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What counts as a commercial content provider for A8?

Could the criteria for A8 be even more specific about what a commercial content provider is. It has encyclopedias and newspapers, but I've seen just about any website used under A8. For example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CarRentOnline.com was speedily deleted for this reason. It doesn't seem like a commercial content provider, if it means that the content is what the company is selling. Thanks -- Kjkolb 04:02, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I presumed this meant anything that was commercial that provided content, but now I see the other interpretation. But my one makes sense: just because Microsoft don't 'provide content' doesn't mean I'm not going to speedy an article that copy-pastes their website. -Splashtalk 04:18, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
The idea was to limit A8 speedies to companies/websites/etc. that were unlikely to let us use their information (and therefore license it under the GFDL). It's intended to be a broad category, open to interpretation; it basically includes anyone who sells something and who has been plagiarised on WP. CarRentOnline.com is easily speediable under A8 (as far as being a commercial content provider goes, obviously it still has to meet the other criterions). You can see all that stuff at the original proposal page: Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material. --Blackcap | talk 04:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely not. From the origin of the phrase on Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material:

Add "commercial content provider": As discussed above it is good to have a clear boundary between what might be okay and what is not okay. I prefer "commercial content provider" to "commercial website" for a couple reasons. First, commerical content providers covers the very broad class of people that are trying to make money on their work (and hence are unlikely to give them away). However, it excludes enterprises which, while commercial, may want to provide free content to Wikipedia for the purposes of free "advertising". For example, if Apple wanted to freely post images and descriptions about a new super-duper iPod surely we would want to incorporate that into iPod rather than delete it. I've heard it said that roughly 10% of advertisements added to Wikipedia are for products notable enough that they end up getting rewritten and preserved as their own article. I have no idea if it is true, but as it has been a major objection to other anti-advertising speedy proposals, I would like to draw a distinction here that this is about copied content and not advertising. [Dragons flight 02:36, September 2, 2005 (UTC)]

If the intention was to be "speedy anything that shows up on a .com address from a google search", it would have been worded like that. —Cryptic (talk) 09:46, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Looking at the proposal page, I think Cryptic is correct. A8 should be reworded so that it is clearer. How about something like this: "Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider, which means the content is what is being sold, such as an encyclopedia or news service, and;" -- Kjkolb 12:19, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
God, you're right. Sorry, I had misunderstood that. --Blackcap | talk 16:14, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

If that's the meaning of A8, then honestly it's next to useless. What proportion of copyvios are copied from newspapers and non-Wikimirror encyclopedias? Anecdotally, from carrying out literally hundreds of WP:CP deletions/etc, very very few. If this proposal isn't intended to remove blatant commericial copyright violations, then it isn't really good for anything. -Splashtalk 17:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The "commercial content provider" parameter was designed to make it so rather than being very unlikely, it would be impossible that copyvio stuff could get permission. And as far as I know this criteria has not encountered any problems. I think we should all step back, remember that we are not making a law, and do what we always do and use our common sense. thanks - Martin 20:11, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm. It certainly has encountered problems: I have myself speedied a few things that were taken from commercial websites that, with my new understanding, were not the content providers you had in mind. The CSDs do not give admins latitude, and they are as close as we get to 'laws' on Wikipedia. They are not for applications of 'common sense' because when an admin applies such, it is usually undeleted and sent to the respective deletion process by VfU. Does A8 only apply to those organisations whose business is providing content? Does it allow me to speedy a copy-paste of, say, my University's website, or must that go to CP? -Splashtalk 21:40, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
New users, and a few veterans I've encountered, rarely make it clear whether or not they have permission. I think the criteria was designed to avoid speedily deleting any material that was actually used with permission. Here's a concern from TenOfAllTrades (taken from the proposal talk page).
  1. Anonymous editor uploads a copy of his personal work that also appears on his website [or his company's/non-profit's site -- kjkolb].
  2. Article is deleted summarily as copyvio.
  3. Anonymous editor says, "Hey! Where'd my article go?" (Unlike with our current copyvio procedure, there's no pointer to further information left at the original article location.)
  4. Anonymous editor resubmits the article.
  5. Article is summarily deleted again by another admin. Repeat ad nauseam.
  6. Anonymous contributor gives up and leaves, unaware of how to remedy the situation and wondering why MediaWiki is 'broken'.
-- Kjkolb 01:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
Anonymous editor will have received the message thing after the first instance. -Splashtalk 01:55, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
That's true, at least if the admin takes the time to warn the poster and they don't have a dynamic or shared ip address. Anyway, I don't care that much which way it's interpreted as long as it's consistent. Splash is correct that the narrow definition doesn't do much good because very few copyright violations, out of the hundreds I've found, are from an encyclopedia or newspaper. I think a better solution would be to mark anything that's been copied from anywhere, or at the very least commercial sites, if there is no assertion or clues that it is used with permission. Then an admin could take a look at it and see whether it is worth even attempting to get permission, depending on the topic, how well it is written and the source. If no reasonable editor would want to keep the article or it is very unlikely we could get permission, it should be speedily deleted, like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/CarRentOnline.com was. If deleting the article would be controversial or there is a possibility that the article could be useful and a chance we could get permission, it can go through the regular copyright problem process. This way, A8 would be much more useful, plus we could take care of some of the stuff simultaneously listed on AfD and copyright problems. -- Kjkolb 05:19, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Alternately, we could just reword the criterion to "suspected copyright violations", as that's what's being deleted in practice. —Cryptic (talk) 08:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The word is "blatant" and only blatant copyright violations should be deleted. If they're other than blatant, pop them on WP:CP. --Tony SidawayTalk 09:01, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I have recently found a number of uses of the tag for this case mis-used -- several were on images, and some on obvious non-commercial pages (people's home pages for example -- exactly the kind of over use the restrictions were intended to prevent. i hope admins are double-checkign that the source is actually a commerciual content provider and the otehr restrictions have been adhered to. What can we do to make people aware of the restrictions? Should the CSD be reworded to make them clearer? DES (talk) 18:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Lots of speedies are tagged incorrectly for all the criterion, I guess thats why we have admins. Martin 18:46, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Universities

From the discussion above, the intention behind the phrase "commercial content provider" is to restrict A8 to cases where it's quite clear that the copyright owner will not give consent for the content to be used in Wikipedia.

Now universities are fiercely protective of their reputation - it translates directly into student numbers and thus income; copying papers and then submitting them to "merciless editing" translates into faculty reputation. How about extending A8 to academic publications? Is it a good idea or needless instruction creep? Pilatus 22:12, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

nn-website

I'm sure this must have been proposed before - so what's the argument for not having a CSD for non-notable websites to mirror non-notable people? eg No Mercy Zone. Rd232 talk 09:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

nn-bio is basically only useful for honest mistakes by individuals, who think they can have a personal page here for themself or a friend. Anybody can dodge it by making a plausible but unverifiable claim of notability. In a way, we're being nice to subjects of nn-bio's by not subjecting them to an AFD chorus of personal critics. Also, many nn-bios contain rather personal information, that should be toasted before it's permanently adrift in cyberspace. Pretty much any commercial web site makes a claim of notability, so wouldn't be covered by an equivilent rule. Also, I don't see a huge AFD back-log on them (compared to bands, for example, which is a problem we need to fix). --rob 09:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
No. Non-notability is definitely not a speedy criteria for "any article" SchmuckyTheCat 01:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Non-notable articles are not speediable for a reason: there are many topics on which people disagree about notability. For example, I've seen small towns nominated for VfD on the basis of "non-notable" and overwhelmingly defeated. Deco 01:19, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
That's why notability is not part of deletion policy. Most of what people mean by this is covered by existing wp policy - there is no need for further instruction creep. Trollderella 09:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

New Criteria for hoax articles?

I propose creating A9 as:

  • "An article which is an obvious attempt at a hoax."

or similar. Has this been proposed before? Alphax τεχ 02:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

This has been discused before. I am opposed to any such idea. There are too many false postitives, real but obscure topics incorrectly labeled as hoaxes. DES (talk) 02:29, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps what's needed instead, is to allow early closing of hoaxes, after confirmed by more than one person. This ensures everybody sees what's being discussed. It's essential we delete these hoaxes early, so we don't aid their spread (more than we have to). We need to get rid of these articles before they're cached/indexed by SEs and sent to infrequently updated mirrors. --rob 02:55, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I have been speedily deleting anything counterintuitive that I can't verify for quite some time now, others have as well, and I encourage other admins to do the same. Perhaps at some point we should formalize this as A9, as suggested above. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 03:18, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I suggest speedily deleting articles that admit that they are hoaxes, which, surprisingly, many do. Also, anything that is extremely obviously a hoax should be deleted as well. For example, someone who claims that they can high jump 10 meters or that the president has been replaced with an alien clone (although that would explain a few things). -- Kjkolb 04:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I think DES may be talking about articles that can't be easily verified and might be a hoax. There's a big difference. A possible hoax article may claim that someone is a well known filmmaker, except there is no entry on IMDb. An article that says trolls live in the Earth's core is another matter. -- Kjkolb 04:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Truly transparent hoaxes, such as articles about trolls living in the Earth's core, or about a nuclear war between Uganda and Zimbabwe that "happened" on the day after the article was posted, can arguably be speedied under G3 as pure vandalism. While we approved a whole separate case for attack pages, despite them already being speediable under the same logic, I'd be strongly opposed to making a separate explicit case for hoaxes. Why? Because speedy criteria always get stretched - articles are speedied under A8 as copyvios despite not being from commercial content providers or not being identified within the first 48 hours; under A3 despite having a sentence of advertising copy along with the external link; G7 when the only "reasonable explanation that the creation was by mistake" is that the creator blanked the page. These are relatively harmless, but there's a very large possibility of error if an explicit "Obvious hoaxes are speediable" CSD is introduced. —Cryptic (talk) 04:51, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
If those kinds of hoaxes can be deleted under G3, then it should be explicitly mentioned there. Some stuff like that ends up on AfD, often with the explanation that hoaxes can't be speedied. -- Kjkolb 06:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Here's an example of one. An article about a line of gnats that bisects Georgia is clearly a hoax. It was tagged as a speedy delete, but brought to AfD instead. -- Kjkolb 09:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Taking a closer look, it does say that it is fictional. In the part I glanced at, it talks as if a line of gnats actually exists. I wouldn't say that this would prove the point, as one would be more careful when actually deleting an article. -- Kjkolb 09:59, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Truly transparent hoaxes, and self-admitted hoaxes, i would argue could be speedy deleted as vandalism. However, an article about trolls at the earth's core might be a plot summery of a work of fiction -- i would look closely for cluse that thsi was so and maybe do a google search before speedying. (I have several times saved articels abotu fictional topics that fialed to explicitly indicate that they were a description of fiction, but gave enough cluses to find the context. This is bad writing, but should be fixed, not speedy deleted.) less probably, but still possible, it might be about the belifs of a weird but real group who acutually think there are trools, etc. if you didn't know it was a real group, would you think that the Falt earthers were a hoax? Therefore, even in what seem the most obvious trasparent hoaxes, i would advise thinking three times, looking for cluses, and doing a short google check. DES (talk) 16:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
And Yes, above I was speaking of of alleged hoaxes that were not self-admitted, adn not nearly as trasparent as the "trolls" example. DES (talk) 16:13, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

(resetting the indentation} Self-admitted hoaxes are already speedy-deletable as vandalism. I strongly oppose anything more than that. For a while, I made a hobby of tracking the articles initially tagged as "hoaxes" which turned out to be true but obscure or just very poorly written. Finding those nuggets takes the full scrutiny of the community. As individuals, our track record for correctly detecting hoaxes has been very poor. Rossami (talk) 02:41, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I constructed an example of an "extremely obvious" hoax some days ago. It goes something like this:

"Karlsson is a fat boy who has a propeller fastened to his back. Because of this propeller he can fly around. He starts this propellor by pushing a button in his bellybutton. And Karlsson is the best person in the world."

Speediable? What about reading Karlsson-on-the-Roof? Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:52, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

You might call me cynical and heavy-handed, but anything that looks sufficiently like a hoax or nonsense to risk speedy deletion needs sources. We are arguing that the closing admin mistakenly speedily deletes an article on a valid topic. Now chances are that most readers will consider the article a hoax, too. Pilatus 22:19, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
This is also much closer to an A1 than to a G3, and had I seen this after a "context was:" in the deletion log, I would have assumed that was the criterion it was speedied for. There's no context whatsoever, though "very short" is pushing it. —Cryptic (talk) 01:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Another possibility for hoaxes, if we just want to try and limit their spread, is to create a "possible hoax" template to put over articles that you suspect might be a hoax, with gentle language something like "The content of this article may be a hoax. If you can confirm or deny this, please weigh in on its talk page; if it is clearly confirmed as a hoax, you may want to list this article on articles for deletion. If the article's accuracy is confirmed, please remove this notice." Additionally, I wouldn't have anything against a CSD criteria that allowed for things that have been clearly confirmed as a hoax on their talk page to be speedied; but the criteria would have to make clear that a bit more explaination is needed when you want to speedy-tag or speedy something as a hoax than with other criteria. --Aquillion 01:22, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Tagging as hoax and speedy deleting the page when the hoax is confirmed preserves transparency and wouldn't give the article its five days of tenure on AfD. The hoax tag might also discourage further vandalism. (I've got the feeling that semi-elaborate hoaxes are cropping up increasingly.) Pilatus 02:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
      • If you have truly confirmed that it is a hoax, then you have already confirmed that it is vandalism. No new speedy criterion is necessary. I very much prefer to stick to that standard. We already know how to confirm vandalism. I have concerns about our ability to draw a bright-line distinction for "confirmed hoaxes". As I've said before, speedys may be carried by the first admin who comes along. As individuals, we are very poor at uncovering or proving that something is a hoax. As a community, however, our track record is excellent. The existing AFD process does a very good job of subjecting the article to community scrutiny. Rossami (talk) 17:40, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
        • In my understanding that is incorrect. The CSD relating to vandalism applies only to "simple" vandalism; if it applied to all vandalism, we wouldn't need special cases for (say) linkspam, which is also considered vandalism under the broader definition. The problem is that vandalism is a term that gets thrown around a lot in other disputes; if we deleted every page that someone accused of being vandalism, we'd have few controversal pages left. So only clear-cut cases of vandalism are speedy candidates. (And even if that isn't how things really work and clear hoaxes can be considered vandalism, the fact that this discussion has come up and the number of clear hoaxes that end up on AfD shows that a clarification is probably needed. I saw one article on AfD recently where the still-living subject was claimed, among other things, to have won Nobel prizes in every category and to have been beatified, a process that can normally only happen 5 years after death.) --Aquillion 21:36, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
        • Having a "suspected hoax" tag might have the effect of deterring hoaxters from future vandalism. With a hoax tag an article would quickly be labeled as suspect while the entry is scrutinized on the talk page and if confirmed to be a turkey, deleted. Spotting a hoax tends to take no more than a day. With such a process in place, a vandal might conceivably think that vandalism just isn't fun because it's so quickly got rid of. Under the present system, the article is "considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy" and then hangs around for five or ten days until the debate is closed. Meanwhile the hoaxter checks how many days of public exposure he has had through Wikipedia bureaucracy. Pilatus 02:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Regardless or not if hoaxes ought to go through the regular AfD process or should be speedy-deleted I have created the hoax template. Please come and discuss at Template talk:Hoax. Pilatus 19:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree we should be able to speedy delete hoaxes. As a matter of fact, we can do so under G1 already if there is not enough context in the article to allow expansion. Johntex\talk 01:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Experimental Deletion

Hi, I just found Wikipedia:Experimental Deletion as a result of stumbling across a {{XD4}} tag on an article. The article in question seemed to me to be fairly obviously in need of rewite rather than deletion and I'm a bit concerned that experimental use is bypassing the normal Afd process. That said, I'm completely in agreement that there are problems with the Afd process currently in place. This is my first look at this area, so it may all have been well discussed before - if so I'd appreciate any pointers. Dlyons493 Talk 21:55, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

No one is authorized to actually delete pages based on Wikipedia:Experimental Deletion, it is a proposed alternate method. For the moment it is just a way of edtiting an articel and, in effect suggesting its deleteion via one of the existing forms of deletion. If anyone is actually deleting pages basaed on the {{XD4}} tag, unless such pages qualified for immediate speedy deletion anyway, then any such person is violating policy. DES (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
No, I don't think anyone is actually deleting pages. Guess I'm not clear what happens after a tag has been applied for a while - is the intention that it's a sort of one-step way of getting the article to Afd as opposed to the current 3-stap way? Dlyons493 Talk 22:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
An article that's been XD'd but really just needs cleanup can just be cleaned up. That's the beauty of it- no silly undeletion or "voting" or anything like that is needed. XD isn't really bypassing Afd, it's ignoring Afd. That's its purpose; it's an alternative that can be used whether or not we have something like Afd. Friday (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I think I'm missing something here - how does it differ from {{cleanup}} then? When is it decided, and by whom, that it's not going to get cleaned up sufficiently and then is deleted - after all it is being called experimentaldeletion? I'm sure all this is explained somewhere and I just need to find and read the relevant document! Dlyons493 Talk 00:29, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
"Deletion" doesn't actually delete stuff, it just hides it from the eyes of mere mortals. (yes, even admin deletion, that's why deletion review works).
XD explores new ways of (soft-) deleting content, which will hopefully be more scalable than AFD. Currently articles that are being XD-ed should be submitted to the normal deletion process after a while, after someone has completed their experiments. You can help check if that's happening and/or help clean up by following the relevant instructions on the XD page for that version of XD.
If it's not clear, give me a yell and I'll figure something out. :-) Kim Bruning 23:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Speedily deleting band vanity articles

I came up with some criteria for speedily deleting band vanity articles based on WP:MUSIC. They are much less strict than the other criteria, as past efforts to use WP:MUSIC as criteria for speedy deletion have failed.

Articles will be deleted if all of the following criteria are met. The band:

  1. Hasn't been listed on any national music chart
  2. Hasn't gone on any tours
  3. Hasn't released any albums or singles, other than demo tapes or self-made releases
  4. Hasn't had even a minor mention in any major music media
  5. Doesn't have a notable member or a member from another band that is notable
  6. Hasn't become the most prominent representative of a notable style or the local scene of a city (or both, as in British hip hop)
  7. Hasn't won an award bigger than the county level
  8. Doesn't have an All Music entry

The criteria will be judged according to the content of the article, the band's website, if available, and information found through Google and All Music. If the article or any websites claim that the band meets any of the above criteria, even if unverified, the article will be taken to AfD. The article will be deleted if it fails to claim that it meets the criteria and a search on Google and All Music is unsuccessful. -- Kjkolb 20:28, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

  • A comment - though I agree that some case for speedying vanity band articles is needed, there are frequent appearances on AFD of stub articles on noteworthy bands, placed there simply because the article is so stubby that it looks like a vanity article. ISTR we even had bands of the notability of the UK Subs making an appearance there not long ago. If this suggestion is brought in, articles will need to be thoroughly checked before deletion (and one minor bit of pedantry, too - Britain isn't a city). Grutness...wha? 00:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't the Google and All Music searches (I just made that clearer above), and the band's website (if they have one), cover the stubs of notable bands? The chances of all of them failing to turn up some information to meet any one of the extremely lax criteria seems unlikely. All we need is to find out if they released even one song, won a regional or state award, have a notable member, traveled to a few cities or had a hit on the charts (top 500 or 1,000 or how ever high they go). I think most of the bands that show up on AfD would probably fail these criteria. Some of them have only been around for a few months or have never played anywhere but a garage. About the Britain part, that was taken from WP:MUSIC. I didn't know of any valid examples, so I left it in. -- Kjkolb 03:57, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Yeah, fair enough. I'm just worried that - if a band can get to afd without being checked, someone could slap a speedy tag on it in the same way. I'm intrigued to see my former band meets one of those criteria, BTW (maybe two, depending on your definition of "major music media"). Grutness...wha? 05:06, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Surely you mean that your former band fails at least one of those criteria? If it fails seven of the eight, I think that you do deserve an article, after all. NatusRoma 03:24, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • You're right - forgetting the double negatives :) It fails one of the criteria (we did a small tour) and possibly a second (we got a couple of minor mentions in this country's top music mag of the country of the time (Rip It Up)). No way we should have an article, though! Grutness...wha? 04:31, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I suppose we could make a place for the urls of the band website and Google and All Music and search results in a template, so it can be checked. Then the admin would verify it before deleting. The copyvio template has something similar. -- Kjkolb 00:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
    • EIGHT criteria? Sorry, but that's major m:instruction creep. How about wording it similar to CSD#A7, that is "an article about a band that does not state the importance or significance of its subject. Criteria for importance include, but are not limited to, WP:MUSIC". If you look at WP:CSD/P you'll see that more complex proposals have a greater tendency of getting voted down. Radiant_>|< 17:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree with Radiant, somewhat. Just expand {{nn-bio}} to explicitly say "...a real person or group of people..." and thus it won't exhibit specific "anti-band bias" (and will also cover other "group vanities", such as any collective name given to "you and those three friends with whom you smoke pot whilst skipping economics 101") — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 15:57, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree. Although band vanities are endemic to AfD, a speedy category for this with this many criteria just isn't going to cut it. IMHO the name "speedy" itself is self-explanatory -- an admin should be able to look at the article and say, "Duh, of course this has to go." Having this many criteria means the tagging editor has to do all the research and the admin has to replicate it to confirm. Far easier to send it to AfD and have links in the nomination to the proof. Instead, I would rather see an expansion of A7 (see above for that discussion). --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 16:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Radiant's proposal is a good one, I opposed the band vanity criterion because of the WP:MUSIC pointer which might eliminate a few bands which actually have a chance of surviving AFD. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • That's fine with me. I was just trying to make it palatable to the people who are worried about notable bands being deleted. I even think WP:MUSIC is too inclusive. However, I think it would be good to have some kind of instruction so we don't have the same problems we have with non-notable biographies, where any assertion of notability is seen by some to be enough to send it to AfD. -- Kjkolb 08:29, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm not confident that these criteria wouldn't all be satisifed by a band which is notable for some other reason. More importantly, it'd take way too long to accurately check them all. Speedy deletion criteria should be speedy to check, too. Vanity articles in general may just be impossible to speedy delete. Deco 08:48, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

WP:PUI is incompatible with these?

WP:PUI is now incompatible with speedy deletion criteria, which clearly say that any image that was marked as unknown, should be deleted after 7 days. WP:PUI proposes 30 days procedure, which is much more.

Many people can become confused by these incompatibilities - e.g., I have wandered around Wikipedia: namespace for few hours before I found out clearly which are the rules for the unknown images and how these images should be marked.

I have proposed that page's templates for deletion; please check WP:TFD#Template:PUI. --Monkbel 18:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


Wikinomic

CSD and its talk page are very wikinomic-ish, could it be cleaned up a bit somehow? --Kim Bruning 23:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Unless you meant archiving the talk page, please point to an example? To my knowledge all CSDs with exception of #A8 are very clear-cut, and there's good reason for A8 being as it is, as explained above. --Radiant_>|< 23:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for proving my point. :-) --Kim Bruning 23:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I really don't understand you. --Radiant_>|< 00:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Kim, in her own round-a-bout way was pointing out that CSD has become very inbred and exlusionary, with an impenetrable jargon as a symptom. To me, "To my knowledge all CSDs with exception of #A8 are very clear-cut" is goobledegook, unless I want to spend 20 minutes reading up on this. --Maru (talk) Contribs 06:53, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think, in practical terms, CSD can be simplified usefully. Simplification works when actions are reviewable; speedy deletion, by its nature, can only be doublechecked by other admins. These rules give the community confidence that User:DeletionistAdmin isn't quietly speedying school articles, and give guidance to non-admin RC/NP patrollers on what they can reasonably tag. <beat dead horse>(We could simplify A8 by getting rid of it entirely; I've seen it misapplied dozens of times, and not once seen it correctly used.) —Cryptic (talk) 00:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Agree. Simplify, removed A8 completely. Re-write in common sense language. Trollderella 22:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Summary

I've seen a lot of proposals to modify CSD here recently. I've summarized them all on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/New criteria for convenience. I am not convinced as yet that this, or part of it, is a worthwhile policy proposal, but there has been enough of it that people may want to discuss. Radiant_>|< 00:54, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Rulecruft...

The present detestable state of CSD is one of unbridled rulecruft and templatecruft. Does nobody else find this utterly disgusting? I am rapidly losing patience with the growing Wikipedia bureaucracy. -- Seth Ilys 07:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Then I don't see what you have against CSD, as it's defining the ways we can reduce the bureaucracy overhead of AfD. And regardless of what you feel, replacing the content of the page with a redirect to WP:IAR is just being petulant. --howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 07:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it was petulant. I have utter contempt for bureaucracies, rulesets, and legalism. Foolish conistency is the... anyhow, I doubt I'm going to win over the rules lawyers and nomic-players that seem to have taken over Wikipedia. It's people like you, Howcheng, that cause me to lose interest in this project. -- Seth Ilys 20:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, well, the CSD need to be numbered to keep them apart, there's more of them than major wikipedia policies. Depending on how you count, there's almost 30 templates attached to the process. Finally, the rules are strictly interpreted a la nomic.
In comparison, using AFD takes only 3 templates, and only a few basic rules. And you can ignore those if you're unsure, since AFD process mostly self-corrects for any accidental errors you make.
Kim Bruning 07:41, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
There's only a problem if it's no longer acceptable to simply use {{d}} or {{db|a reason written out}}. Such a thing is happening with stub sorting, where I have been accused of disruption for choosing to use {{stub}} over a more specific template. --SPUI (talk) 07:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
{{d}} is deprecated. Kim Bruning 07:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm. There seems to be dissent to that position. --SPUI (talk) 07:51, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, that's something. Kim Bruning 08:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I think most of the templates listed at the bottom of CSD are rather confusing, and I wonder if anyone uses them. As SPUI suggests, it's easier to use {{db|attack page} for instance (and no, {{d}} isn't deprecated).
  • The main point is, why do we have such a long list of criteria here? The answer is that they are in reaction to issues already debated to death several times. If an article clearly would not pass AFD by a long shot, there's no real sense in wasting everybody's time by listing it, and it could be deleted outright. Of course that could be a matter of opinion. Hence, the CSDs are things that by consensual agreement need no further discussion. Radiant_>|< 10:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Indeed so. We have a list of strictly-interpreted rules for speedy deletion because speedy deletion is a drastic action that should only be allowed in strictly-defined circumstances. I've been known to do my share of rules lawyering over the speedy criteria, but the bottom line is that if an article does not clearly match a specific speedy deletion criterion, it should be nominated on AfD instead. And if you personally dislike the pedancy inherent in CSD, you can always ignore it and use AfD exclusively instead. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'd like to encourage people to use WP:XD in cases where they want to speedy but it doesn't quite work. It's very low-overhead compared to Afd, and it leaves the "discussion" out of the picture unless it's actually needed. With a large number of Afd'd articles being obvious deletes, Afd seems like a lot of ceremony in many cases that could just quickly and quietly go away. Friday 15:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

WP:XD is a proposal it is in no way authorized for actual deletions, and any deeltions done via that are out of process, adn should be speddily restored. DES (talk) 16:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Ahh, but XD does not involve actually "deleting" the page (by our current notion of what it means to "delete" something.) So it cannot possibly be out of process. But, if you wish to make a case that people should not be using it yet, I think Wikipedia talk:Experimental Deletion is the best place for it. Friday 16:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • {{d}} has been listed as deprecated for some time, although not everyone agrewes. when i see it used I always ask the person who places it to use {{db}} or a more specific reason template instead, adn i am far less likely to delte a page taged with {{d}} and rather more lilel;y to simply remove the tempalte if the case is marginal. If the case is clearcut, I simply put the proper reason into the delete log, of course. DES (talk) 16:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Where is {{d}} listed as deprecated? Given that people still use it, it may be the case that it was listed as such by someone who doesn't like it. But that's not really an issue I'd say. DES, if you take a look at XD you'll see that even if it were fully implemented, it would never actually delete anything. That's its whole point. And personally, if I were in doubt about how CSD applies to an article, I would tag it rather than delete it outright, thus asking for a second opinion. Radiant_>|< 16:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this rulecruft is damaging and anti-wiki. I have had several articles that I have been working on deleted imediately I save a stub without any consideration for the fact that they were being worked on, and had existed for less than 90 seconds. Endless rulecruft should be deleted. Non Notable! Trollderella 16:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Seriously, it will hurt less if you stub-up in userspace. -Splashtalk 04:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, it's a wiki-, and further it's a -pedia. Though it seems a novel concept to some, you're supposed to be able to start encyclopedic articles in the main namespace here, beginning with a stub. Kim Bruning 16:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
By "stub-up" he meant "get the article to the point where it's a proper stub." Proper stubs are great and should not be deleted; blurbs with no context are different. -- SCZenz 16:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I have as little idea what Seth Ilys is on as where this thread thinks it is going (to go). -Splashtalk 04:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

It's very clear - there is massive rulecruft, accompanied by templatecruft. Much of it is misapplied and abused, being charitable this is probably because it is so difficult to apply properly. Trollderella 22:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

New criterion: Self-described fiction

Perhaps I didn't notice, but I didn't see a speedy delete rationale for fiction, and I've seen a couple of instances of such articles lately. It would seem to me that if something is self labeled as fiction -- that is, the article consists of a short story, a script, a transcript of an animated cartoon, etc. -- that it is an obvious speedy. If there isn't such a criterion right now, should we be adding one? --Pmetzger 01:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I've hardly ever seen a contribution describe itself as original fiction. However a lot of entries are plot summaries of existing fiction, and these might get wrongly labelled with the tag you propose. Kappa 01:17, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I've hit two in 24 hours -- one the script of a flash animation, and one some misguided individual's idea of fan fiction. I'm sure that we can avoid mislabellings if we simply say something like "this does not include plot summaries". --Pmetzger 01:53, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Could we make this into, perhaps, a more general topic of "unencyclopedic topic" or some such wording? There isn't a need to be that specific..."unencyclopedic" fits the bill quite nicely. --BorgHunter (talk) 02:37, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Unfortunately, I don't know that "unencyclopedic topic" is specific enough to allow people to "know it when they see it". One wants to be specific.
  • I've speedy-deleted two works of original fiction recently. It seems to me that Wikipedia:Ignore all rules covers this quite nicely. We don't need to enumerate every possible thing that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia -- we'd end up with something like those multi-volume books listing every possible sin that were compiled in medaeval times. --Carnildo 00:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I think [this|http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31051] is what we're heading for with more and more rulecruft! Trollderella 01:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

?

  • Someone added a comment to the article Richard Borcherds saying Borcherds had collaborated in research with a certain other mathematician. You clicked on that other mathematician's name, and the article began by saying the person didn't really exist. I deleted it and several links to it. Michael Hardy 02:00, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
It's already unverifiable original research. No more rulecruft please! Trollderella 02:08, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
It's possibly a coincidence. Sometimes imaginary people are notable, and the person who added the link may have been referring to an actual person rather than that imaginary person. Deco 03:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Copyvios

I would like to see the criterion for speedy deletion of "copyvios" extended to cover any blatant copy and paste from any website, irrespective of whether it is commercial or not and irrespective of whether the contributor has permission or not. For example Jedi Assembly was first nominated for speedy, changed to non-speedy copyvio and now has a user assertion of permission (probably valid).

All such articles are in my view an insult to Wikipedia. Why should we be fobbed off with someone else's style? If the contributor cannot be bothered to convert to Wikipedia standards, the article should be deleted until someone willing to produce a proper article comes along.

By definition, a crude cut and paste represents very little effort on the contributor's part and so deletion of such articles is not destroying hours of work. -- RHaworth 13:22, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I would say that merely because someone re-used their own work for elsewhere is not good enough reason for a speedy. If something would survive an AfD, why should it then be possible to speedy it? Also, this concept of "insult to Wikipedia" is rather odd. Wikipedia is not a human being. Wikipedia exists to provide people with information. Either the article contains information someone will find valuable or it does not. If it does, and there is no actual copyright violation because someone has permission to re-use their text from elsewhere, there seems like no problem at all. --Pmetzger 14:51, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Most of the cases I am thinking about would not survive an AfD without being marked cleanup. For "insult to Wikipedia" read "insult to all those Wikipedia editors who take time and effort to create proper articles". -- RHaworth 16:19, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
      • In my mind, the way you pick a new criterion for speedy is, "does the proposed criterion quickly deal with articles that would never survive AfD anyway". Unfortunately, I think that this criterion would hit many articles that could survive AfD. Merely because something was taken from a web page (with permission) does not make it valueless, so we don't have a proper speedy criterion. --Pmetzger 16:40, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • It is precisely because of cases like this that the copyvio speedy was limited to "commercial content providers" (note that this is considerably more restrictive than "commercial sites"). I will grant that a straight cut&paste is unlikely to be a good article without cleanup, but if we have proper permisison it can be a far batter starting point than an empty page. Feel free to tag such articles for celanup, or even to claen them up yourself. Personally I'm not as worried about "inslults" as anout un-needed speedy deletes. DES (talk) 16:32, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, more using deletion instead of cleanup is unhelpful. If 'needing substantial work' is now a reason for speedy deletion we're in trouble. Trollderella 18:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Deprecate CSD

Let's drop the bomb on this one. Since CSD is now more byzantine than AFD ever was (by about an order of magnitude) I suggest we abandon CSD entirely, as its function can be entirely covered by AFD, + the 2004 speedy deletion rule: "obvious vandalism only", with less timeloss for most admins concerned.

have a nice day! Kim Bruning 23:24, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I hereby second this proposal, primarily since it seems absurd we have so many XfDs present on Wikipedia which more or less cover similar functionality, each in varying stages of decay. In the interests of reducing instruction creep, and making the deletion process more rationalised, I fully agree with Kim's proposal above to drop the bomb on this one. Of course, I think if we do the Obvious Vandalism Only speedy delete rule will have to be made more prominently known; some people do appear to be unaware of it. However, if that is solved, then there is little to no purpose to this system remaining here. Let us work towards unifying, integrating and streamlining processes such as this one into single conglomerates. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 23:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, sending another 400 articles per day to AfD sounds cool. -Splashtalk 23:36, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Note that we'd still have the old&conservative speedy deletion rule above. It won't be 400 articles per day to AFD. Kim Bruning 23:49, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. There's no need to send more articles to AfD if you don't want to. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:44, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

But the extra articles going to AfD are the ones that everyone can agree we don't want. -- SCZenz 23:46, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The old "rules", where we trusted sysops to actually use their discretion and intelligence (gosh!) were much better, yes. We shouldn't try to hamstring ourselves over what we can and cannot delete. We should strongly encourage sysops to consider AfD if appropriate (if they think that others might object, for instance), but we shouldn't require it.

James F. (talk) 23:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Just out of historical interest, the earliest version of this page is from 10 January 2004, so you'll have to cast back further into the good old days to find the rule you're looking for. -Splashtalk 00:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Question though, Kim - what problem are you trying to solve? Do you suggest that too many articles are improperly speedied? Or do you suggest that the CSDs are too complicated? Or do you suggest that people should use common sense rather than rules? In the latter case I wholeheartedly agree, but I'm afraid that sense is less common than it should be. Or something else entirely?
  • I think the problems with deletion reside mostly in AFD because of the sheer amount of controversy and negative feelings it evokes, and I would much rather remove that in favor of something light and less factionalizing. Radiant_>|< 00:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
CSD is more complex than AFD at the moment. AFD is <cringe> actually superior. Kim Bruning 01:03, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Getting rid of CSD is a very bad idea. CSD isn't broken. Why does it need to be fixed? The new criteria (e.g. nn-bio) were introduced (and overwhelmingly supported) in order to reduce the load on AfD. The most recent set of CSD changes only succeeded when the criteria were fairly narrowly defined to only apply to articles for which the majority of people thought they wouldn't survive an AfD nomination. So, yes, the criteria are intricate and seeminly complicated, but the RC patrol folks are generally doing a very good job applying them. Unless there's a problem I'm not aware of, I see no reason to get rid of CSD. --MarkSweep (call me collect) 00:36, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for making my argument for me. Before this whole CSD mess, people would just speedy delete the dang article, and if someone was actually working on it, they could request it undeleted with little trouble. (I actually had that happen once when I was an anon, 'twas no problem at all! ) Kim Bruning 01:03, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Umm, what? How does that phrase make your argument? The question is pretty simple - is there a problem with the current CSD operation? - brenneman(t)(c) 01:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I was all ready type what Aaron said. Are you saying that the problem is that too many people tag articles for deletion without deleting them? That makes very little sense. The CSD aren't broken.--Sean|Black 01:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Before, if an article was obviously a mess, it could just be deleted after 5 days, or if it was blatant vandalism, it could be removed speedily. Nowadays, almost nothing may be deleted, unless you spend quite a while learning all about this complex CSD thing. I think only regular RC patrollers even have time to learn this stuff. The vast majority of tens of thousands of wikipedians probably have better things to do with their time.Kim Bruning 01:29, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Frankly, no. With the unfortunate case of #A8, all CSDs are very simple and easy-to-understand descriptions of kinds of articles that would have no chance whatsoever on AFD. On a smaller wiki, you could get away with letting admins deleting whatever they consider, in their best judgment, to be junk. ALSO on a smaller wiki, it is possible to get unanimity on issues. On a larger wiki, you get discussions about what is junk, and most people aren't going to wade through all the logs to see if they disagreed with someone. And you won't be able to get unanimity on anything any more, instead having to accept majority. So people went and wrote down the lines that most people (but not necessarily all people) agreed on. And this is about the least instruction creepish way of putting it, and it still contains a reasonable amount of common sense. And that includes the common sense of knowing when to ask for a third opinion, and when not to bother. Radiant_>|< 01:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Hmmm, I'm sorry. Ummm, What's #A8? I sincerely apologise for this, but I think I got lost somewhere around trying to figure out what "CSD G1" means. The page is quite hard to understand unless you've been working on this like forever. Could you explain to the layperson? Kim Bruning 01:35, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I've been here since June, and I can understand it just fine. It seems perfectly okay to me,--Sean|Black 01:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • In all frankness, if someone doesn't understand the CSD then they shouldn't be applying them. As you've mentioned, AfD is still fairly simple, and plenty of people continue to use that. Everyone contributes in their own way, and tagging articles for speedy deletion is a drastic measure, that I am happy to leave to people who understand and accept the narrow definitions applied. - brenneman(t)(c) 01:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
That's not really the wiki way though. Anyone should be able to grasp what can and should be done. That way the burden of maintaining such a large encyclopedia rests on the largest number of shoulders. Kim Bruning 02:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not an anarchy. Anyone should, but not everyon does.--Sean|Black 02:12, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
But wikipedia is not a nomic either! Perhaps we should try for middle ground at the least? Kim Bruning 04:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • CSD = this page. A8 = section A (for Articles) number 8. G1 = section G (for General) number 1. I suppose those abbreviations can be annoying but it's no worse really than the average WP:TLA. But you really don't need those abbreviations (and I'm not really happy with those templates, myself). You can just write "deletebecause|attack page" if you see an attack page. Everybody knows that those are bad. In other words, there's rules. And you get to WP:IAR them if you don't like them.
  • AFD suffers from overload, and CSD is one of the ways of alleviating that. More importantly, CSD is a way of avoiding having to discuss a dead horse over and over again. Radiant_>|< 01:45, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Break to ease editing

So you're saying we could simplify this page to just 'You can just write "deletebecause|attack page" if you see an attack page. ', with some slight embellishments perhaps? Kim Bruning 02:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, that's true in the sense that you don't have to use any of the special templates. However, the reason for the speedy ought to be something with community consensus. (And those reasons happen to be reflected by the templates.) -- SCZenz 04:02, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Community consensus is pretty easy to gauge at deletion review. The problem we have now is that some folks there are commenting based on lots of silly little rules listed here, as opposed to building a consensus based on their own considerable insights. As you know, all significant editing on wikipedia must be done by humans. What pages like this version of CSD are trying to do is make an end-run around that, forcing humans to behave like bots; as opposed to letting them do what they do best (that is, apply their own intelligence and creativity to each challenge). Kim Bruning 04:15, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Strongly opppose. We vote on this, and some things are voted by the community as speedyable, and some are not. We really don' tneed to add more nonsense to AfD. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is WP:NOT a democracy. Kim Bruning 04:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, but it does make great use of community consensus, which CSD has. -- SCZenz 04:13, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, so I think I'm beginning to understand what the perceived problem is. You're saying that at deletion review there is not discussion over the "common sense" version of whether an article should have been speedily deleted (i.e. discussing the articl's content), but that instead it is all discussion about the silly little rules (i.e. discussing the process). Is that the problem as you see it? And that if we got rid of these little rules, everyone could go back to using their brains instead of acting like bots?
brenneman(t)(c) 04:45, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

When I do RC patrol I make use of several basic CSD rules, but only basic ones, such as "obvious vandalism", "does not assert notability of its subject", "serves only to deprecate its subject", and "nonsense". I'm not comfortable with the rule about fresh copyvios, or else I might use it, as I come across a lot of those (I like to give the violators a chance to prove they're not the copyright holder). Do I want a more managable CSD? Sure, like the original set of a dozen or so rules wouldn't be so bad. But shrinking it down too dramatically is just overkill, and would only result in admins breaking the rules and AfD overload. Deco 06:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Note that a lot of people actually AREN'T following the rules. It's rather sad when you have rules that people aren't following, because it reduces respect for *all* rules. Kim Bruning 07:01, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Isn't for instance Tony Sidaway famous for this? Kim Bruning 20:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Er, wait a second, you're one of the foremost promoters of WP:IAR and you complain that there are rules people aren't following? Also please give examples of the problem you see, rather than repeating mantras like "Wikipedia is not nomic". And also please note my earlier comment about how written down rules obviate the need for repetitive discussion. As before, if an article is an obvious mess, it can be deleted after five days. Also in several specific cases, five days of discussion aren't needed. Radiant_>|< 10:26, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm for Keeping It Short and Simple. IAR helps with that. Current CSD certainly doesn't. Kim Bruning 20:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is a good plan, CSD just isn't. Just take a look, how many rules and subrules and templates are there? Right. You noticed. Can we at least simplify? Kim Bruning 20:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I sort of see your point. Perhaps we need the obvious, clear-cut rules (nonsense, attack, etc) right at the top of the page, with the templates and everything later. Thoughts?--Sean|Black 21:04, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Just icing over the rulecruft isn't going to cut the cake. It's time to clean up! Kim Bruning 21:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

CSD reads like Mornington Crescent

Whatever we have needs to be usable by and supported by the valiant poor bastards actually doing newpages patrol. We're getting 50% strangled-at-birth rate on new articles; I have no doubt that's actually about right. It's just that the current CSD rule set reads like Mornington Crescent.

There must be something better than this A6 B2 Q3 Z12 "MORNINGTON CRESCENT!!!" ruleset. It's inherently confusing and intimidating. And A7 is a REALLY BAD EXCUSE. - David Gerard 21:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Please state the problem
Rather than all of us waffling on about this, how about some actual examples? Can we see
A) some articles that went to AfD that were speedies and
B) some DRV discussions that made incorrect decisions based upon CSD?
Otherwise we've just got a solution in search of a problem.
brenneman(t)(c) 22:36, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Mu! Kim Bruning 22:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
With respect, Aaron, you're missing the point. The issue is not that CSB is turning out hopelessly wrong decisions. The issue is that it's overly and unnecessarily complicated, and that this is something that can be fairly easily fixed without damaging the process. Ambi 22:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Musings on why CSD must die

On IRC recently, I came to a realisation that the reason why CSD needs to be quietly euthanased is that, at present, it is necessary for me to keep the CSD page open whilst I do speedy deletion and garbage collection work around the wiki. This is to check to make sure pages I speedy-delete meet appropriate criteria; if I failed to do this check against the letter of policy, and deleted things merely on my own recognisance rather on guidelines, I would in short order be accused of sysop abuse. But the thing to remember is that no set of steadfast rules could ever possibly cover all permutations of material that perhaps ought to be deleted, and after all even the judgement between individual admins on the application of the CSD criteria vary enough. Consequently, it is quite clear that the use of CSD does not permit IAR to be applied to speedy deletion, and also is not flexible enough in my view for the requirements of Wikipedia. This, in my view, inhibits editorial discretion and increases the propensity towards rules-lawyering on Wikipedia. Since we have other processes in place that could deal with such deletion without inhibition of editorial judgement, we ought to get rid of CSD entirely. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 22:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

What exactly would happen to the hundreds of articles that presently get speedied every day then? Martin 22:25, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
They'd still get deleted, only quicker. Kim Bruning 22:33, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
How could it possibly be quicker? You havent satisfactorily explained any of your reasoning or claims, I am very open to change that I feel will make the process better, but I havent seen a single nugget of information that makes me think removing CSD would be anything other than highly inefficient. At the moment I can click "delete" -> give a reason -> click "delete page". thats it, how could it be quicker? Martin 22:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Again, can we see something other than "musings"? If we don't even have a single case study to discuss we're wasting our time. - brenneman(t)(c) 22:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Because rules-lawyering is intrinsically odious, and the Z9 X7 Q3 K42 version may as well be custom designed to confuse, even if that wasn't the intention - David Gerard 23:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I think you two (Martin and Aaron) are misunderstanding what this is trying to do; it's not trying to eliminate speedy deletion or make it harder, just to simplify the legalistic criteria. And how is that a bad thing? Ambi 23:09, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
On IRC, huh? Just about most weeks someone hands down a fiat from IRC that everything on-Wiki is crap and broken and that those cretins who go about actually working on-Wiki, especially those who delete things, should really have their heads examined. This week is nothing unusual. -Splashtalk 23:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, God forbid editors actually talk to each other quickly to sort stuff out with a view to writing an encyclopedia rather than running it past the committees committee for a vote on voting on a vote on the committee. PROCESS OVER PRODUCT! - David Gerard 23:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
You're as funny as ever, but I didn't really expect you to agree. -Splashtalk 23:11, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Nicholas - any policy should be kept not by its letter, but its spirit. Anyone who claims otherwise needs to read up on WP:IAR and WP:NOT a bureaucracy, and should be slapped with a wet trout. There are plenty of admins who, in good faith and good sense, delete junk without referring to the exact letter of CSD. In the rare case where they are mistaken, they are reverted - not for being out of process, but for being wrong for a chance. And that is proper, and if anyone dares flame you for that please tell me where they are and I'll bring a trout. Radiant_>|< 22:54, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I delete without CSD open. I just use a simple subset of CSD and send the rest to AFD. They'll vote speedy-delete if they think it meets a criterion I missed. Deco 04:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite

I have rewritten the entire page, removing all excess cruft, cutting it down to KISS plain lines as much as possible, and removing all references to obscure letter/number combos so that people can discuss things in proper English rather than referring to procedure 12 sub 4. I have no doubt that somebody will want to revert this within the hour, or put back oodles of explanations or warning signs, but it was worth a try. I believe I haven't actually changed anything, just cleaned out the dirt and cobwebs with a heavy-duty flamethrower. We would probably need a separate section for the copyright-related stuff, though - the few cases in which copyvios can be speedied are rather complex for a variety of reasons including Jimbo fiat. Radiant_>|< 22:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Radiant, I love you. Ambi 23:01, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Nice one! :-D - David Gerard 23:03, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
So now I'll refer to the third bullet point down in the section titled Articles. Ok, then. -Splashtalk 23:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
That's the spirit! Assume bad faith! - David Gerard 23:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Is that really all that this was about? Ambi is right, I was totally missing the point. - brenneman(t)(c) 23:14, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
You can if you like. I don't see that apart from numbers to bullets, anything has changed other than the suggestion that AfD now only considers the precise words in an article, even if an article on the same topic is immediately recreated. Which rules-reading is I'm sure what you were after. -Splashtalk 23:15, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, it still needs some work, I agree! But it's a step in the right direction. Kim Bruning 23:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Radiant, nice work with the mop. I expect some detail tweaking as the content settles, but your version looks remarkably good. As for the copyvios, my suggestion would be to split the detailed criteria to a separate (sub?)page. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind the rewriting of the CSDs, the bolding and the expanded context are nice, but why did the numbered list have to go? Titoxd(?!?) 00:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
These are guidelines, not a code of law; it was an unnecessary legalism. Ambi 00:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
True, but it sure is easier to refer to when an angry user spams me with "Why did you delete my precious article about my pet rock!!! How do you dare do that!!!" Although, in a way they are law, since they are directly referenced by the Deletion policy. Titoxd(?!?) 00:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I understand your point, but it isn't too hard to explain the situation in a sentence or two and point them to this page. Ambi 00:24, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
It is also going to make cleaning out speedies more difficult. I don't expect a whole lot of admins writing the entire explanation on their edit summaries, they'll keep using "CSD A1/A6/A7" or whatever. Then, users who got their pages deleted are going to be confused... Titoxd(?!?) 00:30, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Yeah. Not to mention the tens or hundreds of references scattered around various WP:space and talk pages. I've restored the numbers and made a couple of further trims. - SoM 00:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
And the revert war has started. Sigh... :( Titoxd(?!?) 00:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I didn't cast the first stone - as far as the text goes, my only changes were to go slightly further than Radiant...
Although Kim B and Snowspinner's version counts as blanking as far as I'm concerned... - SoM 00:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


If this was really all that the problem was, wouldn't {{sofxit}} have been quicker than us using over 3,000 words? - brenneman(t)(c) 00:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Redundant with Wikipedia:Speedy deletion, scrap immediately

Hmm, I started rewriting, but actually this page is redundant with Wikipedia:Speedy deletion. Just these silly criteria can all be tossed. :-) Kim Bruning 00:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Hehe... well, summarizing isn't tossing everything out. And unfortunately, Speedy deletion refers back to here, so wouldn't it be too recursive? Titoxd(?!?) 00:57, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Hey, give a man 10 minutes to write! :-P Done. :-) Kim Bruning 01:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Which is, of course, why you stuck {{Historical}} on it and tried to say it wasn't policy. - SoM 01:16, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh sorry, let me clarify: I just modified Speedy Deletion so that most of CSD was summarised well enough in about a paragraph or 2 there.  :-)Therefore we don't need this page anymore, and can declare it historical. Of course, now people still need to agree with the proposed change, so we can expect some reverting back and forth, I guess. :-/ *ducks* Kim Bruning 01:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


Stop it all of you mad reverters. If you weren't admins, you'd never pass RfA with behavior like this. Why don't you just go ahead and use the roll back button while you are at it? Get a grip! - brenneman(t)(c) 01:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Ok, this was light entertainment distraction at first Kim, but now you're just being pushy. That's enough, thank you. -Splashtalk 01:20, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I edited the page 3 times total, one was a rewrite, which was reverted (which is ok, because I was about to revert myself anyway) and oh drat an edit conflict while trying to mark as historical (notpolicy is no longer a template), um sorry about that one. Kim Bruning 01:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Cut it out

Hey everyone, cut it out with the revert war. I would protect the page except that most of you are admins to begin with, so that wouldn't actually help. Just cut it out, okay? Radiant_>|< 01:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

See. -Splashtalk 01:20, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. This isn't even lame, it's just stupid.--Sean|Black 01:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

What I actually did, in the end

I put on my thinking cap and modified Wikipedia:Speedy Deletion so as to contain a summary of CSD in such a way, that it practically works in the same way. That makes this page redundant, so I left whatever version there was at that point, and marked it with historical.

Feel free to discuss, revert etc. But at least now you know that it's practical and possible :-)

Kim Bruning 01:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's fine to summarize the important CSD at Wikipedia:Speedy Deletion, but this page is still (IMO) the more important resource, and therefore should not be marked with the "historical" tag.--Sean|Black 01:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


(after edit conflict) Well, as I've been saying for the last couple of days, I think CSD should be summarized where nescesary, and the entire nomic rulecruft can then be deprecated. So I gave people enough time to hear what I was saying, but they didn't quite get it. So I've made the changes now.
Hmm, someone went and reverted before anyone could seriously look it. Annoying. Ah well, I don't like reverting people back, so thank goodness for page history: [1]. (diff: [2])
Kim Bruning 01:50, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


(After edit conflict): The summary is fine, but that page a) Isn't policy, b) Misses the point of a lot of CSDs, and c) defeats the whole purpose we have CSDs altogether: they are a system of checks and balances of administrative powers. CSDs exist so we do not have rogue admins removing articles they don't like; since it all broils down to the inclusionist/deletionist debate, it is a tool for inclusionists to keep deletionsists in check, and it is a defense for deletionists to keep inclusionists in check. The CSDs are thereby, narrow in scope, and that's why they should be described in the most detail possible. Titoxd(?!?) 01:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
The concept of checks and balances is to have people with delegated power be controlled by the delegators. However,on wikipedia, everyone has roughly the same powers, and admins just only have the power to figure out what people want and then carry it out. (The concept is to place a number of dangerous tools only in trusted hands).
Since power doesn't get delegated much on wikipedia, effectively, by instituting checks and balances, you don't just hobble admins, but also everyone else!
I'm not sure if that is what you had intended. Kim Bruning 01:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
The power to delete articles is given only to administrators. If you haven't seen, deleting articles is the most controversial thing you could do in Wikipedia, therefore, you need rationale to justify their speedy deletion. Yes, admins delete what the community has told them they want deleted, and that's how the Speedy Delete Criteria came into place. And I'm really not understanding what you're saying with "hobbling everyone else". Titoxd(?!?) 02:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh dear. The en.wikipedia is not a multi million citizen republic. It's a wiki. A very large wiki, granted, but still a wiki. The dynamics of a wiki are very different from what you learn in civics. Kim Bruning 02:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Exactly! And Wikipedia is also an encyclopedia, which shouldn't have crap. There is no way that everyone is going to agree on what is "crap", so that's why there were months of discussion on what should be deletable on sight, thereby having the CSD. If you really want the endless revert wars over what is crap and what isn't, then go ahead and get rid of the CSDs. Titoxd(?!?) 02:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Um, isn't that entirely redundant with Articles for deletion, which has similar criteria? That's what I wrote into speedy deletions IIRC. (If I didn't then I should) Kim Bruning 02:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Have you gone to AFD lately? It is cluttered up to the point of uselessness. And how are you going to enfore the "criteria set by AFD" when it reverses itself almost every single day? The only things that are consistently deleted were identified as CSDs, to get rid of some of the clutter in that page. I don't see how in practice you could enforce what you're proposing. Titoxd(?!?) 02:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
CSD and AFD are equally bad, I'll be going after AFD as soon as possible afterwards. Kim Bruning 06:38, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Restored Deletion Templates Section

Please re-remove and direct me to a consensus to remove this section if their was one, but at first glance I'm not seeing one. This section has been helpful to me when flaging, and has always led to swift review and deletion by admins when used. Xaosflux 02:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, we're trying to make all of CSD redundant, including the templates. Tagging would still work as smoothly or more smoothly than before. (specially since you wouldn't need to look stuff up anymore :-) ) Kim Bruning 02:29, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
You don't have to use the templates. Many people find them useful, some don't. If you don't like them, don't use them, or, if you must, take them to WP:TFD.--Sean|Black 02:34, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
One step at a time! :-) I just got reverted on some changes, so I'm going to have to talk with those reverters first, before trying again. Kim Bruning 02:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
If the templates are not going to be deleted, yet editors still think they are taking up too much space on this policy page, moving them to a subpage would be fine with me, having a template to use not only allows people looking at the article to know with some detail why it is up for SD, but makes it clearer as to what should go for CSD vs AfD. Xaosflux 02:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh no, not even more pages! :-/ Kim Bruning 06:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Kim please don't say "we". You don't speak for me, I'd prefer to keep CSD as it seem to be working just fine. In fact, I'd like to expand it with some more rules, like for bands and fiction. - brenneman(t)(c) 02:44, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Deprecating CSD? You're not going to make me change my opinion, you haven't convinced me why having it is bad. Titoxd(?!?) 02:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll just say that I agree with Titoxd and Aaron.--Sean|Black 03:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
What is CSD actually *good for* that cannot be covered by other policies (perhaps with a bit of tweaking)? What I'd like to see is that people cut down on um well, rulecruft, so people can get back down to actually writing an encyclopedia. Rulecruft leads to wikistress. You're esperenza members, so I expect you know that already. :-) Kim Bruning 06:48, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Repetitive discussion leads to wikistress. Plain and simple rules aren't cruft, and if they serve to bypass repetitive discussion (as the CSDs do) then they are useful. Citing mantras isn't going to help you on this one. Radiant_>|< 12:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

{{Delete}}

I'm not sure who marked this as 'deprecated' but I don't see how it is. If people want to deprecate it, take it to TFD, but it goes there every two months or so and ends up kept every time. In general, giving a reason is preferable, of course. Radiant_>|< 12:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Changing policy requires consensus

I can't even begin to follow the politics of what's been going on this page today, but one thing I know is that the criteria for speedy deletion were approved after much discussion by community consensus. This discussion hasn't even begun to include enough people to gague that there has been some change to that consensus. So, if I understand anything about how Wikipedia works at all, there shouldn't be major changes to this page at the moment. Before any major changes are made, everyone should remember that there are lots of people who haven't voiced an opinion in this discussion yet (because the many CSD-changing proposals almost always amount to very little, I think people often wait to let them blow over). To make major changes, I think there would need to be a clear (and separate) proposal page with what would replace them first. -- SCZenz 07:02, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, an illustration of what consensus is, and how you can do consensus based editing, can be found at the harmonious editing club . I'm following those rules now. Kim Bruning 07:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think making big changes that don't have general consensus, then discussing them when they're reverted, is appropriate for major policies. It makes things less harminious than just discussing until there's some agreement on how to proceed. See, e.g. {{policy}}. -- SCZenz 07:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
[3] [4]. Err I actually wrote that! ^^; The intent was to allow people to use consensus to make policy changes. :-) Kim Bruning 07:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you claiming that changing the policy page to something completely different isn't changing the policy? Whoever wrote that template (either version), it seems to say that making policy changes requires consensus/discussion first. I wholeheartedly support this notion; it follows directly from WP:NOT an anarchy. -- SCZenz 08:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
See dicussion from the last 2 days then. But of course at some point someone does have to just be bold and try something to see what happens. Else you never end up discovering where the actual consensus lies. In fact I got reverted by someone who hadn't participated in the previous discussion at all.
Now that I have a better idea of who I need to talk with to obtain consensus, I'll be applying that knowlege in the coming day(s). Kim Bruning 09:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Kim, this is the page where you need to talk to people to obtain consensus, and you need to obtain it before you make substantive changes in the page (such as declaring it obsolete). Being bold does not mean being reckless. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Be bold applies to articles, not to policy. In fact, be cautious is probably a good guideline for policy change. Filiocht | The kettle's on 11:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, so I discussed for a couple of days, and then tried some stuff. You have to make an edit sometime. Consensus is not unanimity, and generally needs to be reached before the heat death of the universe. Anyway, I'm off to talk with SoM :-) Kim Bruning 18:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I believe consensus was that this page had gotten too long and convoluted; that has now been improved. I believe Kim thinks that speedy deletion shouldn't be used except in cases of clear vandalism; I'd say that is a highly impractical solution. Radiant_>|< 12:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
    Well it was improved a bit by you, but it's been reverted back. That, and I'm not happy yet. I think the entire page can go. It happens to be the newsest rulecruft page, so I'm starting here, in reverse historical order. (I need that running leap before I can take on AFD :-) )Kim Bruning 18:19, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I would point out that Kim has not changed policy - he's effectively summarized it. Phil Sandifer 18:24, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, yes. Except for his new suggestion of disallowing speedy deletion of anything more than a week old. But Kim refers to "pages that clearly fail the criteria for staying on the encyclopedia", but does not reference what he means (at a wild guess, WP:NOT, but that allows for a rather wide interpretation). Radiant_>|< 21:55, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Didn't I correct that yet? In any case I was about to go and dig on AFD for something more solid. But SoM reverted me, so I'm first stopping and discussing with him before I proceed further. Kim Bruning 02:48, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Haven't really progressed much with SoM. I hope he replies soon, else maybe it's time for some um, calvinball? In other news, did you notice that it's typically new articles that have the speedyable properties stated in CSD? Articles that tend to stick around for a week or so typically do not, so using that as a helper-criterium is not a bad idea when summarizing, to catch any small flaws that might arise. Kim Bruning 16:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Kim, please stop using mantras like "calvinball" and "nomic" all the time, and tell us what your point is. Talking in riddles isn't helpful. You are correct that new articles tend to be speedies more often than old articles, but that's no grounds for putting in an arbitrary cutoff point. An article's age is irrelevant; it's its content that matters, and NPP isn't perfect.
  • If I understand correctly, you want the simple criterion that admins in their best judgment can delete obvious junk. I predict that this will generate wheel wars because one admin's judgment frequently disagrees with another's, and this will lead to violent debate until the dust settles and we have a set of consensual guidelines indicating what is deletable and what isn't, moreso for any newcomers who were unaware of the earlier discussion. And that is roughly what we have now, hence your plan is a step backwards. The wiki has simply grown too large to not have any rules. Radiant_>|< 16:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Numbering

What's the point in removing numbers from CSD? --Nlu 05:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

In particular, it's making it far harder to put in justifications for actual speedy deletions. It was much easier putting in a number than to give a description. Since I don't see any consensus in the above discussions about removing numbers, I'm going to go ahead and put them back in; speedy deletions shouldn't take 2 minutes per deletion. --Nlu 05:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm neutral on that, I want the whole of CSD gone, leaving SD. Kim Bruning 06:41, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I would like the numbering gone, because people should refer to CSDs by name rather than by a cryptic abbreviation. E.g. they should say "Delete - test page" rather than "Delete - G2". The former encourages discussion, the latter encourages bureaucracy. Using words rather than numbers won't take more time but will improve clarity. Radiant_>|< 12:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I see the numbers have been removed. While I agree that in theory they should not be used, there are thousands of references in Wikipedia currently that refer to the numbers and now there is no way to look up what they mean. Therefore, I feel they should be restored and a stronger notice put in place above them encouraging the use of text moving forward. Turnstep 16:53, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I've just restored them, as I really feel they need to be referenced somewhere. People coming to this page wondering what "G3" is should not have to look through the page history, nor should we go back and change people's votes to expand the numbers for them. One compromise would be to add a "historical" number section, explaining the mapping. However, I also feel that the numbers do very little harm (this is speedy, after all, not AfD), and that people will not stop using them. Turnstep 17:00, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • The suggestion that Ambi is not the one making the change is laughable. You're the one pressing SAVE, for goodness' sake! You think removing the numbers achieves anything other than mroe bureaucracy? So now I have to copy-paste the descriptions rather than using a convenient description? Yes! That will fix everything. -Splashtalk 17:25, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Common sense

Any particular reason why we can't just lay down a few guidelines and apply some common sense, along the lines of "attack page" or "patent vanity" (that patent vanity other than bio-vanity gets forced over to AfD where it has to fester for a week before getting killed)? There's really no excuse for not allowing a little latitude in this, since it wouldn't (at least without the incessant legalism) prejudice a decent article that appeared in its place. Very much in the same way that I don't expect to be subject to disciplinary action in work simply because I left a solıtary letter İ undotted. Chris talk back Chris talk back 21:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too clear on what you're saying. This sounds like: let's agree a list of things we think should be speedy, including most of those we already have. We did that already, no? -Splashtalk 21:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm thinking more along the lines of all teh stuff that comes to AfD saying "I would havae speedied it but for some horribly tiny and insignificant technicality which means this isn't technically a speedy" by doing away with the legalism that people get caught up in. Applying common sense to keep to the spirit of the guidelines rather than the letter. Take the case covering vanity articles. The letter of the rule refers to articles about single individuals, and its spirit is to remove vanity articles. An article comes up about two people that is patent vanity. Because Wikipedia is not a system of law, the normal principle in law that there can be no crime where there no offence exists is meaningless. After all, an article does not have to be about a single individual to be a vain attempt to get into an encyclopaedia. Remember, only the guilty have need to rely on technicalities. Clearer? Chris talk back 01:04, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, thank you. However, I figure where you are heading is toward nn-bands. Now I would personally support such a proposal. But all 3 proposals last time around were below numerical consensus (no lectures, thank you) and so it isn't reasonable to extend the application of A7 (sticks out tongue) to bands. To an extent, we are hobbled by the paranoia of history trying to read the future, and no amount of bold editing can do away with that. Less paranoia could, of course. -Splashtalk 02:13, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not thinking bands specifically, but any example of patent vanity (I'm thinking the obvious cases along the lines of "The Foo Company was formed last week ..."), be it about someone's band, company, club, society or parents (after all, if it's about both their parents, it's not an article about a person, and thus technically not a valid speedy, right?). These are things which are not speedy candidates, but only on a technicality - just the sort of legalism we really need to be rid of. Chris talk back 16:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Contribs by banned user

Why exactly is it controversial to be able to remove edits by a banned user, considering 1) the rarity of actual banned users, 2) our banning policy which concurs, and 3) the fact that you may remove them does not indicate that you must remove them? I'm aware that some people don't like this criterion, but that doesn't make it controversial. Radiant_>|< 21:46, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

So a banned user writes a decent article, and then an admin with a grudge against that user speedies it? I don't think so. --SPUI (talk) 23:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, of course decent articles should never be speedied. That's just common sense. The point of being able to speedy contributions of banned users is that, invariably, those users got banned for a reason, the reason often being that they have monomaniacal tendencies and find it hard to contain their enthusiasm for their favorite subjects and theories. It's conceivable that a banned user may write an article that's problematic, but not enough to ordinarily warrant speedy deletion. I think it's Ok for an admin with enough background knowledge to speedy such an article, but this criterion should be used very sparingly. --MarkSweep (call me collect) 23:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • SPUI, I understand your point, but the Wikipedia:Banning policy disagrees with you. However, grudge-holding admins are to my knowledge usually sternly reprimanded on ANI or RFC, so I do believe that no useful articles would be lost as a result of this (rarely invoked) criterion. Radiant_>|< 00:03, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • If they aren't deleted, what's the point of banning them? Everyone else's contributions are deleted, reverted or modified based on their merits and if someone who is banned gets the same treatment, then he or she is contributing like a normal user and is not really banned. -- Kjkolb 12:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Fair use?

I'm not sure I understand this edit. I believe the point of Jimbo's mail was that we should avoid "fair use" images. Radiant_>|< 22:27, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Huh? The point is that being licensed non-commercial or for Wikipedia only is bad. If the image would otherwise be fair use, and it is also marked with one of those licenses, it should not be deleted. For instance, if a company says "you are free to use my logo on Wikipedia", its use in the article about the company is already fair use, and this permission should not lead to its deletion. --SPUI (talk) 23:43, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the point is that we shouldn't automatically delete images just because they may have a non-commercial license tag, because this ignores the possibility that they may still be useable under another license or rationale. By decree of Jimbo, we cannot use images under a non-commercial license. However, for any given image, there may be multiple rationales or licenses for use (e.g., a PD image can also be distributed under a cc-by license or the GFDL). So suppose an image is available for use under a non-commercial license: we can, under limited circumstances, take that image and use it without a license by claiming "fair use". The whole point of this edit is to limit the scope of CSD so that potentially useful and hard-to-replace images don't get speedy deleted. (Aside: Yes, this opens up another can of worms, namely the occasionally rather careless application of "fair use" claims. But, so far, "fair use" images are tolerated, and most definitely cannot be speedied.) --MarkSweep (call me collect) 23:50, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If you read what Jimbo's mail actually says, you'll see that it's meant for images where we would have no other reason to use them. He even says fair use should be taken into account when pruning the pre-May 19 ones. Also see this bit in the archives. —Cryptic (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Redirects

Can we specifically address whether re-creating a deleted article as a re-direct is allowable, should be speedied, or should be sent to RfD? I went through this myself, having tagged List of Catholic scientists G4 only to have it sent to RfD. There is currently a bit of sound and fury over Judeofascism on WP:DRV Marskell 06:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

We can't even delete a different article at the same place; why do you think we'd be able to delete a redirect? --SPUI (talk) 06:58, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
In the case of List of Catholic scientists, it re-directed to a page that was itself borderline G4. In the midst of the AfD, which was a hefty delete, a user created a similar page and immediately created a re-direct when the vote concluded. So yes, in this case a speedy seemed in order. The general point, I suppose, is that there is no unequivocal policy line regarding what to do about re-direct tangles of this sort. Marskell 07:30, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
A deleted article shouldn't be recreated, Marskell, whether containing the word "redirect" or anything else, without a deletion review, or whatever VfU is called now. When an AfD votes to delete a page, they're voting to delete the title, not the particular contents during the week of the vote. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:50, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
OK. As I say I tagged the Catholic scientists speedy based on your reasoning. However, the admin who paused over it (Sherool) noted that a redirect isn't substantially identical and shipped it to RfD instead, and there's an argument to be made for that as well. Now, you can say "I am entitled to speedy a recently deleted article name to uphold AfD integrity" but if you speedy you ought to be able to point to a specific CSD criterion and this page does not unequivocally state that a previous AfD is sufficient to speedy delete based on name alone. In fact, the most widely cited criterion here specifically addresses content, not article title: "substantially identical, under any title." Also, Wiki allows for bold re-creations. The intro to VfU states this, and re-directs to pages that reference topics qualify I’d say. The ridiculous Judeofascism term exists on the ridiculous List of political epithets page and thus the redirect makes sense (while still being ridiculous ;). Finally, I think the truer comment on AfD votes is that they are treated in closing as a referendum on the title, but the substance of the commentary invariably addresses content. One is allowed to re-create a page with different content. WP:GD: "If you think that an article was wrongly deleted, you can recreate the article."
In sum, I don't see a clear-cut answer. Clarity doesn't hurt. I started this thread thinking a sentence should could be thrashed out and placed under the re-direct section here. Marskell 09:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it depends on the AfD debate. If an article is deleted as a duplicate, POV fork etc, then a redirect, even if not specifically sanctioned by the debate may well be reasonable and uncontravertial. (In a short debate, the option of redirectign may not even have been considered). However, where, as in the Judeofascism case, redirecting was suggested in the AfD debate and rejected, then subsequently creating a redirect is to go against consensus achieved in debate - that ought to require another debate at VfU. Use common sense - don't have hard and fast rules here. Re-read old debates and don't overturrn them without a new consensus. --Doc ask? 11:36, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Hard and fast rules have their value. If we had one here a lot of wasted breath would've been saved methinks. Marskell 12:00, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Edit wars unnescesary.

Note that reverts always indicate that there is some lack of consensus, so an edit summary of "no consensus" is not very enlightening. Always give good reasons! And once a revert has fallen, please take it to talk before doing anything else strange. See WP:HEC.

Make sure this page is descriptive

I think the main problem with CSD is is that there has been some wierd voting process producing it, and I don't think all of our 10000s of wikipedians were involved :-P

The objective of policy pages is to describe what people are actually doing to build an encyclopedia, not to establish rules by which they must do so.

If you really insist that the contents here are that important, can we at least reword the page to say to some degree "these are reasons for speedy deletion which are commonly accepted, and people will typically not contest it".

Logically following on, folks can then add or remove sections, if they show evidence of where some of these criteria *were* contested (and hence where they can't possibly be speedy cirteria) and show evidence of things people have done that hasn't been contested (so these would be speedy criteria that have been missed). I see no reason why encyclopedic criteria need not apply to policy pages.

The above is not just a good idea, it is actually probably the only way for "policy" to make any real sense on a sparse and difficult to patrol wiki , and it's high time we stuck to it.

(And I shan't claim I'm entirely innocent either)

Kim Bruning 19:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

This is basically a good idea, except that it has the wrong notion of consensus. On a wiki this size, everything is contested - if something is contested, it could easily still have consensual support. Also, note that when a vocal minority opposes something, a vote is the only thing that can show that said opposition is, in fact, a minority; voting is thus far more useful than you suggest.
As a side point, note that the easier process you suggest for modifying criteria (or, indeed, any policy) already occurs a lot; several commonsensical changes have been made to this page without the need for a wierd (sic) voting process. Radiant_>|< 19:39, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
You need to talk with User:Jdforrester. Kim Bruning 22:11, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Why? Kim, from now on whenever you speak in riddles I will simply ignore you. Radiant_>|< 23:04, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't see the riddle. Based on your statement immediately preceding, I strongly reccommend you talk with Jdforrester, one of the original writers of wikipedia policy. He is an expert on which methods work and which don't. If you go to him and say "Kim sent me", and link to this discussion, you'll quickly be enlightened as to why! But that just boils down to "You need to talk with Jdforester". It's an english expression. I try to not be random too often, you know. ;-) Kim Bruning 23:33, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
So basically you're saying that I am wrong, and that you can't be bothered to explain where I am wrong or how I am wrong, and that I should ask a user I have almost no knowledge of, because I should have guessed that he wrote that policy. This isn't playing Nomic any more, you're playing Mao. Radiant_>|< 23:56, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
But why don't you tell us? The majority of people here don't even understand what problem you're trying to solve. What "specific" problems do you have with this page as it stands?--Sean|Black 23:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
*blink* Did I imagine...? <Scrolls up> nope, it says right there in the section heading; big bold letters too: "Make sure this page is descriptive". And then there's several paragraphs following. Yup. Ok. I'm sane, at least. Phew. You had me worried for a moment.
Hmm, Radiant choses to be incredulous though, so I basically hinted him like "fine then, go talk to the ultimate expert in this area, if you don't believe me!" He's a bit slow catching the hint though, eh? Kim Bruning 00:35, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Penalty - out of turn. Draw a card. Radiant_>|< 00:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
:-P Quit stalling and go talk with the guy already, silly! :-) Aren't you the least bit curious? Anyway, sorry about that, I'm very familiar with the field and I forget not everyone is an expert. ^^;; Kim Bruning 00:57, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Please don't be patronizing, Kim. If someone could make a contribution to this discussion, you can invite him to do just that. Or you can say what you think he'd say. But Radiant's a competant editor with a lot of experience with deletion policy, not a peon to be sent to a mysterious guru somewhere. -- SCZenz 01:20, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I suspect James would be amused to find out that he is a mysterious guru. Phil Sandifer 01:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I am, yes. :-)
James F. (talk) 11:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
I think there were on the order of 100 people who contributed to the voting/discussion of CSD. And no doubt it was linked from the relevant places, so anyone with the slightest interest in running Wikipedia knew about it. And although it was a vote, a substantial supermajority was required, and that's Wikipedia:Consensus says that that's what "consensus" usually ends up being anyway. So the process was a fair one, and as inclusive as possible. I'd say that makes it a policy, with broad consensus of editors, as the tag states. And I'd say that a very broad involvement is required for further large changes too (although not, as Radiant says, for small common-sense ones).
I know that policies were originally codifications of what people actually do, but this doesn't seem to be how policy works anymore, and I say that's a good thing. Wikipedia has grown to the point where the time spent in contesting each individual occurance of anything is very large; much better to have a big, inclusive debate and then write down the speedy criteria that almost everyone can agree on. Otherwise, it's best to send it to AfD first, rather than arguing about it at Deletion Review (which doesn't have all that many regular editors or a full range of community input, and so is better suited to discussing process than arguing deletion).
I know there are other ways of doing all of this, but I gotta say that from what I've seen, most people think the current system (both for policymaking and deletion) is ok. Not great, but ok, and there's much less agreement about different proposed improvements. I know you have fundamental wiki-philisophical issues with the system as-is, but don't represent it as having been arbitrarily imposed in some way. -- SCZenz 19:45, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, see WP:100. I'd estimate 120-180 participants. The notion that a matter cannot be consensual if thousands or more editors participated is impractical verging on the absurd. Radiant_>|< 20:02, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it's worth separating this policy page from policy pages in general. The only people who can enact speedies are admins. If I am a non-admin I would actually prefer didactic rules here that are concise, easily citable and easily browsable--"OK, ya, this page says I shouldn't create/recreate that article." By all means invite consensus, but where admins have "powers that are actually powerful" (as I'd suggest speedying is) absolutely the process should be circumscibed as completely as possible. Don't remove this page per Kim and don't make the rules more generic. In fact, make them more exact. Where an admin speedies, they should have a damn clear policy line they can point to as justification. Marskell 21:25, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd be all for making this page more user-friendly. Perhaps we can state what each criteria is, and then make an indented explanation of what each one means. Titoxd(?!?) 21:37, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
I have to say, I'm personally somewhat... dismayed by the direction the concept of speedy deletion has taken over the past few years. It used to be that we trusted our sysops to be sensible people and "delete as appropriate" (;-)). Then this page sprang up, listing a set of example reasons as to why sysops would delete pages - but they were examples of the sysops being reasonable, not the actual set of possible acceptable sysop deleting reasons. Somehow, somewhere, this turned into "you can only delete if it's a foo, bar, baz, or bing" document (the name really doesn't help to diminish this concept), and I think that it would generally be better if we didn't spend ages wringing our hands saying "oh, but there's a comma there, so we can only delete on alternate Sundays when wearing a pink tutu" or whatever. Common sense - we used to know what it meant.
James F. (talk) 11:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, yes. I entirely agree that it is unfortunate that it has turned this way. However, the main problem seems to be one of trust. Quite some people sincerely don't trust others to delete "only for the proper reasons" (for reference, WP:CFD/P and history of WP:VFU, and it even comes up in some admin noms). As a result of that, many admins are uncomfortable with deleting anything without a statement beforehand that they actually can. I understand the idealism behind trusting common sense, but in a community this size that will eventually generate a list of precedents as to what people actually agree upon. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really like CSD but find it a workable and acceptable compromise and have not seen any better proposals. Radiant_>|< 12:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
A little bit of sociology will tell you, that when communities grow and settle down, power and proceedure neccessarily move from being relational and informal to become codified and institutionalised. It may be attractive to many 'old-timers' to revert to the friendly, informal, trusting nature of the 'good old days' but, unless power is to be kept in a few hands who can still relate to each other (and TINC), it is wholly unrealistic. --Doc ask? 00:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
The power of wikis is that they devolve and segment power of a large number of users into a large number of small segments, allowing every segment to works in a simple, informal manner. To maintain a wiki, it is nescesary to keep things decentralized in this way. If you do not do so, a wiki community will operate at greatly reduced efficiency, or in fact fail to operate at all. Kim Bruning 01:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Erm..What's that got to do with what Doc just said?--Sean|Black 01:50, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I think what you're both missing is that the wiki itself already enforces particular rules and procedures. There's not much theory out there on "politicial programming", but programming does indeed influence social systems (think tcp/ip for a famous example), and the way wikipedia is set up is actually quite explicitly enforced by code in many areas, and code also has unintended side effects in some. Kim Bruning 02:00, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Nature of consensus

Consensus does not mean majority wins, or that unanimity must occur. If people can agree to disagree, that will suffice, but voting can never be used as the final determination in a decision, only to show what people's opinions are on certain issues. The votes on RFA mean nothing; they simply let the bureaucrat know what the community feels. The bureaucrat can always choose to go against a vote, no matter how significant the majority in either direction. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-27 01:48

Consensus isn't voting, but it sure isn't just a straw poll. Community consensus counts, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. If our descions aren't based on consensus, what are they based on? Jimbo's whim, ultimately, but his whim is almost always for us to use consensus decision-making. See Wikipedia:Consensus. -- SCZenz 02:01, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Those voting numbers on the page you cite are contested. Numbers alone should never matter. See Jimbo's opinion. It is never just "whim". The bureaucrat reads the discussion, weighs each person's vote, and chooses accordingly. Numbers never matter, regardless of whether people vote that numbers do matter. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-11-27 02:13
Yes, the details are contested. But well-reasoned consensus counts. Bureaucrats and admins interpret community consensus; they don't make their own decisions based the views of the community. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. -- SCZenz 02:18, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Acquiring notability

I'm not an admin, and have (therefore?) not followed CSD very closely. But I was alerted to a Deletion review discussion recently, and so became interested in an issue around it. The article at issue is Judeofascism, and it was initially deleted, per VfD, 7 months ago. Basically, back then, a narrow consensus felt that it was a non-notable neologism. And now there's a review discussion going on that's probably going to leave the article deleted (rather than created as a redirect to List of political epithets, where the term is mentioned).

This particular article is something politically contentious, and people feel strongly about it. Some feel that its existence would be a violation of WP:POINT. But it concerns me that the voters on the deletion review mostly seem to be voting on the notability (or even political desirability) of the word itself, not on the administrative issue of re-creating a page that undewent VfD/AfD in the past.

It seems to me that sometimes something might very properly be deleted as a result of AfD, but subsequently become notable. Take out the politicization, and let me give more neutral hypotheticals. Someone might create an article on an allegedly forthcoming book, video game, music recording, etc. Generally something like that that exists only at the level of tentative plans is deleted as non-notable or speculative. And quite properly so. Or similarly, a minor academic or musician might have an article deleted as non-notable vanity. However, after a time—say, 7 months—that book or game might come out, or that musician might release a high-selling record. And then the topic is reasonably notable. For that matter, a neologism can come into wider use.

In cases like this, it feels wrong to me that an articles that is currently notable (and obeys WP:V, copyvio, etc) might get speedy deleted just because it was formerly deleted on AfD. It seems reasonable enough that the new article might itself be nominated for AfD to establish whether it really is currently a notable topic. But speedy just seems like too crude an instrument to decide the notability of something that may have been non-notable months or years earlier. Thoughts? Is there a way to clarify this page to exclude such speedy deletions? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Short answer: apply common sense. Chris talk back 21:22, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Well now that's really helpful. -Splashtalk 21:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Are you implying we need a rule to suggest caution when a long time has passed? Chris talk back 22:16, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I'm suggesting a rule something more like: If N months have passed since an AfD consensus and page deletion, and article is no longer subject to speedy deletion, but should go through the regular AfD process again, if deleted. I'm not sure what N equals, but it just seems like any notability decision that is sufficiently old should no longer be presumed as current opinion. Sure, something might well still be determined to be non-notable per regular AfD, but regular editors should have a chance to evaluate that. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
TBH, that's a case of instruction creep, not to mention an example of the sort of rules Wikipedia needs to be cutting out, rather than building up. I have enough faith that the inhabitants of AfD aren't stupid enough to need to be told that it might be worth re-evaluating. They reserve the right to still reach the same decision as they reached before though. Chris talk back 00:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems like you're missing the point of my concern. If something is speedied because it had previously been voted on AfD, "the inhabitants of AfD" never get the opportunity to look at the issue at all, independent of their non-stupidity. Only the inhabitant of "deletion review" potentially look at it; but what they look at is not the whole new page that might describe notability, but only the page name (and comments by other deletion review inhabitants, of course). Deletion review editors are non-stupid as well, but they are wearing administrative hats rather than content-question hats. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 18:39, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
No, you're missing the point. If it's been speedied simply because there was consensus to delete on AfD several months ago, that's a failing of common sense on the part of the deleting admin. Of course, if the reason they've deleted it was because after examining the old deleted version and what they're presented with they saw no significant progress in the article (meaning it was similar to that which was deleted), then that is common sense well applied. Your supposedly hypothetical argument is so transparent, that we can all see through it. ;-) Chris talk back 23:36, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Better answer: yes, DRV is capable, despite the usual tiresome suggestions that it isn't, of realising that new information is now available and overturning the deleted nature of an article. That DRV does not think that to be the case in your particular example is just life. -Splashtalk 21:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
  • As Splash said. If you can make a clear case on DRV that circumstances have changed, you can convince people to restore the article. But as most things don't actually become more notable over time, the key point is "convincing" - if most people disagree with you, you're out of luck. Consensocracy, you know. Radiant_>|< 23:09, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

A consensus on DRV isn't required for the circumstances. Just create a new article on the subject. The new article cannot be deleted without a consensus. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

That is an example of both why recreations need to be a valid reason to speedy and rules-lawyer manipulation of the system. Chris talk back 23:36, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Event advertising

I'd really like for a page like this: Super Sabado Gigante to be speedy deleteable. It's an advertisement for a local event, but I can't squeeze it into any existing speedy reasons. So, it gets at least five days as it goes through a fairly pointless AfD (pointless because the outcome is all but certain). Any ideas? Turnstep 15:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that this kind of page is occurring often enough to justify a new CSD criterion? How many similar articles have we had? Rossami (talk) 15:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
  • It's a blatant copy/paste job from some kind of flyer, thus likely a copyvio. Not that that helps - the CP process is seriously backlogged. It's not unreasonable to make this a speedy if 1) it occurs reasonably often, and 2) we can describe it unambiguously. Suggestions welcome. Radiant_>|< 15:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
    • This, phrased properly, could remove the nasty promotional stuff companies so often provide us with free of charge. The ball could begin rolling with something like:
      "An article that, in substantial part, is written in clearly promotional language"
    • or something. We can allow it to take precedence of copyvio. In general, dealing with such an article requires a total rewrite, often following an AfD, and a DRV. We lose little to nothing by simply removing it and leaving a tempting redlink with which to start again. -Splashtalk 17:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
  • No idea how often it occurs, unfortunately, but I don't think that should deter it from starting a new criterion. This one was just a very egregious abuse of Wikipedia. Maybe something similar to the above, but focusing more on intent:
    "Articles whose only intent is to advertise something (e.g. a product or an event)"

This isn't really acceptable. A lot of quite good articles start out as promotional, and the solution is invariably to alter the language a little and add a bit more balance. I don't see what can be gained by adding a speedy deletion criterion as Wikipedia is not overrun with advertising, and the potential for unwarranted deletions here is far, far too high. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 16:11, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I think that Splash's wording comes too close to making POV articles speediable, which doesn't sound like a good idea. A better way to go about it would be to delete such junk as copyvios (it's a cut/paste job from a commercial site, right?) It seems falls within the spirit of the copyvio criterion (A8), and that criterion is a bit too wordy as it is. Radiant_>|< 12:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Tony's argument seems to be based on the assumption that deleting a piece of junk somehow prevents a good article from ever turning up in its place. Chris talk back 23:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Unneeded disambig pages

I'd like to propose the following as a CSD. This looks like the correct place to do so. If not, please forward to the appropriate department. It's pretty simple and clear cut. Speedy delete if:

"It is an superfluous disambiguation page linking to one or fewer existing articles."
notation: {{db-emptydab}} or somesuch.

Example: Two or more people have the same name and are disambiguated by "NAME (PROFESSION)". All but one of them turns out to be hoaxes, nn-bios, etc., and are deleted, possibly after a week of mulling, leaving the disambiguation page to link to only one article. Shouldn't the disambiguation page be speedy deleted and the remaining article be moved to the now-unambiguous "NAME"? I feel that this would be preferable to having the all-but-empty disambiguation page sit on AFD the following week, tempting the creation or re-creation of articles by individuals acting in questionable faith, further stalling the process, and attracting further undue attention to the hoaxes/vanities in question. Is this unreasonable? — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 22:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. I've added it. --Carnildo 22:59, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Does this include e.g. Zevenhuizen? It links only to non-existing articles (if I only include the articles that are being disambiguated ), but is a perfectly valid disambiguation page. I have changed the criterium a bit to exclude this type of disambiguation page. Eugene van der Pijll 23:22, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm glad to hear that CSD can now be commonsensically amended without the need for a month-long discussion and several pages of voting. Radiant_>|< 10:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I am removing A9 & citing this proposal on VP (policy). It is outrageous to extend CSD with so little discussion & so little public notice. (A9 would IMO is close to a no-brainer, but nothing is a no-brainer when it authorizes immediate deletion for reasons that we have gotten along without for five years!
    --Jerzy•t 18:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Writing A9 is, as you say, a no brainer. You don't appear to disagree with it, either. It is possible for something to be no-brainer without being written down. On the other hand, once someone takes the time to write it down for clarity's sake, we might as well leave it there since it helps out. -Splashtalk 18:29, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Let's keep it there till somebody formulates a reasonable argument against it, rather than devil-advocating ourselves. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 18:45, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Keep it until someone seriously challenges it. There are enough people objecting to deletions on pure-process grounds that it is helpful to have explicit support for the obvious. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

We don't need more criteria for this, this is just moving a page to its proper title, already covered by naming conventions and whatnot. If there's an old dab page or redirect in the way, put it on WP:RM. Actually since what's being solved here is a page under the wrong title, speedy deletion probably isn't the place to handle it anyway. Demi T/C 00:27, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is just the redirect criteria R3 (making way for a page move) as applied to disambiguation pages. --Carnildo 00:48, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. No More Rulecruft. Trollderella 01:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
You said that already. -Splashtalk 01:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
We already created a bunch of rulecruft we don't need as well. ;) Trollderella 02:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Do you realize how long WP:RM tends to take (especially for "trivial" things like this)? Also, some people like to create new articles (hoaxes or sub-stubs) in the meantime to make the move proposer look like an idiot. On the other hand, if the new article happens to be good, anyone can move the old page back where it was and create a new disambig page in a few seconds. Disambig pages don't require that much depth of writing anyway. It just looks awfully stupid (to the new reader especially) to see a disambig page in cases where they are clearly not needed. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 05:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I think Carnildo has a good point. I've moved "Making way for a page move" from the "redirects" section to the "general" section, and added the example of pointless disambigs. How does that look? Note that WP:RM should (ideally) only be for discussing controversial page moves. Radiant_>|< 12:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Scrap vanity page as a reason for speedy - AFD only

See my notes here: Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_of_vanity_articles#Scrap_this_policy_as_a_reason_for_speedy_deletion_-_AFD_onlyZordrac 11:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

  • That is hardly a good example; it is based on a couple of newbies who voted "speedy delete - no context" (not for vanity at all) on an article that was in rather poor shape, and was cleaned up and kept by the AFD discussion. If anything, this proves that our deletion system usually works out. Radiant_>|< 11:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree that we should scrap the vanity as a speedy criteria. Speedy does not encourage article expansion, bites newbies and allows admins to delete material without it being reviewed. We have no idea what proportion of speedy deletions are inapropriate. Trollderella 17:52, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Articles about oneself or one's friends is an appropriate speedy and are not candidates for expansion. - Tεxτurε 17:59, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Not necessarily. Suppose we didn't have an article already, and George Bush creates a stub about himself. We should expand and NPOV it, not delete it. It's contextual. Trollderella 18:59, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Do you know how much time that would waste just in case that bizarre scenario occurred? Martin 19:10, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Evident vanity articles that assert importance should be taken to AfD, not just deleted by one guy with an itchy finger. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 19:05, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

This is what policy says at the minute; only pages which make no assertion of important are speedies. The Land 19:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • That, of course, is precisely why policy talks about articles asserting significance, rather than articles written by oneself. Apart from the fact that with anonymous editors, it is not possible to check if one did in fact write about oneself. Radiant_>|< 23:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)


No edit war please

We're following consensus procedures, and I'd rather not deviate from that. (not that it's easy to deviate from a 20 lane highway, but...)

If you have specific objections to the CSD rule as stated, please state them, and people will listen! (or else :-P ). Please negotiate a consensus. -- Kim Bruning 18:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I have stated them. This is an attempt to cicumvent the fact that the wp:music guidelines are not policy and sneak them in here. There has been no discuss of this, and there is no demonstration of concensus to add them. Trollderella 19:07, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought there had been a discussion. Could you state or point to or link to reasons why this change should not be added to CSD? Kim Bruning 19:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

As TS says, it grossly misrepresents the intent of A7. It has nothing to do with groups of people or bands, both of which were rejected as criteria for speedy deletion in precisely the same survey that confirmed A7. It tries to encorporate the failed policy of WP:MUSIC into speedy deletion without the consent of the community. Trollderella 20:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how it has anything to do with WP:MUSIC. It's about making the criterion reflect what's actually being done. Friday (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
First of all, it doens't incorporate WP:MUSIC, the way I rephrased it. (Which I imagine was reverted without being considered.) Secondly, WP:MUSIC is a pretty successful guideline. -Splashtalk 20:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Doesn't matter whether it's "succesful" or not - by definition, a policy cannot take a guideline as a parent without becoming degraded itself. - SoM 20:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Like I said, it doesn't. -Splashtalk 21:02, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I've changed the criterion to remove the term "groups" -- while an article about multiple people might be speediable in the same way an article about one person would be, an article about a group that focuses on the group rather than the people should not be speediable. (e.g., a fraternity house, a high school club, etc.)
  • As I see it a group of people more resembles a club than a single person. The proposal to speedy delete clubs was soundly rejected, and should not be incorporated here. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
It was defeated, which is why there is so much resistance to voting on it. Let's slip it under the door while no one's watching. Trollderella 21:41, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
It took you 1 hour longer than I expected to resort to accusations and namecalling. Frankly, you've only got to look anwhere to see wide support for including groups of people and little dissent. There's no reason everyone has to agree with it, and those who have staunchly opposed each and every expansion of CSD and each and every amendment to deletion policy shouldn't be too surprised when they aren't permitted to stand in the way of most others. -Splashtalk 22:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Firstly, I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything that they are not clearly doing. Secondly, this proposal has been rejected by the community every time it has been put to a vote. It grossly misrepresents the intent of A7. It has nothing to do with groups of people or bands, both of which were rejected as criteria for speedy deletion in precisely the same survey that confirmed A7. It tries to encorporate the failed policy of WP:MUSIC into speedy deletion without the consent of the community. Trollderella 22:15, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Please do point me to where WP:MUSIC was referenced in the more recent version? You must read the page before reverting it. Also, to suggest that 69% support constitutes rejection is just absurd. (That was what 3C got, I believe.)-Splashtalk 22:19, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Why do you say "It grossly misrepresents the intent of A7", the intent of A7 is still there, yes this is not what people voted on for A7, but we are trying to expand the scope of A7 on the basis that there appears to be many in favour of doing so. We could add a new criteria called A9, with similar wording to A7, then you couldn't say it mis-represented A7, yet it would have exactly the same effect as what we want to do now. Saying it misrepresents it is just a misleading phrase copied from Tony. Martin 22:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
It didn't meet the level of support required. You can't re-write the rule after a poll because you didn't like the result. Oh, wait a minute... Trollderella 22:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
But your main concern has been over the incorporation of WP:MUSIC. The reason polls are evil is because afterwards people accidentally think that by being 0.5% short of some arbitrary number it has been rejected for all time and no part of it had any support. Except if you actually go and read the proposal and the voting on it you'll see that's just not the case. -Splashtalk 22:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I respectfully disagree with User:Christopherparham in that articles about groups that do not assert their importance or significance should just as easily be speediable as individuals. The proposal to speedy delete clubs was very wordy and applied criteria that were too specific. The proposal to speedy delete bands was too encumbersome. Expanding A7 to read "An article about a real person or group of persons" is simply asking that the the same criteria that are currently applied to individuals be applied to groups. Any assertion of notability (besides those that are patently untrue) disqualifies the article from being speediable. And contrary to User:Trollderella's assertion, there is no resistance to voting on it -- I just didn't know where to put up a vote or how to advertise it, so I stuck it in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Expansion of CSD A7. howcheng [ t &#149; c &#149; w &#149; e ] 22:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • As Splash says. Also, factionalizing the issue or namecalling isn't helpful. This has been discussed for months and suggested individually by a dozen different people. Once more, a proposal for speedying groups was never made. A group (as in a bunch of individuals) is not a club (which implies organization of sorts); if that difference isn't clear, by all means reword. The proposal for bands was voted down on a technicality. I have yet to hear a good argument against the new version, people are only arguing semantics that it hasn't been properly discussed. But Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Radiant_>|< 22:54, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I see the word "group" leads to confusion. Maybe it should be "one or two people"? Radiant_>|< 23:26, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
      • This was why I removed the word "group" and replaced it with "persons." If the article is about the people, e.g. "Marissa and Martin Tomey are siblings in Perth" then I see no reason not to cover those articles as well. But articles about an organized group, like a club or frat house, are a fundamentally different thing. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:35, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
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