Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 44

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Copying footnote #3 to A7

Would anybody mind if we duplicate footnote #3 to A7? This is the one that says to give people ten minutes before you assume that there's no context or no content. Given that we've never had a rule that says "the very first time you hit the save button, even by accident, your article must clearly indicate notability for the subject", does anyone mind if we recommend waiting ten minutes before assuming that an indication of notability won't be promptly forthcoming?

(The footnote says, "Consensus has developed that in most cases articles should not be tagged for deletion under this criterion moments after creation as the creator may be actively working on the content; though there is no set time requirement, a ten-minute delay before tagging under this criterion is suggested as good practice. Please do not mark the page as patrolled prior to that suitable delay passing, so that the wait does not result in the article escaping review at a later time.") WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:45, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I could have sworn when I proposed that footnote text that it was for A7 as well. Support.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I am now on the fence and leaning towards oppose unless some very clear qualifying language was drafted, and I can't think of any that would not result in a mess.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:03, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• strong support. I think this should apply to G2, G4, G11, A2, A7, A9, A10 and F7 (second bullet point) as well as A1 and A3. Thryduulf (talk) 23:30, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  I think this list is reasonable. It might make sense to not have the footnote and say something at the top like "Any page that is not actively harmful, like an attack, or is otherwise potentially on its way to being useful content should not be tagged within 10 minutes or so after creation." IOW, express the idea rather than maintain a list. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  How is waiting on an A10 going to help matters? Monty₈₄₅ 23:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose there are many A7 articles that are obviously never going to pass the A7 criteria, delaying tagging them does nothing but cause a delay in deleting articles that really should be speedily deleted. Example, "Monty who lives at 1400 Pennsylvania ave, small town USA was born in 1999. He is a really cool guy, and is the most popular kid in his class." There is no way that such an article is ever going to pass A7. Unlike an A1 or A3, where the problem is there isn't enough information, with an A7 there is often more then enough information to make a clear determination. If the article is borderline, and could with a few more details pass A7, then sure, wait awhile, or just tag it for notability and give it a few days, but a mandatory wait across all A7 is counter productive. I would support it if it more clearly emphasized waiting till you can make a fair determination, rather then an always wait 10m rule. Monty₈₄₅ 23:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  What is the harm of waiting 10 minutes? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 23:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  Because editors don't always have ten minutes to waste on every pointless article? Pointless nonsense doesn't need protection from the terrible deletionists. Moreover it helps to notify serial pointless article creators before they get started with a huge list of all their friends that such things aren't desired. On the other side of the coin, there's no reason to leave the page up at all. i kan reed (talk) 13:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

  You don't have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs until the 10 minutes is up. The "get started with a huge list" argument seems like a non-issue. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

  What I mean is I don't always have time to be on wikipedia for 10 minutes straight. It creates a huge maintenance burden. I'd rather have an expiration timer on the template and still be able to tag it. The requirement creates tedium to protect bad articles. This won't help anyone. If you can point to one example of a good article with a non-notable start, this would be a conversation worth having. i kan reed (talk) 17:29, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support - for A7 only, at this point. The next edit to the "Monty the most popular kid in his class" article might mention that Monty is a world champion chess player, for example. There is absolutely no reason these articles need to be tagged within seconds of creation - waiting ten minutes would do no harm at all. Thparkth (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  See, I think that if it has gotten to the point where the article is talking about how popular the kid is in class, the article would have already mentioned anything that would be a claim of importance, and an 11 year old is very unlikely to be important enough to pass A7. Sure its possible they may come up with that later, but I think it is exceedingly unlikely. And then many people believe identifying information on young minors who are not notable should be promptly deleted. In my example, we are talking about a 11 or 12 year old. Monty₈₄₅ 23:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

  "the article would have already mentioned anything that would be a claim of importance" - there is no way to know that, and no benefit to assuming it. Thparkth (talk) 03:32, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - "Jenny is an average person born in 2002. She likes talking to her friends" will have no indication of importance for a very long time. 10 minutes will not do any good. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 00:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
• (edit conflict)Oppose Firstly it risks the page being over looked, those checking new pages will end up having a two stage processes, first checking for attack, copyvio etc then having to re-visit the page ten mins later to check for notability, this will either mean the cheeking will only start at t+10 mins or will be overlooked. Secondley if it is tagged and notice put on creators talk page, this alerts the editor to try and fix the issues, if we wait, this increase the likelihood they have logged off. Might support an advisory to administrators that they should wait 10 mins after creation before deleting a A7 tagged article if it allowed for the obvious cases to be deleted. Mtking ^(edits) 00:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

For practical reasons we need to let the newpage patrollers make an immediate call on the article. But it would be best if that immediate call had no effect for a little time when it is a goodfaith article. I think we could achieve that with a bit of programming that delayed the tagging of an article and only added goodfaih speedy tags after 60 minutes, and only if the article had not been subsequently edited. I suggest we combine that with an additional couple of colours at special newpages. Perhaps Blue for tagged for deletion and Green for having a time-delayed tag. After the 60 minutes either the CSD tag would be added to the article, or if it had been edited in the meantime it could revert to yellow as unpatrolled. This would solve the A1 A3 overhastyness and reduce some of the other biteyness aspects at NPP whilst still handling badfaith stuff PDQ. ϢereSpielChequers 16:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I would, in principle, support a system where for the first first 10 mins after an article was tagged for A7, A1 and A3 the CSD tag was say amber, rather than red with a different message pointing out that unless the article is brought into line with requirements then the article would be considered for deletion, the wording could be more new-editor friendlily at this point. Only after the 10 mins had gone past would the template revert to the current look and feel and the page added to the speedy deletion category. Mtking ^(edits) 21:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If we could make the CSD templates less snarky then in my view we should do so anyway, not just for the first ten minutes. I've seen templates given to goodfaith users who haven't learned our notability rules that use the same sort of symbolism that we use in final warnings and attack page templates. But just giving a gentler template would still mean the editor wasn't given ten minutes before their article was tagged. To really improve the situation we need a time delay so that an editor who improves their article in the first hour doesn't get templated at all and the editor who doesn't has their article templated afterwards. ϢereSpielChequers 20:44, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of the opposition baffles me. Perhaps the problem is not reading the footnote. It says that a ten-minute delay is "suggested as a good practice". Do we all understand that there's a difference between "absolutely required" and "suggested as a good practice"? Does anyone actually think that it's horrible to suggest a ten-minute delay, just in case the next edit shows a remarkable change? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not necessarily 100% against this, but if we do that we do need to emphasize the consider part in the same way Special:NewPages says "consider patrolling from the back of the log", not "you should" or "you must". Even for A1/A3, it takes a bit of judgment; for most, I will wait 10 minutes, but if I see what's obviously an attempt to correspond with someone, or it looks like playing around but isn't really vandalism, I tag it on sight. As described below, there are some instances where the extra time will help, but some where it will do nothing but be a waste of time. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:09, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

• Support. It's a footnote- a suggestion- not set in stone. I share the same concern about blatantly speedy-deletable articles (they're all blatant, but I'm referring to ones that can't under any circumstances be made into an article that will survive A7), but even with a footnote you could immediately tag them for speedy deletion. This would be intended for those borderline cases where they could be improved and survive A7 without scaring away the article creator first.--Slon02 (talk) 22:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Do admins even honor the rule as it applies to A1 and A3

It is hardly the first time I have seen it happen, but I just watched an admin delete (not just tag) an A3 in under 3 minutes from creation. What is the point of delaying the tagging of an article if it will just be deleted before the time window is up? Perhaps there should be a focus on getting people to follow the rule as it applies before considering expansion of scope. Monty₈₄₅ 00:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you suggest we do? Note that I added language about this to the top of newpages in December 2009. I also made {{uw-hasty}} and {{hasty}} and though it's not easy to check, my impression is that they haven't gotten a lot of use. This is a very hard area to check compliance but I don't see how expansion is affected by lack of compliance. Also, the fact that you can find examples of non-compliance has no evidentiary value as to what effect it has had.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

As a non-admin, without view deleted I can only really point at anecdotal evidence, but whether the rule is being widely followed is relevant to expansion. We don't want to tell new users to do things one way, only to have them get frustrated when it turns out lots of people are doing it a different way. Monty₈₄₅ 01:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your point. I think what you said is quite aptly analogized to "there is a lot of littering at two area parks, ergo, we shouldn't post signs at another park about littering being prohibited because lots of people are doing it."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

there are always justifiable exceptions. I have always argued for confining IAR within very narrow limits with respect to speedies. But for a7, sometimes the article will be so pathetically impossible that there is no possible reason to not delete it right away--we had one yesterday apparently written by a proud parent about his child in kindergarden. For A1 and A3, I cannot immediately think of similar examples, but there have been,, though it is hard to know what might come at the next edit. DGG ( talk ) 01:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. But applying any policy language reflexively is the wrong way. What I mean by that is that I see no conflict with saying that articles should not be tagged with A7 moments after creation and doing what is right on a case-by-case basis. We certainly disagree about IAR, as previous discussion has demonstrated. You bring up a good point—it's almost always going to be true that an article that meets A1 and A3 at the moment of creation should not be tagged immediately, but for A7, it's not so clear cut. So if we are to apply a similar provision to A7, it really would need to have qualifying language, and I think to do so properly would require far too much explanation for it to be anything but murky. Some goods points are made in the preceding section as well, and so I'm no longer so sanguine about applying it to A7 at all.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think we agree about this. Whether ewe call it IAR or just good judgment, special cases should not be provided for by detailed CSD rules--there are just too many possibilities, and we can deal with them ad hoc as necessary. ` DGG ( talk ) 07:00, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth

Back in 2008 I marked this for speedy deletion. The creator removed the tag (before we had a bot to prevent that) and edited it to say this. Eventually it looked like this before it was AFDd and redirected. Oh boy did I feel like an ass. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:30, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't. I would have tagged it myself, and I would have followed up on the tag. There was nothing to indicate that this was a fictional character, and anyone not familiar with the TV series would have thought that this is about a real-life person. Wherever I see the words "up and coming" in the article, that's a big red flag. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 17:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Blanchardb, above. But while we're on the subject of FWIW, this is a perfect example of hiding vs deletion in a class of cases. I'm glad that the entire history of this article is preserved (due to it being redirected). I strongly wish deletion worked the same way (in some cases), so that a) editors can see at which point an article went wrong, and b) reconstruction (where appropriate) is simplified. Of course some material must be expunged, I get that. But in many cases, I see value in something other than deletion, such as history-only view and edit locking. That is, only viewable as history, not as a live article. I base this view partly on the intended openness of Wikipedia - all content and processes are visible to all (except for certain narrow exceptions). Deletion of articles at AfD, followed by having to make a special request to an admin or higher for userfication or emailing of the deleted content, seems to fly in the face of intended openness. I have the strong sense that this has come up before, and it will come up again... --Lexein (talk) 06:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it has come up before, although I couldn't off the top of my head point to any specific discussions. The point you are making though is regarding what should be viewable to a non-admin user after an article has been deleted (currently just the log entry), which is a matter for a different place, probably one of the village pumps (given the controversy over a current request to allow OTRS agents to view deleted content, I can guarantee your proposal will be at least as controversial though). This page is about when a page may be deleted without prior discussion, regardless of what deletion means for non-admin users. Thryduulf (talk) 11:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I know where I am. Fair enough, though. Thanks for the pointer. It was merely a passing thought. Now back to the regularly scheduled CSD discussion. --Lexein (talk) 12:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed clarification to A3

Hi all, today in IRC we were considering whether an incomplete article (Devastator (video game)) was eligible for A3. At the time, it contained only an infobox giving the article's title, publisher, year of release, and genre. The A3 criterion reads "this criterion does not cover a page with an infobox with non-trivial information." The deleting administrator considered this information to be "trivial." Clearly, if this information were written in prose form, the article would not be an A3 candidate (or even an A1 candidate!), but a stub, suggesting that the deletion didn't reflect the spirit of the rule ("no content"). I would like to clarify this sentence to emphasize this point, something like this:

"This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria (consists only of images, external links, and/or a rephrasing of the title)."

If this is too long, I'd go for the shorter:

"This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria."

Feedback/suggestions welcome. Dcoetzee 05:52, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this line:

"Similarly, this criterion does not cover a page with an infobox with non-trivial information."

Should be changed to read:

"This criterion does not cover a page containing only an infobox unless the contents of the box consist only of external links and/or a rephrasing of the title."

A bit more specific change. --Odie5533 (talk) 06:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

That would mean that an article consisting of an infobox with only an image would not qualify for A3. Dcoetzee's version is better. Hut 8.5 10:08, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Support "This criterion does not cover a page having only an infobox, unless its contents also meet the above criteria.". Thryduulf (talk) 13:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd also support Dcoetzee's short proposal, maybe with the addition of the word "sole" (i.e. "...unless its sole contents..."). On a side note, so far I thought that the "non-trivial" in that sentence clearly meant "information that would allow it to be deleted if it were prose". Regards SoWhy 20:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Thryduulf's (your name is hard to type) version since it matches the mentioning of the article wizard. --Odie5533 (talk) 05:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Since consensus here seems fairly clear, I've gone ahead and made the change. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that any article containing only an infobox, trivial or not, should either be deleted or moved to the creator's userspace if not edited for a certain length of time, let's say 48 hours. No matter how informative an infobox may be, an article isn't an "article" unless it has some prose in it. I see no point in keeping these around for a 7 day PROD/AFD cycle if their creators have "left the building". If deleted it should be "without prejudice" and refundable. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:29, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

If the infobox does contain non-trivial information then it's very easy to add one sentence to the article to make it a valid stub. We shouldn't be deleting pages over issues that are so easy to fix. Hut 8.5 16:24, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Description pages for Commons images - F2

Some time ago [1] F2 read ...includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images - now it's been expanded to include any image description pages, whether empty or not. This means that pages which categorise commons images on en-wiki, e.g.File:Welshhighrailmap.jpg, are being tagged for deletion. Is this correct? —An  optimist on the run! 08:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd say no but I'm unsure as to why it was changed. That wording was added in May 2010 based on a WP:AN discussion and removed in September 2010 based on no objections to changing it back to a 2006 consensus (see here). I'd support restoring the May 2010 version though, it seems to make more sense. Regards SoWhy 09:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SoWhy. WikiProjects use categories on things like featured pictures or other media to keep track of them. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 14:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Categorization of featured pictures is exempted from F2. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 20:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

This discussion comes up too many times... but if I'm not mistaken, a few months ago, the consensus was that all files hosted on Commons will have their local description pages deleted. The only exceptions were featured pictures, valued pictures (which is no longer in use), DYK images, etc. General categorization, like Category:Images of California for example, were to still be deleted per F2 because the categorization effort was being unnecessarily doubled—categorization such as this should be done solely on Commons. — ξ^xplicit 18:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Explicit. Consensus supports it, and there is no need to double categorization. Categorization of commons files needs to occur at commons, not locally on en.wikipedia. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 20:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Could any of you please link to that consensus? I seem to have missed that discussion. Regards SoWhy 08:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SoWhy. Content classification belongs on Commons, but en.wp project classification belongs on en.wp. Any categories here that are content-categorising images can be dealt with by CfD, and then the image pages speedily deleted per F2 if there is no project classification. Thryduulf (talk) 20:43, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Could someone find the discussion that said FP/FS/DYK/etc. categorization is exempt from F2? It might help clarify that section a little other than covering all image description pages for Commons. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:14, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm having some trouble finding it. Said discussion might have taken over at WP:ANI, but trying to find it is truly hell. I'd assume Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs) would have a better idea, he's usually the reason these discussions begin. — ξ^xplicit 21:02, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure it was a WP:ANI dissucssion, it may well have been an informal convention developed on user talk pages,

between myself, other contributors and admins. My understanding was that F2 exemption covered local templating/categorisation for the purposes of :

• Featured/Valued content
• DYK's
• badimage
• Material subject to a deletion debate at Commons

If someone want's to formalise that including :

• Images which are SOLELY used by local Wikiprojects and do not have scope for wider use

feel free :) Sfan00 IMG (talk) 11:16, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Redirect speedy delete criteria

R3, technically, applies only to recently created redirects, and Criterion R2 allows deletion of cross-namespace.

However, there are cases where it would make sense to speedy delete even ancient redirects, which are not cross-namespace. May I suggest a Criterion R4: "Nonsense redirects". This would cover cases where the name of the redirect is unambiguously a different subject than the one directed to E.g. Apple redirecting to Orange, if the page history of the redirect does not include a better page to redirect to.

We could (if it's not thought to be too dangerous) also include those annoying redirects where the redirect wasn't entirely nonsense, but the article redirected to has no information on the subject of the redirect. (for instance, if Coliseum redirected to Rome, but Rome didn't even mention the Coliseum anywhere in the article)

I'd imagine the exact wording of the criterion will need hashed out, but I think you'll agree that, with the appropriate caveats and exceptions, it's an obvious case for speedy (it's pretty much just explaining how to apply G1 to Redirects.). 86.182.20.107 (talk) 11:37, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I can see where those redirects shouldn't be in place because they make no sense, but in your examples the fix is easy, change the redirect so that it goes to an appropriate page. Do you have any actual examples where we should delete the redirect rather than changing it? GB fan 11:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, I was trying to give easy-to-understand ones. The specific situation that set me thinking about this was Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_September_13#Research_and_innovations_in_Ayurveda, which isn't really QUITE R3, as it's rather old, but was certainly well within the spirit of the CSD rules.

That's probably the sort of things these will be. Very specific redirect titles that no longer fit the content of the article they redirected to. Should probably say I noticed afterwards that the target article was a WP:COATRACK - it had big sections you'd presume were on-topic, then you looked closer and found out the research was done by someone other than the article's topic, so it's a redirect now. 86.182.20.107 (talk) 16:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

How many of these are we seeing at RfD per day, though? Regardless of whether or not such redirects are always deleted for those reasons (which I also want evidence of), it's best not to expand the criteria unless there's a demonstrable need. lifebaka++ 17:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking through the current nominations at RFD I don't see anything that would fall into your proposed criterion. It doesn't look like it is a common problem and RFD should be able to handle any that show up. GB fan 01:39, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

As one of the most regular users at RfD, I can clearly say there is no need for this. Old redirects that no longer meet the subject of the article come up only very rarely (I'd be surprised to discuss three in a month) and not all of them result in deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary talk pages

What criterion would something like this (note the article redirect) fall under? Even if that specific page can be simply turned into a redirect, what about talk pages in general? I noticed there's no criteria. Voxii (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

If they have no relevant history, such as that one, they can be deleted using G8. Or they can be redirected to the talk page of the same thing the mainspace redirect redirects to. Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Thx. Voxii (talk) 13:20, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

To clarify a little, relevant/meaningful history should not be deleted or removed outright. Discussions should be left in place or archived, and important tags like {{Copied}} should be left alone. Depending on the WikiProject, banners may be removed or altered to match the article redirect. Flatscan (talk) 04:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Continuing the discussion of WP:NOT

I think we should also consider applying WP:NOTESSAY as a CSD criterion. (Don't immediately walk away, please, I am aware of previous proposals.) Take an article like Doctor or engineer. It's at AfD right now, and it hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of surviving, but there's no immediately applicable CSD criterion. I believe this fits the criteria described at the head of the talkpage for new CSD proposals:

1. Objective: Such articles are always snow deleted. There are articles floating around that are written like research papers rather than encyclopedia articles, but they're still basically informative, and they don't get taken to AfD because they're either salvageable or not in desperate need of salvaging, and editors are smart and recognize this. The criterion would have to be written very specifically, perhaps using the term "persuasive essay" or "personal essay," but this is a class of articles that we as a community recognize as needing to go.
2. Uncontestable: see "Objective," with specific enough wording the rule will target those articles for which a strong precedent for deletion exists.
3. Frequent: I think this comes up at AfD often enough to warrant a speedy, and will try to get some numbers if anyone wants.
4. Nonredundant: I do not see a criterion that already covers this, which is why they always end up at AfD. (Which is to say, I don't think there's precedent to apply G11 so broadly.)

–Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:41, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Doctor or engineer article appears to be speedily deletable as a copyright violation. But the example made me think of Tiger versus lion, which might have been thought to be a snow-delete as an OR essay when it looked like this, but the result ended up being really not so clear as first thought. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 03:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that "Tiger versus lion" is a good example. The article in its current state bears absolutely no resemblance to the old version which was nominated for deletion; it might as well have been deleted and rewritten from scratch. Similarly, an article that qualifies for G11 might be on a worthy topic, but the content itself is inappropriate by community consensus. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Some other examples, then, that editors had flagged as NOTESSAY: Standard of living in the People's Republic of China (see AfD); Deepwater oil spill prevention (see AfD); Internet search engines and libraries (see AfD); Improving memory (see AfD). Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

With the exception of the oil spill one, all of these seem to be what I referred to as research papers. They still fail WP:NOTESSAY, but they are sourced and informative, so it's better to have them in bad shape than to delete them. I think we can write a guideline to exclude them, or rather to include only pages that are easily recognizable as personal essays. (And, as for the oil spill one - that was kept because it was rewritten into an encyclopedia article, which bears no resemblance to the version that was nominated.) –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Something similar is discussed above, at #New_criterion_-_WP:NOT. →Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw, but it seemed to be focusing on specific NOT criteria other than this one, ie. NOTNEO, etc. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking over AfD logs for the past few days, I couldn't find but a few examples of pages that were being deleted for violations of WP:NOTESSAY, and I'm fairly sure they were not all the type of page you're talking about. Ignoring the other merits of a proposed criterion, I'm not comfortable expanding the criteria for something that shows up at AfD less than a dozen times a week. This is a level that AfD can handle. lifebaka++ 15:50, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

And I took a look through the 98 articles in Category:Proposed deletion as of 14 September 2011, and there was not a single one being proposed for deletion related to it being an essay. Unless that was an unusual day, Prod can handle the frequency of these essays too. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:26, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Funny. In the past few days I've prodded two essays. →Στc. 01:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

An average of 1 per day is hardly teh frequency level that requires speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:30, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A7 "uncontestable"?

The instructions at the top of this page suggest that speedy deletion rules should have an uncontestable character. That doesn't seem to be the case in practice. For example, this or the plethora of these. The "importance" part is interpreted by some as a more stringent, and more subjective requirement than "significant coverage in reliable sources". Perhaps some further clarifications are necessary? Have mörser, will travel (talk) 03:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

The first incarnation of "John_Maxson_Stillman" mentioned that he "was a pioneer of the history of science in the United States" which an assertion of importance, so A7 would not apply. You could have contested it successfully without removing the csd tags yourself. As creator of the page you are not allowed to remove the tag. In the second case those articles are stubs on educational institutions, so they do not fall into any of the speedy deletion criteria. Jarkeld (talk) 04:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

An assertion of importance or significance is a very different test to "significant coverage in reliable sources". Speedy deletion is only for certain types of commonly occurring article where the community has agreed that AFD can be bypassed and admins can delete without a debate over each article. If you are discussing whether or not a set of references constitutes "significant coverage in reliable sources" then it is unlikely that speedy deletion would apply, though other routes to deletion might. ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

New CSD - T4 Unused userbox that is more than 30 days old

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

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I'd like to propose a new CSD category: Unused userbox that is more than 30 days old. WP:MfD is cluttered with these at the moment, see: Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Unused_userboxes --Surturz (talk) 07:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Good idea, but citation from mentioned page may be interesting ("I see no reason to delete any of them. Someone some time might want to use them. Why delete them? However I can not be bothered to !vote on every single item. --Bduke[odp] (Discussion) 00:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)")Bulwersator (talk) 07:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Not a good idea imho. Userboxes are clearly a field where we have and had many different opinions and thus it would not be a case where we can assume that such pages are always deleted at mfd. Just like Bulwersator wrote above, there are good reasons to keep them even when they are currently not used. Regards SWM (SoWhy[on]Mobile) 11:17, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. MfD is "overwhelmed" at present because a large number of such templates have been nominated - but this is not a long-term pattern, and indeed, there isn't a clear consensus that we should always be deleting those templates (as the commenter in the link you gave pointed out). Anyway, the criteria you suggest isn't very useful; a template that a single user has transcluded for years, but which is accidentally or temporarily removed from their user page, and which they intend to re-instate, would be speedy-deletable, and that is not a desirable outcome. If we could identify templates which "have been unused for more than 30 days" that would be much more useful, but as far as I know that is not possible. Even then, your proposal would run afoul of the usual problem with templates - templates which are designed to be substituted rather than transcluded should not be deleted based on link count. Overall this criterion is designed to solve an infrequent problem, and would produce undesirable deletions - so I don't think it's appropriate as a CSD. Thparkth (talk) 11:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose until there is consensus that "unused" is a deletion criterion at all, it is utterly inappropriate to have it as a "speedy" criterion. Thincat (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Why should they be deleted users may wish to use them in the future. As above unused is not a deletion criteria. So no need for a csd for this unless unused becomes a deletion criteria. Warburton1368 (talk) 18:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons everyone has already said. -DJSasso (talk) 18:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose MFD is fine for the purpose, and as others have said above they may be used in future, there is no hurry to delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:55, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose if MFD is cluttered with unnecessary attempts to delete things for no good reason, the solution is surely some sort of speedy keep procedure not a speedy deletion criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 20:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

  What a good suggestion! I wish I had thought of that. Thincat (talk) 21:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:MFD is one venue where WP:NOHARM can be a valid argument. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:52, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose as instruction creep and completely unnecessary. If a userbox is unused, check to make sure it's been added to the correct listing of userboxes. It may just be that no one other than the creator is aware of it. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:32, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear that there won't be consensus to add this to CSD. Most of the arguments made above however belong to the current MFD discussions and especially to the MFD talk page discussion Surturz cites in his proposal. Although I commented on that talk page and proposed to close those current discussions procedurally, I do not think it would be canvassing to ask all who expressed interest in how such pages should be handled to head over to the discussion at WT:MFD instead, since the discussion is misplaced here. Regards SoWhy 06:59, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: I support the deletion of unused userboxes, but they shouldn't be speedily deleted because that doesn't give anyone a chance to start using them. If they go to MfD, and the creator is notified, the creator, everyone watching the userbox page, and everyone looking at MfD have seven days to decide whether they want to use it or not. If anyone uses it, the "unused userbox" nomination doesn't apply, and the discussion should be immediately closed. Dynamic|cimanyD contact me ⁞ my edits 14:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm one of only 4 Wikipedians using {{user off-island suburbs}}, and the other three are very occasional editors. It is somewhat likely that so few people might simultaneously get rid of this userbox by moving across the bridge, and if that happens then the speedied userbox will be made unavailable to anyone else who wants it. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 05:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

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

T3 ?

How long has T3 been written as though limited to duplicates? It used to be unused templates, including duplicates. As currently written, orphaned and unused templates must go through Prod or Tfd. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 21:26, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, since it was proposed in late December 2007. The wording was tightened a bit in early January 2008 (see same discussion link) and has been stable ever since. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Namespace to mainspace

There is criteria for deletion of redirects from articles to namespace areas. Why is there not any criteria for the other way round (other than perhaps maintenance)? Simply south...... creating lakes for 5 years 18:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

When users are in article space, they expect to see... articles. Therefore a redirect from an article title to something that is not in article space is always wrong. The reverse is not always true. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Up to thirty days grace for G10s

There is some interesting discussion going on at mediawiki New Page Patrol Zoom Interface about possible changes to the Newpage patrol process. I suspect the proposal to shift the emphasis of patrolling from the front of the queue to the back will be of particular interest to viewers of this page. ϢereSpielChequers 21:32, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully even if they do manage to move NPP to the end of the queue, most Vandalism and Attack pages will still be picked up and promptly dealt with by those patrolling recent changes for vandalism, thought I guess this will cause more to slip through. Monty₈₄₅ 22:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps unusually for experienced NPPers, I tend to work the front, partly because there's usually more to do but also to compensate for the children who don't know what the hell they're doing. With that whole exercise, the WMF people are demonstrating their inability to recognize where they're in over their heads and other people know what they're doing better than them. I've rather clearly expressed why that is in a couple locations, but they don't seem to want to listen. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:16, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Judging by my experience as an NP patroller, I can say that the vast majority of speedable articles are found at the front end of the queue, and even going only two hours back I usually find that at least 90% of speedable articles have already been dealt with before I saw them. When I work the back of the log, my prod-to-speedy ratio increases tenfold. In fact, sometimes I can do a whole page of backlog patrol without tagging a single article, whereas in front-end patrol that only happens when Dr. Blofeld (talk · contribs) is mass-producing his geo stubs. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 02:10, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I completely concur with Blade. I've just done what has become for me a rare stint at NPP from the front o the queue. Of about 20 articles checked, I probably summarily deleted 5 without further ado, tagged another 5 or so for other admins to delete, warned about 5 NPPers (that's 25% of my patrolled pages by the way) about using the wrong criteria, PRODed another 5 or so, sent a couple of declined PRODs to AfD, and could not pass one single new page as fit for use. Steve Walling (WMF) has suggested we do a video record of our patrolling - is that because they don't trust the stats we've been providing them with for a year? Or is it because they want to take the credit for coming up with an alternative solution to what was proposed at WP:ACTRIAL ? The proposed mediawiki New Page Patrol Zoom Interface won't necessarily bring about any changes to the Newpage patrol process, because such a tool can only be as good as the workers who use it, and the prospect of allowing G10 to slumber for 30 days waiting for attention sounds not only ludicrous, but positively dangerous. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:49, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

You can direct Steve Walling to User:Blanchardb/CSD statistics. It's been a while since I stopped compiling such data, but not much has changed since then. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 03:58, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Nice table Blanch. Must have taken ages to complete it manually. I've often thought of doing something similar, but I cannot figure out what Twinkle does to our patrol logs these days - if it's even working properly at all. I certainly don't have the time, inclination, or energy to provide a screencast for people as rude, dismissive, and patronising as the the current WMF team working on this Zoom project. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The usual reason for working at the back end, is to deal with the difficult ones. Not that they usually need speedy, but they need the judgment of someone experienced to figure out what to do with them. (I've just checked 10, and though only a few need deletion, most need something.) But there's reasons for patrolling from the front also: one has been given: you get more action. But another is that at least half of the otherwise routine speedies deserve the attention and assistance on the user talk page that an experienced editor is better able to give, not the use of the standard templates, which is generally all that beginners are abler to manage. I'm aware this could be an argument for the most experienced users doing everything--in which case nobody new could get practice and develop their skills, and it's necessary for people to develop skill in this to become admins & other experienced people, just the same as the need developing the skills of new editors. In practice, what I think we with some experience need to do is to take a hand at various portions occasionally, to keep in touch with the raw input, just as all experienced people also need to write the occasional article DGG ( talk ) 01:15, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

"...Click here to contest this speedy deletion which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag..."

This page says:

"A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the button that looks like this: Click here to contest this speedy deletion which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag."

I cannot find that button anywhere on 3D printing, Talk:3D printing, or File:MakerBot ThingOMatic Bre Pettis.jpg. Am I missing something or is the documentation out of date?

(I want to contest the speedy deletion; everything MakerBot does is open source - GPL or CC. I am confident that I will be able to obtain explicit permission, but I may need more time.) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

That's because the page hasn't been proposed for speedy deletion (not yet, anyway, it will be on 2 October 2011). That button is just a more user-friendly way of posting on the talk page, which I see you've already done. Hut 8.5 15:23, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah. In that case, the bot that posted to Talk:3D printing probably should not say "An image used in this article ... has been nominated for speedy deletion." --Guy Macon (talk) 16:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggested automated behavior

• Geely GE (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Take a look at the history on this article.

• 2011-06-19T09:33:07 Nominated for speedy deletion under A1 by Island Monkey (talk · contribs). [2]
• 2011-06-19T12:24:47 Speedy deletion declined by me [3]
• 2011-09-19T02:08:33 Nominated for speedy deletion under A1 (again) by Androids101 (talk · contribs) [4]
• 2011-09-19T06:06:54 Speedy deletion declined by Vejvančický (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) [5]

Doubtlessly, Android101 was not maliciously re-nominating. In three months, he or she simply forgot to check the article history for previous nominations.

Question: Should SDPatrolBot (talk · contribs) have automatically declined the second nomination? Given that I had previously declined the CSD nomination, the bot could know that there is at least one revision in the history that does not fit CSD criteria, which necessarily precludes speedy deletion: even if the current revision is speedyable, previous revisions are not, and so reverting is better than deleting.

Thoughts? causa sui (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that this sort of thing happens frequently enough that a bot is really needed. If a bot were to be made, it would need to try to identify socks from legitimate editors, as new editors have been known to sock to get around the current page creator revert functionality. It should also only apply to the declined CSD criteria, if someone tags the article under a CSD criteria that has not yet been rejected, the bot should let them. Monty₈₄₅ 14:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

  Thanks for the feedback. Since CSD moves so fast (it has to), it's hard to say how much it happens without doing research. I'd like to see that research but until then we have only guesswork. My thinking is that the easiest way to find out would be to program the bot to do it. :o)

  To the second point, this was discussed previously and I'm not sure it makes sense. When I look at a tagged article, and I think the tag doesn't apply but another one does, I speedy the article under the rationale that I think fits best: I won't procedurally decline a CSD like a grumpy schoolmaster saying "Try again, and multiplication tables five times." What that means is that if I declined a CSD tag, it's because I think the article is not speedyable at all, and so I'm effectively saying that speedy deletion of the article is controversial forever and future nominations should be sent to AFD or else reverted back to the revision where I declined to speedy it. causa sui (talk) 15:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• That's not always the case. Suppose an article on a company is tagged under G11, which is declined. Three months later someone notices that the article is copied from the company website and tags it for speedy deletion under G12. In this case the re-tag is entirely valid and the article should be deleted. If anyone did write a bot to do this then many speedy deletion criteria would have to be exempt (G6, G7, G8, G12 and possibly G4, G5, A5, A10). Hut 8.5 15:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• It would be possible if the bot didn't decline but simply flagged, e.g. a template saying something like: "Note to reviewing admin: A speedy deletion nomination under criterion X was previously declined. [link to nominated revision], [link to declining revision]". Thryduulf (talk) 10:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Not that we should have to but if everyone used {{Oldcsd}} the bad ones of these, retagging under the same criterion, would come up less often (though I have not seen it a lot).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Thryduulf's suggestion a lot. Would this really cause any harm? causa sui (talk) 19:55, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposal for speedy deletion criteria for products

I have been finding quite a number of articles on WP about products and have I have been putting many of them up for deletion. The PRODs and AfDs sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion. Given the large numbers of product articles scattered throughout WP the energy, the inclination, and time needed to assess these articles it would be preferable to have a speedy deletion criteria for products. This has been discussed here before but in my opinion the arguments against such a proposal have been largely unsatisfactory.

Another reason to speedily delete product articles is because WP is an encyclopaedia rather than a product catalogue or listing of a company's products. Also, the number of cheap, common, commodity products with a short useful life, is huge, so in order to add, maintain and assess such a vast list would be very difficult. There is also the chance of SPAM by stealth occurring by unscrupulous editors adding articles that appear to be NPOV at face value but their existence on WP is in reality a promotion for the product.

Having large numbers of articles about products is completely outside the bounds of what a reader would expect in an encyclopaedia. Even though WP is not paper is it also not a complete exposition of all information. There is no prescriptive notability guideline for products but WP:PRODUCT suggests deletion or merging for less notable product articles. In AfD's editors have sometimes been using the argument that if a reference exists then that is sufficient justification for an article. It is generally easy to find references for products since they are often reviewed in newspapers and the trade press.

I would like to propose that, as well as individuals, animals, organizations, and web content, the A7 criteria should include products (with the exception of books). Criteria A7 works well since there is a clear-cut case can be made for deletion or retention. There is no reason to suggest that this will not work for products. Where it is not a clear-cut case the speedy deletion request is easily rejected by the admins. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Some recent discussions

• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_37#Proposal:_Let_products_fit_into_A7
• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_39#Minor_edit_-_A7_.28products.29_and_F5_.28nonfree_imagery_in_deleted_articles.29
• Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_39#Products

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Discussion

• I'm afraid that potentially notable products will be deleted as a result of this. Intuitively, when you write about a person, you say why they are important. If someone has written an article about a person that does not indicate in anyway why that person is important, it is extremely likely they are neither important nor notable. With a product it is different; if I were to write about a product without specific knowledge of Wikipedia policies, I would write what the product does, and maybe who makes it. But it is very possible that in writing what a product does, I may fail to say why a product is important. To the extent that there is an overload of useless products, it is largely things like social networking websites, or software available from app stores, both of which are already subject to A7 as being web content. To the extent that a product is sold through conventional distribution channels, I don't think speedy deletion is going to be a good fit. Monty₈₄₅ 14:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with speedily deleting "potentially notable products". Notable products on the other hand will not be tagged for speedy deletion and if they are the admin will decline it. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

A potentially notable product should be deleted only after a deletion discussion, just like a potentially notable person. That is why a mere claim of importance is enough to save an article about a person from deletion under A7, however as mentioned above, potentially notable products are much less likely to include such a claim as an article about a potentially notable person. Monty₈₄₅ 15:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• I think you yourself have given us the best reasons to oppose this proposal. Not only did you kindly provide links to previous discussions, all filled with tons of good arguments as to why this is a bad idea, but also your proposal itself says so. Let's see, shall we?
  1. "The PRODs and AfDs sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion."
     To put it another way: AFD and PROD are not always clear in handling those articles and there is indeed a genuine need to discuss some of those articles throughly. A speedy criterion would not be able to determine when such discussion is required and when it isn't, so discussion should not be bypassed. Again, although it seems to be less clear to some editors, PROD is already a mechanism to handle articles where the question whether discussion is required is unclear, so it's exactly the right tool for these articles.
  2. "Given the large numbers of product articles scattered throughout WP the energy, the inclination, and time needed to assess these articles it would be preferable to have a speedy deletion criteria for products"
     Non-argument. What you are saying is basically "We don't have the manpower to handle them, so let's just nuke them instead". By the same logic we would have to delete more and more articles randomly each year as the number of editors dwindles - a state in part caused because many are disillusioned after their articles are speedy-deleted.
  3. "This has been discussed here before but in my opinion the arguments against such a proposal have been largely unsatisfactory"
     You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion alone is irrelevant for this decision. The only thing relevant are arguments.
  4. "because WP is an encyclopaedia rather than a product catalogue or listing of a company's products"
     That non-argument would also apply to iPod, Windows, Coca-Cola etc. Just because products are included does not make Wikipedia a product catalogue. If the products are subjects for an encyclopedia and handled like such subjects, they should not be treated any differently than others.
  5. "the number of cheap, common, commodity products with a short useful life, is huge, so in order to add, maintain and assess such a vast list would be very difficult"
     See above (#3), just the same non-argument in different words
  6. "There is also the chance of SPAM by stealth occurring by unscrupulous editors adding articles that appear to be NPOV at face value but their existence on WP is in reality a promotion for the product."
     See above (#3). That risk exists for any article we have but it's not a reason to delete anything. If such an article is brought to AFD, it would be kept but rewritten. Speedy should never ever delete anything that would be kept at AFD.
  7. "Having large numbers of articles about products is completely outside the bounds of what a reader would expect in an encyclopaedia"
     Again, you are entitled to your personal opinion and I often valued it but in this case, it's irrelevant. What readers expect is up to the reader to decide, not you or me or anyone else. If it meets the rules, it stays and the reader may decide whether they want to read such an article or not. Also, that's a non-argument to nuke all product articles, so it's really irrelevant when discussing a speedy criterion to handle certain products only.
  8. "it also not a complete exposition of all information"
     I'm afraid that's a straw man. No one argued that it was and we have rules that clearly say what Wikipedia is for and what it's not.
  9. "There is no prescriptive notability guideline for products but WP:PRODUCT suggests deletion or merging for less notable product articles" (emphasis added)
     The first part is another straw man, since a.) A7 is not about notability and b.) the notability guideline for products is Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) and Wikipedia:Notability. The second part is a perfect example as to why the proposal is flawed: Since merging is often the preferred option, there should be no policy to delete such articles instead (that's why schools are exempt from A7 for example).
  10. "In AfD's editors have sometimes been using the argument that if a reference exists then that is sufficient justification for an article. It is generally easy to find references for products since they are often reviewed in newspapers and the trade press."
      It certainly is an argument as to why an A7 criterion for products would mostly fail - since coverage in reliable sources is almost always an indication of importance or significance.

Regards SoWhy 15:02, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) You pretty much ruled these out for speedy deletion with your comment "sometimes result in clear cut deletion and sometimes a protracted discussion". Speedy deletion is for easily definable groups of articles that always result in clear deletion decisions at AFD. Also when it comes to products we need to think of our readers, and not just the current ones but also the 4th millennia archaeologists consulting us to try and identify what they find in our landfills. ϢereSpielChequers 15:15, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Look up to the top of this page where the standards for new criteria are listed: "it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. " Beeblebrox (talk) 19:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I am confused. What have I ruled out? What I am proposing is to avoid the wasted time in the clear cut AfDs that result in deletion. And it is the readers that I am thinking of both now and in the future. They are surely interested in the more notable products. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• While I think that with a limited scope, we could address most if not all of SoWhy's valid concerns, past proposals (see User:Fiftytwo thirty/Denied CSD Proposals) have shown time and again that a criterion for products is not going to happen. Some of the proposals I have listed at my user subpage have been to include products under A9, which would narrow the scope and address the fact that most unimportant products are merged. Remember also that "products" can have large scope, and for my purposes is restricted to non-creative products (Books, films, video games, ect. are exempt; software is not). I personally think that there is a valid need for this criterion, which would help to eliminate uncontested product deletions from babysitting at PROD and snow deletes at AFD. Likewise, I think it is a common occurrence in the New Page queue, more common than the current scope of A9. While I think an A9 extension is sensible, I just don't think consensus will be in is favor. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 20:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

No-one disputes that many product articles legitimately get deleted. The difficulty is coming up with a speedy deletion criteria that clearly and simply differentiates the ones that will close as near unanimous delete in 7 days time from the keeps, merges, redirects and closecalls. "I've looked into my crystal ball and seen the AFD close as clear delete next week" is perfect, but we can only implement that when we've issued crystal balls of acceptable reliability to our patrollers. Until they arrive, we can only implement this if someone comes up with a clear and simple test that predicts a group of articles that stand no chance at AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 21:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The test would be the same as all the other A7 categories, It states, in bold text "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant.". -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately that test wouldn't work for products because as was explained above, a non spammy article about a product is less likely to start with why that product is important or significant than an article about a person. ϢereSpielChequers 06:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

@Alan, I don't support A7 deletions of products. It just doesn't make sense based on how we treat them. @WSC, yes, due to budget cuts, we cannot give each NPPer a crystal ball! In terms of this whole proposal, the issue for new pages and deletion is not the buttons we have to push but the people pushing those buttons. --Fiftytwo thirty (talk) 00:00, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Consensus is only a snapshot of a point in time. Given that it has been a perennial proposal is it the case that those watching this page are of a conservative disposition with respect to WP policy? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Perennial proposals are alternatives that the community has rejected many times and for consistent reasons. If those rejecting a proposal do so simply because it is a change and it is either a new idea or an idea that has previously been rejected then it might be reasonable to describe the regulars of a page as being conservative as regards that policy, and I can think of a page where that does apply. However this page is pretty much the opposite of that, proposals get considered and people explain why they disagree with them. Occasionally some idea comes up where we can get consensus for change and that change happens. Most of the proposals that come here are from deletionists looking to make it easier to delete articles that they can't get deleted at AFD. As that is obviously out of scope for this page they sometimes get frustrated. ϢereSpielChequers 06:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• I had pre-empted opposition to my proposal. See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2011-September/109417.html titled "Difficulty making structural changes to WP due to human nature?". -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:45, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

While I have some sympathy for your position (it would make some sense to apply similar criteria to products as companies, albeit with significant changes), I think you're going about this all wrong. That doesn't pre-empt opposition to your proposal, but instead applies a negative characteristic to people you disagree with while offering absolutely no evidence to support it. It also refers to changes to policy "however minor", but this would be a fundamental shift from previous policy so doesn't fit that description. And this is disingenuous in the extreme. Have you considered the possibility that your proposed changes to policy aren't being adopted because they're too radical to be useful? You do seem to have a worryingly high rate of incorrect CSD taggings. Alzarian16 (talk) 20:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd seen that posting but thought you were discussing a different area of policy making. To answer your query "Or am I trying to satisfy the readers of WP rather than editors" readers who search for an article and find it has been deleted are rarely well served by its deletion. So no a proposal to make it easier for deletionists is a disservice to our readers. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

• I wholly support Alan's suggestion - even though it's a perennial discussion, consensus can change; there are just too many spam articles now for products, services, and web biz. However, I would guard against introducing any new CSD criteria until we have either found a way to educate the children who do most of the NPP, or made NPP into a user right for experienced users, or finally convinced the WMF to allow WP:ACTRIAL that was adopted by a heavily subscribed consensus. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

But how would you write a speedy criteria that differentiated between such articles that needed deletion and those we want on the pedia? Yes many articles on products get deleted, the difficult task is to write a clear simple guideline that newpatrollers can be expected to follow. Alternatively we need to change the rules - hence my suggestion elsewhere of a sticky BizProd. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

A7--proposed clarification.

I'd like to change A7 to make it so that if a topic has a source that reasonably could be considered to meet WP:N it isn't an A7 candidate. I think I've proposed this before, but my sense is that A7 isn't supposed to be used as a way around WP:N. That is, if an article has sourcing that likely qualifies under WP:N it really shouldn't be deleted as an A7. There seems to be some debate about this at a few recent DRVs. Proposed language is in bold:

...even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines, though a source that does qualify under that guideline is an assertion of importance.

Though I'm open to better/other language. Thoughts? Hobit (talk) 15:36, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

We already try to make that clear by saying that A7 "is a lower standard than notability", but apparently that text ought to be made more prominent. I'm not fond of your proposed wording, as it's a bit clunky and slightly confusing. I'd rather we add another sentence after that one, reading something like:

This criterion does not apply to any article which provides a reliable source written primarily about its subject.

Perhaps with a note attached explaining why. In addition, we might want to bold some part of A7 being a lower standard than notability. Cheers. lifebaka++ 18:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I like Lifebaka's proposal, and maybe the attached note can be a footnote. I don't like saying that including the source is itself an "assertion of importance", that "assertion clause" is already confusing enough to most people without muddying it up any further. -- Atama頭 18:52, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I support the principle and Lifebaka's wording is better than Hobit's, but I'm not certain about requiring the source to be "primarily about" it's subject. For example if the subject is an artist and the source is a book that devotes a chapter to the artist then that's almost always going to be enough to pass the A7 hurdle; however if the book has chapters on a dozen other artists too then it's not "primarily about" the article subject. So I think a better phrasing would be:

This criterion does not apply to any article which provides a reliable source containing significant coverage about its subject.

Although I don't think that is perfect yet. Thryduulf (talk) 19:31, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

For the record, I agree both proposed phrasings are better than mine and prefer Thryduulf's. Also, I think A7 is getting long enough breaking this (and maybe some other stuff) into a footnote would be wise. I found parsing A7 to be hard as written and a footnote is a good solution IMO. Hobit (talk) 19:35, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I have supported this in the past, and for reasons unknown, there has been substantial opposition. Anyway, support again.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I would just say, "If there is any way that the article could be construed as notable, by anyone, anywhere, ever, then it is also not eligible for A7", but the above proposals are also acceptable. Monty₈₄₅ 23:26, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to make suggestion that make the addition unwieldy in length, but don't we need to indicate that were talking about independent, third-party sources? (this could be added as a footnote right after the word source).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:59, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we need a standard, one-word description of such sources ("suitable"?, "qualifying"?) that is linked to a footnote that explains that by this we mean reliable, independent, third party sources with the usual definitions. My concern, including with the wording I suggested yesterday, is that CSD patrollers shouldn't be determining the reliability or independence of sources as such is not always straightforward (cf WP:RSN). Thryduulf (talk) 09:06, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of the exact formatting and wording of this phrase, Hobit's idea is great. A7 deletion of articles like this is plainly not in the spirit of the criterion, so we should update the wording to ensure that it's not in the letter of the law either. Nyttend (talk) 11:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

yes, the idea is good but the wording will take some adjustment. I think we should take some time to consider possibilities. The proposed "a reliable source containing significant coverage about its subject." is not right because that RS could provide significant information about something not pertaining to any conceivable notability. As the moment I'm thinking about the language I sometimes use in trying to explain a valid speedy to the contributor: "any indication or claim or source that would let a reasonable person think the subject might be suitable for an encyclopedia" DGG ( talk ) 03:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I think that statement works better if you replace "suitable for an encyclopedia" with "important". Suitability for an encyclopedia is far to open to interpretation. Monty₈₄₅ 20:10, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I believe that "If there is any way that the article could be construed as notable, by anyone, anywhere, ever, then it is also not eligible for A7" would practically negate A7 as a CSD criterion, and would open up the floodgates to AfD. I don't think we should risk reducing the role that A7 plays in protecting the encyclopedia against unwanted pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:43, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I think that Hobit's presence of a reliable source is an excellent idea, OK there are a trickle of genealogical records which would go to prod or AFD as a result of this but most real A7s are "sourced" from Myspace or Facebook if they link to anything. I agree the anyone anywhere thinks its notable test is too broad, even if we exclude the author from the "anyone" bit. ϢereSpielChequers 10:46, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kudpong, but that was not my formulation: mine was "that would let a reasonable person think the subject might be suitable for an encyclopedia"; I think that with such a formulation I would be able to remove somewhat more totally unsuitable articles with A7 than at present. a more difficult problem with my wording is that it might be too subjective, and might be used for deletion too too broadly.

With respect to relying on a source, "substantial coverage" is too flexible an option also. Most divided AfD debates where notability is the issue focus of the meaning of that phrase. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

My failed RFA last year focused on my interpretation of criterion A7, so indeed a clarification of "assertion of importance" vs. "notability" is in order. I still use the term "notability" in my edit summary when tagging for A7, but that's to point out to the creator that borderline A7 cases might still fail at AfD even after clarification. However, I agree that the criterion should be worded as to state that an article should be speedied under A7 only if it gives the reader no reason to believe could ever develop into something that could pass other deletion processes, that is, no reason to bother looking for reliable coverage. With regard to individual people, the line in the sand is usually clear, but with regard to bands, that could be trickier: articles often claim that the band won a prize a concert (an assertion of importance if stated in vague terms like this), but when the creator is asked to elaborate, we are treated with the fact the concert in question was their high school's Battle of the Bands. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 17:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

But that is the problem, without a chance to ask questions, we cannot tell whether a claim about receiving an award is really indicative of notability. Speedy deletion criteria are for cases where there is really nothing to discuss. I was being hyperbolic with my previous "anyway" statement, but it really comes down to whether a good faith editor thinks the claim being made could have resulted in the person being notable. Not necessarily that they are in fact notable, as the media can be fickle about what it does and does not cover, just that the claim is of the nature that it may have caused someone to write a newspaper article about the subject, or to have discussed it in a book etc. Monty₈₄₅ 20:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

New criterion - WP:NOT

It's fairly clear that whenever something falls under WP:NOT, the content will get deleted. Procedurally, we have a few possible options at the moment for dealing with articles that are not acceptable for Wikipedia- rewriting the article, making it into a redirect, or deleting it. These are exactly the same options that are available to anything that falls under WP:CSD, except for that last part. Instead of simply tagging an article that is not acceptable for Wikipedia for speedy deletion, we're forced to undergo a lengthy deletion process that involves PRODing it, having that PROD removed, and taking it to AfD where it endures a week of pointless discussion when we all know that it'll get deleted in the end. Sometimes I see editors try to squeeze by WP:NOT articles under G2, G1 or A1 when it's obviously not the case. Sometimes the articles get deleted under a valid CSD, like G11 or A7, but there are still many cases where those don't cover articles that should be deleted without question. It's pointless bureaucracy to force Wikipedians to waste their time on a full deletion discussion when an article should be immediately deleted. That is why i propose making the criteria under WP:NOT a criterion for speedy deletion. Please see below for the two specific proposals of A11 & A12.--Slon02 (talk) 19:43, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

For reference, a recent discussion about a similar proposal is at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 42#Create a new CSD - G:13 Unsalvageable WP:NOT Violations. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:59, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Based on that discussion, I've looked through the WP:NOT parts more individually. WP:NOT#ESSAY mostly falls under G11, as does WP:SOAP. WP:NOTLINK is related to A3. WP:CRYSTAL is often an A7. However, I still believe that WP:NOT#DICT and WP:NOTGUIDE frequently appear and have to go through the PROD/AfD process without any solid reason other than it being current policy. Naturally we'd need to make sure that the wording would only make the article apply to the cases where it would uncontroversially be deleted, just like our current CSD do. (ex. "Pages that are exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic.") That wording would eliminate the potential for abuse to the same extent that existing criteria can be abused, which I'd say is fairly low. --Slon02 (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

To be more specific, I'd like to start by proposing the following:
A11: Dictionary entries Articles that consist only of dictionary definitions of a word, idiom or term with no encyclopedic content. This excludes any articles that could be rewritten to become encyclopedic.

A12: Guides Articles that consist solely of instructions, advice, suggestions or recipes that would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic. --Slon02 (talk) 20:30, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed time and time again and every time it has correctly been rejected. Have you read the last discussions on this topic, like [6], [7], [8], [9] etc.? I honestly fail to see how those two proposals meet the four criteria at the top of this page any more than the previous proposals did... Regards SoWhy 21:16, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Of course I read those discussions. As for the four criteria at the top, it meets everyone one. I think that my proposals are specific enough to meet #1, although someone might suggest that they could be tighter. Seeing as those articles are not meant for Wikipedia per WP:NOT, and I specifically mentioned in the proposal that they either could not be rewritten (A11) or would need to be fundamentally rewritten (A12, same as G11 in wording), it meets #2. The frequency with which this discussion pops up is enough to show that #3 is fulfilled. #4 is fulfilled because I cited off the current parts of WP:NOT that are currently more or less covered by existing speey deletion criteria, leaving only these parts that are not. --Slon02 (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

As for A11, any criterion that uses "encyclopedic" in it is by definition too lose to be a speedy deletion criterion. We have 846 admins and that means that we have 846 different opinions as to what constitutes "encyclopedic" content and what does not. So your proposed A11 fails #1 because there is no clear definition of "encyclopedic". As for A12, the line between instructions and covering a subject is a fine line indeed and often content can be both instructing and covering a subject. Leaving this to the judgment of administrators poses the risk of articles being treated differently based on the reviewing administrator's familiarity with the subject, their language skills, their definition of "instructing" etc. Again, that's imho not "objective". As for #3, just claiming that it's frequent is not sufficient. I would very much like to see some actual statistics about how often those appear in PROD / at AFD. For example, I cannot find a single article in today's AFD log that was nominated for being a dictionary definition or a instructions-only article. Unless there are some statistics proving that it's really frequent, I think we should assume that PROD/AFD can handle it. Regards SoWhy 21:51, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I just did a little searching to find some data. Out of 75 current PRODs (picked randomly), 2 were for WP:NOT#DICDEF, 2 were for WP:NEO and 1 was for WP:GUIDE. That's almost 7% of all current PRODs, which is significant given that I'd say about 80% deal with notability. I also looked through all AfDs from June 16-22. A total of 282 articles were deleted- for WP:NOT#DICDEF, 1 for WP:NOTGUIDE, 2 for WP:NEO and 3 for both WP:NEO and WP:NOT#DICDEF. That's 3% of all articles deleted at AfD at that time, and I think that it's quite significant. The AfD articles that I found were Quintain(5lines), Blogma, Chunav, Ping-ponging, Portioned learning, Lol@souffs, Tompion (bear hibernation), Bought in, Year of entrance exam- all with a clear consensus to delete. --Slon02 (talk) 00:28, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the numbers, but I think we have different definitions of significant or frequent. Because speedy deletion for articles is mainly a way to deal with reducing the load to the regular deletion processes, I think sacrificing the ability for the community to decide what to do requires a much higher load than 3-7%, especially since PRODs are not really a "load" on the process. If we are to sacrifice community consensus for efficiency, it should only be in cases where the reduction of AfDs would be something like 30%, 40%, not 3%. On a side note, not really pertaining to the discussion at hand, am I the only one wondering why proposals to allow admins to have more rights to bypass community discussions are mostly made by non-admins and it's mostly admins who argue against them? One would think that it would be in the interest of non-admins to strengthen community decision making, not weaken it. Regards SoWhy 10:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

It looks like we do. However, that 3-7% (which, in another sample, I found to be 4%), ends up being one of the most common AfD rationales. It looks like my guess of 80% of AfD's being about notability was confirmed- my sample had 81%. The second most frequent was original research, with 7%, and WP:DICT was third with 4%. Granted, it wasn't a very large sample size, but it still shows the overall pattern. It's not possible to get something like 30 or 40% because notability is such a common argument there, and with due reason. However, almost everything proposed at AfD that does deal with WP:DICT ends up being deleted without opposition. Since people don't oppose those deletions, and since it's obvious from the start that such "articles" would be deleted at some point anyway, dragging them to AfD really just smells of SNOW. --Slon02 (talk) 14:41, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say so but your argument is flawed. Arguing that almost all such articles will be deleted is for criterion #2 but it is not proof that it's frequent enough for #3. After all, we already have a process that deals with stuff that almost certainly would be deleted at AFD - it's called proposed deletion. It says so in the very first sentence of that policy. You need to make an argument why AFD and PROD cannot handle it, not why AFD should not have to handle it. Regards SoWhy 15:13, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Criterion #3 fails to define how frequent something has to be. It specifically uses the words "If a situation arises only rarely". Facts show that it doesn't arise rarely- it arises once or twice every day. That doesn't mean that it comes up rarely- it means that it comes up frequently, especially when compared to other reasons for why articles are deleted. This type of article, in its most obvious form, ends up going to AfD often, yet it never needs to be treated on a case-by-case basis because everyone knows that it has to be deleted. It follows the same reasoning as G11- the pure and obvious forms of advertising are speedy deleted, the unclear ones are sent to PROD/AfD. The same reasoning can apply to dictionary definitions- if it's purely and obviously a definition and not an article, then it can safely be speedy deleted without it having to waste everyone's time at AfD. Also, your last sentence is contradicted by these words- "speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion." Adding this as a speedy deletion criteria will reduce the load, which is what speedy deletion is meant to do. --Slon02 (talk) 22:49, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

You are free to disagree, unfortunately that does not change the facts. G11 was created because PROD/XFD couldn't handle the amount of spam-pages created day-by-day, not because such pages are regularly deleted anyway. You persist on arguing based on AFD, when I already pointed out to you that WP:PROD was created exactly to not "to waste everyone's time at AfD", so all those arguments based on the potential outcome of an AfD for those articles are irrelevant. No one - except the straw man you created - argued that those articles should be handled at AfD. As for frequency: Once a day is not frequent - three dozen times a day is frequent. It's sad that we have to discuss the meaning of English words here when no one in the real world would ever think that something that happens 3% of the time is frequent. The same applies to your argument about the "load": If you look up the definition of load, it will usually be something like "a burden; a weight that slows you down; etc.". 3% of articles that are deleted after 7 days of PRODing (which usually does not create any more work than speedy tagging!) is not a burden for the processes. If you persist on arguing based on "load", you really need to explain why the load cannot be borne by PROD or AFD. I don't think one can validly argue that the sentence you cite was ever meant to mean anything else than reducing a burden that cannot be borne anymore. After all, despite common misconceptions, speedy deletion is not a normal deletion process - it's an exception that removes the ability of the community to decide the fate of an article. Since consensus is the project's "fundamental model for editorial decision-making", it should not be curtailed without a very good reason. And "I wouldn't have to wait 7 days for a PROD to expire" does not sound like a very good reason to me. Regards SoWhy 07:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

An article failing WP:NOT can often be fixed or content moved to remove the issue. Not appropriate. --MASEM (t) 21:20, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

I had already limited the proposal to just two parts, and I believe that the wording should eliminate any possibilities where the articles could be fixed. --Slon02 (talk) 21:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

This is a great idea, and I think we need a proposed wording to refine this debate to where the criterium could be instituted or rejected. i kan reed (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

It shouldn't be about what "wikipedia is not" but about articles that aren't articles

I think we're looking at this backwards. WP:NOT is about what "wikipedia" is not. A lot of articles that definitely are "articles" (ie they're "wikified", written from a NPOV etc) are taken to AFD for failing one of the "nots". Pages in mainspace such as resumes, how-to guides, adcopy, and most essays aren't "articles" but right now the only one of these that's CSDable is "adcopy" (G11). I might support a CSD criteria, under the same logic we use to justify G11, for other kinds of pages that would need a "fundamental rewrite" to be articles and by "fundamental" I mean you would all but have to blank the page and start from scratch to make it an article. Yes they can be PRODed but the flaw here is that if the creator goes to WP:REFUND and asks for it back we technically have to restore it in all its brokenness. If it's speedied we can tell him to read WP:FIRST and try again.

However, one problem with this is that we may see a slew of BITEey applications of {{db-notanarticle}} to incomplete first drafts so it should only apply to "non-articles" that are in a complete or semi-complete state. I expect this idea to be opposed for all the reasons given in all the previous discussions pointed to above but it is something to think about. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 22:36, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

You..you're a genius! I think that this an amazing idea. The issue with BITEy applications of it already exists as a possibility with hasty tagging of A1/A3. That's also BITEy, yet not a lot of people do it. Some people not well familiar with policy do, but those cases aren't very frequent and those people are usually quickly corrected by another editor. --Slon02 (talk) 01:17, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

See my suggestion about dealing with blatant NFT pages above. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:18, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

I've seen admins delete quite a few things as "WP:NOT - IAR" within the past two days, and this is a WP:NOT#ESSAY, (which somehow got tagged as A7). --Σ ^talk_contribs 07:09, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

I am going to have to disagree with these as a speedy delete criteria, as a dictionary definition could be expanded. Almost all words in English could have an Encyclopedia article written on them, so we need a chance for them to grow. Instructions could be transwikied or converted to a suitable article with a rewrite. So that means we should give a chance for this to happen, so a prod gives this more of a chance. The aim of Wikipedia is to have more suitable articles so we should not speedy delete out of existence articles that could grow if the they a week's reprieve. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:30, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOT is a very subjective area--check out all the bus route AfD discussions currently underway. Speedy criteria are only for very concrete things, so this is simply not workable. If there are specific instances of NOT that are 1) clearcut, 2) always resolved the same way, and 3) frequent enough, individual criteria can be enhanced to cover them, but a general NOT CSD is not appropriate. Jclemens (talk) 15:16, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

What I'm thinking of is pages like Beer tac toe, Ong language, or Got curled?, which were all self-serving NFT pages (admins only; I just remember them). The wording I thought of some months ago was "Articles stating that the subject was made/invented less than a month (or 30 days, don't care which) ago and assert no notability"; that's just a rough draft, but that gets at the basic problem. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:04, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, Midd. --Σ ^talk_contribs 17:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• I think that conceptually, this is a good way of putting it. However, historically there has been a lot of opposition to adding to the list of criteria unless the new criterion is very precisely and narrowly worded. I worry that there is no way to get "CSD A12: Page that is not an article" pared down enough that concerned inclusionists (like myself) will not worry that it will be so open to interpretation that it will license the mindless summary deletion of many good pages. Jclemens, for example, noticed this problem in his comment above. Pages like Beer tac toe or I ONT O are obvious speedy candidates to anyone who finds them, but good luck figuring out a principle that captures the "why" while not being too broadly defined. Regards, causa sui (talk) 22:54, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

  I'm guessing that if G11 hadn't been pretty much handed down from the foundation, it'd have been very difficult to pass through, because it's frequently a judgment call. That's what any criterion about NFT pages would have to be; I don't think that's A Bad Thing, but I definitely understand the desire to keep it narrow for the reasons described above. I'll try to work on some wording and see if I can make it a bit clearer. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 02:05, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

it has not been handed down by the foundation, at least not as a speedy criterion. On one hand, the general principle that Wikipedia is not for promotion or advertising is more basic than the WMF, and part of the original idea of an encyclopedia, as one of the meanings of NPOV; NPOV and promotionalism are incompatible fundamentally, The distinction is what differentiates an encyclopedia from a directory, which is not to say a directory is a poor idea either. But on the other hand, the actual rule that we speedy delete articles that are wholly promotional as contrasted to removing them by some other process is not fundamental, and is a local procedure only. I agree with Blade that it is in reality a very impractical rule, and impossible to accurately determine except in the extreme cases. The criterion of needing to be fundamentally rewritten is meaningless--with enough effort one can rewrite anything if there is potentially encyclopedic content to be had, and there is a continuum from mere copy editing to fundamental rewriting. It's entirely a matter of effort and judgment. I delete about half my speedies on G11, often in conjunction with A7, so I can make the dual argument. To be honest with myself, many of them are judgement calls, obvious enough to satisfy me as hopeless, not necessarily blindingly obvious. In fact hopeless' is the way I personally think of the criterion. I wouldn't enshrine that word, though, as it's even more subjective than the present wording. The only way to get perspective is to look at New Pages, and I do that every few days to reassure myself that there is a n essential purpose behind what I am doing, that somewhere around one-forth of the material submitted just has to go. That I must use such wording, implies both the subjectivity--but also the general agreement of almost everyone here.

in practice, seeing what a minority of admins insist upon deleting even though it fits no criterion, I would not broaden the criteria. WhatI'd wish instead is that we had some way of automatically requiring the judgment of two admins each time without it being an undue burden. The backlogs recently have been very small, so maybe this is a possibility. DGG ( talk ) 03:59, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

"Hopeless" is the word I'd choose to summarize the theme of our criteria. Speedy deletion is meant to remove pages that are so obviously inappropriate for Wikipedia that they have no chance of surviving a deletion discussion. "Maybe there are sources to support notability or maybe there aren't, but I'm too lazy to find out, and this little stub only says positive things about the subject, so I'll call that 'promotional'" is not a CSD candidate. If you're not >99% certain that a week-long AFD would result in hands-down deletion, then it's not a CSD candidate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Not to derail, but this is exactly the problem with the criteria for speedy deletion. Contrary to your expectations, once something meets one of the criteria, many admins feel that they are blessed by policy to delete it without considering other factors. This is a direct result of the uncharacteristically rigid, legalistic language of the policy page. Almost all of the rest of our policy pages are substantially more vague, openly inviting (and expecting) that editors use their own judgment and therefore personally take responsibility for what they're doing. That was the basis for my failed attempts (ironically, due to opposition from fellow inclusionists like DGG) to loosen up the language in the policy. Since we're not going to do that, and since many people are going to use the CSD policy more as a bought priesthood (relieving us of the burden of critical thought in hard or difficult cases through the rigid and mindless application of rules) than an electric fence, we have to be very paranoid about introducing new criteria. causa sui (talk) 17:27, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

"[G]ood luck figuring out a principle that captures the "why" while not being too broadly defined." In the past I've suggested the following criteria for articles in this vein, which I think really is narrowly tailored: An article on a thing (word, phrase, game, ceremony, philosophy, religion, etc.), which indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I think WP:NFT and WP:NEO are really the last two frontiers for speedy deletion and this covers both in a way that is fairly objective, uncontestable, seen with some frequency, and is nonredundant with any existing criterion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd fully support adding that in as A11. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:47, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

While I support the principle subject to seeing statistics demonstrating the need (frequency of occurrence, universality of such pages being deleted). I'm, not entirely comfortable with the specific word "thing" nor with the list ending with "etc". I need to think longer though before I can suggest alternatives. I absolutely could not support unless the criterion is accompanied by an explicit statement that "important or significant" is a lower standard than notability and independent of verifiability and reliability of sources (like A7) - even with this text there are too many incorrect A7 taggings. Thryduulf (talk) 16:12, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Saugie. It went through a CSD, PROD, and finally an AfD. Enough said. --Σ ^talk_contribs 16:54, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I would support a new criterion that only covered WP:MADEUP and WP:NEO. --Σ ^talk_contribs 16:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm waiting until DGG gets a whiff of a CSD for a "thing". *g* We could consider removing the pseudo-constraint that the subject has to be a "thing" and just admit that we're going to delete anything that was "made up by your friends one day". But that seems to be nothing other than an extension of A7 to every possible article topic. Is that what we want to do? causa sui (talk) 17:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

While there would be some overlap with A7, neither would be a subset of the other - A7 covers things that are not made up in one day, and things that are made up in one day are not necessarily within the topic areas covered by A7. I believe the reason for the topic restrictions on A7 is that these are the only ones where it has been shown there is a load that AfD cannot cope with. CSDs only exist for those specific areas where XfD cannot cope, XfD is not for those cases where CSD doesn't apply (there is a fundamental philosophical difference that many people don't seem to get). It is for this reason that I don't support a universal extension of A7 and why I would want an A11 to be similarly demarked (although not necessary to the same topics). Thryduulf (talk) 18:59, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I see my repeated opinion was requested above on some particulars. Neologisms need to be checked--what to one admin will seem very obvious as a neologism is not necessarily so. I have a good deal of confidence in my own accuracy of judgment, but this is is one of the sorts of things that i would never attempt to judge for myself, without a chance for a community opinion, We have enough problems with administrators deleting articles based on their personal extensions of the established categories. A good many proposed neologisms have in fact been contested, with various results; the frequent AfD debate show that this is the sort of thing that is rarely obvious, unless it descends into hoax territory. We get a fair number of made up one day articles, and most go very nicely by prod--nobody usually contests them, but there are examples where schoolchildren may think and write that they made up what turns out to be a well known children's game. As for the special class of drinking games, all I can say is I consider them matters for expert, and the expertise of the community in this particular is likely to be far wider than any one of us, however wide our relevant experience. And if someone has clearly written an article just to be a nuisance, I consider that disruptive, and we already have speedy for that.

More generally, what we need to do is try to refine and narrow more exactly the present categories. A wrongfully deleted article usually equates to a lost editor, and avoiding that is more important than the speed at which we delete any particular article. The only acceptable way to go when unsure is AfD. The community may not always be right there, but individual admins acting on their own account would do considerably worse, and after an AfD nobody can say they did not have a chance at a fair hearing. DGG ( talk ) 02:07, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

By including the requirement that the article's text actually indicate that it was made up/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally in my suggested language above, I cannot see how any of the false positives you speak of are not insulated against. This language takes pretty much all of the judgment call as to whether it an obvious neologism or thing made up one day out of the equation. I include that language purposely for that very reason. But let's not talk in the abstract. I performed this search and then looked at the text of the article that was present when taken to AfD, After looking at 30 AfDs I did not find a single one that would have even arguably met the suggested criterion, given the framed language. Can you point to any example of a neologism or NFT thing that was ever kept at AfD that could have been deleted under this criterion if it was in place? I can't even think of a hypothetical example.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 07:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

An example case

A perfect example of this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saugie. Admins can take a look at the article. The thing is either a completely crap dictionary definition or a WP:NEO. It falls so far from what we expect from a new article, and we had to bounce it around between PROD and AfD. It was finally deleted today, but if there were an "unambiguous, unsalvageable WP:NOT violation" criteria, we could have wasted a lot less time on it. There are plenty more such articles where that came from. I'd much rather spend time improving struggling articles in Special:NewPages than have to try and shove a round ball of trash into a square CSD criteria, or shuttle this kind of thing between PROD and AfD, or indeed, find admins willing to do IAR deletions. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:06, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and as the closing admin, I can personally attest that deleting irrecoverably non-notable neologisms and MADEUP things, among others, is overwhelmingly commonplace. The policy page simply needs to be updated to reflect this. Keep in mind that I'm the type of admin who typically hates to do out-of-order deletions, but because we see so many of these glaringly uncontroversial deletion candidates, and because {{prod}} is useless (it's usually removed by the article's creator soon after it's added), I simply do not hesitate on summarily deleting them after a quick google+sanity check. Taking them to AfD is simply a waste of time, because they always result in SNOW deletes. I have no idea what the people on this talk page want to phrase the new CSD(s) as, but the fact remains the policy needs to be updated to reflect the consensus that there realistically is a CSD for this type of thing already. --slakr^\ talk / 17:15, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Another piece of crap that I remember (but didn't tag, I think I saw G1 or G2 on it) was *~*. Another WP:MADEUP. I would believe that if we did make a new CSD criterion, it would have to be broken into different elements of the WP:NOT, to make it more concise and less open to interpretation. AfD and PROD are both a waste of a week. --Σ ^talk_contribs 17:32, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Son of PRA could be deleted as "Wikipedia is not a random free webhost". --Σ ^talk_contribs 18:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

You read my mind. I used "Wikipedia is not a general web host." These sorts of deletions are truly that obvious and commonplace, so there really needs to be a CSD for this so we don't have to keep falling back to WP:IAR or clogging up WP:AFD, and so that non-admins actually can use a tag other than the generic {{db}} each time to let us know. --slakr^\ talk / 18:09, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

IsisFlower Wikipedia and Randy sayrs. Surely WP:NOT is frequent enough that it needs a CSD criterion. --Σ ^talk_contribs 18:50, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOT is far too broad and vague for a criterion, that will never happen. What might happen is that some specific subsections might get criteria, and these will be judged on the frequency of that specific failing occurring. It also isn't just about how frequent it is, it's about all articles falling within the definition always being deleted, and there being too many for AfD to handle. IsisFlower should have been moved to userspace as a test and the user educated that we're not a hosted. Randy sayrs was correctly deleted under G7 so is not evidence of the need for a new criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 20:55, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Poo-Poo Puddle - Wikipedia is not for things made up in one day, or for poor neologisms of crappiness. --Σ ^talk_contribs 03:08, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

While the title might be a neologism, the content was not something made up in one day. The content was an admittedly poorly written article about the effects of leaking sewage systems - an issue that has existed since there were sewerage systems. Whether there should be an article on this, and if so under what title, I'm not sure. I've not been able to find that we have such an article, but if we do this would be deletable under criterion A10, if not it should go to prod or AfD - there was no reason why leaving it up for a week would be harmful. That was a very bad speedy deletion, thank you for highlighting it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:55, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

As you well know, CSDs are extremely specific subsets of their corresponding policies and guidelines. G11 is a very strict application of the more general WP:SPAM. A7 is a very strict application of the more general WP:N. The list goes on. All of these were created because of the large number of out-of-process deletions that had to occur, and because AfD gets clogged with their backwash.

To say that a strict application of certain parts of WP:NOT is impossible to accomplish on this talk page might be correct, but only because of the vast number of anti-CSD interests that watch this talk page. So, like it or not, the so-called out-of-process deletions will continue, and nothing is going to be done about it, because WP:SNOW is a de facto criteria for speedy deletion. The more you force people to use SNOW in glaringly obvious cases, the more likely they're going to ignore the increasingly policy-crept anti-deletion CSD discussions on this talk page, and, ironically, the more stuff is going to get deleted out-of-process in the long run.

--slakr^\ talk / 12:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not (and I don't think other people here are) anti-CSD. What I am is anti-IAR speedy deletions, because they are fundamentally against the principle of consensus (CSD is a list of specific cases where there is consensus that individual discussion is not required, because consensus for deletion is a given). WP:SNOW is not speedy deletion - speedy deletion is deletion without discussion, WP:SNOW is deletion with abbreviated discussion (there is a big difference). If there are lots of the same things being SNOWed then that is evidence that a CSD criterion for them. If they're all deleted out of process then we don't know that the criterion is needed.

Regarding WP:NOT, I never said a strict interpretation of parts of it is impossible - just that a strict interpretation of all of it under one criterion is. For example see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of bus routes in Peterborough where the nominator and some others are convinced that it falls foul of WP:NOTDIR, while other editors of equal standing are equally convinced that it does not. Speedy deletion is only for things that will always be deleted, and this discussion shows that not everything that some people think meets WP:NOT always will be (previous discussions of lists of bus routes have mostly ended in keep or no consensus, but some have been deleted). Therefore a criterion to exclude things that are not for Wikipedia needs to be more specific. Thryduulf (talk) 12:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Once again, we're talking about things that clearly and irrecoverably violate WP:NOT, and we're really only talking about a certain subset of NOT that frequently occurs, is obvious, and are indisputable violations (e.g., WP:NOTWEBHOST, among others). That's the reason why someone hasn't gone and WP:SNOW deleted the article you mentioned out-of-process—it's not just because there isn't a CSD to cover it. Conversely, most admins don't go around deleting things that do meet a CSD on a technicality, either, if it's obvious that it shouldn't be deleted. --slakr^\ talk / 13:19, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Because "I know it when I see it" is never going to be a CSD criterion, we need to define what it is about such "things that clearly and irrecoverably violate WP:NOT" that makes them so and we have to do so in a way that generates the absolute minimum number of false positives. Thryduulf (talk) 13:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

For the moment I'll comment on 2 of these..

• Saugie was snow deleted at AFD and right now I think this is the most effective was to treat "blatantly unverifiable" subjects that aren't CSD G3 candidates. Skip PROD, send them to AFD, and let it be snow deleted as soon as other participants say they can't verify the subject either.
• Son of PRA It would have been obvious to anybody with even the most basic knowledge of WP that it wasn't an "article" and trying to pass it off as one is like going to a football game with a net and tennis racket and saying "this is how we should play football". (OT: see m:Maddenville for an essay I wrote on this) It was articles non-articles like this I had in mind when I started the previous subsection.

--Ron Ritzman (talk) 13:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I would, however, note that Saugie's delete-worthiness is clearly evident on a single google search. That's why it's extremely easy to verify blatantly, irrecoverably non-notable neologisms, and that's the reason why sending them to AfD, even for the SNOW-pile of delete-!votes, is a waste of time. :P It's like using G3 to apply to hoaxes; a simple google search reveals that either the possible hoax is a true hoax or it reveals that there might be a shade of possibility of factuality. I'm saying that the same standard should be applied to self-evident things like that that would be more BITE-y to call vandalism than to just develop a separate CSD for blatant, irrecoverable violations of clear-and-evident portions of NOT. --slakr^\ talk / 13:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I completely disagree that getting consensus to delete something that does not meet the CSD criteria is a waste of time. There is no deadline. If sending them to AfD means that there is evidence of a need for a CSD criterion then the time has not been wasted. Thryduulf (talk) 13:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I concur with Slakr. The whole point of this discussion is "hey, look, there's lots of stuff which no sane person would ever suggest isn't speedy-worthy but the criteria doesn't quite cover them, so let's change the criteria". I'll probably follow Ron Ritzman's advice next time I find a Saugie-type example (I give it a couple of hours of NPPing) and go straight to AfD rather than PROD, but surely the fact that I'm having to "hack" the deletion system to get stuff like that deleted shows we need to extend CSD sooner rather than later. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

"Hack the deletion system"!? How on earth is nominating something at AfD hacking the deletion system!? Articles for deletion is the standard way that articles on Wikipedia are deleted, CSD is the "hack" to allow things to be deleted without discussion in a limited range of circumstances where consensus agrees this isn't needed. Thryduulf (talk) 15:29, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you're understanding his point. Tom Morris is commenting on the irony that because of a loophole in the process, he is forced into skipping PROD (which is supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions) and going straight to AFD because the snow delete on AFD is actually faster. That is technically "out of process" but still necessary since it's the shortest distance between "Creation of an indubitably speedy-worthy article not covered by current CSD" and "Article is deleted". causa sui (talk) 17:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

It may or may not be faster depending on how much attention it gets or which admin closes it. The main advantage to using AFD instead of PROD for "non-articles" and "semi-hoaxes" is that the clowns who create them can't go to REFUND and ask for them back. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 23:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that sending something to AfD that could be prodded is "out of process" (although I'll admit to not being as intimately familiar with prod policy as I am with CSD), but prod not working as intended is no reason to speedy delete something that is not covered by CSD criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

You're right that it isn't. That's why editors here are trying to get it done the right way and amend the policy -- in this very discussion. causa sui (talk) 19:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Adikiaphobia, Going HAM and Opposite Week. --Σ ^talk_contribs 05:22, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

• Opposite Week is at AfD. While this might be deletable under a "not for things made up by the author" criterion, it's not a classic example of such things and so could be borderline depending on the wording of the criterion. Worth noting though. Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
• Going Ham. Hmm. Deleted under WP:CSD#A3, which doesn't actually fit. It does make me think though that "articles that do nothing but define the title", where a definition already exists in Wiktionary or where the content would not be acceptable at Wiktionary might be a good expansion of that criterion (it's not a great leap from "restating the title" to "definining the title") if we can work out a good wording that does not require a knowledge of Wiktionary's criteria for inclusion. In this example, I see several mentions of the phrase and a couple of what might be uses but in sources that are not "durably archived" (one of Wiktionary's requirements, but which as is not a concept in use here most Wikipedia admins will be unfamiliar with), so it would be speedily deletable. Confusing matters for the lexically inexperienced though is that "going ham" is a term used with a completely different meaning in the amateur radio community (meaning, I think, to select/use the HAM radio system/technology/conventions(?) opposed to a different one, e.g. CB radio). Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
• Adikiaphobia correctly deleted as a hoax (G3), based on it being a dictionary definition deleted from Wiktionary as a "creative invention/protologism". Obviously any dictionary definition deleted from Wiktionary would be a clear delete under the slight expansion of A3 I mused about above. I'll start a new separate discussion on this. Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

"Going ham" was tagged by me first as G1, which was then deleted as G1 and recreated under another title, which I didn't tag, but asked on IRC as "TheSigma" for advice on what CSD criterion it truly fell under. It was deleted as A3 by User:Zscout370 I believe. The series of phobias aren't G3 (hoax) because if you check the roots out with their Latin definitions, they are true. The phobias were just non-notable neologisms. We need a new set of CSD criteria to cover non-notable neologisms with no chance of being salvaged. (Vague idea, it will get developed further) --Σ ^talk_contribs 06:37, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

On the same topic: why is stuff like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slogans on earth at AfD? This should be part of CSD's bailiwick. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

It is. Speedily deleted as A1. Thryduulf (talk) 13:46, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... that's true, but I still don't see what criterion Beer tac toe or I ONT O quite fall under, or Once you jump a fence, an ocean is no problem". All three of those would definitely fall under the wording proposed above; the best I can think would be to highlight the importance of the "which explicitly indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally" part (italicized word added by me). That would keep the software and books by minor companies out of an A11 while incorporating the "book" written two days ago by the article's creator. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Pay you a dollar, Pasta chili, Merriage, Tray Golf, Education loans: How to plan and manage loan repayment, 8 Strategies to Having a Great Website, Passionate Marriage. --Σ ^talk_contribs 02:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The Contribution of Sports to Community and Youth Development in Nannyville, Kingston Jamaica. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 00:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

That was exclusively promotional in tone and so covered by G11, so no need for a new criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 02:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Roberts list of greatest presidents. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:50, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No, that should not be speedily deletable as it requires checking to show that it is indeed original research and not some other person's list (that may or may not be notable) or sytnthesis of notable opinions that should be reworked into other articles. In this case it is original research that should be deleted, but future things of this type need more analysis than is appropriate for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

How about adding to the currently nonexistent criterion that the article must plainly state that the creator has a close connection with the neologism or madeup game or guide or whatever, for example, "This word or game or whatever was made on 04:37, 24 December 2024 UTC [refresh] by Joe "? Things such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Band football (which happens to not be A7-able, which is why I declined it) and the aforementioned examples that went through AfD were just a waste of a week for what was sure to be a blizzard. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 22:23, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

That proposed criterion wouldn't allow things like Band football to be deleted as the article makes no "plain statement" about a close connection between the author and subject (it makes no statement at all). I still don't see why such articles need to be speedily deleted, they aren't harmful and they are not overwhelming AfD or prod. If all of those you've listed here over about 3 weeks were all examples of things clearly made up by/closely associated with the article author and not speedily deletable using existing criteria (at a rough guess only about a third are) and had been submitted over 2-3 days at absolute most then I'd say there was certainly a case to be looked at. As things stand you haven't demonstrated a need, nor a specific wording that would allow the deletion of those you want to delete without generating false positives. Thryduulf (talk) 22:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I almost snow deleted Band football but decided to turn my closing rationale into a !vote instead. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Really? The close connection was plainly stated in the first sentence in band football. What about MOBILE PHONES AND CHILDREN, if it weren't a copyvio? The very title of the page is dripping with the words "Wikipedia is not a place for essays", and even clueless anonymous users who read without editing would believe that it is unencyclopedic. The history of me AfD'ing the NOT violations have resulted in blizzards of Delete. If such pages are so uncontroversially deleted, why not speed it up? --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 23:18, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

We get plenty of WP:NEO and WP:NFT every day. Often they are IAR'ed so we don't see them at AfD too often, which is sort of the whole point: When it becomes common practice to IAR certain types of subjects, that suggests a criterion is probably needed. Σ suggested a close connection as part of the nonexistent criterion; that's already in the proposed criterion I suggested higher in this discussion. You're right that including that would make it miss some, but including that gets us over the hump of being narrowly tailored so it doesn't rope in false positives. As for "a specific wording that would allow the deletion of those you want to delete without generating false positives", can you think of even a hypothetical example of an article that would meet the criterion I proposed that would generate a false positive?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I tried, and I haven't come up with anything. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:05, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Selling a restaurant. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Why would that need to be speedily deleted? Yes, it's not what Wikipedia is for, but it's not actually doing any harm is it? I also fail to see how it would be caught by a criterion as proposed here for things that were made up by the author? Thryduulf (talk) 10:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I put that there because I saw someone note that "unfortunately, no CSD criteria apply", and thought it would be worthy of note. Like I said, as the page is being destroyed in the blizzard so uncontroversially, why not speed it up? --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 17:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Because that's not what CSD is for. CSD is categories of narrowly and carefully pages that will always be deleted and would either either overwhelm the relevant XfD pages (e.g. A7), would do harm to keep around (e.g. G12) or there is no need for discussion (e.g. U1). The page in question here meets none of these requirements (and we have WP:SNOW for these sorts of things).

It's possible that things like articles that state the subject was made up by the author or their friend and which assert no significance or importance might fit the frequency requirement for a criterion, but you'll only demonstrate that by highlighting pages that would actually fit that criteria. Listing random pages that might be speedily deletable if some other undefined (and even unmentioned) criteria existed doesn't help make the case for anything.
I suggest you start a new section (not a sub-section of this one or it's parent) on this page explicitly proposing a defined criterion (taking note of the guidance at the top of the page) and either include or link to a list of pages that would be deletable under that criterion if it were implemented. If you have proposals for more than one criterion, make a separate section for each. If you want to bring to the attention of people who watch this page random pages that people think should be speedy deletable, then start a separate section for that, but unless you can explain how they relate to something that meets the frequency requirements for a new criterion or ammendment of an existing one, then I don't really see the point.
This section is obscurely titled and so muddled with discussion about random pages and multiple criteria that it's becoming next to useless for anything. Thryduulf (talk) 18:34, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Criterion for made-up subjects

"An article about a thing (word, phrase, game, ceremony, philosophy, religion, etc.), which plainly indicates that it was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines." Neologisms sometimes can't be deleted as a hoax because the roots sometimes make sense. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The proposed criteria does not consider whether there is a credible claim of importance, or even if the subject is notable. I would suggest incorporating the importance criteria of A7, otherwise what happens if someone with a username related to the subject, makes an article about a new game or invention that is actually notable? Monty₈₄₅ 03:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I forgot to include an example. Tappy jack shack and Gaalball. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That is a valid concern. I have added a bit to the sentence. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:48, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this and more already included in the criterion I suggested above (which no one has been able to come up with a false-positive for), or is there some limitation you're seeing?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I've copied what you've written and added "plainly" in front of "indicates that it was invented..." The only thingt hat worries me is that the "etc." and "thing" will be used by more imperfect new-page patrollers as an excuse to tag things that shouldn't be tagged, though my suggestion wasn't better. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 04:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Well "thing" could be replaced by "subject" or "topic", but if we're not limiting it to specific subjects then I don't see a need to list any. So perhaps "An article which plainly indicates the subject was invented, coined or developed by the article's creator...". If we are limiting it to specific subjects, we need to explicitly list them. I'd have written "clearly" rather than "plainly", as I think that would fit better with the other criteria, but it's probably just a stylistic choice. Thryduulf (talk) 10:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I support the wording of Fuhghettaboutit above; and as a word of advice, Σ, we have plenty of examples of what you're getting at. Any more would be overkill, and won't help us keep this discussion on track. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I Oppose Fugehettaboutit's version as it includes the vague language "thing (... etc)". As I said above if we're not limiting it to certain subjects then we should make that clear rather than leave it open for wikilawyering. If we are limiting it to specific subjects we need to explicitly list those. As I believe we are not limiting it, I could support the following.

An article which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines.

This is simpler and with little ambiguity. Changing "plainly" to "explicitly" would be completely unambiguous, but I get the impression from the above discussion that this wouldn't be supported. Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Though anything which satisfies this criterion will almost certainly be deleted there are an awful lot of blatant NFT examples that don't explicitly say that the subject was invented by the article's creator or someone close to them, such as Sandy pants, Xopiad, Copy Paste Game, or Snauzball. I suspect that if this criterion was introduced the wording would be routinely stretched to include other types of NFT deletions. Hut 8.5 16:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I've posted a list of some more examples of MADEUP deletions to my userspace. Hut 8.5 19:47, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I'm glad you support the proposal. It is support, you've just failed to parse the language. Replacimg thing with topic with no list of examples is a language tweak resulting in no change to the proposed criterion's meaning at all, and if you support that, as you indicate above, then you support the criterion. Let me put it another way. You seem to think that "thing" followed by a list of examples plus "etc." is ambiguous as to whether its limited to just those examples or not. That is not a reasonable interpretation, and not open to wikilawyering, since the natural language meaning of it is unambiguously open-ended—that's what the words used mean. The reason I put the list of examples in, and prefer that form, is because it travels down the route of listing the most common NFT topics we see, plus invoking WP:NEO (with "word"), thus giving a reminder right in the criterion of items to look for. But all we're talking about is window dressing, not opposition to its actual meaning; your tweak of the language leaves us with it applying to exactly the same subjects, under exactly the same prerequisites, and we shouldn't get bogged down in that minutia.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:58, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not mere semantics. Given the wide consensus that CSD criteria should be applied to the letter, it is important that we get the letters absolutely correct, and that means being precise rather than vague. Using "thing" rather than "topic" is less precise (is an abstract philosophical idea a "thing"? G11 was reworded due to a similar query iirc), using a list of examples when none is needed makes the criterion harder to parse and leaves it open to argument whether it was intended for the criterion to include things are listed, things that are similar to those listed (how similar?) or everything. I have been around here long enough to write "oppose" when I mean oppose and not write "oppose" when I mean support. You will also note that I could support an alternative wording (meaning dependent on other things, such as frequency, etc) not that I do support it. Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

You've missed the whole point. You are supporting the substance of the criterion, but just don't like the precise language and have suggested some tweaks. Your use of "oppose" is thus outre. As I've indicated, I don't wish to get bogged down in that, and I don't think you understood what I meant by that: even though it's not a substantive change, even though you think it is, I'm fine with your redrawn version since it retains the criterion I suggested. The issue is thus moot. Others may suggest tweaks to your redrawn language, but support having such a criterion and I don't expect them to couch their suggestions as "opposes" either.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:12, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Note I explicitly said "Oppose Fugehettaboutit's version", not oppose the concept. (I am still undecided on whether I can support a criterion for this or not, so please do not put words into my mouth). I feel the issue is significant enough that I can support one version but not another, so I have said that I oppose the version I cannot support (if you don't think it is that significant then we will have to agree to disagree). This is qualitatively different to a change where one can still support the earlier version as a 2nd choice - if this were the case here I would have said I prefer my version rather than opposing the earlier version. "Oppose" means I do not support something for the reasons following the bolded "oppose" (as is Wikipedia convention). It does not necessarily mean I support or oppose a wider or narrower point, or an alternative. I hope people oppose my version if they cannot support it, even if there is another version they do support; if they prefer an alternative but would still support my version then I hope they express this. What is needed now is for comment from other people to see if there is consensus to implement this or not. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I understand your position. I understand your changes as well and how you have characterized them as a substantive change; I understand how you are parsing the original language, even though your interpretation doesn't comport with plain English language meaning. But you want to fight over that characterization, and how I turned your post back on you, and I don't want to fight. I have said in effect: "fine, you like this other language better and think it's really different? I don't think it is, but let's use it and move on" (that you've changed your stated position of supporting your own redrawing of the language is a separate matter). Nothing you are saying, after my support of your language, is at all focused on the criterion, whether we should have it or not. A person reading the past few posts just sees squabbling. So can you drop the stick and move forward?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:12, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with everything you've just said, but I do agree that this discussion is not productive (per the final sentence of my previous comment). No stick to drop, but more than happy to move forward. Thryduulf (talk) 11:20, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I would just like to go on record just as I said about products and services below, that I am wholly in favour of an additional criterion for 'made up' stuff. This morning I was faced with the dilemma of eitherapplying CSD by the letter and sending a whole page of nonsense by an 11 year old about his club of friends who play games in the woods to AfD because there is no criterion to delete it, or choosing G2 and getting rid of it on the spot. I suppose if push came to shove, Arbcom could desysop me if <i had used the the wrong criterion, but do we really want that sort of rubbish to stay online for seven days while people debate it its existence? Or worse, run the risk of having it closed as keep because the kid who wrote it has canvassed all his palls in the shoolyard? Nevertheless, and unfortunately, talking about kids again, there is no rush to add new CSD criteria until we have resolved the extremely urgent issues surrounding NPP. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Future timestamp to permit other editors to comment. →Στc. 04:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Criterion for guides

"A page in article space that does nothing other than give advice, instructions, suggestions, and other directives that are nearly impossible to rewrite to become encyclopedia articles." Example: IMacsoft iPod to Mac Transfer. --Σ _{^talkcontribs} 03:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• I don't like this phrasing at all. I can't immediately come up with an alternative for the first part, but for the second I'd suggest using the "need to be fundamentally rewritten" language of G11. Additionally, I'm still not convinced that guides would meet the frequency requirement. Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

A3 questions

Currently A3 includes deletion of "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks". If a newbie is asking a question in the wrong place, surely we should be moving their question to the right place and explaining to them what we've done, rather than summarily delete it? Am I missing something here or can we agree to change this? ϢereSpielChequers 19:24, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with you, however we still should be deleting the page itself even in those cases. It's probably a good idea to add a footnote with that suggestion as long as nobody else objects. It strikes me as biting to simply delete a good-faith question from someone trying to get help, only because they asked in the wrong place. I'd say copy their question to the appropriate place and leave a message on their user talk page that you've done so, or if the question is something you can answer or otherwise assist with yourself, engage the editor directly to provide them assistance. After giving that help, then delete the page. -- Atama頭 19:33, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) An admin can, and in most cases should, still copy+paste the question to the right place and inform the new editor of their mistake. But A3 allows them to delete the page they created for it afterwards, since it doesn't serve any purpose anymore (since HD/RD work in sections, not pages, actually moving such a page there won't work). Regards SoWhy 19:34, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

A good point. I would suggest this as a footnote (far to long for in-text): Those nominating under this criterion on the basis of a misplaced question are encouraged to repost the material to an appropriate forum, e.g., the [[WP:HD|help desk]] or a section of the [[WP:RD|reference desk]], and to inform the user on their talk page as to the place of relocation. If not done by the nominator, administrators are expected to do so before carrying out the deletion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:02, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

SoWhy makes a fair point re the structure of the question pages. Most of these mainspace questions are from newbies so new one can move their question page to create their usertalkpage, which might not fit the template but I hope would be seen as an appropriate use of IAR. Also I'm uncomfortable about the "are expected to" I can't think of anything else where we require admins to do something before deleting a validly tagged article. But howabout we move this from A3 to G6 "Questions asked in mainspace and copied to the help or reference desks." That would only be fractionally longer in total than now, but it would expand the relatively short G6, reduce the long A3, and make the process more newby friendly whilst not needing a footnote. ϢereSpielChequers 10:32, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Moving it to G6 would work (although it then should cover questions asked anywhere by creating new pages, not only mainspace pages) but it would kind counter-intuitive, since those are in fact chat-like messages which A3 was created for in the first place. Regards SoWhy 18:20, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we need to split A3 into a criterion for "no content" (including attempts to correspond with the subject of an article) and one for "misplaced questions or correspondence" (including attempts to correspond with Wikipedia, users (generally or specifically), the foundation, etc). The former would be an A criteria (either remaining as A3 or as a new A11 with A3 being deprecated) and the latter a G. General chatty comments would be covered by the A if they were an attempt at an article or an attempt at dialogue with the subject or the latter if they were an attempt at dialogue with others).
The point of the split being that the latter could be qualified with "after moving or merging the question/correspondence to an appropriate page, if one exists" (or a better phrasing of this sentiment) that would not be relevant for articles with only a see-also section.
It's worth noting that "attempts to correspond with the person or group named by the title" were previously covered by a separate criterion (A4) but were boldly merged into A3 in November 2005. However, attempts to correspond are different in that there is content, it's just never going to be encyclopaedic. Thryduulf (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking about reinstating A4 as distinct from A3? -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 05:19, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to it, but that would be splitting current A3 into three parts - "no content" (residual A3 or a new criterion), "attempts to communicate with subject" (A4) and "attempts to communicate with Wikipedia/Wikipedians/others" (G13 A11 or A12). I'm not sure that a tripartite split is necessary though. The following table shows three possible ways of splitting -

	Article with no (non-trivial) content	Attempts to communicate with article subject	Attempts to communicate with others
Status quo	A3 as currently formulated
Option 1	Article with no (non-trivial) content, or attempts to communicate with the article subject (A3 or A11)		Attempts to communicate with people/groups who are not the article subject (e.g. misplaced questions) (G13 A11 or A12)
Option 2	Article with no (non-trivial) content (A3 or A11)	Attempts to communicate with the article subject or others, including misplaced questions (G13 A4)
Option 3	Article with no (non-trivial) content (A3 or A11)	Attempts to communicate with the article subject (A4)	Attempts to communicate with people/groups who are not the article subject (e.g. misplaced questions) (G13A11 or A12)

Last night I suggested option 1, now I think that option 2 would probably be the best (I'm not sure that it's necessary to distinguish who the communication is aimed at), but I would support any of the options (and the status quo, but I think the above discussion shows that this is probably not ideal). Thryduulf (talk) 19:42, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Hold on a second, it makes sense to have a A critera for attempts to communicate regardless of the intended recipient. But a G criteria would be applicable in all spaces, sorry of its a bit of an absurd example, but every user talk page with comments on it would qualify for deletion under G13 in option two. Stick with Article only criteria. Monty₈₄₅ 19:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Good point, I've changed it in the table above. I was intending that misplaced communication attempts in any namespace would be caught, but thinking about it anything in a talk namespace can just be answered (and orphaned talk pages are already covered) and I suspect that communication attempts in other namespaces are not so frequent as to require speedy deletion (I've not actually looked to verify that though). Without an A/G split distinguishing the intended recipient seems excessively academic. Thryduulf (talk) 23:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

We have reference desks for encyclopaedic questions, and a helpdesk for questions about Wikipedia and the editing of it. But we don't currently have a way of handling questions for celebrities and other article subjects other than deleting them A3. I can think of one celebrity who we could potentially set up a correspondence page for. Though purists might argue it was out of scope. But in the vast majority of cases of people using us to ask questions of article subjects I don't see an alternative to deletion. So I'd suggest we stick to the original proposal, A3 remains as is except that "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks" is removed from it. And we find a new code to delete these pages with after the question has been posted at the relevant desk. ϢereSpielChequers 20:57, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I would personally use G2 for misplaced questions, so long as there was no other content. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

We already use G2 for test pages. The proposal is to take "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks" out of A3 where it currently sits, and copy the question to the Reference or Helpdesk as appropriate before deleting the page from mainspace. ϢereSpielChequers 20:11, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Instatagging

I've noticed a distressing tendency while patrolling the articles tagged for speedy deletion, namely that sometimes articles are being tagged as A7 (among others, but the most often) far too quickly after the article is created - sometimes the timestamp on the speedy-deletion tag is the exact same time as the timestamp for the article's creation. Authors new to Wikipedia might not know how to work on an article in userspace, or for other reasons might be "drafting in articlespace"; assuming a lack of notability and tagging for CSD the very moment the article appears might well be discouraging to newcomers - I think that, perhaps, there should be some sort of algorhythym in the tagging process or something that prevents the addition of CSD tags (with, perhaps, the exception of G10) for at least five minutes following the creation of a page. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's likely that we're going to be able to change the behavior of taggers overnight; by its nature, new page patrol tends to occur at the very front or the very back of Special:NewPages. However, what will make a difference instantly is to change the behavior of the templates themselves. I know that {{db-c1}} uses code to prevent the tagged page from appearing in CAT:SD for four days after the last edit, and we could adapt this to other speedy deletion templates in order to prevent immediate deletion of content, if not immediate tagging. I propose that we prevent {{db-a1}}, {{db-a3}}, {{db-a7}}, {{db-a9}}, and {{db-g11}} from adding articles they appear on to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for two hours after the last edit, in order to prevent articles from being deleted while their creator is working on them. Less time is always an option, but more than a few hours seems eminently abusable by creators trying to prevent deletion. Cheers. lifebaka++ 03:36, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I would support the not appearing in CAT:CSD for an hour or two thing (from the point of tagging, not last edit...it's quite possible that edits other than the author improving the article could take place on the article or something) for the A# criteria (not the G# criteria). I think that if something like this is done this is the way to do it rather than not allowing the tagging of the articles for a certain period of time. At the very least it gives the author more of a chance to contest the deletion, if not beef up the article, which won't hurt anything but could certainly be of benefit. Ks0stm ^{(T•C•G•E)} 03:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I think there is benefit to prompt tagging of articles with problems. The page creator is more likely to be around minutes after they created the page, then an hour later. If they are still around when the page is tagged, they will notice the talk page message, and know they need to fix their article immediately or it may be deleted. A borderline A7 article can stay in tagged for deletion for several hours, and sometimes a day or more, typically it is only the clearest cases that are actually deleted within minutes. Nonetheless, few articles end up being rescued from an A7, even if the tag to deletion time is in the hours. The vast majority of articles that have A7 tags properly removed were improperly tagged in the first place. I only oppose a delay in tagging, I don't see a harm in delaying the hour between tagging and listing in the category, as any pressing need can be tagged under an alternative criteria. But would admins still be allowed to delete on sight, or would they be required to tag, wait an hour for the listing, and come back to delete? Monty₈₄₅ 04:01, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

There is probably too much deleting on sight going on. This is fair enough to delete attacks and vandalisms, but those that need a cleanup only should get a chance between tage and delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I think a grace period would be nice. We could create a delay-appearance template using ParserFunctions (like Template:Expiry but in reverse), and then reprogram Twinkle to have that template wrap around the CSD tag. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:25, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

"Jenny is a random person born in 2001. She likes talking to her friends" will have no indication of significance for a long time. Half the G11s I tag have no chance of being rewritten neutrally. 10 minutes will not do any good, much less 2 hours, when Jenny has told her friends on Facebook that she has a Wikipedia page, which makes the problem of different IPs putting vandalism and test edits on it, removing the CSD template, turning it into an attack page... →Στc. 06:45, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be better to keep such a page for 1 hour or so than to delete a potentially notable topic after 5 minutes. Other editors can vandalize any page, make any page an attack page - they don't rely on such pages not being deleted for an hour. I'd support a switch in those templates to make them not appear in CAT:CSD for an hour after creation although I don't think that's technically possible at this point. Regards SoWhy 07:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Certainly for the CSD criteria listed above by lifebaka, it is exceedingly unlikely that leaving at least 1-2 hours between tagging and deletion will harm the encyclopaedia and not hastily deleting something notable will improve the encyclopaedia. Not discouraging new contributors will improve the encyclopaedia in the long term. Note that attack pages and copyvios are not among the criteria proposed for delayed appearance in the CSD category. How would this work for pages tagged for multiple criteria where one is a delayed criteria and one is not? Thryduulf (talk) 13:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be a simple change to have the CSD category not appear for an hour after the last revision to the page, but without a subst of a time stamp at the time of tagging, I don't know if it is technically possible to have the category appear an hour after tagging. The problem with revision method is that even after the category appears, any edit at all will cause it to disappear for another hour. If a subst was used with a wrapper to set the time stamp, we would need to be on guard for any tampering with the time stamp. Monty₈₄₅ 16:17, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, that's the main problem of this proposal. Most of the problems like that could be resolved by creating an Extension to handle speedy deletion instead (e.g. instead of notices that are saved as wikitext it would use persistent "tags" on pages) but I don't think anyone is willing to do all that work. Another, less elegant, solution would be to create magic words for this purpose. I submitted it to bugzilla, let's see if someone will do it (shouldn't be too hard since most of the code for revision IDs can be copy+pasted). See T33439. Regards SoWhy 17:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I suppose this could work - my main concern is that a newbie will see the big honking "speedy deletion!" tag at the top of their just-created page and leave in disgust. But if the tag clearly says "if you are working on this page, you don't need to worry about it being deleted for an hour, and if it meets the criteria after an hour this tag will be removed" or some such, I guess that could work. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:32, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I also support this proposal--waiting a few hours would not save the impossible articles, which are the majority of the a7 and g11 taggings, but would deal nicely with the 10 or 20% that are nominated for speedy while the contributor is still working on them and where there is a strong possibility of the contributor being ready to add the necessary material to indicate importance or whatever applies. DGG ( talk ) 23:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

If mw:Article creation workflow goes through and significantly reduces the pages tagged for CSD, this might not even be necessary. {{subst:User:Σ/Signature 23:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

This is not the first time we have discussed this, and there was support in the past too. In the discussions I remember, the answer was that it was not technically possible. If it is now, or it was wrong to think so then, okay. But one issue that was brought up in the past is the problem of tag removal. This is sometimes caught by a bot but not always. Doesn't this greatly increase the likelihood of speedy removal not being caught by human beingd? I think it does since the natural editing patterns of people is to not only see and follow what they've done recently, but to log off after some length of time. How will we gird against the increase in missing tag removals while the delay is in effect? I certainly support this in theory, but I would not without some assurance that this issue is addressed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:35, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I have put together a mockup of a timed A7 tag based on tagging time, but requiring a subst. For testing purposes it adds the page to a fake category (instead of a live CSD cat) 30 seconds after tagging. {{subst:User:Monty845/A7/Submit}} Before it could be used outside of testing it would need a check to make sure it was substed rather then just transcluded. Failing to subst it will prevent it from measuring time from tagging. Monty₈₄₅ 01:00, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

If mw:Article creation workflow goes through (and it still needs a lot of work), then the "Jenny is a random person born in 2001. She likes talking to her friends" type of 'good faith' vandalism by minors will be nipped in the bud. When they realise that there are more buttons and questions to be selected than just clicking 'save page' , they may hopefully give up - and that's exactly what we want as a an alternative to the WP:ACTRIAL that was unfortunately declined by the WMF in spite of its clear consensus. People seem to forget that that the problem is not one of losing mature, serious new editors or their articles; it's one of preventing the disruption made by the Jennys and the 'Globsplotch is a punk band that got together last week coz we did a sponternius gig in the Bottler's Inn, and in 2013 w're gonna make a YooToob movie' and w're grate'. These A7s will never become decent articles, and although Jenny might become a Wikipedian when she is 5 years older, the Globsplotchers are most unlikely to become serious editors. Let's not introduce more automation for the sake of introducing more automation. Instead, let's educate the New Page Patrollers, and perhaps make NPP a user right and get more patrollers, and rely on the integrity of admins to check on what they are deleting before they press the button, and then convert to PROD if necessary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Technical possibility is something I've thought about, Fuhghettaboutit. It's the main reason why I proposed the wait time being from the last edit, easily accomplished using {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}}, {{#time}}, and an {{#ifexpr:}} parser, like it's done for {{db-c1}}. Removal of tags, as you mentioned, remains a problem. Cheers. lifebaka++ 16:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Didn't read this entire conversation as this is about the thousandth time something like this has been proposed so I feel like I've already read it anyway. The same issue is brought up each time: the obvious fact that many, many new articles are absolute garbage with no hope of ever being an acceptable encyclopedia article. Waiting some arbitrary length of time for them to magically morph into one isn't the answer. If somebody is tagging badly written articles with actual potential after just a few seconds, talk to them personally. If you see an article that you think should be kept, remove the tag, look for sources, and fix it up. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:47, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

And that's precisely what the page patrollers are supposed to be doing. I think this proposal is a solution looking for a problem. In lieu of WP:ACTRIAL, mw:Article creation workflow along with improved patrolling (and we're working on that too) will solve anything else. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

There may indeed be better ways of accomplishing the same purpose, but this is an immediately applicable practical solution as a stopgap, that will benefit both users and the encyclopedia. Education of the NPPatrollers will be a very slow process. DGG ( talk ) 17:44, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

web sites & web forums

The current template being used for a7 includes web site and web forum, but the actual rule at WP:CSD for web content makes it clear that the criterion applies only to the content of a web site, not the site itself. I think this an unwarranted extension. The many debates on the notability of sites on AfD indicate that a judgement about deletion for them is too difficult for speedy. Additionally, there is almost always some sort of claim of significance "used by x thousand people" or the like. I think we must alter the template to conform to the present rule, and then possibly discuss extending the rule--which might or might not have consensus. . The templates for speedy are rather complicated to change, because twinkle must be changed also. DGG ( talk ) 17:49, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

My concern is that many articles about youtube content make similar claims about viewed by x thousands of people, often greater then 100k. I for one don't know where to draw the line, certainly by the time you get to multiple millions of views, its a claim of importance(I have seen CSD A7's on articles with such a claim, 7 million if I remember correctly). Why is a website exempt from A7 on a weak claim of views, but not a youtube video or channel? Could we establish a viewership/membership size criteria for {{db-web}}? Also with the low cost of web hosting, I think the distinction between web content and websites is weak. Monty₈₄₅ 18:11, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that "web content" in A7 is only a short form for "web site, forum, video, pictures etc.". After all, it does not use the wording "website content" or "content of a website" but "web content", as in "content that is on the web". Imho this already covers webpages (and I have been using A7 like that for more than 3 years now). As for size criteria, I disagree with that. Amount of views is no real good indicator of anything: Videos that are seen by few people might be covered by a reliable source while those with millions of views might not. Also, any fixed number would be arbitrary without any real scale to define it. Regards SoWhy 18:57, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

everything is exempt for A7 on a weak claim of importance. Only those with no plausible claim to importance fall under a7, and this is as it should be. an individual admin can easily remove the implausible, but where the claim is merely "weak" no body should interpret how weak it may be on his own personal judgement, the community needs to decide in every case regardless of subject. I agree that number of views is usually not accepted at AfD, & I've concurred in most such deletions; but that's AfD, where the community can decide to accept or not accept according to consensus in the individual case. DGG ( talk ) 03:52, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Exception to double jeopardy rule

Add "and creations by banned or blocked users (G5)" to "should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations". Obviously if it is discovered that the article's only contributor is editing with a sock in violation of a ban it can still be speedied. Marcus Qwertyus 22:16, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. If the article has gone to AfD and gotten a keep result, the community has decided that the article is encyclopedic, and thus adds value to Wikipedia. While I understand the strong need to not reward sock puppeteers by keeping the contributions they sock to create, removing content the community has already determined to valuable to punish the sock is going too far. Monty₈₄₅ 22:29, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

But a good percentage of the G5-deleted articles are encyclopedic and add value to Wikipedia. Why make a special case for AfD'd articles? Marcus Qwertyus 22:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

It makes a convenient line to draw, that a discussion has already occurred over whether the content is worth keeping. Personally, I think G5 should be used more selectively then it is, if there is clearly nothing wrong with the article, and the sock isn't socking for the purpose of creating more, similar articles, I think the harm in letting the sock puppet get away with it is outweighed by the value of keeping the article. Its not really consistent with the nature CSD criteria to have something that nuanced and subject to interpretation built it, but making an exception for AfD keeps is straightforward. Monty₈₄₅ 22:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Until G5 itself is changed this change should go into effect. I would highly disagree with your change as it would allow socks like OSUHEY to stay around forever (incidentally this guy is also a copyright violator so he is just reverted anyway. But you get the point). Marcus Qwertyus 23:03, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Bans are usually there for a reason. They need to be enforced somehow or otherwise they are pointless. Marcus Qwertyus 23:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

But the point is that G5 is only a speedy deletion rule. Like all criteria, admins don't have to delete a page just because it was created by a banned user. It's a fine line, I grant you that, but it's still a line we need to draw. If the community in a discussion agrees to keep an article then it would be against the spirit of all applicable policies if a single admin could reverse that decision. The exception for G12 exists because there is no way the community can decide to keep something that obviously violates copyright; on the other hand, the rules on how to treat banned users and their creations are community-made and as such subject to exceptions based on consensus. I know that the point of your change is to address situations where the identity of the creator is only discovered after the AFD closed as keep but nonetheless the community should be allowed to decide whether to reverse their previous discussion based on those new facts; as such, I think the proper course of action would be to re-nominate it for AFD, outlining the changed situation. Regards SoWhy 07:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

• Certainly under current policy we can delete such a page; but equally certainly, the community can make an exception to this and everything else. It is unclear at this time to what extent the community is willing to make these exceptions, and until it is clear, it would be unwise to change the speedy rule. I see two cases: If at the A7, the community was actually aware of the nature of the user and decided to keep the page anyway, their decision very obviously should hold--any admin attempting to over-ride such a decision on his own initiative is doing wrong--even for copyvio, it the rule here talks about newly discovered violations. I doubt MQ is referring to such a case as that. If the community was not aware, which I think is the case being referred to, I do not think it right to have it judged arbitrarily --we have 700 active admins, who all individually have different standards in interpreting policies. Speedy should not depend upon who gets there first. A keep at a prior AfD is a reason why it needs group consideration. I note that QM has encountered some opposition to his deletion of apparently innocuous articles by banned editors, & I think his attempt to broader the deletion rule when the matter is not resolved is , frankly, not appropriate. (my own position is that the general principle is wrong--such deletions have no measurable effectiveness: despite many such deletions of his articles, the ed. mentioned by him above is still at it. But even if the general principle remains the consensus, a prior AfD is a reason why it needs community consideration about whether a particular case should be an exception.) DGG ( talk ) 03:46, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

  With the banned user he's dealt with, OSUHEY, I think he has a very reasonable concern that there are copyright issues with that user's work; OSUHEY has created huge copyright problems here, and those might well remain even after his articles are kept at AfD. While I generally agree with you, I'm wondering if we could make an exception for users banned due to serial copyright infringement (i.e. OSUHEY, Roman888, and PrimeTime); that would make it consistent with the standards laid out at CCI. I don't hugely care one way or another (the banned users I deal with present very different problems, so I don't have a major stake in this), but I do see some potential for confusion given the conflicting instructions here and at CCI. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:01, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

• I believe that the goal behind this AFD exception is to simultaneously prevent, ah, admins with unusual interpretations from deleting articles, and to show respect for the community's decision about the subject. It isn't actual critical that a sock's contributions be deleted within mere minutes, and if you want to remove the sock's contributions, then you can re-write/stubbify the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
• Material created by a banned user can be removed if it hasn't been substantially edited by other editors, and an AFD does nothing to change that. The exclusion list here should be expanded to include this case.—Kww(talk) 02:11, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: inclusion of paragraphs of the importance of correct nomination

Would it be possible to include a paragraph or two describing the importance of nominating correctly? For example an attack page that is nominated as A7 may hang around for several hours, buried in amongst all the other A7 nominees, whereas correct nomination would have it deleted within minutes? Stephen! ^Coming... 15:58, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

When I think about nominating "correctly", my primary thought is that people should not send borderline cases to CSD (e.g., maybe it's kind of spammy, but it could be stubbed to a non-spammy couple of sentences and it might be a notable subject: Those situations are why we have prod and AFD).

Perhaps an encouragement to use the most specific category would be appropriate, but are we really seeing a problem with things hanging about for "several hours" (post-tagging, not post-creation)? I thought I read last week that the average time to deletion under CSD was a mere two minutes, which isn't even long enough for a newbie to read the directions on how to contest it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

It really depends on how obvious the case is. Borderline cases can go 16-24 hours, and rarely even longer. For example, tagged for A7 right now is The Coasts (band), nominated at 17:34, October 8, 2011, has been tagged for all but a minute since(when the creator tried to remove and the bot smacked them down), in half an hour it will have been tagged for 2 days. Monty₈₄₅ 16:56, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Another example Jarrod Dominguez tagged A7 for an hour, I've now added a G10 to it. Monty₈₄₅ 17:06, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I would add a bolded note between the second and third paragraphs of the Criteria section to the effect that if an article meets either the G10 or G12 criteria, those two criteria take precedence over all others at nomination. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 18:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that really will fix it, besides you can always use a {{db-multiple}}. The problem doesn't seem to be identifying multiple problems and choosing the wrong one to tag, its not seeing that the A7 is also a G10. Monty₈₄₅ 18:37, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

It might make a difference in some nomination cases; besides, it is a good idea to have the process documenting the reality of the situation. That is: Non-notables tend to hang around a while, to give editors a chance to improve them; attack and copyvio pages are deleted almost immediately, as libel/copyright is taken very seriously. Stephen! ^Coming... 19:39, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

If you find a copyvio for which A7 and/or G11 also applies please nominate it as both. This is a common problem with articles about companies that contain material from the official website. It is deleted as copyvio, so the creator (often an employee) goes to the trouble of sending permission to OTRS, only to have the article redeleted under G11 or A7. Yoenit (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a G12 article will often qualify under both A7 and G11, and even a promotional noncopyvio will often be A7 as well as G11. If I see something that could be tagged under additional criteria, I generally add the other(s) before doing the deletion, to make it easier to explain to the contributor without getting into arguments, and discourage submission of a series of slightly different , but still unacceptable articles. DGG ( talk ) 03:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposition: A11: not for an encyclopedia

Explanation: criteria for an article whose thematic or/and content are unsuitable for Wikipedia (unencyclopedic). Issues that might also occur complying this criteria:

• Unencyclopedically worded,
• Non-encyclopedic style, etc. Alex ^{discussion ★} 19:26, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

This proposed criteria would provide far too much room for individual interpretation. CSD Criteria need to be unambiguous, the application of a CSD tag should require no discussion or explanation, either the article is eligible or it is not. What is and is not suitable for Wikipedia is a constant area of discussion, and deciding if a particular article fits often requires a discussion. Monty₈₄₅ 19:30, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. "Unencyclopedic" was proposed and rejected multiple times as a criterion already for those and other reasons. Regards SoWhy 19:42, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, so that means "if I think a new article is 'unencyclopedic', then I should propose it for deletion". Am I right? Alex ^{discussion ★} 19:52, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, WP:PROD or WP:AFD are the ways to deal with unecyclopedic articles. Monty₈₄₅ 19:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Once we are outside the realm of the carve outs for speedy deletion, generally, and especially at AfD, we look to the merits of the topic rather than the current text in deciding whether to delete an article. Your post refers to content that is "unencyclopedically worded" and does not bear an "encyclopedic style". These seem addressed to the text only and are not typically seen as proper bases for deletion. A common way of way of seeing it is "If [an] article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD"—see WP:BEFORE. These concerns are, however, excellent bases to fix the material yourself, to ruthlessly prune down poor and unsourced content, and to affix maintenance tags addressing issues you find.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:58, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Well said. An article can be "unencylopedically worded" or use a "non-encyclopedic style," and yet form an excellent basis for an article with a little bit of cleanup. Dcoetzee 23:06, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Above discussions (such as the one at the top) may contain more detail about the proposal of a new criterion. →Στc. 23:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

All right $\sum$ if you insist I would like to make a reference to WP:NOT by adding this criteria. I believe this reasoning is convincing enough at its value. (Page deleted because: CSD A11: article unsuitable for encyclopedia, see What Wikipedia is not; stuff I presented at the top can often occur, and only comply this criteria). Alex ^{discussion ★} 17:30, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

There have been many, many discussions about WP:NOT and the consensus every time has been that it's far too broad and far too subjective to make a good CSD criterion. There is (or was) a discussion further up this page about a specific individual part of NOT that might make a good CSD criterion, but as a whole it has been rightly rejected time and time again. Thryduulf (talk) 10:54, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• "Unencyclopedically worded, Non-encyclopedic style" are things that can be fixed through normal editing, deletion is not appropriate here, let alone speedy deletion. We need to remember that newbies will make Newbie mistakes, or in the case of not writing in Wikipedia style or not using Wiki format Newbies will display some ignorance of things that experienced editors have picked up. But "Written by a probable newbie" really shouldn't be a deletion criteria. This is something very different from the issue of articles where the subject clearly doesn't belong here or elsewhere in Wikimedia, we have speedy deletion criteria for many types of articles that don't belong here, if someone can identify another subset of articles that clearly don't belong and propose an unambiguous test that relatively inexperienced patrollers are unlikely to misinterpret then yes it would be good if we could define a subset of articles that we can all agree merit summary deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 19:53, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Adding a parameter to {{db-copyvio}}

Given the comments stated above in #Suggestion: inclusion of paragraphs of the importance of correct nomination, it has occurred to me that the vast majority of article submissions that meet the G12 speedy criterion also meet some other criteria as well, usually G11, A7, or both. I'm wondering if, instead of asking patrollers to use the {{db-multiple}} template in such situations, we shouldn't be incorporating the possibility of adding other criteria right into the {{db-copyvio}} template.

If so, I believe it should be done in a way that lists the article as a copyvio, yet the article creator would see more emphasis being put on the other criteria, given that to the vast majority of them it's the other criteria that are the bigger concern. Because if they see G12 being stated as the bigger concern they'll just file a request at WP:PERMISSION only to see their donated text being deleted as A7 or G11, or rewritten from scratch. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 16:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

What's wrong with using {{db-multiple}}? Regards SoWhy 16:37, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Nothing. However, given that if nominations were done correctly the {{db-multiple}} would be used about 10 times more often than {{db-copyvio}}, editing the latter to include additional criteria would simplify the nomination procedure, IMO. It would eliminate a parameter in the template. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 16:43, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the problem lies with the tools New Page Patrollers use and how. For example, while Twinkle allows {{db-multiple}} to be used, it's pretty complicated to do so, with multiple windows opening etc. And even if they can do so, they often won't because they don't consider those things that you mention in your post. As such, it's imho nonsense to modify {{db-g12}} in this way, since that won't make people start using those changed features and if you plan on educating them to do so, you can just as well educate them to use {{db-multiple}}, can't you? Regards SoWhy 16:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

PS: I asked at WT:TW if Twinkle can be changed to make multi-tagging easier. Regards SoWhy 17:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of db-g8 redirects

The high use {{db-talk}} and a bunch of other db-g8 redirects such as {{db-redirnone}} have been deleted for reasons that are not clear to me. I have asked why this was done at the deleting administrator's talk page, here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 09:23, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Nevermind. They're all been restored.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:03, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Adjusting F2 and F8 to NOT delete non-blank image description pages of images on Commons

I'm tired of having Admins delete my images that I have categorized on en.wiki. These categories are for wikiproject usage for further subdividing photos that are in a broader category on commons. In addition, the bot and users that copy images to commons have no accountability to correctly categorize an image. This combined with over-zealous ignorance when it comes to generous photographers and OTRS is the reason I have boycotted commons. I refuse to upload my images there, and have tagged every image I have on en wiki since then with KeepLocal.

However, I have no issue with somebody else copying the image and description to commons, and maintaining just the categorization on en.wiki. The remainder of the description page from commons will still show through when an image description page is tagged only with a category.

So, for these reasons, I would like F2 and F8 to be made more clearer:

F2. Corrupt or empty image.

Files that are corrupt, empty, or that contain superfluous and blatant non-metadata information.[7] This also includes blank image description pages for Commons images. Description pages tagged with {{Keep local}} should not be deleted.

And be sure to provide evidence and a good reason before a bunch of people pile of with "that's against the rules". As I stated, this doesn't disturb the Commons description from showing through. Categorization by wikiprojects on en wiki is far more appropriate than over categorization on Commons anyways. -- ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 02:44, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

There was a discussion here that resulted in consensus that categorization should be done at Commons, not here, which is why F2 and F8 were changed to cover those pages in the first place. See also Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 44#Description pages for Commons images - F2, unfortunately I couldn't find the discussion that prompted it. Regards SoWhy 15:58, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

A discussion here or a centralized discussion? Wikiproject categorization is more appropriate here, and a blanket ban on any categorization of Commons images on en.wiki should have some pretty darn good reasons for prohibiting it, as it could be very useful. A discussion here wouldn't be appropriate for deciding the community consensus for implementing that ban. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:11, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Projects are allowed to operate on commons too. If the categories on commons are not good enough then change them on commons! Talk pages can still be used for projects to make a statement about images on en.wikipedia. In my opinion the option to add a category to a non existent page should not be given, it should take you straight to the commons to do it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:13, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Overly specific categories are deleted, just as they are here. A category to specifically lay out types of photos of roads in Ontario for the sole purpose of pulling them out quickly by the Ontario Roads wikiproject. In addition, there is a precedent that I've noticed from the discussions that I have found that "users should not be forced to use Commons if they do not wish to". I don't use commons, and I upload my photos here, as I said, with {{Keep local}} because I find the entire Commons operation to defy common sense and logic in most cases. If bots or editors cannot properly copy images over with all the categorization intact, then I should be able to add it here. Again, since it doesn't effect the description page from Commons showing through, I do not see how it has come to pass that we speedily delete these pages. If it is controversial, in any case, it should go to XfD. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 23:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Time limit?

Is there a limit to how long an article has been in existence as to when you can nominate it for a speedy deletion? For example, can only newly created articles be nominated, or can an article that fills one or more CSD, but is several years old, be nominated? – Richard BB 14:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Most speedies don't have a time factor, though one of the ones for redirects does say "recently created". Also I'd suggest that in some cases if an article has been around for years but you feel that A7 applies a prod is a more diplomatic way to go. Articles that have been around for several years and look like they merit speedy deletion are often recently vandalised, so checking the history is more important than usual. But it wouldn't surprise me if amongst our 3.7 million there are still a few hoaxes that would merit speedy deletion once they are discovered. ϢereSpielChequers 14:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Not only hoaxes, also lots of copyright violations where the violating text has been around for years. Some G10 negative unsourced pages were around for years as well, bu with the BLP cleanup done these should be very rare now. Fram (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, remember that if an article has been around for a long time, it will most likely have been edited by a number of experienced editors who did not think it worthy of speedy deletion and thus it would be most likely controversial to delete it without discussion (unless the criterion allows the page to be deleted even if it is controversial, like G12). Regards SoWhy 15:56, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Righto, thanks very much for that info, guys. – Richard BB 23:31, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Does A7 apply to a tribe / family / surname ?

The criterion for A7 say "An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization (for example, a band, club, or company, not including educational institutions),[4] or web content ...". At the bottom of that paragraph, {{db-club}} is described as "for clubs, societies, groups, and organizations".

It's not clear to me what "group" is supposed to mean, and why it's in the second place but not the first. Is a family or tribe an "organisation" eligible for A7, or not? This has arisen around Al-Hussouna, a page whose newbie editor has now blanked it after it was nominated A7, un-speedied, prodded (see User talk:Hamidalhussona). 85.211.13.188 (talk) 14:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

if it is a specific group of people, such as a particular family group consisting of a usually small finite number of named people, it falls under A7; if it is a continuously changing group, such as a tribe or a surname, or an extended family over time, it does not fall under A7. Or at least, such I think is the obvious intention. Anything potentially complicated or hard to define does not fall under speedy. DGG ( talk ) 02:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree. Mostly because, as you say, it could get a bit vague and CSD is only for obvious cases. I don't think CSD was ever intended to apply to any ethnic subdivision, no matter how small, surnames would be a case-by-case situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:41, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

F5 and deletion of revisions of an image still in use in articles

Is F5 applicable as a reason for deleting revisions of an image? Especially where the revisions are derived from the original image(s)? I'm not a lawyer, and not making any kind of threat, but I was under the impression that GFDL/CC compliance required maintaining the history of not just the text of articles, but the images as well? —Locke Cole • t • c 22:40, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

We only delete the history of non-free images and these are by definition not GFDL/CC-BY licensed. Yoenit (talk) 23:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

If the image is in use anywhere, F5 wouldn't apply anyway. It's pretty clearly for unused non-free images only. Although i would add that creating a new image based directly off of content that is not free is probably a problem all its own. We shouldn't have derivative works like that at all, so whatever rationale was used, deleting them was probably the right move. Although I could be wrong, rules for non-free files are a bit murky in places. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:46, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Hangons

White-T Death Squad, which I just deleted, was the first use of a hangon that I've seen since we implemented the new "Click here to contest" links; I had mistakenly thought that we'd deleted the hangon template. I understand the problems with the hangon system (e.g. people removing the CSD template) and the more intuitive nature of the new one, but I'd like to ask — would it work to code the CSD templates so that they automatically display the hangon when the talk page has been edited? For someone like me that's been an admin since well before the new system was implemented, it's easy to think "no hangon, so there's no dispute", and the "Note to administrators: this page has content on its talk page which should be checked prior to deletion." is significantly easier to miss than a hangon template is. Please note that I'm not trying to return to the old system; I'm simply interested in using the template automatically within the current system. Nyttend (talk) 23:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

As a non-admin often reviewing Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, I often find pages marked for speedy deletion that have some content on the talk page. I usually consult these talk pages, but in about 30% of cases the only content I find is a Wikiproject banner. And in many more cases what I find is the tagger's detailled rationale for speedying, not the creator's rationale for keeping. Despite that, I think the new system works well, and the fact you had to wait for so long to find one misuse of the old template shows that we're on the right track.

Actually, ever since the new system was implemented, I've seen the hangon template more often on AfD candidates than on speedy candidates. Presumably, it was inserted by occasional editors who had an article speedied back when the old system was still in place. Give it time, and you'll see the hangon template less often.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the hangon template has been discussed at TfD with a decision to keep. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 03:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

And is back at TfD. See the log for 15 October 2011. →Στc. 04:37, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Blanchard, I'm confused about your reasoning — how is what you said related to my idea to use the hangon template as an automatic reminder to the admin to check the talk page? Nyttend (talk) 04:57, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't focusing on that part, actually. But now that you mention it, I don't think that's necessary, some text on the db- template changes color whenever there's something - anything - on the talk page. That serves the purpose you're talking about, IMO, but perhaps we should make it a bit more obvious, but not to the point of overwhelming the template. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 23:36, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Having done a bunch of CSDs recently, I agree with Nyttend that I never even noticed the litle note about there being content on the talkpage. However, I make a point of always reading the talkpage if there is one, and I noticed in several cases the hangon argument was "please replace this text with why you think the article should be kept" (or whatever the actual text is that the template uses.)Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course, the "hangon" rationales are (in 90% of my experience) along the lines of "because he's an up-and-coming rapper who is going to make a big splash." With most articles getting tagged, there is very rarely anything that the creator could say that would prevent us from deleting it. Not to stir the pot, but I find that these "hangon" procedures are more like a simulation of bureaucratic responsiveness where there is none; "our decision has been made but if you want you can fill out this complaint form and put it in the locked box over there (which we automatically empty into the trash every Friday)." It's all mildly Kafkaesque, but I suppose it serves a purpose in 1% of cases. causa sui (talk) 17:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Don't know about other admins, but I've declined plenty of speedies because of an argument made by the creator on the talk page. Per Blanchardb, I'm not talking about overwhelming the template: when a message is on the talk page (e.g. this diff), the hangon is less than 1/3 the size of the deletion template. Colors often aren't helpful for many people, including me, and even if your eyes are fine in that way, at first glance a second template is more obvious than a different color and slightly different amount of relatively small text. Let's say that we implement my idea: how possibly will Wikipedia be made worse off by a more prominent reminder to admins to check the talk page? Nyttend (talk) 01:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: I do a lot of page patrol and a lot of re-checking articles that have been CSD'd by patrollers. In several thousand patrolls and hundreds of deletions over the last few weeks I have not come across one single use of the Hang On template. Perthaps we should run some regex and compare: 1) the number of pages that have been tagged for CSD, 2) the number of CSD that have been contested 'Hang On' tags have been applied in the last six months, and 3) how many 'hang ons were successful at contesting the deletion. However, I believe this to be a superflous exercise - the big new button is really big enough. The result would most likely be erronious tagging by inexperienced patrollers and we're already working on a brand new NPP system to change all that. It's time for the hang on tpl to be deleted as deprecated and move on. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:56, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

A bunch of things.

• Accompanying db-meta's reworking, I created Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages which appears at CAT:CSD as "possibly contested" to replace the prior category that hangon placed: Contested candidates for speedy deletion (the reason its possibly contested is that the best we could do with the new system is recognize talk pages that have content, but there was no way to winnow out talk pages with other material, such as project tags). Keeping an eye on this category is one way to monitor contested pages.
• I had hoped that admins who do reviewing would quickly learn to recognize the stark difference between the CSD tag with the green notice that the article has talk page content and the red notice when there is no talk page. We could bump up the size or otherwise make it a bit more noticeable. The relevant place to do this is {{Hang on/notice3}}. I have just created {{Hang on/notice3 sandbox}} for testing a more prominent notice, if someone wants to take a stab.
• There was quite a bit of discussion of automatic placement of hangon. Technically, this presented quite a challenge; I was told by some of our best template coders that it was impossible. Then Fetchcomms started working up a way to do this, originating I think from a Wikinews template that does some magical placement of a template upon a button click, like what we would want. The code is at User:Fetchcomms/hangon.js but implementation stalled. I think it would be a great if we got this working—upon the button being clicked the hangon template magically appears above the CSD template. Losing hangon's functionality (as opposed to the bollixed system of getting new users to place it) was my one minor regret in the implementation.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:40, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who is savvy enough to be an admin, should be able to see the green text before deleting. In any case, they should be doing more checks before deleting anything and not accepting the judgement of the tagger on face value. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't disagree. In fact, I think all admins should know to check the talk page without any prompting at all. However, I also see no harm in making the notice a little more prominent.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• Facepalm Just when I opened my big mouth... causa sui (talk) 16:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

CSD C1 removal by category creator

CSD C1 = Empty Category. Technically, speedy deletion templates may not be removed by the page creator, so my action here was a mistake. However, in the case of "empty category", the only rule should be: is the category actually empty or not, and not whether I created the cat or not. Can the rule (and then the bot application, which was correct) be changed to avoid this? Or is this such a rare occurrence that changing the rules for it isn't worth the effort? Fram (talk) 09:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the {{policy}} tag has the correct wording for this example: "This page documents [...] a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. [...]". Since it links to WP:COMMON, a common sense edit, like the removal of a tag from a page where it clearly doesn't apply, is not forbidden by the policy. For example, if someone slapped an A7 tag on a clearly notable person like Barack Obama and the person who created the page 9 years ago removed it, it would also violate the letter of the policy but noone would object. I don't think we need to change the wording though; cases where it's really crystal-clear that the tag is misapplied are rare and if we wrote "the page creator may only remove the tag if the tagging was clearly erroneous", people will probably remove them claiming "Of course the tagging was erroneous, my favorite person/band/webpage is clearly hyper-mega-super-important!". Regards SoWhy 09:33, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with SoWhy. I've added a check to the bot so as it shouldn't replace C1s when the category is populated. This kind of thing isn't really anything new for the bot, since it already has a few other common sense checks. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 11:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Allright, that's good enough for me as well. Fram (talk) 11:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

No question that this is a good idea: C1 should definitely be exempt from the no-removal-by-creator standard, since whether a category qualifies for C1 is a yes/no, black-and-white issue rather than a somewhat subjective issue like A7 or G1. Nyttend (talk) 03:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Speedy delete of some templates redirected to user space

Here's a situation that occurred recently which I think might merit discussion (though the original problem has been resolved by a different route).

Criterion R2 covers "Redirects, apart from shortcuts, from the main namespace to any other namespace except the Category:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Help: and Portal: namespaces." I applied this to a page in template space that was a redirect to user space, but this request was denied on the grounds that template space isn't the main namespace. Fair enough, but my point was that if a main namespace page contains a reference to a template and this template is redirected to user space then this is functionally similar to a direct user space redirect and should therefore be covered as well.

There are many legitimate examples of pages in template space that are redirects to user space, but they are intended to be used in user space pages so no problem arises. It's only if the template is used (or intended to be used) in the main namespace that it should be a candidate for speedy deletion. Jontyla (talk) 20:04, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you point out a specific example? If I understand correctly, you mean pages in template-space that are redirects to the userspace? In that case, the page is used not as a redirect but as a template and thus not covered by R2 (R2 is only for cases where the only content of a mainspace page is "#REDIRECT User:Example", not where the content is "{{User:Example}}"). Regards SoWhy 20:16, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

OK. So why is this? What rational for the existence of R2 would not apply equally to {{User:Example}}? Perhaps I do not understand the reason for the existence of R2. Jontyla (talk) 21:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The context is Template:Comparison of types of hang gliders — Jontyla tagged it for R2 speedy, but it didn't apply, so I declined it. Soon afterward, I deleted it under G8: it redirected to a userspace page that had been deleted after I declined the speedy, and the deletion made it an example of a dependent page of a deleted page. Nyttend (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Convert OTRS pending to NPD?

As far as I'm aware, {{OTRS pending}} will prevent bots from tagging an image for deletion indefinitely; I could upload a Getty image with OTRS pending, and the image would still be online a year later if it's not noticed by a human, even though there will obviously not be a valid OTRS email. What say all of you about converting OTRS pending to {{npd}} if they're over a month old? In response to a question at WP:AN, Betacommand is developing a bot to date all of the OTRS pending templates; we could simply make it so that OTRS pending is an NPD template with a month-long wait instead of a four-day-long wait. Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned in the AN thread, there are extremely stale pending tags outside of file space as well. For instance: Talk:WBGU (FM). We should think about how to fix them as well. Monty₈₄₅ 03:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm fine with changing {{OTRS pending}} to work like {{prod}} but this is probably the wrong page to discuss this, since the policy on speedy deletion does not sanction such behavior. The issue would probably receive more input if raised at WP:VPP. Regards SoWhy 19:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 2 November 2011

Please delete my name, Daniel streater, from Wikipedia.

Daniel streater (talk) 08:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "Daniel streater" does not currently appear on the page you want edited (namely Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion). As far as I can determine it has never appeared on that page. Furthermore, Wikipedia doesn't have a biographic article for Daniel Streater, nor has one ever existed. —RP88 ^(talk) 08:51, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Nor does it appear to be present in any article or on any page except this one. There's a request for an article about LeShawn Daniel Streater, but that's probably not the same person. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Possibly the user wants to delete their account; unfortunately, this is technically not possible. Regards SoWhy 19:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

New Criterion - Unsourced WP:BLPs (Article)

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

---

As I've started clerking on WP:Requests for undeletion, it appears some of the speedies being contested there are out-of-process A7s for biographies of living people that have no sources whatsoever. As this seems to be a very reasonable IAR speedy (and one that appears, to me, to be growing more frequent), I'm proposing a new criterion:

A##. Unsourced biography of a living person.
An article about a living person that does not include any reliable sources to prove the subject's notability. This criterion does not apply to articles that have at least one reliable source, even if that source is not enough to establish a subject's notability.

Thoughts/opinions? —Jeremy v^_^v ^{Components:V S M} 05:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

"Barack Obama is the President of the United States from 2008 to 2012" can be deleted under this proposed A11. →Στc. 05:44, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Your proposal can be found at WP:BLPPROD. Alex ^{discussion ★} 09:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is almost identical to BLPPROD, except that it doesn't allow interested editors any time to find sources. Hut 8.5 09:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - unsourced biographies are already dealt with reasonably well by BLPPROD. This would duplicate that process, except without allowing any timeframe at all for article creators to add sources. New unsourced biographies are not such an urgent problem that they must be deleted in the thirty seconds between the newbie editor's first save ("Bob Smithson is a famous nuclear physicist who won a Nobel Prize") and their second save when they (hopefully) add a source - but your proposed criteria would permit that to happen. Out of process A7s have always been a problem, since many administrators have only a vague notion of what it actually permits them to do, but the solution to that is challenging the deletions and educating the administrators. Thparkth (talk) 10:38, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Comment - I'm wondering if unsourced BLPs that include negative material shouldn't have a CSD time frame instead of PROD. Might this be part of the answer to WP:DOLT situations? Just a thought that if editors responding to page blanking had a CSD criteria, or a template with CSD instructions for a complaintant, it could stop some of these situations in their tracks. Like I said, it's just a thought. VanIsaac_WS^contribs 12:10, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) A BLP which is negative in tone and unsourced can be speedied under G10 already. If only part of the article is negative and unsourced then current BLP rules allow the material to be removed immediately. Hut 8.5 12:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose When WP:BLPPROD was created, it was the result of a very very very long discussion that started exactly with the same proposal. In the end, most of us agreed that BLPs without sourced need to be removable fast but with time to allow people to fix them. If admins use A7 for this instead, I recommend a healthy usage of {{whale}} because that's one of the most flagrant abuses of IAR one can imagine: The community explicitly rejected using speedy deletion for such articles, so there is no justification whatsoever to ignore this. If it really does include negative material, use WP:BLP and remove those parts. If it's only negative material, WP:G10 already covers that. But A7 does not cover stuff that's just unsourced and neither it nor any other criterion should do so. Regards SoWhy 12:20, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. This already falls under existing criteria, namely A7 if the article is hopeless, G10 if it's negative in tone, and there are a few cases where G11 applies. WP:BLPPROD already handles the rest quite well and gives the creator a chance to look for references. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 15:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I fear you are right that these sort of incorrect deletions are becoming more common. But the answer is to trout the admin who deletes an article per A7 when it has a plausible assertion of significance or importance and should have gone to BLPprod, not to legitimise the mistake. ϢereSpielChequers 19:38, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I am one of the people that will reverse the out of process A7s. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Since we're voting, oppose. We already have a process for dealing with unreferenced BLPs which is perfectly adequate. BLP PROD, while it probably does result in the deletion of articles on notable subjects, does at least allow interested parties some time to find sources for the article. This proposal also allows for the deletion of well-sourced articles if the deleting administrator doesn't feel they meet the notability guidelines. These decisions are always left to processes such as PROD or AFD, and for good reason since they are inherently subjective. Speedy deletion criteria are supposed to be objective in that people should be able to agree whether some article meets the criterion and uncontestable in that articles which meet them should always or almost always be deleted. It is perfectly possible (indeed quite frequent) for people to argue over whether the subject of an article meets the notability guidelines and as noted above some articles on highly encyclopedic subjects could be deleted under this criterion. The only case in which unsourced BLPs should be removed as quickly as possible is where the entire article is a BLP violation, but current rules already allow such things to be summarily deleted. If people are using A7 on such articles then that is a severe misuse of the deletion process and those deletions should be overturned. Hut 8.5 11:20, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose BLPPROD was an excellent solution and was developed by a huge community participation. It only still remains for the criteria of allowable links/refs to be decided - and that's another issue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:20, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose BLPPROD works for benign issues, G10 for malignant ones. Jclemens (talk) 03:45, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

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

Discussion regarding G5

I have started a discussion regarding criteria G5 here. Thank you. Alexandria (talk) 16:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

A public company listed on NASDAQ is speedily deleted from Wikipedia?

Are there any guidelines anywhere? I am surprised to see a publicly listed company Mellanox Technologies being speedily removed with no discussion whatsoever for: (A7: No explanation of the subject's significance (real person, animal, organization, or web content): ) Ottawahitech (talk) 00:56, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The process for situations such as this is as follows:

1. Leave a note on the deleting admin's talk page providing a policy and fact based explanation of why you believe the speedy was inappropriate and asking for the article to be restored.
2. If the deleting admin does not provide a satisfactory response or is unable to respond in a reasonable period of time (Remember, admins are people with lives outside of Wikipedia so it can take a day or two) then the next step is to contest the deletion at Wikipedia:Deletion review.

Personally I consider a company being listed on a major stock exchange as de facto proof of the subject's significance. You should also be aware it is common practice for articles restored via deletion review to undergo procedural listings at WP:AFD. If this occurs you should be prepared to add a couple of third party sources to the article to clearly establish the subject's notability (A quick search engine test should provide you a couple of news stories. If a search engine fails to locate any suitable news stories for a currently active corporation then that should also tell you something important). --Allen3 ^talk 02:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

• This article was not written by me, I was just a witness to its speedy deletion. What I did, which proved to be a waste of my time though, was to look for the term "Mellanox" on Wikipedia itself and found plenty (try a wiki search if you don't believe me). Ottawahitech (talk) 00:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:CORP simply being listed does not make a company notable. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:07, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

This article wasn't deleted for being non-notable, it was deleted under A7. A7 is a much lower bar to meet than notability. Personally I would consider a statement that a company is listed on a stock exchange as being an assertion of significance, especially as WP:CORP says that there is a "very high likelihood that a publicly traded company is actually notable according to the primary criterion". Hut 8.5 10:58, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Hut 8.5 and it's sad to see that some admins still confuse A7 with notability. That said, I don't think DGG (talk · contribs) who deleted it thinks so, so I guess he just made a mistake, which anyone can make; admins are only human, too. Just leave him a message at his talk page and ask for the page to be restored since it didn't meet A7. As for notability, I think somewhere in the 2000+ GNews hits are probably many reliable sources to establish it. Regards SoWhy 11:24, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I find it quite strange that anyone would think that being publicly listed is an automatic indication of passing CSD A7. Anyone with a moderate amount of money can set up a business, and anyone who wants to get funding for their business can try to do so by floating it as a public company. It is no indication whatsoever of importance or significance. "It's a publicly listed company, so it must be important" is about equivalent for a business to "they've actually released a recording on a well known label, so they must be important" for a band. There a vast numbers of companies listed at NASDAQ, and only a small minority of them are particularly significant. I am aware that some Wikipedians have a different view, but another, more clear cut, point is that CSD A7 is for "An article about a ... or company ... that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant". (My emphasis.) Even if one takes the (to me strange) view that being listed on a stock exchange automatically indicates importance or significance, the article has to mention the fact, otherwise it does not "indicate why its subject is important or significant". In this case the article did not do so. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:57, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I concur with that notorious deletionist DGG. There are some shockingly obscure firms still technically listed on the NYSE and AMEX, much less NASDAQ; mere possession of a ticker symbol is neither assertion nor evidence of notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, even if the specific market is a "closed" system requiring specific requirements for entry - most of those can be met if you just throw money at it. --MASEM (t) 21:25, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

A7 has nothing to do with notability. Hut 8.5 22:43, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I have never considered NASDAQ as sufficient indication of importance. That's different than NYSE, which I think shows actual notability , and AMEX, which is enough to pass A7. I associate these with first, second, and lower rank sports teams. I would never say that an assertion that someone is on a local football club as passing A7. I may possibly be in error here about NASDAQ, and would be very willing to be convinced of it. ( However, certainly I am quite sure that merely being a public company is not enough to indicate any good faith encyclopedic significance or importance at all, and I think it would be extremely difficult to convince me or other Wikipedians otherwise--I don't want to say impossible, for even here I might be wrong, but I consider asserting a public company like asserting a self-published book.) I would not say A7 has nothing to do with notable -- anything which might reasonably indicate actual notability certainly passes A7. In the other direction, I will usually restore my organizational A7s for which a good faith case is made on request, though I usually warn the requestor: "Unless you have references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases, there will really be no point in trying to get an article here, for it will surely be deleted. Better to wait until you do have such sources. " I'll of course let people to do whatever the rules permit, but if it is going to be a hopeless waste of effort, I certainly won't advise them to do it. (I have seen that about 3/4 of the time, my advice to this effect is followed).

Accordingly, I take Ottawahitech's comment as a request to undelete, and I therefore have restored the article; I'd of course rather have been asked on my talk p., but I do check here a few times a week. It had been tagged for G11, which I think was clearly wrong--it was entirely descriptive and factual, unlike earlier versions. Except for the possible BASDAQ listing, it certainly does not otherwise indicate importance, (and , tho it is not a speedy criterion but did affect be opinion a little, is the sort of infrastructure company which rightly or wrongly is very difficult to keep from deletion without strong evidence. I urge the concerned user to try to find it. I'm not immediately sending for AfD, but I'm sure somebody will if they are not added promptly.

And more generally, I need to say that the recent sharp increase in spam for both commercial and non-commerical organizations has made me a little readier to delete in this area. DGG ( talk ) 23:36, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I have punted it straight to AFD. Yoenit (talk) 23:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, I think the people commenting here expose little knowledge about the way the public stock markets work. Let's start with "I have never considered NASDAQ as sufficient indication of importance. That's different than NYSE, which I think shows actual notability , and AMEX, which is enough to pass A7." It may come as a big surprise for you to know that the listing requirements on AMEX are lower than on NASDAQ. Since its acquisition by the NYSE in 2008, the AMEX is positioned predominantly as a marketplace for "strong micro-caps" - the smallest and least significant of public corporations.. Check out http://www.venturelawcorp.com/listing_requirement_chart.htm. You'll also note that with the exception of one criteria (Market Value Publicly Held Stock), there's not a significant difference between the requirements for a NYSE listing and those for a NASDAQ listing, so I statement that says "NYSE shows actual notability , NASDAQ does not" is based on some pretty flimsy grounds. I also find the comparison with self published books to be misplaced. Anyone can publish a book for a few hundred dollars, and there's no governance over the content of that book, nor do you have to actually sell even a single copy. There is simply no equivalent for a public company listing. At a minimum, you need 3-4 "market makers" - independent firms that are required to perform both buying and selling of your stock, at published prices; you need to have 300-400 individual share holders; you need to have sold products or services in excess of $11 million over 3 years etc.. etc.... Jeff Song (talk) 22:30, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, that;s the sort of information that's helpful. Which market are your referring to? I admit the apparently changed status of Amex is something I was not aware of. I don't think $11 million in sales over a 3 year period is a claim to importance. (though of course a firm that size might none the less be important in some other way. I accept as assertion of a significant market share in an industry as an assertion of importance)). the 3 or 4 market makers might correspond to having Amazon etc sell the self-published book. The individual owners simply mean a public, not a private company. DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I was specifically using the criteria for the NASDAQ Global Select Market, but as you can see in the link I provided, the arguments hold pretty much the same for all markets. The only "big" difference is the NYSE's requirement of a $40M market value for publicly held Stock at IPO, vs. NASDAQ's $8M. And no, Amazon is not analogous to a market maker, as they have no obligation to buy, or even sell. A market maker in a stock market has an obligation to do both, so long as there are interested customers, which makes it more than just a listing site (a la Amazon). My points with regards to shareholder count and sales are not meant as a way of showing that these metrics, in and of themselves, establish importance (though I think they do) - but to put aside the silly comparison with a self published book. It a very narrow and technical sense, yes, you can get a public ticker by just "throwing money at it" - A LOT of Money. If you have >$11 million dollars to spend buying all your own products/services, the willingness to do it over a 3 year period, the means to convince 400 individual shareholder to buy your stock , and to convince 3-4 market makers that there will be profit in it for them , and get people willing to sit on a board of directors where they face potential severe personal liability... - but that's just not comparable to plunking down $300 and getting a book self published and listed on Amazon. But let me turn this back to you - you've already stated that you think an NYSE listing shows notability - in what way is this notability established while a NASDAQ listing is not? If all it is is the $40M vs. $8M market value of publicly held stock, would you agree, at a minimum, that a NASDAQ listing for a company with more than a $40M market value of public stock is notable? Jeff Song (talk) 20:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• THANK YOU, Jeff Song for enlightening all of us. I wonder if we can now change the rules so that articles about companies listed on NASDAQ will no longer be speedily deleted on Wikipedia? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Oversimplification of the above. If I write an article "Bobcorp is a company founded in 2005" in the Bobcorp article, and do not state that it is publicly traded on NASDAQ and has multiple industry awards, then it will (and should) be subject to A7. It doesn't need to be deleted immediately, but we should not have to have a full afd to decide that based on that one line the company doesn't sound very notable and worthy of inclusion. The way you write it sounds like if someone made the Bobcorp article, doesn't improve it beyond that one sentence, and I delete it by A7 that I would be guilty somehow because it was double secretly notable. Syrthiss (talk) 14:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• Syrthiss: The original article which was speedily deleted specifically mentioned the company WAS listed on NASDAQ. It even included the NASDAQ ticker. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:03, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

• So the question is, does the mere statement that a firm has a NASDAQ ticker symbol constitute an "explanation of the subject's significance" and therefore exempt the one-liner from an A7 deletion? --Orange Mike | Talk 20:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Are all publicly traded companies automatically considered notable? I'm not aware of any policy, guideline, or logical reason that they would be. However what is and is not a credible claim of significance is unfortunately one of the more subjective areas of CSD. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if publicly traded companies are automatically notable. It only matters if being publicly traded is a credible claim of significance. IMO it probably does meet that very low bar. The more important question of notability is something that should be settled at AFD, not with a CSD A7 deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

wp:Notability is a measure used to decide if a topic rates a stand-alone article on Wikipedia.  Non-notable topics can still have encyclopedic material.  We can say with certainty that for all companies listed on NASDAQ there exist reliable sources that say that they are listed on NASDAQ.  So speedy delete does not appear to be useful.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

"Also, in some cases the article's creator should be notified."

I see this sentence in Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Procedure_for_administrators and since I have had several/many pages speedily deleted and only found out about it by chance later, I wonder under what circumstances an "article creator" is notified? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Usually when the admin speedy deletes a page that was not tagged for deletion or when the creator was not notified by the tagger and didn't have enough time to see the tag. The point of that sentence is to ensure that article creators are notified about the deletion one way or another. If the tagger informed them about the possible deletion already, there's no point for the admin to do it again. Regards SoWhy 15:34, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd say another situation where it's appropriate to notify the creator is when the page was deleted under a criterion different than the one invoked on the speedy deletion tag. For example, a page tagged for A7 for which the creator adds references, yet it still gets deleted under G11. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 18:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

In the circumstance where you were the creator and were not notified (either before or after), or you see someone else was not, you might to bring up the issue at the admin or tagger's talk pages, as the case may be. Note the existence of {{SD warn-needed}}. We make it pretty easy by including a relevant notification template for placement in the CSD tag itself. For admins who've already deleted there's a separate set of tailored warnings such as {{nn-warn-deletion}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for this useful info, User:Fuhghettaboutit. However, I am still not clear why there are no clear instructions in the article saying something like: "Article creators SHOULD ALWAYS be notified of a pending deletion"? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:03, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Certainly article creators should almost always be informed, but there are cases where it is reasonable to make exceptions. An example is when the article was created by a banned user. If the article was created by a persistent sockpuppeting trolling vandal, it is usually desirable to avoid feeding the troll, and silently deleting their vandalism is often best. Also, it always seems to me doubtful whether there is any point in informing the creator of an article if they last edited seven years ago. Again, if a user has stated that they want an article deleted is it necessary to post a message to their talk page telling them that it may be about to be deleted? I am on the whole against saying that one "must" do something. Wikipedia started out with a few general principals and no firm rules, and the never ending instruction creep that adds more and more "rules" as to exactly what one should do under what circumstances is, in my opinion, unhelpful. Better to indicate what is normally expected, and allow people leeway to make exceptions when appropriate. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem there is when someone decides not to notify people because its optional. It would be easy to set a rule that you don't need to notify G7 or U1 tags. ϢereSpielChequers 17:52, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Easy, yes, but helpful, no, for at least two reasons. (1) Introducing more detailed "rules", attempting to specify the exact circumstances in which one can make exceptions, would add one more little bit of complexity, one more bit of verbiage to one of the grossly excessive number of guidelines, policies, etc etc. This would add one more bit to how confusing and uninviting the whole system is to new users, who are confronted with a bewildering quantity of instructions that they can't possibly be reasonably expected to read, and that they find can be thrown in their face when they do something that isn't in line with one or other of the hundreds of details of one or other of the guidelines/policies/etc. It would add one more opportunity for wikilawyering by the people who like to argue abou exact details of guidelines as though they were hard and fast legalistic documents. It would add one more bit of detail for people like you and me to trip over and get wrong, because we don't go back and reread every policy and guideline every time we take some action for which it is relevant. (2) It wouldn't work, because some time or other someone or other would come up with a legitimate reason for making an exception which wasn't covered. Then (presumably) we would get another discussion here, and another increase in the complexity of the policy to cover that case. (3) It would be totally unnecessary, because anyone who can't work out for themself that you don't need to notify a user about (for example) a U1 speedy tag lacks the competence to make meaningful decisions on such issues anyway. (4) It wouldn't work, because people would still not always stick to the instructions. No, far better to just say that normally the user should be informed, and leave it to common sense when to make exceptions than to try to legislate for when such exceptions should be made. Of course, some people would not use common sense, but no matter what the policy says some people won't use common sense. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:06, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

In the end, the creator is always notified if they are watching the article. This is a preference option that can be on by default. So if the creator is concerned about the article, they should have it on their watch list. In fact, I believe there is even a report of unwatched articles so that editors with some space in the watch list can choose to follow a few extra articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be Special:UnwatchedPages. There are three issues with it, however. First, it's an admin-only special page. Second, it is based off of cached data, and is updated only once or twice a day; the current information is a touch over five hours old, for instance, having been updated at 16:14 UTC. Third, it only goes 1000 results deep, which doesn't make it past articles that begin with "1930", and trying to reach further unwatched pages results in an empty report. For these reasons, it's not terribly useful for anything except filling up admin watchlists. (Also, would the admins reading this mind adding a smattering of these pages to your watchlists?) Cheers. lifebaka++ 21:41, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

no point adding them from the items there--they're almost all totally unimportant--if we could get a proper list, then we could divide it up. DGG ( talk ) 02:55, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we can get someone with toolserver access to run off a proper report and email it to interested admins. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:44, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

The only way to get people notified is to make it required. The small amount of troll feeding will be outweighed by the good faith new contributors who get some kind of alert. (For some types of articles, it'll be more like warnings than alerts, as is current practice) I do not think any new contributor knows about watchlists. The extent of the knowledge required to actually work optimally here is very considerable. Most of the people here do know how to do things like this, but we need to have consideration for the others. The question is very simply: do we want to give beginners the impression that we act fairly, or do we think that if we go on arrogantly and incur antagonism, it won't matter? People are angry enough when their articles get deleted, and that can't be completely helped no mater how gentle we are about it. But at least we should do what is possible to help some of them realize we're not totally arbitrary about it. DGG ( talk ) 03:02, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I support the idea to strongly encourage notification of a speedy delete nomination. Also admins that speedy delete without a nomination should also do the informing. Exceptions are already discussed above. Tools like twinkle already make this easier. We can excuse new people making nominations not following the recommendation or requirement, but those that nominate many articles, or delete without presence in the speedy delete category should definitely do some kind of notification. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:44, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I strongly agree with "strongly encourage". JamesBWatson (talk) 18:15, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Any wording other than "require" will be gamed.Certainly I would mean this to include admins deleting in a single step--which is needed in some situations. . Obviously new people will make mistakes, and we'll teach them, not punish them. DGG ( talk ) 01:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Any wording can be "gamed". Let's face it, you want the stronger wording not because you want to avoid gaming, but because you want to make it as hard as possible for anything to be deleted. There are situations where it is not necessary to notify, and it's pointless to insist on doing so in those situations. Another example, not yet mentioned, is this: sometimes a new user creates a whole load of similar unsuitable pages in good faith, because they don't understand how things work on Wikipedia. They then get a string of a dozen or so virtually identical warnings, telling them over and over again of their mistake. Isn't that biting the newcomers? Wouldn't it be better, once they have had the point explained to them a couple of times, to just drop it? In that situation I will drop it, no matter what unsuitable nonsense is written into policy, but many people are likely to think that they have to keep biting the newcomer, because an ill-thought out policy says that they have to. (And please don't suggest including a special clause to cover this exception, because trying to anticipate and list every possible exception makes things worse, not better. It inflates and complicates policies, gives more room for wikilawyering about exactly when the exceptions do and don't apply, and doesn't work because sooner or later another exception comes up.) 79.123.73.121 (talk) 16:39, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Requiring the article creator to be notified is, in many cases, a complete waste of time. As noted above there's no point mandating it for G7 or U1 deletions, unless you want to notify yourself of the impending deletion. If you tag a redirect to a deleted page for deletion there's usually no point in notifying the editor who created it. If you tag an orphaned talk page consisting of one Wikiproject notice for deletion under G8 there's no point notifying the bot which put it there. If you're cleaning up page move vandalism you don't have to notify the vandal that their redirects are being deleted. Any absolute requirement to notify the article's creator would either (a) be widely ignored or (b) require a huge number of caveats. It's much better to include wording encouraging taggers to notify the creator but allowing room for common sense. Hut 8.5 17:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

We already have clear language in the policy, stating "There is strong consensus that the creators and major contributors of pages and media files should be warned of a speedy deletion nomination." (It occurs to me now that this should probably say at the end not just nomination but nomination or deletion if not informed until after the deletion takes place.) In any event, this thread starts with Ottawahitech's personal experience that he/she has seen many pages speedied without notification, but is there really a large problem? I just looked at the deletion log and looked at the last 50 A7s. to wit:

Fusion Genesis, Hummie King, The Manor (Flower Mound, Texas), Cj Elijah Belrose, Skyblu, RXVL, Crazy - The Virtual Band, Dantheman, Music Lab Inc, Subzer0, Fusion Genesis, Gashaw masresha, RJL Records, Rainbow garden club, Clams Casino (musician), Brian McIlravey, Howard's Club H, Ogotu, Nathan Smart, Walter Thomas Edwin Roberts, Hariprasad Rao, Zw3d, Team Vante, The Looters, The white sheebas, SupporttroopsUS, InterRacial Productions, Orange Amigo, Redfoo (LMFAO DJ), Rebecca Beltran, Jibba Battersby, Taseen Anwar, Zoe Swallow, Kankle Kickers, Diseased Imagination, Carter Menary, -sod-deathsword, Austin Nelson, Pure awesome, Jeds Barbecue and Brew, Hamilton United, The Cookie Jar and More, Samantha Frangi, Yash 'NotPatel' Tulsiani, Killhouettes, FanFuser, Shae moments", Ascend Aviation, Robert Mental Productions, Anwar Khan (Farmer).

All creators were informed except for the three I have struck. This is not a large enough statistical sample to give us a real percentage but it does indicate we're not doing too badly on the notification end of things.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Record labels and assertions of significance

Could I please have a second opinion? I've just declined a large number of speedy deletions of record labels, all proposed by 2.26.167.200 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), as it is my understanding, from precedents, that releasing recordings by notable artists is enough of an assertion of significance to escape a speedy deletion. Thanks in advance, Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 04:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

You are correct to decline them. After all, if a label released music of a notable musician or band, it's likely that the label received some coverage as well. Regards SWM (SoWhy[on]Mobile) 08:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

We still need independent evidence of notability. If I had seen any of these articles at AfD I would have deleted them. (OK, strictly speaking, because they contain an assertion of notability then they should be taken through the prod/AfD processes. But Wickethewok (talk · contribs) who created most of them ought to have learned by now.). — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

No technically about it. If there is an assertion of significance or importance (which for an article about a record label, releasing work by notable artists absolutely is) then they can not be speedily deleted. The reason for this requirement is that it is likely there is coverage, and this needs to be looked for, and (if found) evaluated for reliability and depth - questions that speedy deletion is not competent to answer. Thryduulf (talk) 10:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, evidence of notability might be still needed. But A7 does not need it, it just needs any indication of significance or importance. Releasing music for notable people is such an indication; if it turns out that the subject is not notable, PROD/AFD can handle it. Regards SoWhy 11:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

G4 and subsequent XfDs

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

This discussion is closed. See the close regarding the applicability of G4 there and the proposed new wording there. Armbrust ^{Talk to me about my edits}_review 12:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

---

The G4 criterion states, essentially, that a page deleted per a previous discussion can be speedily deleted after being recreated if it is "sufficiently identical" and "unimproved". So if the page looks like it did before deletion, and the concerns at the previous deletion discussion are still valid, the page can be deleted.

What the criterion does not state is what happens after subsequent XfDs. Let's say that an article is recreated after being deleted at AfD and looks pretty similar to the way it did before. This new discussion is closed as "no consensus". As our policy is currently written, I see no reason why G4 deletion is not still eligible. Technically, it can be speedily deleted even with a "keep" conclusion if the article is still identical to the way it appeared before, and the concerns at the prior AfD are still valid (possibly because they weren't even addressed at the new discussion).

Should the assumption be that any XfD after recreation that does not result in a "delete" conclusion makes G4 deletion invalid? Or perhaps the criterion should state that the most recent deletion discussed resulted in a consensus to delete? I suggest amending the criterion to make this clearer. I don't want to overcomplicate things but I ran into this situation recently myself. I actually was the one who did a G4 deletion after a "no consensus" AfD and felt that I was following the letter of the policy, but I'm still not sure that articles should be able to be deleted in this way. -- Atama頭 18:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the first assumption is correct. If the article survived an AFD, then its deletion should only be the result of a new AFD or DRV. If you did such a deletion, you possibly followed the letter of the policy but not its spirit. Any subject that was kept in a discussion should not be speedy deleted afterwards because speedy deletion is per definition the exception to the rule that all deletions should be the result of a deletion discussion. Deleting an article after it was not deleted at AFD essentially ignores the consensus of the debate in favor of the reviewing admin's viewpoint (so in that case, please consider yourself {{trout}}ed).

To sum it up: If the recreation happened after the article was deleted at AFD, G4 may apply. If the recreation was sent to AFD and kept there (either as keep or no consensus), then G4 cannot be applied. If there is support for it, I'd suggest we add that to G4 to clarify. Regards SoWhy 18:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there need for that verbiage? I don't see how anyone bright enough to become an admin could possibly misunderstand the way G4 is supposed to work. Deleting under G4 after a keep or no consensus Afd would be POINTy at best, and warring at worst. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 19:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Since Atama admitted to do such a deletion and I do not think he was doing it in bad faith, there might be some real confusion. Regards SoWhy 19:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Ack, did s/he? I thought this was a rhetorical question. The verbiage must be more confusing than I thought. It reads clearly to me, but if there is actual confusion over this, then yes, we need to copyedit so it is more clear. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 20:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Current verbiage

A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply).

Suggestions to make this more clear? We could simply add a sentence which reads "any article which survives an Afd without being deleted does not qualify for deletion under G4." Or we could add it to the current last sentence: "This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which has survived an Afd without deletion, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)." KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 20:11, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I did the deletion (and I'm a he :)). I didn't consider the deletion to be pointy, but of course I wouldn't, if I thought it would be I wouldn't have done it. My situation was this... Someone else placed the CSD request, I reviewed it and could not justify declining the request as our policy is written, so I deleted the article. I gave some thought about changing the wording and considered this; where it begins, "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion." Perhaps it could instead begin, "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via the most recent deletion discussion about the page." I assume that if an article or other page was nominated and kept, and nominated again later and deleted, G4 should apply even though it was once kept. I believe that the spirit of G4 is to assume that a current consensus of editors favors deletion and that a demonstration of a change in consensus (via a newer deletion discussion) would be necessary to change that assumption. If my assumption is incorrect or my wording is imprecise please correct me, thank you. -- Atama頭 21:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, adding to my confusion here was that the discussion was not closed as keep, but as "no consensus". If there is not a new consensus to keep, does that invalidate the old consensus to delete? I think it might be fair to say that if there is no consensus in a newer discussion, then the matter is "muddied" enough that speedy deletion would no longer apply. On the other hand, in another hypothetical situation what if the AfD were closed as "delete", and after deletion there was a discussion at DRV about whether the closure was appropriate and that DRV discussion closed as "no consensus", does the article stay deleted or is the deletion reversed? That's almost the same situation, I don't see a big difference between an article restored after deletion and subject to AfD, and a DRV about an article that was deleted via AfD, the process and consequences of each discussion is the same. So again, I am honestly conflicted about this. This why I'd like the policy to be clearer about this. -- Atama頭 21:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

"No consensus" at AFD means "No consensus to delete", not "No consensus what to do". If the community cannot decide whether to delete, no single admin should decide it for them. As for the DRV example, it stays deleted because "No consensus" at DRV means "No consensus to change the close", not "No consensus to delete". Since DRV only serves to check an admin's close of a deletion discussion, it does not influence the article's fate itself. Often people will say that DRV is not "AFD round 2" and that's exactly the reason why. Regards SoWhy 21:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a good explanation, thank you. -- Atama頭 21:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Atama that G4 is valid if the most recent XfD resulted in delete. Adding "most recent" has been disputed in the past: see WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 39#G4 clarification (September 2010) and User:Jclemens/CSD-RFC (stuck RfC draft, November 2010). Flatscan (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Another previous discussion: WT:Deletion review#G4 (copied from Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 November 4#Carli Banks). Flatscan (talk) 04:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

You're right. My suggested phrasing doesn't cover that, does it? Darnit. Is there support for "most recent' now? (it has been a year, after all...) KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 16:23, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Once kept, NEVER G4-able

The above discussion has it backwards. Per the lead of WP:CSD "If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations." Speedy deletion criteria are made to be brittle and "fail" to a full-blown XfD discussion. Thus, if an article is no-consensus'ed, then deleted at an AfD, and then recreated, why would that second deletion be automagic and able to take place without discussion? It wouldn't. Any deletion of any material which has survived an XfD at any point in its existence under CSD G4 is a non-policy-based deletion: that's the way it reads, and I think it's absolutely appropriate that it stay that way. If things are getting obnoxious with repeated recreations against consensus, then WP:RFPP is the way to enforce the community's will, not a one-admin decision. Jclemens (talk) 04:45, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me clarify: Your opinion is that if an article was kept 3-2 in 2004, deleted 15-1 in 2009 because we enforce policies better these days, and recreated with the exact same content as the 2009 revision in 2011, assuming no copyright issues, we should waste several community members' times again? NW (Talk) 15:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the answer to the question, "why would that second deletion be automagic and able to take place without discussion?" would be "consensus can change". Also, it's not that the second deletion took place "without discussion", but rather that the second deletion resulted from the discussion that occurred just before the first deletion. -- Atama頭 17:34, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to add, we do treat WP:PROD in this way because proposed deletions need to be completely uncontroversial. If an article went through AfD in 2004 and was closed 2-1 in favor of being kept, then in 2011 we still consider deletion to be controversial. I'm not aware that CSD is intended to be treated that way. -- Atama頭 17:40, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that NW makes a good point. The most recent deletion discussion should be controlling. That said, I'd hope that an admin would look carefully at a speedy of any article that was kept in the past at an AfD. Such an article probably has an interesting history attached to it... Hobit (talk) 19:48, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with that, NW. I'm a big proponent of SNOW closes at AfDs when consensus is clear, as well it would probably be in that specific hypothetical case. In fact, the vast majority of G4s-after-a-previous-keep-even-if-the-most-recent-was-delete are nowhere near that clear-cut, are they?

G4 is for an AfD/deletion/repost the same content elsewhere or under the same title sequence. The wording also includes trivial modifications, but it is in no way an excuse to prevent editors from working on good-faith updates to deleted content in mainspace, which is how I've seen it applied on several occasions. Jclemens (talk) 00:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with that at all actually. If an article was deleted through AfD, then the community decided that the article doesn't belong in article space. It shouldn't be placed back into mainspace because someone wants to improve it. That circumvents the entire process. We have the article incubator and user subpages for that kind of thing. G4 should be used exactly for that purpose. Does it make sense to totally ignore an AfD because someone wants another chance to work on the article? It doesn't make sense to me. -- Atama頭 00:13, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The circumstance that this recreation is allowed is when new information comes to light on the topic, and the issues in the AFD have been addressed in the recreated article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:35, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure--no one is arguing that the recreated, still-defective article should be kept. It should go directly to AfD, where it would be quickly and painlessly executed by the community rather than an admin acting alone. Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If a situation is codifiable with just a few simple criteria which apply 100% of the time, then what is the point of saying "go to AfD or declare that you are speeding this per IAR". I see no upside to your preferred wording at all. All it seems to be doing is wasting community members' time, which is finite.

Also, can you explain to me how your proposal is consistent with G4's current wording: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)." NW (Talk) 03:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

NW, I am not making a proposal: I am pointing out how CSD is actually worded. G4 is limited in that since it's a speedy deletion process, it can only apply to speedily deletable material. Nothing kept once at an AfD is speedy deletable unless it's a newly discovered copyvio, and changing the wording of the G4 criterion doesn't affect the overall scope of CSD. Individual criteria can't expand the mandate of CSD, so "fixing" the problem the lead creates in G4 requires a change to the CSD criteria. Which is OK, but not too many people seem to be understanding the location of the issue, and are proposing changes that won't have any net policy effect while the CSD scope remains unchanged. Jclemens (talk) 17:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

And I think that everyone else is saying that doesn't make sense at all for G4. I thought policies were supposed to be based on common sense and what's best for Wikipedia, not dogma. -- Atama頭 18:51, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

So are you suggesting that the lead be rewritten to allow what you think should be the common sense application? I don't disagree that that's a reasonable way forward. Jclemens (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Most definitely. I'm not sure that the lead unambiguously matches what you're saying (that it clearly demonstrates that any XfD survival invalidates non-copyvio CSDs) but I can definitely see how it can be interpreted that way. So to avoid a situation where the lead conflicts with a change in G4, it should be changed. I'm not sure if it should be changed to say that it's referring only to the most recent XfD result, or that G4 is an exception, as copyvios are also mentioned as an exception. -- Atama頭 16:36, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Depending on the specifics, 2009 to 2011 might be enough time for consensus on the relevant issues to change. WP:Deletion review tends to allow recreation and send to a new AfD if the last AfD is a few years old. To make the hypothetical example clearer, the time between deletion and recreation should be shortened to days. Flatscan (talk) 04:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Of course if an article was deleted at a recent AfD and it is reposted with the same content, G4 applies, even if it was kept three years years before at another discussion. And this meets the letter of the criterion, which is not the statement you quote from the lead but "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion." The general notion in the lead is a good one, but it was never intended to conflict with G4; it's just that a few very specific situations where it also would not apply (I can think of two others) are not as obvious as copyvios. It addresses the general idea that when considering a speedy, a one (or, depending on how you look at it, two) person decision, as opposed to a discussion among more people that explores the merits, is trumped in most situations.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

While it certainly seems like that might be the case, it's not. The lead paragraphs of CSD explain the process, which is exactly as it says: Speedy only applies when there's no controversy, and nothing except a new copyvio allows a previously kept article to be speedily deleted. G4 is just one criterion, and it doesn't trump the overall expectations for CSD usage. I, too, can think of others--but those would be IARs, which is always OK when the circumstances dictate it. In fact, NW's hypothetical example might be a fine example of an IAR speedy... but it's not a G4, because the underlying article had been kept once.

I'd be willing to help craft a rewrite of the lead AND G4 that actually fixes this, but I think the more important aspect of G4 reform is strengthening the "substantially identical" requirement. That is, no good-faith effort to address a prior deletion is G4-able now, even though it happens inappropriately at the moment, and I'd welcome the opportunity to strengthen the language appropriately. Jclemens (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah I see: you think that there's something controversial about an article whose most recent deletion discussion resulted in it being deleted upon the close of that discussion, being summarily re-deleted when it is reposted in contravention of the outcome of the discussion, with the repost containing the same content that the discussion considered. By contrast, I can't imagine a more uncontroversial matter.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:30, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

If it's been kept at AfD once before, indeed, there's nothing controversial about it: it's simply not eligible for G4 unless it's a copyvio, since it was kept at AfD at one point. Of course, special BLP measures apply as well, if needed, but remember: Speedy deletion is for things that no good-faith editor familiar with our policy disagrees with; for things that are an uphill and/or hopeless, yet contested, battle... AfD applies. Jclemens (talk) 05:00, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

It makes no sense to grant the right to perpetual recreation to a subject that once managed to muster enough !votes to prevent a consensus from forming and has since been deleted by one or more subsequent AfDs. G4 should be based upon the most recent AfD as explained above. --Allen3 ^talk 19:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

No one has proposed that. I've said that WP:RFPP or changing the overall CSD wording are both effective ways to accomplish that. Jclemens (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems people just aren't understanding the problem with the logic here--AGFing that I'm not explaining it well, let's try this again:

1) The general CSD rule: "If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations."

2) What G4 says: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion. This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version, pages to which the reason for the deletion no longer applies, and content moved to user space for explicit improvement (but not simply to circumvent Wikipedia's deletion policy). This criterion also excludes content undeleted via deletion review, or which was deleted via proposed deletion or speedy deletion (although in that case the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply)."

Nowhere does 2) claim to supersede 1). It has a bunch of additional clauses about what is NOT G4-able, but nowhere does it claim to have an exception to the general rule articulated in 1). If there's a desire to have G4 apply to previously-kept XfD's, then 1) needs to change, not 2). Does that make it clearer? Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Explained that way, 1) need to be changed to specify the most recent deletion discussion instead of using its current ambiguous wording. If an article has been has undergone multiple discussions then "prior" may refer to any past discussion suitable to a wikilawyer's agenda and fails to recognize Wikipedia's policy that Consensus can change. --Allen3 ^talk 20:18, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it should specify the most recent. I've actually always worked on that assumption--it does not really make sense otherwise. ` DGG ( talk ) 01:24, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It makes sense to me: consensus can change, and consensus can change back, so speedying something that's been decided two different ways on two different occasions is inappropriate. Speedy is not about making things convenient for those who want to see things deleted, it's intentionally narrowly drawn to do things where the outcome is essentially predetermined, were it taken to AfD. Differing XfD outcomes is the poster child for consensus being able to change. Jclemens (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Jclemens, you may wish to re-read your statement and decide where you stand. Your statement the "It makes sense to me" indicates support for the two comments directly above (using the most recent discussion). This is followed with "speedying something that's been decided two different ways on two different occasions is inappropriate", indicating you oppose using the most recent discussion as the deciding factor when at least one previous discussion came to a differing conclusion. I suspect your repeated introduction of such non-deterministic language is the reason people are unable to understand your position. --Allen3 ^talk 11:44, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's break this down once more.

1) The way the lead of CSD is written, nothing which survived an XfD previously, except newly discovered copyvios, are eligible. I really don't see that as controversial, unclear, or ambiguous.

2) The way that would be applied, that any kept-deleted-recreated article would be automagically booted to AfD forever after, doesn't seem inappropriate to me.

3) At the same time, rewriting the lead so that G4 works the way several people want it to work doesn't seem inappropriate to me either.

So... does that help? Don't confuse my pointing out an inconvenient fact about the current verbiage with me saying that it's the only possible way it could be, and advocating that it remain that way. In this case, I think it's reasonable way to change it, but the discussion reveals a lot of poor assumptions about the purpose and scope of CSD. Jclemens (talk) 01:08, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) It makes no sense at all. Consensus can change is a complete red herring here. The notion is just as applicable to an article that was deleted only once at AfD as one that was kept and then later deleted. Consensus can change has nothing to do with the matter. G4 is a mechanism to enforce the result of deletion discussions that ended in a deletion. It is obvious and tacit that when an AfD is closed as delete it trumps prior discussions as a logical necessity—or we wouldn't delete at all as a result of the very discussion. It is just as obvious and tacit that when an article is kept that was previously deleted, the consensus of keep trumps the prior deletion on a going forward basis. Accordingly, of course an article whose most recent discussion was to keep is not subject to G4, and of course an article whose most recent discussion was to delete is subject to G4. This view of the lead language as inviolate, as to be interpreted like some strict constructionist scholar interpreting the constitution is a problem. Someone added the lead language in (actually here), the exception of a potential conflict with G4 was simply never noted, and we can remedy that now. Meanwhile, the reductio ad absurdum; actually not even, the natural absurd result of your interpretation, is that if an article was ever kept, upon a deletion result at a later AfD, one second after the close anyone can repost the exact same content that was considered at the discussion, and that repst has to go through AfD again.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

And why is that necessarily a problem that must be dealt with by unilateral administrator deletion? Do you think that the editor who reposted that article will escape unscathed? That sounds like disruptive editing to me, and RFPP would easily take care of that possibility. The much bigger problem with G4 is when administrators take one look at a rewritten article and say "Nope, I think the deletion rationale still applies" and delete the article (again, rewritten in good faith) without a discussion. If you want to pick on a real problem with G4, as opposed to a mostly theoretical interaction, that would be my pick. I'd much rather sculpt its applicability to safeguard good-faith reposts, even if that means we have to deal with disruptive editing without immediately deleting the reporting. Jclemens (talk) 01:15, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Unilateral administrator deletion? What? If you want to characterize it that way, that's every CSD. You think it should be treated differently when there's been a prior survival, whereas I think the prior survival is utterly irrelevant. People will escape unscathed? I have no idea what this has to do with the matter. RFPP? I'm again lost as to what you're talking about. Instead of deleting a repost we would protect it? Why? In what form? So an AfD ends and then the same content that was deleted is reposted. We should now keep that new content but protect it? As for misapplication (as opposed to your misinterpretation) as you're talking about in the latter half of your post, that does happen, but every CSD is sometimes misapplied. The language is already clear that G4 does not apply to sufficiently rewritten material. Maybe we could make it clearer but it's off topic; a complete tangent to the issue you raised in this thread.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:35, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Let me play Devil's Advocate here (not that I'm calling you The Devil, Jclemens!) because while I don't agree with Jclemens I think that I get what his point is. He suggests that speedily deleting an article that has been recreated isn't necessary, and may be bite-y. He's also suggesting that if recreation of an article is such a problem, it makes more sense to salt it rather than to keep deleting it over and over per G4. There's some sense to that, I'll admit.

However, I still disagree. First of all, the concept of "unilateral administrator deletion" is somewhat flawed. G4 is probably the least "unilateral" CSD criterion. You could say that most every other CSD criterion is unilateral, except perhaps for U1 or G7 which require that the user or page author respectively is requesting deletion explicitly. Most any other CSD criteria can be applied if an administrator simply sees a page and thinks the criterion is relevant (generally), as the policy states, "The criteria for speedy deletion specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media." Alone among all of the criteria, G4 actually requires that a consensus be reached in a deletion discussion that supports the administrator's deletion. So again, it's the least unilateral form of speedy deletion.

And there is one thing that Jclemens has stated that is simply wrong; I'm not saying it's an opinion I disagree with, I'm saying it's factually incorrect. He has stated that, "Speedy only applies when there's no controversy". That's incorrect, and our policy makes that clear. It lists the differences between speedy and the other three deletion methods (proposed deletions, deletion discussions, and office actions) and defines proposed deletions as "nominating pages for uncontroversial deletion". If speedy deletions needed to be uncontroversial, there would really be nothing to differentiate them from proposed deletions. I can say that in practice, controversial speedy deletions happen all the time. Otherwise we wouldn't have discussions at DRV about how appropriate a deletion was, we would just restore a page if someone objected to it (which is how proposed deletions actually do work). If they had to be uncontroversial, then we'd allow article authors to remove CSD tags. We'd disallow deletion of articles where someone has protested the deletion on the article's talk page. None of that is the case. The only CSD criterion that can't be applied with controversy is G6. So I agree with Fuhghettaboutit when they say that "prior survival is utterly irrelevant". -- Atama頭 16:49, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

A good summary Atama. One quibble. If by "RFPP" what was being referred to was salting, then it still makes no sense. In order to salt, one needs to delete first. So the G4 deletion would still need to be carried out. Whether to salt thereafter is a different question. It think we generally should not. By salting, we foreclose the possibility of a person posting a new version that is not sufficiently similar to the deleted content—one that addresses the deletion bases by, for example, including sufficient sources to meet the GNG that was identified as the problem in the AfD. There may be particular, sui generis situations where (long term) salting is warranted, but I think they are rare.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:29, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it wouldn't, Jclemens is proposing that recreation should lead to a new AfD, and if that AfD concludes as "delete", that it should be salted at that time. And I agree with you, salting seems to bite even more than just deleting by G4, because if we don't salt then we open up the possibility of recreating the page properly (in other words, substantially different and resolving the concerns that led to deletion at the AfD). I personally have kind of a "three strikes and you're out" rule for salting; if a page is recreated 3 times or more and speedily deleted each time (for whatever reason) then I protect it after deleting it one final time. -- Atama頭 23:14, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily the second AfD--it would depend on how firm the consensus was, how much good faith was demonstrated by the re-creator, etc. If it was re-created the day after an AfD closed as delete, with no new info, I expect that might cause salting... (at which point RFPP or DRV can each host a discussion if someone else comes along and wants to recreate it properly) Which is an entirely different situation from a good-faith but inadequate attempt six months or a year after the discussion. Jclemens (talk) 21:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

The "survived a prior deletion discussion" sentence in the lead

Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases. If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations.

Is this sentence general guidance that allows for unstated exceptions or a rule that must be interpreted rigidly? I agree with Fuhghettaboutit's comment (diff) that there are a few exceptions in addition to the explicitly stated copyright violations (G12). For example, an exception involving U1 is easy to describe:

U1 User request: User:Example's user page includes content that another user believes to be a violation of WP:User pages. That user nominates it at MfD, but the page is not found to be an egregious violation and is kept. Example later retires and tags his/her user page with U1.

Is it necessary to expand the list of exceptions to be exhaustive? Flatscan (talk) 04:19, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer we enumerated the list of things to which this doesn't apply, while keeping the general rule and scope of speedy deletion intact. Sure, U1 is a good example of something where the prior deletion discussion probably doesn't make sense. Jclemens (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused about the fact that you seem to be supporting this, given the discussion above. Anyway, I didn't think we needed an exhaustive list but given that discussion, I do think we need the change something. I was not thinking of IAR as you suggested, but in addition to G4: U1, G9 and possibly undiscovered and confirmed hoaxes under G3 (i.e., the creator admits). We also have to hope that "page" is not interpreted more broadly, or F1, F5, F8 and C1 would also need to be included in any list.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

If we're getting into a list longer than about 3 entries then I think that it would be good to link instead to a separate "Exceptions" section where exceptions to the general rule of 'XfD Keep = not speediable' are listed with a brief explanation why (copyvio is obvious, U1 isn't necessarily). Thryduulf (talk) 19:41, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe a footnote?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:00, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's just change the wording from "survived a prior deletion discussion" to "survived the most recent deletion discussion". Nyttend (talk) 11:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

No. If it's ever been kept once, there's a question that makes it unsuitable for a speedy deletion discussion. U1 and G12 have very different reasons why the new request should trump the XfD requirement, G4 does not. Jclemens (talk) 21:39, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

That addition doesn't fix U1, among others. Flatscan (talk) 04:09, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Is CSD G4 applicable or inapplicable to a previously kept page whose most recent discussion ended in deletion?

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

---

Once a page has previously been kept at an XfD discussion as "keep" or "no consensus", some users believe {{db-repost}} (CSD G4) is never applicable, even if the most recent XfD was closed as "delete". Others hold that the most recent discussion is what invokes the applicability of CSD G4. 06:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Notifications

• Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines (tag) (list) | (detag) (delist)
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Never applicable

Most recent discussion

1. The common sense interpretation of the policy. Fuhghettaboutit (talk · contribs) comment here aptly sums up my position on the matter. NuclearWarfare (talk · contribs)'s comment here demonstrates why the "never applicable" position lacks common sense. Cunard (talk) 06:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
2. I agree with Cunard. G4 is a maintenance criterion, created to enforce the community's decision at AFD against recreations. Since the second AFD "overrides" the first one completely (e.g. if the result in the second one is "keep", it's irrelevant that the first one ended in "delete"), the first AFD cannot be important later for purposes of G4. As such, if the most recent AFD ended in "keep", G4 can't be applied since it would override the community's decision but if it ended in "delete", G4 only serves to enforce that decision and thus is applicable. Regards SoWhy 06:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
3. I also agree with the above. Quite simply, If a page's most recent xfd results in delete (or rename or merge to another target, for that matter) or the most recent discussion was a deletion review resulting in endorse deletion, G4 is always applicable (assuming the reasons to delete are the same as in the discussion). If the most recent xfd was no consensus or keep, or the most recent discussion was a deletion review resulting in overturn deletion, G4 is never applicable. That's how I've always treated it at least, it's a common sense application of the rule, and it reflects what I believe is common practice amongst administrators. I would support changing the wording to better clarify this. VegaDark (talk) 07:06, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
4. The point of G4 is to make sure deletion discussions are actually binding and cannot be overturned by an individual editor. Preventing pages which have been kept at some point from ever being deleted under it therefore violates the spirit of G4. Hut 8.5 10:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
5. Per above, as the most recent deletion discussion would represent the current consensus. However, if the subject becomes eligible for inclusion in the future and a similar article is recreated, then G4 would no longer apply, despite the AfD. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 13:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
6. Hut 8.5 has it right. Hipocrite (talk) 16:38, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
7. It should be clear from my comments in the section above what my opinion is, but just to reiterate, I agree that G4 (and other CSDs) should be based on the most recent XfA result. I don't want to take up too much space here so I'll add my own section below outlining my thoughts. -- Atama頭 16:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
8. As explained by others above, this is the option that makes sense. There are too many ways to game the system in the short term and serious problems other than copyright. Just because a elaborate hoax from a banned user escapes deletion in one AfD does not mean that once its nature it proven each recreation should require another full AfD to clean up. The same principle applies to WP:COATRACKs that attract enough WP:SPAs to block consensus during an initial deletion discussion. --Allen3 ^talk 22:50, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
9. Per everyone who has explained why this common sense interpretation is the most obvious and best for the encyclopaedia. I have no doubt that this was the original intention of the criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 22:32, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
10. All the arguments I would have used have been covered. I agree with User:Mkativerata's past reference to Generalia specialibus non derogant: the individual criteria should override the general sentence in the lead ("survived a prior deletion discussion") when they conflict. If the sentence were meant as a hard rule, it would be bolded or otherwise emphasized. Flatscan (talk) 04:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
11. Just because it was kept years ago doesn't make it ineligible if the 'delete' consensus is current. WikiPuppies! (bark) 07:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
12. I agree that the most recent discussion should, in general, take precedence. I would caveat that, however, that a years-old discussion should be a matter for sober consideration by the (possibly) deleting admin, especially if there is (for example) acknowledgement of it on the article talk page, especially giving some argument as to why consensus may have changed. Basically amounts to WP:COMMONSENSE, though. SamBC(talk) 13:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion (re G4 applicability)

• It depends upon the circumstances and timescale. If something is immediately recreated after deletion then this is edit warring and so G4 would be appropriate. But consider the case where an article has been repeatedly nominated for deletion and kept on many occasions. Then, for once, a delete result is obtained. If G4 could apply thereafter then that singular result would be binding in perpetuity and this would be manifestly unfair. Per WP:SAUCE, if an article can be repeatedly nominated for deletion on the grounds that consensus can change, then it should be allowed to be recreated on the same grounds. In such cases, common sense requires that a reasonable interval of time should elapse between each testing of consensus - a year or so, say. Warden (talk) 06:57, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

• I would disagree with this. I would say G4 is applicable even after the delete result is finally obtained in your example. I would say the proper venue to contest this would be deletion review, not recreating the article in protest. I would also support speedy closes of renominations too soon from a previous xfd resulting in keep or no consensus, if renominating something was becoming an issue in order to try and admin shop for one that will get a result to their liking. VegaDark (talk) 07:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Nyttend

Why aren't there any "View by ___" sections for actual users? I'd like to endorse SoWhy and VegaDark, with the added comment (in response to Warden) that a page only qualifies for G4 if it's a repost; i.e., virtually identical to the original content. If you create a page about a trivial school and object to a prod, the page can't be A7 deleted (as it's a school) or prodded (as you objected), but it can definitely be deleted at AFD. Let's say that the school begins to attract the attention of scholars; articles are published about its education-leading practices in the Elementary School Journal and about its influence on colleges in The Journal of Higher Education, and a thorough account of its history appears in The American Historical Review: the school now is clearly notable, and a thoroughly new article that uses those articles as sources will definitely not be subject to AFD — it's substantially different from the deleted page. Nyttend (talk) 11:32, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Atama

I didn't want to take up too much space above but I have given this more thought and think that we should be changing the policy in regards to all CSDs, not just G4. In other words, we should use the most recent deletion discussion to determine eligibility of speedy deletion no matter which criterion is used. Let me give a hypothetical example. Someone creates an article about a company that makes bicycles and uses nothing but self-published sources. It is taken to AfD, and it is kept, perhaps because someone finds a couple of press releases that talk about the company and convinces enough people to form a rough consensus to keep it. A year later, another AfD comes about, where someone points out that press releases are essentially self-published sources anyway and aren't reliable, and nobody can find significant coverage anywhere else, so the article is deleted as being non-notable due to lack of coverage from reliable sources. A month after that, the article is recreated but simply says that the company makes bicycles (without elaborating), and then has a list of current models and prices. The article bears practically no resemblance to the form it was in when the previous AfD concluded, so G4 wouldn't necessarily apply, but it definitely qualifies for A7 and maybe G11 deletion. So because the article was once kept a couple of years ago, is yet another AfD necessary? I'd hope not. I don't see how that first AfD should get in the way of a valid speedy deletion no matter which criteria you use. -- Atama頭 17:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

1. Although this deviates from the core question, I agree that a third AfD should not be necessary. Rather than needing to use A7 or G11, I hope that G4 would cover obviously worse recreations, but no changes came of WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 41#Proposed rewrite to G4 (January 2011), where they were discussed briefly. Flatscan (talk) 04:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Jclemens

Contra Nyttend, G4 is applied far more liberally than "just a repost". Several editors have opined that if one admin thinks that the cause for deletion, as outlined in a previous AfD, hasn't been sufficiently or adequately addressed, then G4 is applicable. I would have a lot less heartburn about the change if the "identical or virtually identical" were actually determined to be consensus, and that good-faith recreations which were NOT identical but did NOT address the previous XfD would be routed ONLY through XfD (...until such time as the community's patience is exhausted and create protection is applied).

The way it's written now makes sense. G4 is mostly applied to things that were never kept in the first place, so routing kept-deleted-recreated articles back through XfD is not an unreasonable burden on XfD. Remember, the default for all processes is "full discussion", and I think the fact that we're even having this discussion demonstrates that G4'ing previously kept material does not have the sufficiently high level of community consensus necessary for a CSD criterion. Thus, I see no problem with the status quo and prefer it be kept until and unless someone can demonstrate that sending a previously-kept page to XfD, even if it had been deleted in the mean time, creates a problem other than "But I want it gone without having to wait!" Jclemens (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I largely support this view. If an article is deleted at AfD, and then an identical or virtually identically article is re-created, obviously consensus has already stated that that article should be deleted (in fact, it already was!) It doesn't matter what its past is like. The trouble arises when we encounter a situation in which the new article has a number of changes (perhaps small) and the deleting admin still believes it "doesn't address" the concerns raised in the AfD. Should an admin be making this decision unilaterally, especially for an article with a contentious history? I believe the answer is no, there should be discussion around it. If the only result of the AfD is a snowball delete and a trout to the face of the re-creator, so be it - it's not like this happens all the time. Dcoetzee 20:29, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

View by User:VegaDark

Contrary to Jclemens' assertion above, I would contend the actual status quo is to treat it how everyone else participating here so far has agreed the system should be, that being the most recent deletion discussion is controlling. Despite the actual wording of the criteria, I believe it is standard practice to only go off of the most recent discussion and not decline G4's for ones that happen to have a keep result from 5 years ago where it was later deleted.

I would also disagree that the recreated content needs to be substantially identical in order to apply G4. The content could be 100% different so long as the original concerns of the xfd have not been satisfied in the new version. I would agree that an admin should err on the side of not applying G4 if they are in doubt, but other than that I have no qualms leaving it up to admin discretion whether something satisfies the concerns of the previous deletion discussion or not. If an editor disagrees they can take it up with the admin in question or go to deletion review if necessary.

The very goal of creating the G4 speedy deletion criterion was to avoid discussions on things where consensus has already been reached. If an editor wishes to recreate content that has been deleted in its most recent deletion discussion, the proper venue to determine if consensus has changed regarding that content is deletion review. If the current wording were enforced to the letter, any content that had a past xfd resulting in no consensus or keep would not have to go through deletion review to be recreated. This creates a number of problems which I have outlined here. Let's change the wording to reflect what I believe is the standard practice, common sense approach. VegaDark (talk) 09:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

1. Endorse almost all of this. An old survival at AfD has no bearing on whether the latest recreation is "sufficiently identical and unimproved" when compared to the last deleted version. I might be a little more restrictive on G4 use than VegaDark, but I agree on the broad point that it should be looser than "identical". DRV can be skipped if the recreation is obviously fixed (e.g. completely unsourced → significant coverage in several excellent reliable sources), per WP:BURO. Flatscan (talk) 04:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
2. Endorse this view. The most recent discussion is the best representation of current consensus. Requiring a textual match for a G4 is also excessive: if a reviewing admin determines that the new article has done nothing to address the original concern, and the motivation behind that original concern is still valid, G4 is applicable. There's obviously a bias towards believing that new text and new sources render a new article worthy of discussion, but if it's the fifth recreation of "Famous Singer's Twelfth Studio Album" and it still doesn't satisfy the concerns of the original deletion discussion, it's still a G4, even if the editor and text are completely unrelated to the original.—Kww(talk) 02:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Monty845

As I see it, there are two issues at play, which AfD should be controlling, and how binding a delete decision should be. As to the first issue, I think that the most recent AfD should be controlling, as others have noted, if a past keep decision forever forbids future G4 deletions, then the deletion result would be essentially unenforceable. In regards to the second issue, I support a standard between that of User:Jclemens and User:VegaDark. G4 should be applicable to recreations if the recreation is either virtually identical to the deleted version OR if the recreation is as bad or worse then the deleted version in regards to what ever issue resulted in the deletion. That way a good faith recreation that has at least improved on the deletion issue over the deleted version can receive another AfD, and we can avoid filling AfD with recreations that have the exact same problem. Under this standard, reviewing admins should err on the side of rejecting the G4 if there they have any question whether the article is an improvement over the deleted version. Monty₈₄₅ 05:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

1. Endorse. While I think that borderline recreations should require consensus to be restored (they benefit from no consensus at AfD), I would be satisfied with the line drawn here. Flatscan (talk) 04:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

View by User:TransporterMan

G4 ought not to become an alternative to deletion review. If any sysop other than the sysop who closed the XfD evaluates the G4 nom, then they're second-guessing the closing sysop's judgment. That should only happen if the XfD closer fails or is unavailable to review the G4. G4 ought to remain as a criteria but the procedure for making and reviewing G4s ought to change. A person making a G4 nom ought to have an obligation to also put a note on the talk page of the sysop who closed the XfD saying that the article has been restored and nominated for G4. (And it must be remembered that G4 noms can be made by non-sysops who cannot see the deleted version of the article.) No other sysop ought to either remove the g4 nom or delete the article unless the XfD closer fails to review the G4 nom and keep or delete the article within a set period of time (to be determined by consensus, but 3 days/96 hours sounds about right). If that happens, then the G4 reviewer ought to delete the article unless it has clearly been improved enough to substantially cure the problems which were raised in the XfD and should notify the restorer that deletion review is available to review whether or not the article should now be kept. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 16:58, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

View by User:Herostratus

The last XfD should control, but G4 should have an expiration date of X amount of time. Otherwise we are ruled by the dead hand of the past.

For instance, the article Echo Helstrom. It was deleted -- but more than three years ago, with four editors advocating "Delete". Of those four, one remains active (if you consider five edits since June 2011 as active), one is marginally active (two edits since June 2011) and two are inactive. Thus is probably typical, and I'm sure in other deletion discussions, all of the Delete advocates have moved on. How much control should people who aren't even active Wikipedians anymore have over what does or does not appear in the Wikipedia?

The article cited is probably not acceptable because the subject is a private person and BLP concerns and rules have strengthened in the intervening time, but leaving that aside and just taking it as an example, I think it would be justifiable to re-post this article into Wikispace (perhaps with an advisory AfD).

Times change, the Wikipedia population changes, de facto standards change. If an article on an entity is deleted, and five years later the de facto standards have changed such that similar articles are routinely kept, what sense does it make to say that that article can't be recreated, even with very similar content.

Granted, this means a bit of extra work, as some articles would have to be wack-a-moled again. But this probably won't happen much, and the upside gain is some acceptable articles. But the sell-by date of an XfD delete decision shouldn't be too short. So how much time should "X" be? I don't know. Surely at least 1 year, but surely not more than 5 years, I would say. Two years sounds about right. Herostratus (talk) 16:17, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think a hard time limit would work, rather an advisory note along the lines of "If the XfD was more than about 1-2 years ago, and particularly if the consensus was weak or participation was low, then it is recommended to check whether the discussion reflects current community standards. Also check whether the situation regarding the subject has changed significantly in the intervening period such that an article may now be sustainable. Unless it is clear that a discussion today would stand no chance of reaching a different conclusion then it should not be speedily deleted under this criterion."

The specific wording is crap, but the sentiment I'm trying to give is that a "reasonable doubt"-standard test should be applied - i.e. if there is reasonable doubt that an XfD today would come to the same conclusion about the article then speedy deletion is not appropriate. This should always be the case when evaluating a G4, but the factors highlighted are specific things that make reasonable doubt more likely (but obviously don't guarantee it). Thryduulf (talk) 18:38, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Right, and an alternative to my suggestion would be something like that, or to simplify: "If an article is taken to DRV with the argument that the deletion was more than X years ago, this alone should be sufficient to restore the article, even of the deletion was in order, absent some other compelling argument not to". This has both the advantage and disadvantage of allowing some leeway, so that common sense can to come into play. However, this would likely tend of turn the DRV into an AfD, e.g. "There is a compelling argument not to, mainly that article is crap and/or has no chance of surviving an AfD". Much simpler to add a clause not subject to interpretation to the G4 criteria: "G4 does not apply to articles reposted X or more years after deletion". The article would of course be subject to a new AfD. Better to argue its merits there than at DRV. Herostratus (talk) 04:08, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

That is crucially different to what I'm suggesting in that an XfD being old is, on it's own, a reason to undelete unless there are reasons not to. I oppose that and strongly think that an XfD-deleted page should remain deleted unless there are reasons to undelete, with the XfD being old being just one possible contributing factor and not a reason on it's own. Thryduulf (talk) 11:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

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

G4: Moving forward

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

---

The 30-day RfC tag will expire in a few days, and there haven't been any new comments in nearly two weeks. The consensus seems obvious to me, so we can start discussing implementation before the formal close. Does the text of CSD need to be modified? Flatscan (talk) 04:08, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The RfC has been closed with the outcome that G4 should be based on the most recent deletion discussion. I propose adding "most recent" to G4's full description. I think that "most recent" might be confusing if also added to its bold text. Flatscan (talk) 05:42, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. I think placement in the full description is sufficient. VegaDark (talk) 00:11, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I have notified the discussion's participants about this new subsection. Cunard (talk) 00:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• I agree with the wording change in the lead of

  If a page has survived a prior deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations.

  to something like

  If a page has survived the most recent deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations.

  I also propose adding a footnote to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G4 that links to this discussion, as is done in other parts of the policy. Cunard (talk) 00:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Flatscan (talk · contribs)'s suggestion below regarding the wording of "its most recent discussion" instead of "the most recent discussion" is a sensible and uncontroversial revision. I prefer Flatscan's wording. Cunard (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with the wording change and the footnote. Thryduulf (talk) 00:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I had thought most recent was utterly axiomatic but given the need for this RfC, I guess we do need to be explicit. (I didn't participate directly since my opinion was made clear in the discussion leading up to it and I was quoted by diff in the first line.) Given how one-sided the RfC outcome was, I don't think this is an important enough clarification to be part of G4 directly and so I definitely agree this is better done by a footnote that can be pointed to in the rare cases where it arises. I would add that footnote right after the end of the first sentence, and would suggest something like The result of the most recent deletion discussion controls. This means that if the most recent discussion was "keep" or a default to keep through no consensus, G4 does not apply. Likewise, an article that was deleted through its most recent discussion, but was kept in prior discussions, is subject to the criterion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:36, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• agreed DGG ( talk ) 00:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• I agree with adding this wording to a footnote for G4. What are your thoughts about the proposed wording change to the lead, which I quoted above? Cunard (talk) 00:43, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I certainly agree with the change to the lead and its very small footprint but I worry that people are treating the CSD as a constitution that cannot be changed when someone notices something obvious, just as the lead language was viewed here. I am not saying we need to change more now (doing so would derail us) but there are other clear exceptions in addition to copyvios (as was pointed out in the discussion prior to the RfC), so that sentence will remain a target for overzealous 'strict constructionist' interpretation.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I started the RfC because of a literal interpretation of the text, one that was being cited to support overturning valid G4 deletions at DRV. Although I agree that the RfC and this discussion about the wording can be considered overly bureaucratic, I believe it is necessary to avoid future misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the policy. Cunard (talk) 00:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I concur with the need to clarify the lead, and endorse Cunard's proposed wording, because the introductory paragraph controls the scope of CSD. No clarification to G4 can adequately implement the consensus expressed above, although I'm not opposed to an additional footnote on G4. What this outcome does raise, though, is the issue of administrators abusing the "substantially similar" clause of G4 to stifle discussion. I would be willing to help wordsmith a clarification to G4 that helps address that issue. Jclemens (talk) 03:25, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Dcoetzee supported your view and Nyttend's view mentioned "virtually identical", but I don't see much support for restricting this. Flatscan (talk) 05:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• I prefer "survived the its most recent deletion discussion", but the precise wording can be polished in place. The proposed G4 footnote is okay also. I agree with Fuhghettaboutit – "most recent" without other changes is still vulnerable to strict interpretation. We identified several possible exceptions above, and having a explicit list (G12, G4, U1, etc.) invites wikilawyering over omitted criteria. I think that we should qualify "should not be speedy deleted" with "generally" or "usually", making it clear that the sentence is general guidance, not a rule. I would prefer to make all the necessary changes to the lead now, but I'd be okay with doing only the G4-specific RfC stuff now and spinning off another discussion. Flatscan (talk) 05:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• I think it's clear that there's general agreement on what the policy is/should be in practice; if the current wording has lead to other interpretations, it is absolutely worth clarifying as discussed, particularly the seeming blanket rule up top as well as G4 itself. SamBC(talk) 09:24, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with the proposed clarification. I would have thought this was obvious, but evidently some people interpret it differently. Hut 8.5 09:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• Agreed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:16, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• I also agree. -- Atama頭 22:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
  • @jclemens It does not "control the scope of CSD". While the individual criteria have been hammered at for years, the introduction has not been looked at with any of the same scrutiny, as was made evident when I demonstrated that the language you wanted to use as a sword for your interpretation of G4 was simply added in by one user one day, and was wrong in multiple particulars that would never have withstood the examination the individual criterion have undergone. I am a lawyer and really do hate the term wikilawyer because while it does describe what some lawyers do, it does not describe what good lawyers do. But the way you have elevated the lead language meets that term quite nicely. If you want to treat the CSD as a statute then there are legal concepts of statutory construction that are apt by analogy here, such as that when there is an ambiguity we look to the framers for what was meant; the specific controls the general (ejusdem generis) (though I'm bastardising it a bit); no portion of a statute should be interpreted in isolation from other parts and a construction of one portion that does violence to or renders another part meaningless needs to be scrutinized and reconciled.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
    • All changes are made by exactly one user; the ones that remain in core policies and guidelines do so because they are looked at by many eyes without objection. If it's somehow wrong to point out the disconnect between what people think and the current wording, as well as pointing out the necessary wording changes to rectify the problem, then I plead guilty. I happen to believe the way it WAS is better for the encyclopedia, but that doesn't relieve me of my obligation to help the encyclopedia even when consensus is against me. Jclemens (talk) 05:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Agree with Flatscan, this is fine. Or some other tweaked wording keeping in the general spirit of his proposal, that's fine too. Herostratus (talk) 03:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
• NuclearWarfare added "the page's most recent" to G4, with reference to this discussion. The sentence in the lead has not been edited. Flatscan (talk) 05:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oops, somehow I missed this talk page section (I just went off of the closure statement). Sorry about that. The suggestions made so far all sound fine with me. NW (Talk)
• If there are no objections, I will add the proposed clarifications. Flatscan (talk) 05:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

• I have asked previous closer Armbrust (talk · contribs) to review the discussion. Cunard (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

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

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

New speedy template for user .js and .css pages

Would it be all right for me to create and everyone to start using a new speedy deletion template and category for user scripts and stylesheets? While I think they are technically covered under U1 and G7, templates don't expand as wikitext on these pages and must be placed on the attached talk page for an admin to see. However, someone going very quickly, or a bot in the case where you try to use G7 like I did, may delete only the talk page without paying close attention to the rationale. A separate category would let admins and their bots know to check the main page's history and delete that instead of just the talk page. Let me know if something like this already exists, or this isn't the right place to ask about this, or if there's some other way I'm supposed to be requesting these deletions. Thanks! — Bility (talk) 21:10, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• If you are going so quickly through candidates for speedy deletion that you don't know your on a talk page rather than a main page then you're going way, way too fast to properly evaluate anything. Thryduulf (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduulf here. Placing a U1 or G6 template on the talk page with a short explanation is sufficient. Your proposed new tag would only cover the "short explanation" part but the admin still has to read the tag to understand what they are asked to do. And if they do that, which they have to of course, then they could just as well have read the short explanation you wrote manually. Regards SoWhy 23:24, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, while adding speedy deletion templates to .js and .css pages might not expand the tag, as long as the tag isn't part of some actual code it will sort the page into CAT:SD properly. See User:Lifebaka/sandbox/donothing.js, which I've sorted into Category:Long sting which shouldn't have any contents except one user page, as an example; the template shows up as plain text on the .js page and the category doesn't show on the .js page, but the page still appears in the category. You can just tag the .js or .css page directly with the speedy tag, and trust that admins will both be able to find it still and (generally) understand what's going on. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:58, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Good to know, thanks for that! — Bility (talk) 00:23, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I revised the U1 note back in February per WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 41#Deletion of css and js user pages. Should it be clarified somehow? Flatscan (talk) 05:45, 18 November 2011 (UTC)