me. ϢereSpielChequers 11:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I have been collapsing old warnings (especially for shared IP's from educational institutions and very dynamic IP's (starhub)) for a while now when I happened across them (mostly through AIV). Shouldn't something like that be sufficient? How about a bot that specificaly archives warnings templates once they are older than x (say, a year, or some other metric, I could live with leaving at most 10 warnings, and archiving everything over a year old), and creates a link to the 'warning archive'? Is there any reason for deletion then? MZMcBride, you say these can create problems. What kind of problems? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:47, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I should start out by noting that I'm rather deletionist. ;-)

When I said "problems" above, there are a few different things that I was referring to.

First, just in terms of sheer size, these old IP talk pages make up a significant percent of the pages on the English Wikipedia. Using the most recent stats and a back-of-the-envelope guess, I'd say we're talking about somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 pages. As someone who's recently been investigating ways to search through all current wikitext in a fast manner, this quantity of pages has actual impact on what's possible and at what speed.

Second, these pages are largely unpatrolled and come with the same kinds of problems that unpatrolled pages have elsewhere. They can be filled with test edits, vandalism, attack pages, copyright violations, and the like. Most are automated or semi-automated warnings, but having gone through a good number of these, some are not.

Third, while this isn't necessarily a "problem," I'd say that deleting these pages after a certain amount of time is just good housekeeping. Any database accumulates over time—that's the point, after all. But it's perfectly healthy to perform maintenance and cleanup on the database routinely. While MediaWiki doesn't completely delete the data (it's moved to the archive table and a logging row is created), it will remove these pages from subsequent database dumps, which will in turn remove them from mirrors and other third-party uses. Even internally, when there's less data to output, things go faster. That is, with enough maintenance and deletion, the time it takes to create database dumps could markedly decrease. This is the same reason that database maintenance is done elsewhere with other types of databases. Cleanup improves performance.

I'm in complete agreement that these pages should be kept if there's any question about their future value. While I personally don't find value in them, I recognize and appreciate that Dirk and others doing anti-spam work and other good work do rely on them. However, both in my opinion and what seems to be the general consensus, a lot of these pages are simply not valuable. It's not worth blanking them and having millions of blank pages lying around. They're almost all the result of scripted warnings from tools such as Twinkle and Huggle, or bot messages from ClueBot, et al. If the IP address is actively editing or has any kind of significant contributions, keep the talk page! Of course, without a doubt. But if we're talking about a single vandalism edit made in 2007 that resulted in a quick warning via Huggle or Twinkle, I don't see any reason to keep that page in every database dump forever. That just seems insane to me and frankly unsustainable in the long term. While these pages can be somewhat filtered (as Dirk notes), it isn't and shouldn't be the responsibility of third-party users to keep our database tidy or to duplicate cleanup efforts.

That's my general view on the issue. I've also started working on a longer essay at WP:OLDIP, if you're interested. Let me know if you have any further questions or need any clarification about any of this. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:44, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

A guideline?

Hmm, maybe you're right regarding a speedy deletion criterion. This may be something best left to admin discretion. I don't think trying to prescribe a set of strict criteria will ever work. The draft criteria above are already very complicated. It's ultimately about using good judgment and evaluating the contributions of the IP. Perhaps a guideline could be written instead? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a way forward. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I rewrote Wikipedia:Old IP talk pages just now. It doesn't incorporate all of your points (or mine), but it's a start. I'll take another look at it tomorrow when I'm not so tired. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:34, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello. I've made some edits to the 'essay'. I hope they're agreeable, since I can't say I've read everything above. A couple of things I'll mention. I have quite an interest in old pages like these, both in terms of good housekeeping as MZMcBride puts it above, but also tracking long term patterns of various sorts over multiple ranges. I would generally agree with Dirk, whatever he's saying now. For me however the ones you can't delete are IPs explaining why they made an edit, on their own talk page. Some of them are priceless. I've seen a few get deleted in the past, probably with a bot and a sql query. Another thing I'll mention is that sockpuppetry was previously explicitly an issue; this time it's hardly mentioned. Half of those sockpuppetry user pages should go, imo, but that's another issue. Oh and these criteria look very similar to what they would be for indef'd vandal accounts. Just saying. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:06, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

an idea

I dunno if this would fly, but... why do we have IP talk pages anyway? Yes we're the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. But one can edit without needing a talk page.

IPs choosing to not register really probably don't need a personal talkpage.

As an option, when asking for the removal of IP talk pages, we could ask the devs to open access to Project:Unblock requests as a special page for anyone who is blocked. (Though that isn't entirely necessary as we have a specifically purposed mail list.)

It's not as if they have a watchlist or any of the other features that come with an account. And collaboration can happen on one of the myriad other talkpages, whether in article space or wikiprojects, etc. - jc37 06:31, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the biggest reason for having IP talk pages is so that IPs can have the "new messages" bar when there's a message delivered to them. This is particularly important in the case of behavior warnings. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:35, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
(ec)Hmm, no, some of us do choose to edit as an IP, and not register. I know some who are very active editors, and we do need to communicate with them too (and we need records for that). Moreover, where would you leave a warning if such an editor needs a warning? --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:36, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
What might be worth pondering, is that an IP-editor should not be allowed to edit until they have read the message on their talkpage (or at least, loaded their talkpage, as we don't know whether they actually read what is added).. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:38, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Stale warnings may not be relevant to the current editor on that IP. For example I've now stopped logging in from insecure IPs. I recently spent a quiet hour in an airport terminal fixing typos and in similar situations in the future I think I'll stick to IP editing. If someone needs to send me a message whilst I'm editing that way then fair enough and they'd need an IP talkpage to do so, but I wouldn't need to see old IP messages. ϢereSpielChequers 11:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I was considering the issue of warnings. and I'll just say: I'm not sure. Though I suppose we could do it in some way similar to the "you have new messages" banner (having it link to the warner's talk page, and maybe a button confirming the warning has been read). And the warning would be logged like the block log (an IP warning log). Simple, standardised, and saves on kb : )

And I disagree that IPs "need" a personal talk page for collaboration, any more than they "need" a watchlist. - jc37 06:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

  • Shared IPs such as schools definitely need a talkpage, if only as a place to notch up the warnings and past blockmessages. But there have been longterm valuable members of the community editing from stable IPs and using the talkpage, and of course there have been instances where IPs have been incorrectly warned and need a place to respond. ϢereSpielChequers 11:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
  • All of this seems a bit OT here, but what the hell, right? The way that I've always thought about things, IP talk pages really belong to the "community" anyway, so I have no qualms about imposing any sort of standards on them, in terms of content or deletion or anything else (I'd put known static IP addresses in that category as well, by the way... although we could certainly be more lenient with them, I think that they still belong to the project rather than the unregistered user. Those who have a problem with that can simply register a user name). I can at least understand the perspective that brought all of this up in the first place now (the whole DENY aspect is a perfectly reasonable concern), although it's nice to see this moving away from being a speedy deletion criteria. I don't particularly care if "old IP talk pages" are deleted or not honestly, but I didn't understand the desire to do so at all, prior to asking. I still think that blanking is perfectly sufficient (I think that adding some sort of standardized IP talk page template, similar to what is done with known school IP pages, is something to seriously consider), but if you guys want to delete them... I'm certainly not going to stand in your way. It's your time to use as you like, after all. *shrug*
    — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
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