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The exact wording and the links in WP:G13 have been changed twice recently. The most recent change has links that are misleading. Specifically, CAT:PEND does not include rejected and non-submitted drafts. To the contrary, it includes those that are actively awaiting review.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&hideredirs=1&hidelinks=1&target=Template%3AAFC+submission&namespace=

was used as the link up until recently but it is a "super-set" of the pages we are interested in. In particular, it includes project pages that should not be deleted. There is no single "catch-all" place to look for such pages at the moment.

Perhaps de-linking the phrase "Articles of creation pages" and adding the following as a new line would help:

Possible declined submissions and unsubmitted drafts.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

We really need a bot to create a list and update it at least weekly until the backlog is down, then run it at least daily. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:19, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Opened new proposal below. --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 20:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

I see that there is a criteria U1 "Personal user pages or subpages on request of the user". However, there is already a criteria G7 that states "Author requests deletion". In theory, general criteria apply to all pages, including userspace. If that is true, then U1 is easily made redundant by G7. Therefore, I propose that criteria U1 be repealed on the grounds that criteria G7 made it redundant. Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 19:27, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

G7 is limited to pages for which "the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author". U1 is not. --j⚛e decker^talk 19:53, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Users are allowed to request the deletion of pages in their userspace even if they didn't write them or if other people have contributed to them. G7 doesn't allow this. Hut 8.5 20:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Alright, but U1 still seems redundant. If it is possible, can we merge U1 with G7? (If it's not, it's not.) Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 20:07, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Like, say, change G7 to say "All pages that are not userspace are not eligible if others have done major contributions"? Citrusbowler (talk) (contribs) (email me) 20:10, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

User space is different; the user has unique rights to that content, and having specific userspace criteria helps to explicitly specify and limit that distinction. I can think of no way in which conflating U1 and G7 is in any way helpful, and it has a distinctly deleterious effect. Let's leave well enough alone. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 20:18, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

If they're merged, I reckon it'll increase confusion. It is possible for a user page to fit both U1 and G7, but what's wrong with that? Something in article space could fit A7 and G11, and G12 as well. You can't merge all of them into one. It ain't broke, so why bother trying to fix it. Peridon (talk) 08:17, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Also, U1 is simpler for the reviewing admin, who need only check that the request is made by the owning account, and need not go through the history to see whether others have made substantial contributions. JohnCD (talk) 08:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

• Generally, I think it better to use G7 for G7-U1 deletions, because G7 eligibility is pretty obvious from the contribution history, and U1 can be misused by applying over a previous page move. U1 nominally applies to a usertalkpage moved to userspace, or a mainspace page userfied, or someone else's userpage, when it shouldn't. A deleted then userfied page should be easily and quietly deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:41, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

  I've been reviewing U1 deletions for some time now, and it is very rarely misused - and if merged, G7 could be misused in exactly the same way. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

  Yes, I would think so. I've not heard of anyone moving some other page into their userspace and then trying sneakily U1, and I expect that the reaction would be strong. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• While these two criteria are similar and have some overlap in scope, each has specific situations where it applies and does not apply and I don't see any benefit to merging them. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:27, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• The two are significantly different - one is userspace, one is articlespace. U1 is also far more "lenient" because it's in userspace (✉→BWilkins←✎) 23:53, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• I oppose a merge, because I have found it very useful to have the two separate criteria. As pointed out, U1 is not restricted to "no other editors" and is simpler to check. All a review of a U1 needs is a check that it is the user making the request and that the page has not been moved from a user talk page (and I think the latter would be less likely to be checked if merged into a more generic G7). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 04:03, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• I can see where this is coming from, but I also can't really see the ened for it. As JohnCD said, it makes it easier for the admin because they just have to check it's the same person making the request as is the userspace; no need for value judgements or anything else. GedUK  13:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
• Concurring with other rejections of this proposal above, having deleted 1,000s of pages among which many were U1 and G7, I always found the separate criteria to be appropriate and I therefore see no need to change the status quo. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:52, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Would File:Num7.PNG and File:Sfz.gif be obvious ((PD-text)), and therefore not be eligible under ((di-no source)) ; and something that would be expected that one of the 400 most active wikipedians on Wikipedia who deals with mostly file issues should know? (this comes up repeatedly, under di-no-source or di-no-license; so to me, seems like an obvious fix for someone so involved with file cleanup, as slapping a PD-text on it, and be done with it, instead of what seems to me to be using the wrong deletion process ) -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 03:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

They would be PD-text, so I have removed the di- tags. CSD-F4 is not applicable as the source is not needed to verify the copyright status. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:CSD#G4 deletions (deletions of recreated pages) are quite often appealed at DRV. Some DRV participants think G4 is appropriate if a page has not been significantly improved from the deleted version or if the reasons for deletion at the XFD still persist in some substantial way. Others take a highly literal reading of the G4 criterion (because CSD criteria are to be observed strictly) and argue that if the two pages are “not substantially identical” then deletion is not allowed a priori. This difference of approach can result in a discussion not focusing on the real issue. It seems to me that consensus at a long series of DRVs has been to adopt the less literal reading. Even so, many discussions have resulted in “overturn”. Because I am in the “literal reading” camp and would like to become more consensual I am suggesting a change to the wording of G4. I am only going to suggest one clause is changed.

In the second sentence of G4

“This excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version”

should be changed to

“This excludes pages that have been significantly improved from the deleted version”

The main G4 reason in the first sentence (“A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy …”) would be completely unchanged. I believe this rewording better reflects not only administrative deletion practice but also consensus opinion at DRV. Thincat (talk) 21:44, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

• Support This seems closer to current practice. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:58, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support this makes sense. Suppose an article is deleted at AfD for notability reasons, and is subsequently recreated with exactly the same sources and no new claims to notability, but with completely different text. Although it is not substantially identical to the the deleted version it ought to qualify for G4. Hut 8.5 22:06, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose There is no way of judging "significantly improved" without a discussion--it can mean whatever one wants it to mean, and . except for the most obvious cases, that sort of judgment requires consensus. That discussion is best held where it now is held, at AfD or DRV, not judged by a single administrator. In general, the ones taken to DRV are the ones that are disputable. Disputable deletions do not belong at speedy. At present, about 1/3 of such DRV applications result in the speedy being overturned, and, generally the article being relisted--or even simply accepted. We should encourage the improvement and review of unsatisfactory articles. There is already an enormous bias from the invisibility of the previous version to all but admins--probably a good many more G4s should be appealed. the proper standard for G4--analogous to all other speedies-- is that no reasonable person would think the article needs another chance at consensus. DGG ( talk ) 04:57, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per DGG - "significantly improved" is a criterion that cannot be judged quickly by one person. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:59, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose If a page HAS been "significantly improved", then it isn't substantially identical to the previous version. G4 is for things that are as close to the previous version as damn it is to swearing. If there are significant changes, be it for the better or for the worse, the article needs to be reviewed for what it is, not for what it was. I don't call it significant change if just a couple more links to YouTube or Facebook have been added... Peridon (talk) 08:30, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per Peridon and that "significantly improved" is a subjective term that requires discussion. Pol430 talk to me 09:33, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• Opppse that introduces vagueness that begs for discussion. Dennis Brown / 2¢ / © / @ 12:07, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
• It's still going to be an angels dancing on the head of a pin question: To me, "substantially identical" means "none of the changes address the issues raised at the deletion discussion", and I will stand by that definition. Someone that wants to discuss the same article over and over again at AFD as each new author produces a new variation on a bad article will argue that the definition of "substantially identical" should focus on whether or not the sequence of words is largely the same. "Significantly improved" is going to have the same split of opinion along largely the same lines.—Kww(talk) 00:31, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. If there is any reasonable doubt about whether a speedy deletion criterion applies then, by definition, it does not. For this reason we need to make the criteria as objective as possible, and per DGG the proposed wording here reduces the objectivity. Thryduulf (talk) 15:51, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
• Neutral. A "page[s] that have been significantly improved" {proposed text}, by definition is not a "identical and unimproved copy" {current text}, so G4 already should not apply to significantly improved pages. Removing the (more or less objective) criterion of excluding "pages that are not substantially identical" {current text} by a explicit need for beeing "significantly improved" {proposed text} may lead to *more* G4 deletions (as in: oh! It is not identical, but it was not an significant improvement, so it is deleteable) which I doubt is the intent here. - Nabla (talk) 16:28, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
• Rigorous interpretation of "substantially identical" also excludes "substantially" worse recreations. (I don't remember any G4s of terrible recreations being overturned.) Hiroyuki Tsuchida was obviously not improved, the sourcing was worse (Anime News Network versus Murderpedia and Anime Source), and the new claim about a "moral panic" against otaku was unsupported. At WP:Deletion review/Log/2013 January 21, several editors insisted on sending it to AfD. It was deleted at WP:Articles for deletion/Hiroyuki Tsuchida (2nd nomination) after no one argued to keep it. Of those recommending overturn and/or relist, only User:Hobit participated. Recreator User:Kotjap persistently misused sources. He claimed to be Japanese, but he asked other editors to find Japanese-language sources. Kotjap was ultimately blocked a month later as a sock of User:Timothyhere. Flatscan (talk) 04:51, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
  • It is absolutely not the job of speedy deletion to evaluate a source because no one admin can be expected to know whether a given source is reliable or not, so if different sources are used then it is not a G4. If there is a claim in the article that was not in the version discussed at XfD (whether sourced or not) then it is not eligible for speedy deletion because that claim needs to be evaluated at a competent venue - i.e. XfD. The case you link to is an example of DRV working exactly as it should do. Thryduulf (talk) 11:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
    • My issues with the Tsuchida DRV are that the article was clearly not improved and that the sources were blatantly poor. The majority deletes and unanimous non-keeps at the AfD indicate that the decision was clear enough to handle at DRV if the participants were willing. I evaluate the article's merits if I am able, and I recommend endorse deletion, keep deleted, send to AfD, or allow recreation accordingly. Flatscan (talk) 04:43, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
      • There is a world of difference between DRV evaluating sources and speedy deletion evaluating sources. DRV is a conensus-gathering discussion that is able to investigate things, speedy deletion is one admin determining whether a given page meets explicitly narrowly drawn criteria for when there will always be consensus to delete. In the case of G4 the sole question to be determined by the admin is whether there has been any change to the article since the version that was deleted in a deletion discussion that has the potential to cause the result of the discussion to be different. If there is a source that was not evaluated in the previous discussion, then the answer will always be that G4 is not applicable. Thryduulf (talk) 11:11, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
        • Any added source, including ((Citation broken)) and WP:Verifiability#Sources that are usually not reliable? What about reprints/reposts such as news agency stories, sister newspapers, or unauthorized copies? (In the Tsuchida DRV, I found that the Murderpedia page included verbatim copies of the ANN articles.) Flatscan (talk) 04:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
          • Yes, any source which has not been considered by XfD. Reprints of sources already considered are not new sources, obviously. Equally obviously sources which are "not usually reliable" need to be considered at XfD because there are, by definition, times when they are reliable and speedy deletion is not competent to determine the reliability of sources. It really isn't as complicated as you are making it out to be: Does the new version contain material that was not considered at the XfD and which might affect whether the page is kept or not? If "no", G4 applies. If "yes" or "maybe" then G4 does not apply. Any source not previously considered obviously means the page is not substantially identical and so G4 does not apply. Thryduulf (talk) 09:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
            • That's ridiculous. According to this view, if I create a page which is absolutely identical to one deleted at AfD except with the addition of a link to the subject's Facebook page, then G4 doesn't apply and we have to waste the community's time with another deletion discussion. There is some threshold below which administrators are allowed to discount sources as not constituting sufficient improvement. Hut 8.5 12:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
              • Is the Facebook page being used as a source to verify any information in the article or as an external link? If the former then it needs to be considered by XfD if it is verifying something that was previously unverified. If the latter, then not it is not adding anything significant. If it is an additional link to the Facebook page then it has already been considered and doesn't need to be considered again. If the previous discussion explicitly noted that it needed third party sources and the Facebook link is a primary source (most are but there are some which aren't) then the source has already been considered by XfD and doesn't need to be again. Thryduulf (talk) 23:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
                • If the deletion discussion asked for third-party sources and the article can be deleted under G4 because the Facebook page is not third party, then the speedy deletion process is being used to make determinations about the sourcing of an article, albeit an obvious one. I don't think there are any circumstances under which an AfD is going to decide that a Facebook link demonstrates notability. Hut 8.5 12:41, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
• As someone with the "speedy deletion is narrow" view, I can't support this. That said, if we see persistent recreation of the same article, speedy or salting might be the best option. Basically one person shouldn't be making the call if there is any degree of merit to the new article unless someone is clearly abusing process. Hobit (talk) 13:16, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose If a page has been significantly improved, then it's not identical to the previous version ? ....... -
  

→Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 21:06, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Comment from OP. Thank you for the thoughtful discussion. I was relieved when the first !votes were supportive but as time went by I began to be rather pleased in many ways that so many people were opposed to the change. The existing wording is OK by me also except I feel it does not describe too well what has been happening when G4 speedies arrive at DRV or, to a lesser extent, how DRV responds to them. For unappealed G4 speedies I simply don't know. Just a thought – perhaps of all policies CSD should be read as being normative rather than descriptive. Thincat (talk) 22:11, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose; the point of the criterion is to ensure that content deleted at XFD remains deleted, while the proposed change would run a much bigger risk of being applied to new content on the same subject. Nyttend (talk) 18:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi all,
Sometimes I wander through the backwaters of the file talk namespace. Some new pages there are attempts to contact the subject of an image. Some recent examples:

1. I. LOV. U SHAMUS FROM. CANNEN , K
2. all the best jack.....
3. hai

This is not a wholly representative sample, because a large proportion of attempts to contact the subjects of images are in poor (or dire) English, and get deleted under a broad interpretation of G1 so I can no longer see them - although it's arguable whether G1 should be the right flavour of CSD for something which is comprehensible to some extent, even if it's useless. Other examples simply get blanked.
Would it be practical to add this to the CSD criteria?

• I'm not arguing that we should CSD these because they're overwhelmingly frequent or because they're very damaging to the encyclopædia - they're neither - but rather because they're a clear subset of new pages in the file talk namespace which are useless, way outside our remit, and I feel the community has better things to do than stand around for 7 days discussing whether to delete a page that only says te quiero mucho messi cincos balon d'or, or something like this rant.
• There was previously a CSD criterion for "Attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title" but this got rolled into A3; it doesn't apply to file talk.
• I'm still interested in the "uncontestable" principle; are there any corner-cases where attempts to contact the subject of a file are worth keeping? (Or, rather, would they get mixed !votes in a 7-day deletion discussion?) If so, how should any potential rule-change be worded to sort the wheat from the chaff?

Any comments/complaints? bobrayner (talk) 00:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

IMO if texts in talk pages are non-offensive, just ignore them. The word "worth" you used is two-ended: is there a reason to increase the workload of admins and watchlisters? The case of a fresh new talk page is no much difference with an existing one. Would you chase each and every idle off-topic chatter and revert them? "Attempt to communicate" is no different from "My girlfriend is the sexiest" in terms of uselessness.

The way I see it, the 'AtoC' criterion could have been useful in early days of wikipedia, when many did not know what's up and could confuse a celeb wikibio with 'myspace' and such. So 'attempts to colmmunicate' could be a bother. But I am not sure it is so now. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:02, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• My first thoughts, without considering the frequency, are that it might be worthwhile migrating some of A3 to a G criterion. Something like "Any page (other than redirects, soft redirects or pages intended as article or project page drafts) consisting only of:
  • External links
  • Category tags
  • "see also" sections
  • a rephrasing of the title
  • attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, and/or
  • chat-like comments"
• Obviously this is entirely unworkable as written, but these things are currently deletable in article space but don't really belong in any namespace. Refinement of definitions is almost certainly needed, but at this stage it's the principle of expanding some of A3 to a G criterion. I'm interested in. Is this something that is worth spending the time on to develop a workable proposal or not? Obviously there are parts of A3 that should remain article-space only (e.g. pages consisting only of template tags) and I'm not even remotely suggesting changing that, which is why this is a pondering about splitting not moving. Thryduulf (talk) 01:28, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I have long thought that there is a case for extending speedy deletion of pages with no substantive content to pages other than articles. However, moving to a G criterion would require numerous exceptions and special cases. For example, a userspace sandbox would not be deletable because it has no content, a user talk page would not be deletable because it contains only "attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title", and so on. In fact, my guess is that we would either have a criterion which was too broad to be useful, one that was too narrow to be very useful, or one that had so many ifs and buts that it was too complex and confusing to be useful. On the other hand, for some reason this sort of thing does seem to be particularly common in file talk pages, so having a specific criterion for those might be more workable than a General criterion. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• Before we start getting WP:CREEPy, is this a problem of a scope that just blanking can't fix? Empty talkpages never really bothered me much. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 08:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree, in any of the talk-like namespaces, blanking is about as effective as deleting (unless revdel is needed, but that's a different policy), so no need to over-complicate CSD rules to cover them. Kilopi (talk) 00:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
• My point exactly. Why would we want to waste admin's time? Staszek Lem (talk) 00:09, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
• I have to admit, sometimes when I need to test Twinkle's CSD module, I just look at Special:NewPages for the File talk namespace; plenty of speedy deletion fodder there. A certain editor (I forget who) would often replace the content of these useless talk pages with ((talk header)), which in my view is a marginally useful pursuit, and it is no better or worse than tagging or deleting them under G2 (which is the most relevant criterion for these pages, in my view). — This, that and the other (talk) 11:08, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Why isn't G7 applicable to user talk pages? We generally don't permit speedies for user talk pages, but that's because it's important to retain discussions. No page where discussion has occurred can be said to have just one substantial contributor, and no discussion has really happened on a page that just one person has edited. Nyttend (talk) 18:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

You raise a good point. Perhaps it is because admins may not check. But if some one said something by creating a usertalk page, perhps we should allow them to retract it by deletion. But say if we had some one doing page patrol and issued 100s of talk page warnings, nad crated user talk pages, would we then be happy if the page creator then nominated them all for deletion? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I work on the principle that if no-one else has done anything more than welcome them, then a user request is valid. What really puzzles me is the number of new accounts that create a user page with nothing on it except a request for deletion. I ignore those... Peridon (talk) 16:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It is applicable, the text here is broken. If someone asks for a G7 of a user talk, and they were the only contributor, delete the page. Or leave it, and I'll do it. ;) WilyD 14:59, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've alway thought of G7 as covering any namespace, including Usertalk, except talk pages, where a talk page is a page where users talk to each other. A Usertalk subpage can of course be immediately deleted if you're the only author. You can delete your copy-pasted talk page archives, but not your page move archives. Your main talk page, here assuming that it has been used, can't be deleted per G7, regardless if the namespace you just moved it to. Sounds like the wording of G7 could be improved. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:25, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

In practice, of course, the actual namespace an archive is moved to doesn't matter much. But that isn't the question here: the policy page stated that unused talk pages ain't deleted as G7. That's clearly not true - multiple admins have opined here that they would delete eligible user talk pages as G7. There's no need to add an exception for pages that have been used for dialogue; such pages inherently have multiple authors, and thus ain't eligible for G7. WilyD 10:04, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and I agree with your edit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Would it make sense to change the headings of the criteria from boldface text to subheadings? This way, they would all appear in the table of contents. Thoughts? Ego White Tray (talk) 23:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed that ((di-no source)) is applied to images where the source information is available in the rendered image itself. Isn't this a "source" intrinsic to the image, and thus would never be unsourced? (unless cropped out) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, ((di-no source)) is a pretty badly abused tag. Remove it, add the sourcing, and put a note on the tagging editor's talk page asking them to look more closely before bandying this guy about. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Which images are you talking about? In my opinion, ((subst:nsd)) should only be used if knowing the source is necessary to determine the copyright status of the image, and only if the source isn't already available (including text in the EXIF, ((Imagewatermark)) and similar). --Stefan2 (talk) 09:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I notice di-no source applied to anything that doesn't have the correct image data template with the source line filled in. (regardless of the information being present on the page, as in an incorrectly filled out template, or some typo breaking the template, or on the page itself, but not in the template, or in the upload log, or in the EXIF data, or watermarked into the image)

If someone deleted the info, but it's available from an older revision, that's understandable to miss, or if it's in the editsummary of the file page revision log. The upload log is visible on the file page though, so unless they're scraping the page source, I think people should see it (same with EXIF). And the image itself is at the top of the file page, so people should see that.

But I do expect people to look at the image before tagging it for deletion. Perhaps that's hoping for too much, since they might just be doing page scrapes for ((information)) and similar tags; and then to tag everything under the sun, without actually looking to at the image at all, just what the file page scrapes as.

In this particular case, it's File:Peoria Growth Plan.JPG (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), and I've filled out a ((information)) for it.

-- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 10:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That one goes to PUF. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I want to ask if whole of the article is unrefrenced with only one or two sources which are also not reliable which criteria should we use ? 176.195.51.225 (talk) 19:20, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

There is no speedy deletion criterion for pages which only have poor sourcing. You may be able to use the proposed deletion or articles for deletion processes to get the article deleted on notability grounds, but only if there aren't any better sources around. (If there are better sources available then add them to the article.) Hut 8.5 19:30, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

See WP:Perennial proposals #Delete unreferenced articles. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

• Only media that is unsourced can be speedy deleted, and then, media that is categorically ineligible - eg, chemical diagrams, simple text, shapes, etc. - also does not need sourcing. The reason is that copyright eligible media must either be verifiably released, or its fair use/public domain status verifiable, in order to be legally used on Wikipedia. Article content could only be copyrighted by the editor, and the terms of use and legal disclaimers on all edit pages specifically release all content under Creative Commons share alike. So there is no legal issue with unsourced article content, and the lack of sourcing is not nearly unambiguous enough to qualify for a speedy criteria. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 19:43, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Not quite sure if this is the right place or it should be on the template talk page, but it'll probably get seen here by the right people. I just deleted an AfC (for spam and copyvio). As usual I check to see if the discussion page has been started as there might be a contested edit. But of course, it's an AfC, so it's all on the talk page.

However the 'contest' button is still there. On pressing it, it took me to the talk page edit screen, thus blanking the whole article (had I submitted). It seems to me that the 'contest' button shouldn't appear on AfC taggings, but to be honest, I don't know if it's possible to be that page specific, or whether we need another separate set of templates for AfC, or whether this is a solution in search of a problem that's never happened. Any thoughts? GedUK  13:03, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

If desirable it should be pretty easy to change the behaviour of the template in the Wikipedia talk namespace (although thinking about it the same issue will happen in any talk namespace). My off-the-top-of-my-head suggestion would be to automatically start a new "Contested deletion" section on the page, either at the top or the bottom. Ideally the template would check for the existence of such a section to flag it up to the reviewing admin, but I don't know whether it is possible. Alternatively, something stylistically similar to the endorsed prod system could be used, but that might be more complicated for new users to get right? Thryduulf (talk) 15:26, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I think doing it as a new section would work well enough, or whatever would be the simplest. At present these are being deleted so quickly, & the editors are almost always inactive, so I doubt it would actually be used to any significant extent, but it would be well to have it fixed in case it is used. DGG ( talk ) 23:56, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

• No one has said if this has already caused a problem in the past, but I do concur with DGG. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't think it is likely to have caused any problem with AfCs, but the same issue could arise with any talk page. Although talk pages are nominated much less frequently than non-talk pages (excluding G8s of talk pages when the associated page is deleted) I agree with DGG that it's worth sorting it in case it is used. Thryduulf (talk) 07:58, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

The few contested AfC cases I've seen have just posted on the page itself. The problem doesn't arise with article space talk pages, as the 'contest' button doesn't seem to appear (just tested this to be sure...). On the current buffalo shoot at AfC, as DGG says they're inactive authors who aren't going to contest anyway. (Have any contested G13 yet, or appealed post deletion?) I've never been really happy with the talk page being used for AfC creations, but unless some way was found of bypassing the IP block on page creation specifically at AfC, I can't see a way round it. Peridon (talk) 09:30, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Several G13s have been REFUND'ed, yeah. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

So who can action any change? I know if I touch a template it'll fall apart, probably taking the entire site with it. GedUK  11:55, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Why are recently created categories exempt under G7? I have been deleting many of these, nominated as C1, as they are obviously typos. There is no reason for this type of request to not be eligible under G7. I have been deleting obvious typos under C1 as G7s and no one has ever objected. However someone has questioned editors who nominate these under G7 based on the guideline. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't think categories are exempt under G7. The criteria that start with "G" apply to all namespace, including categories. Like you, I've used G7 many times for categories. I've never had a complaint, but I have had several users thank me. Who is the user who has questioned its application to categories? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
  • According to WP:G7 if the original/only significant author blanks them that is not considered a deletion request like it is when it is done on an article. I believe that is what Vegaswikian is talking about. GB fan 01:15, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
    • I see. I'd be interested to know the rationale for including category pages with user pages in that exception. Categories should never be "blanked", and they rarely are, except in cases of vandalism or a sole-creator user who wants it deleted. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
• Are we talking about blank and empty categories, or blank but populated categories? Aren't empty categories, even if not blank, auto-deleted after 4 days unless somehow specially marked to be kept even if empty?
  I recall that blanking was once taken as a G7 request, but that was definitely changed, for userpsace. For mainspace, another criteria would apply. For any Talk page of an existing page, there is generally no reason to delete an edit history. I still think that category creation should be harder than it is, and that category creators should be expected to know how to properly CSD tag. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Blank and empty and recently created. What we see is cases where an editor creates a category with a typo. Then creates another one with the correct name. Rather then tagging as a G7 which seems prohibited, they blank it. So it stays around until someone sees it and tags it for C1. Not a problem unless you like to look through the C1s and see if there is anything there that was improperly emptied. Yea, restricting category creation would help, turning off hotcat by default appears to have helped. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Categories created in error (e.g. with a typo) would seem to be covered by G6? Thryduulf (talk) 08:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

      No. All created in error is subject to ((db-test)). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

      • ((db-g6)) or ((db-test)) could work, but to make it clear that should be listed as an alternative in the instructions for G7. If we are telling editors not to use G7 we should also indicate the correct options. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict)G2 doesn't seem like a good fit at all. If an experienced user wanted to create e.g. Category:Ballerinas from Guam as part of a series of categories about ballerinas from various US territories but accidentally created Category:Ballerinas from Gaum then that wouldn't be any sort of test. One bullet of G6 though is "Deleting pages unambiguously created in error or in the incorrect namespace", which seems exactly what this user did. Thryduulf (talk) 18:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
• What's the problem? If a category was created in error, then it is probably empty, meaning that it goes away as C1 soon anyway. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:16, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
  • The C1 queue can be over 200 categories. That makes it hard for someone who is looking for out of process empties to do an effective job of checking for these conditions. Other common, not an issue entries, are parent categories where the subcategories were emptied at a full discussion or as a result of a template change that may or may not have been discussed. That latter one covers WikiProjects where the name is changed (I feel in that case the admins involved in the project should do all of the cleanup that goes along with the name change). Vegaswikian (talk) 18:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
    • To answer the original question — blanking a category should not be taken as a deletion request because of the nature of categories. Create any other page and blank it, and it's completely useless without further editing. Create a category and blank it, and the category continues to function because it links to numerous related pages. Most categories have no code at all except for links to parent categories (e.g. Category:National Register of Historic Places in Fayette County, Ohio), which would be absurd for any other kind of page. As a result, we should treat the blanking of a category as we treat the removal of categories from any other kind of page. Tag your newly created category with ((db-g7)) and of course we should delete it, since your actions are unambiguous, but blank it and we shouldn't because we don't know what you mean. Nyttend (talk) 00:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Nyttend is correct. I may be the only person who created or ever modified a category page but thousands of people could have used it. G7 should not apply - though in the scenario you describe, it seems like C1 always should apply and G2 might. Rossami (talk) 22:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I would like a clarification of how G11 applies to user pages. Specifically, if a user page is a biography of a (non-notable) user, written from a neutral point of view in the form of a fake article. Would it be appropriate to delete it under G11? I have seen the following opinions:

1. Yes, a fake biography is exclusively promotional by its nature.
2. Yes, if the user’s editing history shows a promotional intent, the user page may be regarded as exclusively promotional without any non-neutral content.
3. No, G11 applies to promotional content—not intent. Objections to a user page being a fake biography and/or violating WP:UP should be handled at MFD.

Although the question was inspired by the deletion of User:Ruturaj Prajapati, I ask this as general question. Thanks —teb728 t c 22:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

If they are communicative then discuss it with them, and suggest making it clear it isn't an article (e.g. with a ((userpage)) template or reformatting). If they're resistant or uncommunicative, but they are usefully contributing to the encyclopedia then I'd take it to MfD. If they are WP:NOTHERE, or just aren't around any more, then I would use G11. The basis for this is that we shouldn't be speedy deleting the userpage of a good contributor and non-notable biographies of contributors are very rarely urgent. Thryduulf (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, a vanity page, whether in mainspace or userspace, is by definition promotional. There are ways of telling people about yourself and your interests on your userpage that do not mimic an article. IMO userpages should always be written in the first person. Any pages that are not written that way, especially ones that are made to look like an article, should be tagged with ((userpage)) to make it clear that it is not an article. There was an issue this week (referenced above) of a user who created a vanity userpage (having had the same page G7ed from mainspace) and kept deleting the ((userpage)) tag with no response to discussion. So the page was deleted as promotional because the user refused to keep the tag in place or discuss it, even though he was obviously around. Harry the Dog WOOF 06:50, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It depends; the normal way to go would indeed be MfD, but there are of course exceptions depending on the context. I would be somewhat reluctant to just speedy a userpage if it isn't a clearcut G11, like spam for an enterprise or the such. Lectonar (talk) 07:10, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Spam can be for a person as well as an enterprise. I did see this particular case as one of those exceptions given the user's past behaviour removing speedys in mainspace and ((userpage)) on his userpage. He was clearly trying to promote himself as a "politician" with an article about himself on Wikipedia. So in this particular case I considered the G11 appropriate, Harry the Dog WOOF 07:29, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is why I said "or such" . Lectonar (talk) 07:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Add criteria as follows:

• A check has been made for incoming links to the local file at Commons(or other local projects), and prior to 'local' removal, incoming links to the file at Commons have been updated accordingly.

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:12, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the courtesy to invite me (although I ever watch here), but how do you propose to check incoming links over all other local projects? Do you know a tool? There is no Wikimedia-wide analog of Special:WhatLinksHere because there is no centralized table of links, and searching in thousands of databases (on the m:Toolserver or so) may take a while and become costly. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:48, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Currently I am un-ware of a tool for checking incoming links, but should be a straightforward tool to implement. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that 'attribution chains' are maintained when a file is moved (sometimes to a completly different name to it local upload name).

Limiting it to incoming links from Commons would of course be something I am willing to consider. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 13:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a request pending for an Automated CSD:G13 nominating bot. Once the bot has been approved it will crawl through old AfC submissions and nominate those that not been edited more than 182.5 days (1/2 year or 6 months) ago. The bot will nominate no more than 100 submissions at a time and try not to have more than 150 articles up for G13 nomination at a time (by counting how many nominations are at the start of it's run, taking that away from 150, and providing a escape). This serves as notice to the community involved with CSD that the G13 rationale is going to be exercised for a large set of pages that are ripe for nomination. Hasteur (talk) 21:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Some time ago I started a thread that didn't exactly get much attention (I assume, due to focus being on the discussion of another criterion), and I've just encountered a similar string of deletions that prompted the creation of the initial thread, this time with a bunch of G5-tagged categories, which are now all red in mainspace (all they contained was simply other categories, as is usually done).

Why? What's the point? I don't think this kind of blanket deletion is beneficial to Wikipedia (the rest of my argument is in the original thread).

Could we possibly vote on this? -- Mentifisto 06:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure. My vote is that you were wrong to restore a deleted article that was created in violation of a block or ban. G5 exists to unambiguously spank down the POS scum that violate blocks and bans. We might as well just throw open the door to all the vandals and uncivil POV pushers if we are going to waffle and argue about whether a block/ban actually applies if the content might be useful. Instead, everything they touch, everything they do, every ounce of activity on this site that they engage in when they aren't supposed to is automatically toxic unless sanctified by the contributions of uninvolved editors. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 08:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful to see things in such a black and white manner; also, G5's original intentions were, as far as I know, with regards to possible copyvios, not as a weapon against The Evil Ones. Was that article supposed to never be created again? Or could it only exist if it was started anew by another editor at some point in the future?

If, upon looking at the content, it appears sensible and is not eligible under any other criterion I don't see why it absolutely must be deleted just because of its creator. -- Mentifisto 09:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

If it's been edited by others as well (not counting tagging G5 or adding a comma), it can stand. Otherwise, what's the point of the rules about sockpuppetry? If they create it in violation of a ban or block, it should go. They're often just stubs about obscure footballers or similar subjects anyway. There's no objection to anyone else creating a new article - so long as it fits the standards and isn't by a suspiciously knowledgeable new account... Peridon (talk) 11:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

And I don't think it's helpful to give socks and ban-evaders a free pass if they can be duplicitous enough to flaunt community decisions. I don't see how standing up for block-evading scum helps the community; if we aren't going to stand up for our community and enforce its decisions, we might as well just pack it up and leave it to the vandals. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, Peridon, in almost all cases these pages have usually already been edited by others, as they're typically tagged months or years after creation - and I think, although sockpuppetry policies are fairly sensible on the whole, they really shouldn't come before the improvement of the encyclopedia, and if after looking at a page (how many G5-tagged articles are deleted without being even looked at?) it's fine overall (i.e. if it was created by any other user it would certainly be kept - but really, why do we even bother with who created the articles in the first place, when we should be focusing on the quality of the content itself?) - then it should remain. And please don't say that obscure articles are of no import! I have absolutely no interest in football players either, but that certainly doesn't mean I could just delete them if they don't otherwise meet any other criterion. Also, I don't think it's healthy to be suspicious of new knowledgeable accounts - if they vote in any of the community processes then perhaps, but how does it matter if they're just creating a valid article? -- Mentifisto 03:34, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

To respond to Peridon's statement — policy says that we must consider the good of the encyclopedia above punishing malcontents. If the content helps the encyclopedia, do not tag it with G5 (non-admins) or delete it under G5 (admins). G5 is useful for getting rid of problematic content and ambiguous content; it shouldn't be used to get rid of good content. Nyttend (talk) 00:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If that were the case, then we wouldn't be having this conversation on the CSD talk page. Making judgements about "good content" takes place in XfD deletion discussions. Speedy deletions are for unambiguous issues, and the unambiguous issue that G5 addresses is that it is the enforcement of community blocks and bans. If the community wanted to keep this person's good contributions, they wouldn't have banned them from contributing.

We're having this discussion because you appear to care more about punishing malcontents than about helping the encyclopedia. If you think that helping the encyclopedia is less important than punishing malcontents, I suggest that you seek to get WP:IAR formally deprecated instead of arguing that it's irrelevant. Nyttend (talk) 02:03, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that enforcing bans and blocks does help the encyclopedia and that giving evaders free reign is bad for the encyclopedia. I consider trying to undermine G5 to be bad for the encyclopedia. If G5 didn't exist, I would argue that contributions from block/ban evaders should be summarily removed under IAR. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 03:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

There's another side to the coin, though - an article created by a banned user but edited and expanded by other good-faith editors might be worth keeping. If enough of those editors feel that way, then the deletion isn't noncontroversial and wouldn't merit a speedy deletion anyway. If they don't, or if the only edits are from the banned editor? Kill it with fire. Otherwise, I'd send it to AFD - and "Non-notable subject, no sources available or apparent, article created by banned editor User:Example" is a pretty strong argument at AFD, honestly. If it's kept, it's kept. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 16:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not another side at all. I say just that - significant contributions by other editors sanctify articles of corrupt provenance. The G5 criteria specifically excludes articles that have significant edits by non-banned/blocked editors precisely because the contributions of other editors move it from the unambiguous enforcement of community sanctions to the realm of utility to the project. In fact, my first contribution to this policy was to exclude transcluded templates from G5 consideration. What I object to is trying to conflate actually useful to other editors (so enforcing your ban needs to integrate them into any decision) with potentially useful (so we'll just let block/ban evaders flaunt community consensus). VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 19:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why we would "vote" on anything. Articles that have been created by banned or blocked users that haven't got substantial contributions by others should be generally be deleted. That's why it's a CSD category. It's a part of enforcing the block and ban. Without G5, blocks and bans don't have any substantial effect because the technical barriers are flimsy and easily circumvented. Part of our job as admins is to make up for the holes in the software implementation. Think of it this way: if the blocking software actually worked, the article would never have been created. All you are doing by performing a G5 is helping to compensate for a bug in the MediaWiki software.—Kww(talk) 20:03, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Blocking/banning is to protect the integrity of the pdeia not to punish someone. The intend of G5 was to save admins from the burden of having to decide the merits of each edit a problematic editor makes. It nevertheless is not a must if the usefulness of an edit is obvious. Today's editors seem to be more inclined to cut their nose to spite their face then anything else though. Agathoclea (talk) 21:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The purpose of G5 is to ensure that edits by blocked and banned editors are not retained. If we retain the edits by blocked and banned editors, our blocks and bans have no effect. It's not cutting off one's nose to spite one's face to make our blocks and bans actually have an effect.—Kww(talk) 21:31, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

No. The purpose of G5 is to stop blocked/banned users disrupting the encyclopaedia. We only ban and block people to stop them disrupting the encyclopaedia - if their edits are beneficial to the encyclopaedia then it matters not who created them because the encyclopaedia benefits. Blocks are not a punishment, and if people circumvent them to improve the encyclopaedia then the block has had an effect - it has resulted in an improved encyclopaedia. G5 exists solely that disruptive edits can be deleted without discussion or drama regardless of whether they meet any other criteria.
For example if a user is blocked for repeatedly creating unsourced articles about non-notable books then any subsequent such articles they make can be speedily deleted even though articles about books aren't subject to something like A7. However if this user creates a sourced article about a notable Indonesian author for example then speedy deleting it per G5 would be harming the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 21:50, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I suggest that you reread WP:BAN#Bans apply to all editing, good or bad over again. Maybe tape a little sign on your computer monitor that reads "Bans apply to all editing, good or bad" if it would help remind you. It doesn't matter whether the edit is disruptive or not, it only matters that it was made in defiance of a block or ban.—Kww(talk) 22:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. Thryduulf (talk) 22:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ignore a rule that specifically tells you not to take content quality into account because of the content quality? That's not what IAR is about, either. That's simply refusing to abide by a policy because you personally disagree with it.—Kww(talk) 22:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Eh? IAR is about improving the encyclopaedia. If an edit improves the encyclopaedia then it stays, regardless of who makes it, anything else is WP:POINT. Thryduulf (talk) 23:41, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Try to get a consensus that WP:BAN#Bans apply to all editing, good or bad is a bad policy if you disagree with it. Edits made by banned editors may be removed at will by any editor on the basis that they were made by banned or blocked editor. That's not pointy behaviour at all: it's just making up for the limitations of our blocking software.—Kww(talk) 00:46, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, any edits by banned/blocked may be removed. This is a good thing because it allows edits that are disruptive to be deleted quickly and without drama. My point is that edits by blocked/banned users that improve the encyclopaedia should not be deleted. Blocks and bans are not punitive, they are placed to protect the encyclopaedia from disruption, but the encyclopaedia does not need protecting from edits that are not disruptive. Thryduulf (talk) 01:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

And my point is that they generally should be removed, because the harm done by tolerating block evasion is far greater than the damage caused by the loss of any individual edit or article. It's not a matter of punishment, it's a matter of prevention.—Kww(talk) 01:11, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

If someone improves Wikipedia while evading a block then the evasion was not harmful - indeed it was negatively harmful (i.e. beneficial). Deleting beneficial contributions causes the deleter to harm the encyclopaedia - which is exactly what vandals want. Block evasion itself causes no harm, it is disruptive edits that are harmful, and disruptive edits by banned users are no more disruptive than the same edits by someone who is not banned. Thryduulf (talk) 02:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It damages the encyclopedia by undermining our system of blocks and bans. The project is about both behaviour and content, and good content cannot be used to excuse bad behaviour.—Kww(talk) 02:31, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

• Many blocks and bans are imposed because a user cannot be trusted, especially in the case of edits/creations by socks, persistent COI users, persistent COPYVIO, and persistent spam. That means the content can't be trusted either, so IMO, a summary deletion under G5 is appropriate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:41, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
• G5 doesn't mandate "blanket deletion"; the policy says "obviously helpful changes, such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism, can be allowed to stand". It just gives the administrators permission to not assume good faith on the part of someone who's evading a block or ban. Such editors can contribute material that might otherwise be allowed to stand after a cursory look: for example, the Morning277 socks contributed (are contributing) numerous articles about marginally notable people and companies. Bringing them to AfD would in my opinion be a poor use of time. G5 is just a way to avoid that; I don't see the benefit of changing or eliminating it. —rybec 03:05, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
• We had this discussion only a couple of months ago here. It is tempting to say "if the article is good, it shouldn't matter who wrote it" and, as always, there is scope for WP:IAR exceptions, but there is a good reason why the policy is WP:BAN#Bans apply to all editing, good or bad: otherwise, a ban is useless, because a persistent socker can simply ignore it and carry on editing through strings of socks. The only way to put a persistent spammer like User:Morning277 (240 socks and counting) out of business is to make sure that all his paying clients find their articles deleted. JohnCD (talk) 08:47, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Such a case brings us anyway into the territory of not knowing how slanted the articles are and because of that, a blanked deleting saves a lot of time and mandated unless an editor in good standing can vouch for the article. With really good work we will otherwise get into copyright issues when the material is later re-inserted by others Agathoclea (talk) 09:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
    • @JohnCD: the section WP:BAN#Bans apply to all editing, good or bad says nothing about reverting. A later section, WP:BAN#Edits_by_and_on_behalf_of_banned_editors says

      Anyone is free to revert any edits made in defiance of a ban, [...] This does not mean that edits must be reverted just because they were made by a banned editor (obviously helpful changes, such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism, can be allowed to stand), but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert.

      It looks consistent with G5. —rybec 20:53, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

_{(For use once we have some consensus: ((editprotected)))}

((Di-no permission)) says, "Unless a link to a webpage with an explicit permission is provided, or an email from the copyright owner is sent or forwarded to permissions-en@wikimedia.org, the image will be deleted after <date>". It seems to me that when used, this is too often going to be deceptive and obnoxious, as its documentation suggests it may be used any time a file is missing permission information. Just because a work has no evidence of permission does not mean that the ONLY acceptable FORMS of evidence are "a link to a webpage with an explicit permission is provided, or an email from the copyright owner". There are many other acceptable ones, including evidence within the work that it's old enough to be PD, or that it was published long enough ago, or … Also, it should link to the pages with info on what the email from the copyright owner should say! Please edit the template accordingly. Being obnoxious and overconfident is not actually an effective way to get people to do what you want, and that seems to be the strategy of this template. --Elvey (talk) 03:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean (although being obnoxious is a strategy not infrequently employed in image deletion around here). Do you have any suggestions for a better wording? I can't think of anything brilliant of the top of my head, but I'll keep thinking. Thryduulf (talk) 06:47, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I disabled the editprotect request: there is no request to edit this page. I note that the linked template does not exist, probably a typo that I am not able to catch up, can anyone correct it please? - Nabla (talk) 09:33, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Reenabled. Linked fixed. (Thanks, V.) This is the talk page of the linked template. The link to add is Wikipedia:Donating_copyrighted_materials, perhaps, or Wikipedia:Requesting_copyright_permission. (Wikipedia:Declaration_of_consent_for_all_enquiries is overly prescriptive.)_ I propose adding "such as" as appropriate. --Elvey (talk) 01:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - Nabla (talk) 18:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I think something to the effect of, basically, "This file is attributed to someone other than the uploader, or to an external site which the uploader claims to represent or own, who claims that it was released under a free content license, but not enough information has been provided to verify its licensing status. Please provide evidence that permission has been granted to use this file under the given license (such as an external link, OTRS ticket, e-mail message, etc. See also Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission and Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials), or evidence that the file is in the public domain. Unless the license status of it has been verified, this file will be deleted after XXXXX XX, XXXX" actually explains what we're looking for. The distinction between this and No source is a little tricky... ViperSnake151  Talk  20:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Per the foregone conclusion of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2013 July 22#Ginifer King, I think we should reword the exemption in CSD A3 so that it reads "Any article (other than disambiguation pages, redirects, or soft redirects to sites listed at WP:SISTER) consisting only of external links..." It seems clear that the exemption was not designed to prevent articles that consist only of links to completely external websites from being deleted.—Kww(talk) 19:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support as an option. Leaving the loophole in A3 can be dangerous, but I’d prefer to have valid targets as an explicit list in an inline footnote to get rid of the dependence on a potentially unstable WP:SISTER page and possible loopholes inside Wikimedia Foundation, this time. To which projects such redirects can actually be warranted? Are there so many such actual or upcoming projects? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I'm surprised that anyone has argued that links to sites completely unrelated to Wikimedia projects could be valid soft redirects. Otherwise "soft redirect" is meaninglessly vague enough to completely swallow up the provision that articles "consisting only of external links" could be deleted, as what page of nothing but a link could then be speedy deleted? As I noted at the DRV, it would be silly if a one-link page could not be speedy deleted for consisting only of external links, but a two-link page could be. It would also be silly if the difference between being speedy deletable or not were simply whether the one-link page used ((soft redirect)). postdlf (talk) 19:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Comment: just for consideration: are we totally certain about WP:SISTER being the only legitimate targets for soft redirects? I think we probably all agree that they are the only legitimate ones for links from article space, but what about, say, a soft redirect from "Wikipedia:" space to an essay on MeatballWiki, or to a page on a national chapter's wiki (as far as I understand they are not technically run by Wikimedia itself)? Also, the actual list at WP:SISTER doesn't seem to even comprise all wikis run by the Foundation, for instance the "foundation:" wiki.
  With the wording proposed above, all these alternative forms of soft redirects would be automatically made speedyable, at least under a legalistic perspective. An alternative approach that would still prevent the wording of A3 to become too wordy might be to hand off a more detailed definition of what is and what isn't a potentially legitimate soft redirect target to another page, such as WP:Soft redirect, and then refer to that definition from here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:04, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• A clarification to A3 would only apply to article space redirects, FPaS, so if you think WP:SISTER is the appropriate restriction for article space, this language would do it. Any other restrictions would be on articles related to soft redirects in general.—Kww(talk) 20:28, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Quite true, don't know what I was thinking. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:13, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• I agree with FPaS, the language of A3 needs to be tightened to avoid loop holes like has just been demonstrated, but WP:SISTER is quite restrictive.Soft redirects to the Foundation Wiki for example are fine and I can imagine that some Wikia sites might be acceptable targets. I'd go with either a separate list or with something like sites with a recognised soft-redirect template - if someone creates a bad one of them then TfD it and the soft redirects become valid G8s. Thryduulf (talk) 20:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• IMDB has several aliases for use with soft redirects, Thryduulf, so I doubt that would do what you want.—Kww(talk) 20:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support For article space only, there is no reasonable way that an external link should be the sole content of a mainspace page. It's too bad that we have to codify something so obvious, but aoparently we do. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support articles should not consist solely of an external link, unless that link is to one of our sister sites. Concerns about redirects to Foundation wiki pages aren't relevant because A3 only applies to mainspace and I can't see any legitimate reason why we'd want to link to the Foundation wiki from mainspace. Hut 8.5 20:30, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support Perhaps this could be worded as being limited to sites listed here. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 21:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• How about: A3: Any page in article space that provides no encyclopaedic content at all; or, any page in article space that drives web traffic to a non-WMF page without providing any substantial encyclopaedic content; or, a page consisting entirely of images or templates; or, a question, chat or social media-type post. Be careful when applying this criterion to stubs or newly-created articles.—S Marshall T/C 23:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Redirects and soft redirects are explicitly not covered by A criteria but by R and G criteria. So instead we need an R4 along the lines of "Redirects and soft redirects from the article namespace to sites not operated by the Wikimedia foundation." Thryduulf (talk) 02:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
  • What makes something a "soft redirect" instead of just an article consisting only of an external link? Just using ((soft redirect))? Should the difference between what A3 covers ever hinge purely on formatting? postdlf (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  I was thinking the same thing. Before this discussion I had never even heard of soft redirects in mainspace, it seems like "no meaningful, substantive content" would certainly apply to an article that was nothing but an external link, even if the person creating it tried to bypass that by formatting it as a soft redirect. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:45, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  So what, objectively and unambiguously, is the difference between these pages and Plutography and The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter that makes one an article and the other two not? Other than we don't want one of them? Nothing as far as I can see - these need speedy deleting as inappropriate soft redirects not as inappropriate articles. Thryduulf (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  I am not sure either of two “soft redirects” may be speedily deleted. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  I'm not sure what you mean? The Wiktionary and Wikisource soft redirects are good and should not be deleted, but there is no difference between them and the pages that were the catalyst for this discussion any more than there is a difference between an article about a notable person and a non-notable person - just because we want one but not the other does not mean that one is not an article. Thryduulf (talk) 10:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  These weren't rhetorical questions: "What makes something a 'soft redirect' instead of just an article consisting only of an external link? Just using ((soft redirect))? Should the difference between what A3 covers ever hinge purely on formatting?" postdlf (talk) 16:54, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  As the definitions stand at the moment, the only thing that makes something a soft redirect is claiming to be one. Whether it should depend on formatting is a different question. My take is that if we have an R4 that allows us to speedy delete soft redirects to places we don't want soft redirects to then we can unambiguously speedy delete this sort of thing using A3 or R4 as if it isn't an article its a soft redirect. Without an R4 we need to write an unambiguous objective definition of what a soft redirect is (and get consensus for it) otherwise we will just see re-runs of the current DRV with people correctly saying that "X is a soft redirect and therefore the A criteria do not apply". Thryduulf (talk) 18:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  The documentation for Template:Soft redirect actually defines soft redirects as "short pages inviting readers to visit another page on a different Wikimedia project". By that standard pages consisting solely of a link to a non-Wikimedia site are not soft redirects, even if they happen to use the soft redirect template. This makes some sense in that links to other Wikimedia sites are not really external - they are to projects closely associated with this one. If A3 explicitly defines its scope with respect to soft redirects then I don't think there should be a problem. Hut 8.5 19:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  R series in not a solution because “soft redirects” technically are not redirects, and G series would set rules for the article space and other spaces on the same level, that is not a right thing. I hope nobody will refute that there is nothing wrong with a “soft redirect” in the User: space, either to a SISTER project or to IMDB. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  Per Wikipedia:Soft redirect soft redirects are explicitly redirects for speedy deletion purposes, they are handled at RfD not AfD and WP:CSD#Redirects implies the same with "For any redirects, including soft redirects, that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion.", their only mention on the page other than their explicit exclusion from A3. I agree a G criteria is not right for this situation, which is why I'm not suggesting one, my point is simply that soft redirects are covered by the R and G criteria not the A criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 10:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support although I do not think any change is actually necessary. The reason is that a "soft redirect" to a non-WMF page is not actually a soft redirect at all- it's just an external link masquerading as one and so existing policy covers it already. If you think a clarification is needed, go right ahead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Reyk (talk • contribs)
  • They are soft redirects. They're completely unsuitable as soft redirects, and soft redirects were never intended to be used this way, but they are soft redirects. Thryduulf (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
    • As Hut8.5 rightly points out, soft redirects are links to pages on other Wikimedia projects. If something links outside WMF then it is an external link and not a soft redirect, even if it (mis)uses the soft redirect template. Reyk _YO! 23:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
    • This is academic at this point given that your view doesn't have support here, but if they are "completely unsuitable" soft redirects, there was never an intention for "soft redirect" to cover this kind of link page, and nearly every commenter here and at the DRV does not consider them valid soft redirects, how are they nevertheless soft redirects? I think you're stuck in a reification fallacy. If there is a consensus that these are not valid soft redirects, then they aren't valid soft redirects. What qualifies as a "soft redirect" is purely of our determination, and the exemption at CSD#A3 must also be interpreted by what consensus thought "soft redirect" meant then and what consensus thinks it means now. postdlf (talk) 16:18, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
• Support with slight wording change - From "soft redirects to sites listed at WP:SISTER" to "soft redirects to other Wikimedia projects" Ego White Tray (talk) 03:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Yep, that's pretty much the version I provisionally put in yesterday (but with an underlying link to WP:SISTER all the same) [1]. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
    • We could always link to meta:Wikimedia projects instead. That would seem more relevant for the wording, and it would allay some of the concerns raised above. Hut 8.5 16:17, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
• While I'm sure most realise this, it's still worth pointing out that this is really a lot bigger than just CSD. For example, in the article Mako Mermaids, the infobox contains a number of links using ((imdbname)) to people who have no Wikipedia articles. We need a much wider discussion about how to handle such templates, otherwise we are going to end up with multiple, small discussions all trying to achieve the same thing. We've already had a DRV discussion, now we're here and I can see a need for this to be addressed at WP:EL too. --AussieLegend (✉) 19:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
  • What links are appropriate to include as additional content within an encyclopedia article is a separate and much broader issue than what links are appropriate to be the only content of an encyclopedia "article". I encourage you to have that discussion elsewhere, just not here. postdlf (talk) 20:50, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
    • It may be a broader issue but it's not irrelevant here. It's entirely possible that a broad RfC on the issue results in a consensus that soft redirects like Ginifer King are acceptable. I'd hope not but it is still possible. --AussieLegend (✉) 08:15, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I added the phrase: "occasional exceptions may apply", which was quickly reverted. While I have no argument with the revert and found the editor's comment to be sound logic, I still feel that the mere fact that we're having this conversation makes the caveat necessary. The speedy deletion of the pages in question was obviously appropriate, yet there has been lengthy discussion at DRV and now here because of A3 being interpreted in the strictest terms possible. While the change made by FPaS was certainly an improvement, I feel that adding "occasional exceptions may apply" would go a long way toward preventing a similar situation in the future. Joefromrandb (talk) 08:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the revert, but this is a policy page. It doesn't exist to just hint at suggestions about what might be policy, it actually exists to define policy. So saying that "exceptions may apply" without listing, or linking to, those exceptions doesn't actually tell either a tagging editor whether a given article is eligible for A3, nor a reviewing admin whether a page was tagged correctly and hence should be deleted under the A3 criteria. Until we can say what the exceptions are, it literally does nothing to say that exceptions apply except to facilitate WP:Wikilawyering. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 08:47, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Certainly no need to be sorry. I agree with you that all policy is open to interpretation (although I would say community-interpretation rather than admin-interpretation). I also realize that per WP:IAR, WP:NOTBURO, WP:COMMONSENSE, ect., it goes without saying that exceptions may always apply and it shouldn't be necessary to spell that out. Recent events seem to indicate otherwise. As to "facilitating wikilawyering", that was actually what I was hoping to prevent. The still-open DRV conversation and this discussion (i.e. many hours we all could have sent improving articles) happened because the letter, rather than the spirit, of CSDA3 was invoked (i.e. soft redirects, no matter how inappropriate may never, ever be deleted). "Occasional exceptions may apply" would have made the lengthy DRV discussion moot and this discussion unnecessary. By the same token, it could prevent a problem, and (IMO) prevent future wikilawyering, should a situation arise in the future where a soft redirect is entirely sensible, yet not listed at WP:SISTER. Joefromrandb (talk) 10:01, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The criteria for speedy deletion are a list of intenionally narrowly-defined cases where there is consensus that a discussion will always lead to a consensus in favour of deletion. For this reason it is important that the letter of the criteria is carefully written and consistently, narrowly and objectively applied. "Occasional exceptions" is not objective and cannot be applied consistently and so those words have no place in a CSD criterion. If in future there are any completely inappropriate soft redirects to sites listed at WP:SISTER then they can be snow-deleted at RfD if one of the G criteria do not apply (the idea that soft redirects can never been [speedily] deleted is utter nonsense). Thryduulf (talk) 10:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment- I find this ridiculous instruction creep brought about by those who are cry babies over having been shown they were wrong to support a speedy deletion which was done by someone who did not know policy about speedy deletion or soft redirects. The speedy deletion used A3 and A3 specifically did not allow usage of that category for soft redirects. As others have noted here and in other discussions- a speedy would have been allowed using a different category! Or you could have finished the discussion quickly at an RfD and closed per snow. But editors who felt they had to prove something would rather change policy to try to prove themselves right retroactively. This is instruction creep plain and simple, there were already functioning procedures and categories of speedy to deal with this the proper way. An A3 is the incorrect place as an R category would be the best place for a speedy deletion category. Here apparently R stands for retarded and A for asshole; because editors would rather be prove themselves "right" than to have policy make sense. Sorry that I actually read policy and follow it, instead of doing what I want and then making policy let me do it that way.Camelbinky (talk) 23:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't think anyone's done anything to deserve these personal attacks. And your approach to policy and community standards is backwards. If we have a situation where a strict reading of policy says we should so X, but editors overwhelmingly think Y is a better idea, then policy is the one that gives way- and the strict reading was probably an overly legalistic one. Reyk _YO! 05:10, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Yeah, but come on. "The 'R' stands for 'retarded' and the 'A' for 'asshole'...". That's good stuff!! Joefromrandb (talk) 07:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Can someone explain a logical distinction between the Article Incubator and Articles for Creation that would explain why G13 isn't equally applicable to both groups of articles? It seems to me that all the discussion we had about AFC would apply equally to the incubator.—Kww(talk) 00:19, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• G13 applies to the subpages of WP:AfC, and it was uncontroversial that the huge number of nearly-entirely hopeless and very old rejected submissions there should be deleted.

The article incubator is not WP:AfC. There is clear evidence that deletion of all Article Incubator pages is controversial. Speedy deletion of article incubator does not fit within any CSD criterion, and as a new criteria, it fails the new criterion criteria, or at least it is a discussion yet to be had. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:13, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree the discussion hasn't been had. My question was really intended to start discussion. Aren't articles in the incubator that have not been edited in six months an equivalent problem?—Kww(talk) 05:35, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

OK. Possibly. I don't personally have a strong opinion, apart from watching out against CSD criterion creep. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:32, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Old articles might be problematic, but they are not categorically problematic, which suggests that a non-speedy criteria that actually requires a discussion/evaluation is more appropriate. Simply being out of date is not a criterion for deletion of articles in articlespace, is it? Jclemens (talk) 07:02, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Kww, there's a lot more crap (that is, stuff that probably should have been speedied for other reasons years back) in the stale AfC pile than the incubator pile. MIght still be worth extending G13 to the incubator--most of those may really past any plausible hope of mainspace, but the community's support for G13 was, in my view, driven partially by just how much truly problematic stuff is in that G13 pile, and I don't think it's a slam dunk to extend G13 without further discussion as a result. --j⚛e decker^talk 15:00, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• At Wikipedia_talk:Article_Incubator#Proposal_to_mark_as_historical, still running, there is no clear consensus to shut down the WP:Article Incubator, but this is a different question. Are there a large number of old hopeless pages in the WP:Article Incubator? A PrefixIndex search returns only a few dozen pages total. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:32, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The narrow reading of G13 is only pages under the skirts of AfC. If Incubator goes stale and the ownership gets transfered to AfC (by bulk move, or adding a category indicating their transfered ownership) I know that there are tools in place to nudge the authors of potentially eligible AfC drafts to see if they're going to take any action with the draft. Hasteur (talk) 15:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I know it was discussed here many times, but I have to ask: Why don't we judge content and editors separately? People using Wikipedia usually expect to find information and I doubt they are interested in or offended by fact that an article was written by - say - User:Marriedkangaroo who is a sock puppet of User:bflmpsvz523. We should judge content by content criteria and not primarily associate articles with editors behind them. Deletion of an article written in compliance with Wikipedia policies just because it was created by a banned editor is disservice to our readers, in my opinion. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 09:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

We judge content on whether it was created in line with our policies. Some of the policies are about legal issues, like copyright and BLP. Some of them are about site issues, like whether a subject is notable and verifiable, or whether the content was created by members of the community in good standing. Without being able to enforce community sanctions, we empower the most vile, duplicitous, deceitful, and abhorent people - those who openly defy the will of the community that they not be here. Why would we ever want to do that? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 09:49, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

If an editor has been banned, then we have taken a decision that the drawbacks of that editor's participation here outweigh the advantages. Allowing banned editors to contribute content will therefore do more harm than good. Hut 8.5 09:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

@Vanisaac: What has an article written in line with our policies to do with the fact that its creator is vile, duplicitous, deceitful or abhorent? Is creation of an encyclopedic article vile and deceitful? Do you mean that deletion should be revenge to evil editors?

@Hut 8.5: We can block a banned editor who violates ban, but why should we destroy valid encyclopedic work?

Thank you for your opinions. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 10:48, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

@Vejvančický: If an editor who is editing in violation of a ban/block submits anything and we have to apply the selective reasoning on it, we're only empowering the editor under significant sanctions from the community to continue being disruptive and waste the time of community members. If the content is truly appropriate, annother editor who is not under the significant sanctions will post the content per the "Infinite amount of monkeys on keyboards" theorm. Taking the action to indefinitely block/ban a editor is a drastic measure and is typically done only when other methods of editor behavior adjustment have not worked. By selectively accepting the changes by editors in this situation we only encourage the editor to further test the limits of their sanction and waste more time. CSD:G5 and be done with it until the editor can regain the community's confidence. Hasteur (talk) 11:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I still can't see how is creation of a valid encyclopedic article disruptive or "time-wasting". We should apply selective reasoning based on judging the content by content criteria, not by blanket destruction because of a name behind an article. If a banned/blocked editor "tests the limits" by creating valid articles, responsible and creative editors should think about how to take advantage of it, how to improve and not deteriorate the project - it would be a better signal to problematic editors about the competence of people maintaining this project. It's a matter of common sense. But our opinions may differ, of course. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 12:12, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not the article that's being judged. The blocked or banned editor has been blocked or banned for good reasons, and they are not allowed to edit. Period. If they appealed against their block or ban, it would be considered. Often, they have gone so far and wasted so much time, that it is considered not worth while allowing them back at any price. If they don't appeal, but just create fresh accounts, they are in breach of the rules here. If they are simply ignored and their articles allowed to stand, what message is that giving to other editors? "Yeh, misbehave and you'll get blocked - but don't worry, you'll be able to come back under another name and carry on. Have fun!" Yes, some content of value might be lost. Not in many cases, from what I've seen at CSD. And that's how they are spotted. Posting the same sort of thing. Who really knows how many blocked/banned editors have made a new account that has behaved itself and created good content? Do we need to know? It's a 'fresh start' - unofficial, of course, but if it really works, no-one will know. It's the leopards that can't change their spots that this criterion is all about. This might sound hypocritical, but I think of it as pragmatic. And practical. If they're caught, it's because they're doing something wrongly. And they're not learning from their mistakes. Do we really want them - and the message that their presence gives out? Peridon (talk) 15:22, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

... there's so much cheating and pretending here on Wikipedia that I would give it up and judge only content, Peridon :) This behavior is inevitable, any anonymous online environment allows that. How many editors abuse multiple accounts and live happy Wikipedia lives without noticing? I've lost my naivity long time ago. But you are maybe right and it's better to do something than simply tolerate wrongdoing. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 15:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

My comments on this can be found at: Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 48#AmatulicG5 — basically, just because we can delete articles from banned editors doesn't mean we should. However, since then, while I still agree with Vejvančický that content should trump identity, my thinking has evolved to make exceptions of the most egregious cases of sockpuppetry PR firms. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that many banned editors have serious, but not necessarily obvious problems with their edits. Hidden copyvio, subtle POV pushing, etc... G5 is a valuable tool for dealing with them. We want it to grant broad, permissive authority to delete. Personally, I would still look at the content, how disruptive the socking is, and the potential risks of bad content being in the article, and make a judgement call, but again, broad discretion is needed or its an invitation to sock. Monty₈₄₅ 17:42, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

The existence of G5 doesn't invite them to not sock. G5 is indeed broad, but more akin to dropping a nuclear bomb after every socker - is it *really* needed? Who, honestly, is damaged more... the socker or the encyclopedia? CSD isn't even supposed to be tackling broad issues - it exists only in specific circumstances, which is why there are specific criteria. -- Mentifisto 20:26, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I feel pretty much the same as Amatulic. In the past, I used to try to save as many G5s as possible. (in many cases there was no point, because the was too promotional stay in WP anyway) . (I'm still unhappy about using G5 for editors blocked or banned for reasons other than sockpuppettry or promotion.) But the situation now is becoming an emergency. There are occasional instances of such sockpuppets writing a decent article about their hobby, and in such cases I might sometimes make an exception. But it's rare. Unless we're going to change the basic pillar of permitting unidentified editing--something that is so unlikely to happen that it isn't worth discussing, G5 is a necessary part of our defenses. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 15:45, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I had the Thomson Whisky article on my watch list and it has been speedy deleted, so quickly that I couldn't get to it. Is there any way I can view the deleted article? I just want to make sure it had no merit. NealeFamily (talk) 05:34, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

The log shows: "22:24, 11 August 2013 Bbb23 (talk | contribs) deleted page Thomson Whisky (A7: No explanation of significance (real person/animal/organization/web content/organized event))"

You could ask Bbb23 (talk · contribs) to email it, or ask for userfication.

You could got to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion and request userfication.

When done, replace the content of the userfied page with ((db-u1)). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:44, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I have been running into a fairly decent number of stub or poorly sourced articles about construction projects, often in conjunction with the forum skyscrapercity (using a search term "skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php" -- see also this discussion at RSN).

Maybe some background would be helpful first.

I first became aware of this via recent changes. an article i AfD'd is still attempting to get past AfC, even though it has been deleted multiple times in the past.

A few A7 CSDs were successful on some "___ City" construction projects related to Dubai World City. I assumed that this was applicable to other unfinished buildings, and tagged a number of other articles with it. These have been declined, with the reasoning that "A7 does not apply to buildings". Subsequently, I created AfDs for these pages.

My issue is that construction projects are not buildings, either. In the planning or building stages I would think that they could certainly be said to be "organizations." And when poorly sourced articles about construction projects, particularly those without enough reliable sources to have clear notability, you wind up with a lot of promotional, un-encyclopedic, or out-of-date content. There are more than 700 articles which refer to forum postings on skyscrapercity.com, and that's a fairly substantial task for evaluation, editing, and where appropriate, deletion.

I've dug through the archives of this talk page a bit, and I think i understand the reason for not including buildings in CSD. Fewer watchers, for instance, might mean that an article about a notable building might be deleted without adequate review. but should uncompleted construction projects (or those of unknown or un-determinable completion status) be held to this same standard? -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 09:44, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The problem with this is that there is really no unambiguous means of distinguishing between a clearly deletable building article and those that have some merit. In particular, SPEEDY criteria are objective, uncontestable, frequent, and non-redundant. I only see the possibility for two out of those four ever being met - any objective or uncontestable criterion would be infrequent, and no objective criterion would be uncontestable or vice-versa. I would suggest instead either going with PROD, and seeing if you can't get rid of the bulk there, or going for mass-deletion, with building articles in similar condition grouped together, eg buildings still in planning with only 1 or 2 independent sources, buildings under construction with no reliable sources, etc. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 10:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

That may work for some of them. I have been running into trouble with the creator of a number of the articles i have nominated (which I have just posted at ANI about -- that link gives some background). I'm hopeful that this sort of thing will not be necessary for every article, but encountering it this quickly makes me a bit hesitant, and eager for more input. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 10:32, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

If you've got the creator removing PRODs, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. While a few CSD criteria might help out on a few of them, you're probably going to have to go full AfD on the lot. Just bundle the least defensible articles in your first mass-AfD, then work your way through to the next least likely to survive group. Eventually, you'll hit a point where the deletions will stop being supported, and then you know that your work is done. Sorry I don't have better news for you. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 10:49, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

They weren't PRODs (that never seems to occur for me, my flow jumps from CSD to AfD, and i need to remember to use PRODs more), but the editor was actually trying to remove the AfD notice before engaging in what an admin acknowledged was a good bit of canvassing.

Not sure I really have time to take this on right now, but thanks for your help. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 10:52, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the removal of the AfD notices, see the template warning series ((uw-afd1)), ((uw-afd2)), etc. You can report at WP:AIV after sufficient warnings have been given.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

A while ago I went through many of those articles categorizing them. There were a ton of stubs of questionable notability. There was also a bunch from China which have been pretty much been converted to redirects. I did tag many as needing updates since the proposed completed date has passed and there were no updates to the articles. While AfC is not article cleanup, if some of these don't survive at AfC then there are probably a large number that probably need to be deleted or cleaned up quickly. I wonder if we have any articles about the building in the empty Chinese cities? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I have started an RfC about the use of the forum website in question. I think it's related to this issue, though maybe a bit orthogonal to the issue of building or construction project notability. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 06:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I haven't seen the articles myself, so no comment on actual value of the article themselves, but - as is already happening - these cases should be dealt with by dealing with the person who does this, rather than by mopping up after them. It is far more important that the behaviour that leads to the problem stops, than that we are able to speedy the articles. After that is solved (or during, if you really want to) there is plenty of time to deal with the leftover mess, whether that is a bundeled AfD (but those tend to be risky in these situations, because, misjudge two on a bundle of 10, and the situation becomes so unclear it is impossible to close properly) or PROD, or even AfD individually. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:36, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

• Major buildings projects can be notable even they are never built, if they have sufficient discussion, and they will have it if sufficiently important--both news accounts of the financial and city planning aspects, and discussions of the proposed architecture in professional magazines. In each individual case, they need to be looked for. Speedy does not do this. That Dubai, for example, made extremely ambitious--I would even say ridiculously ambitious--plans before their financial structure collapsed a few years ago is of significant historical interest, & if the buildings were widely discussed at the time, people seeing those discussions will come here to find out what happened to them. . I notice in some ongoing AfD discussions the question of whether or not there are sufficient sources has not been considered, just a blanket statement that it cannot be notable yet. I suggest that the most likely course for some of them is merging related projects. DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I have seen no implication, here or elsewhere, that construction projects are prima facie non-notable. But I do not believe the reasons we allow building articles to have either (depending on your perspective) a lower standard of notability, or a higher bar for deletion, to be applicable to projects themselves.

In every case, for the articles I nominated (and there have been quite a few) there were insufficient independent reliable sources for me to be able to say that they satisfied my interpretation of WP:GNG. A city filing is not enough. A listing in an industry database is not enough. And I can only judge these things based on what I am able to find. In several cases, articles I have AfD'd have prompted additional research by others and the article has been retained with the additional material.

This may just be a personal thing, I don't know, but I have also seen the repeated suggestion that some of these articles might be notable, and so they should be retained. personally, I find that rationale to be in complete opposition to the very principles of this project. I almost find it offensive that someone would suggest that their own personal suspicions should be deferred to in lieu of proper reliable sourcing. We should not, in my view, be retaining articles based solely on the suspicions of random editors. If you can find sources, add them, if not, the article should be deleted. If someone else finds additional sources and wants to create a new page, it can be undeleted. Until that condition is satisfied, imho, it should not have an article. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 23:59, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

That some of these articles might be notable is a reason why speedy deletion is inappropriate. Nobody is arguing that their "suspicions should be deferred to in lieu of proper reliable sourcing" or that we should be "retaining articles based solely on the suspicions of random editors". What is being argued is that each project needs to be evaluated on its own merits. "If you can find sources, add them" indeed, but finding and evaluating sources is not something that CSD is competent to do. Note at the top of the page, "It must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus." That simply isn't the case with articles about buildings or construction projects. Thryduulf (talk) 00:48, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. Multiple intersecting issues on multiple pages, and that last response was probably more appropriate for the RfC. I seem to recall getting "it could be notable, let's keep it" on an AfD listing, and am being a bit knee-jerky. I seem to be running into a lot of resistance from some parts on this issue of tenuous notability and using forum postings for reference.

But I also don't see how the same justifications used for buildings not having CSDs apply to building projects. They may be notable, yes, but we have CSDs for other types of articles that may be notable. The explicit justification seems to be that since buildings may not change very much they may have fewer watchers and thus a CSD listing would risk deleting something that was in fact notable. But construction projects are, by their nature, in flux much more than a building would be, so to me that doesnt seem to hold much water. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 01:43, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Would every building project at a certain stage of completion be non-notable? No, some are going to be big prominent projects with lots of coverage (even if it's not yet in the article). And determining that is the sort of thing we have AFD for. But in this case, with building projects, you can't really say that almost all of the articles that could be deleted should be. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 18:19, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Per user talk:Sfan00 IMG, Sfan00 IMG seems to think that it's ok to tag PD-textlogo for F4 deletion. Is my interpretation correct, and F4 deletion is the incorrect process to use? -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 14:38, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

That is not appropriate as PD-textlogo should be self evident, and licenses are not required. Others like you can contest speedy deletions like this by removing the tag. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

F4 deletion tags should only be used if we are missing information needed for verifying the copyright status of the file. If an image is below the threshold of originality, then it is in the public domain regardless of where the file comes from. On Commons, it is typically necessary to provide a source to the degree that we know from which country the file comes from as different countries have different thresholds of originality (see Commons:COM:TOO), but this is irrelevant for English Wikipedia as we only care about the copyright status in the United States (see ((PD-ineligible-USonly)) for files inappropriate for Commons).

If the logo has no source, then we may have a ((citation needed)) or ((dubious)), but that is a completely separate problem unrelated to copyright and is better handled in the way ((citation needed)) and ((dubious)) tags usually are handled. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:09, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Where should the speedy deletion tag for a template be placed, in the template documentation? Jc3s5h (talk) 13:53, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Which template? UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:59, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

((rtr)) and ((srs)). The first duplicates the function of ((sfn)) and the second duplicates the function of ((wikicite)). Jc3s5h (talk) 15:10, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're trying to say or do. Could you elaborate what you want to to with or to which template exactly? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:05, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I read it as that they want to speedy delete ((rtr)) and ((srs)). I presume the criteria would be T3, which covers duplications. Both templates seem to be the work of a new editor (registered today), and neither appears to be in any sort of use. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 18:10, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, UltraExactZZ, that's exactly what I was thinking. But I'm not sure where to place the speedy deletion template within the template to be deleted. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:54, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

To speedy delete a template (or any other transcluded page), put <noinclude>((CSD template))</noinclude> at the top of the page. The noinclude tags mean that only the template will be nominated, without them any pages transcluding the template would be placed in the CSD category too. This should be noted on the CSD page but doesn't appear to be. I'd add it myself but don't have time atm. Thryduulf (talk) 07:55, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I've added a small note above the template section to this effect.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this should apply to an article talk page where the article page was not edited only by the blanker. Comment. Dlohcierekim 03:02, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Why? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:30, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

A good point. But, do we really want lots of floating talk pages? I can't recall anything much on a G7 talk page that was worth saving. If the G7 is valid, then the article hasn't been edited by anyone else (barring dots, dashes and tags). All there might be on the talk page would be a contested deletion statement and an explanation from the tagger, preceding the blanking or posting of a G7 request. What worries me more in G7 is the article where someone creates it, then an IP edits for a couple of days, then the author posts a G7. The IP is certainly the author. But... Peridon (talk) 09:18, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

The talk pages can then be deleted as G8. However if there is a speedy delete contested on the talk page, then the original speedy delete is void as it is controversial to delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I can't find that in the policies - does that mean that if an article is tagged for being spam (and it is), a contest made solely on the ground that 'this is a genuine company' overrides the deletion reason? Anyway, if the author has blanked the page, it surely means that the article hasn't yet been deleted and that they are acceding to the reason for deletion. Peridon (talk) 10:32, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

"This [apparent spam] is a genuine company"? As long as WP:AGF applies, this means that we have a new editor who doesn't understand the inclusion criteria. This demands a human conversation, not a speedy deletion. AfD is a reasonable place for that discussion. WP:BITE has multiple justifications. Only one is that the new editor may learn to be a productive contributor. Another is our (Wikipedia editors) reputation in the real world. A third is that we should practice collegiality in order to create a collegial environment. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:25, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

There is no requirement anywhere in any policy that contested speedy deletions go to AfD, and the fact that a speedy deletion is contested does not mean the deletion is controversial. The method of contesting speedy deletions is merely a mechanism for interested editors to supply information to the reviewing administrator. Obviously if someone doesn't understand our deletion policies then we can explain them, but this does not require the existence of an article or article talk page. Hut 8.5 14:12, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about the case of the original author blanks the article page and then writes something on the talk page. If other speedy delete reasons exist for the article then it can be speedy deleted, and the talk page eliminated too. If on the other hand an article talk page appears from nowhere, and someone else blanks it, then nominators and administrators should check what was there before blanking. If it was an article attempt, then move it. If it is just talk, then use G8, and other reasons like vandalism, spamming then speedy delete too. But I agree with original poster in that a talk page of an article blanked by someone should be checked in its history to see why. G7 delete only if it was their writing. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:28, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Someone has left a very long comment on the Category page. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 13:47, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

It has been removed. — Edokter (talk) — 13:57, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed some situations where an editor, often an IP, creates what appears to be a draft of an article in Talk space:

• Talk:Erik_Borg
• Talk:Citizen_of_Czech_Republic

Some of these are being tagged as G8. While in a technical sense they qualify as a talk page without a corresponding subject page, the rationale for deleting these via speedy (as I understand it) is that some times an article is deleted via an appropriate process, whether CSD, AfD or Prod, but the talk page doesn't get deleted at the same time. We clearly do not want to go through an entire AfD process for the talk page of a deleted article, hence the CSD category.

However, when someone accidentally tries to create an article in talk space, I think it is exceedingly rude to just blow it away because they haven't followed the process exactly right, and doubly rude because the editor probably won't be notified. I usually try to make sure the editor is notified in the case of many CSD categories (except G10), but I haven't bothered to check in the case of a G8, on the assumption that they were informed about the deletion of the article, and do not need a separate notification for the talk page. However, that argument fails if there never was an associated article.

I thought the natural group to address this would be the hard working volunteers at AfC, but I raised the question at AfC talk, and it seems to have stalled.

In some cases, I have rejected the CSD, but this means the draft article is now in a never-never land. I thought perhaps it should be moved to AfC, but I don't know how to do that. How should these be handled?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 16:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, they're obviously not within the spirit of G8 so I wouldn't delete them if they were tagged for that. In most cases I think the answer about what do is to move the page somewhere it isn't going to get inappropriately speedied. Where will depend on the circumstances though - if it looks ready for mainspace then move it there. If it isn't ready but the author is still around, move it to their userspace. If the author isn't around and its going to take a lot of work to make it encyclopaedic then send it to MfD, or speedy it if it would meet an A criteria if it was in the article namespace. If it is nearly ready but needs a bit of work still and the author isn't here then, erm maybe move it to AFC space and inform the relevant wikiproject? Thryduulf (talk) 17:30, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

That's quite a decision tree.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:00, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum, actually, it's not a bad decision tree, but it wasn't clear to me whether you were proposing that this be followed by the editor doing the original tagging (in which I agree) or by the admin who is assessing the speedy?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:05, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Ideally the person doing the tagging, but I'd do it if I saw that while working through the CSD category. As long as someone does it, it doesn't make a great deal of difference who that someone is :) Thryduulf (talk) 22:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

• In these cases, you can simply replace the CSD tag with ((subst:AFC draft|username of creator )) and save the page. Once you do this it will have the proper AFC header tag on the top of the page which includes a link to "move submission to project space". Click that link, enter a proper subpage name for the submission (the topic of the draft) and click move. We usually leave the redirect for a length of time to make it easy for the creator (or anyone that is working on the draft in that user's talk space) to find their draft. I'm sorry I missed your question on AfC talk, or I would have answered it for you there.  :) Technical 13 (talk) 23:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

@Technical 13. Thanks for this. I's something i'll look out for.

@Sphilbrick. I'm not surprised that your comment at WT:AFC didn't receive much resonance. It's such a busy page, and the operators are so occupied, comments and threads quickly get submerged. I suggested a few days ago that the page should be split into a page about technical discussions, and a page for questions about handling individual submissions - even that thread was largely ignored and went unresolved.

Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:54, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I was on Recent Changes and found the above page. How would I be able to tag it for deletion? George8211 ^{t c} 08:11, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Why would you want to? It's an explanation of the persons edit to the actual article. The genre used to say "sludge metal", but based on the interview the editor linked to, it's supposedly not sludge but extreme ES&L 09:49, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh. George8211 ^{t c} 10:08, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I haven't been much involved with files in general, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to make any trouble with a novel interpretation of F5. It says an image can be deleted immediately "if the image's only use was on a deleted article and it is very unlikely to have any use on any other valid article." This would seem to apply to album art and similar files, right? --BDD (talk) 22:55, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

• Orphaned files have a 7-day grace period I believe. Technical 13 (talk) 22:59, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi all, curious about the wording of G4. It says "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy...", Now, I've always taken that to mean the wording has to be very similar to the original, but in a discussion with Postdlf, my fellow admin has expressed the view that content (in any wording) is the main point of G4. Hence, Valeria Lukyanova was G4ed as the result of a May 2012 AFD, where the version deleted was (in terms of wording, and I think content) considerably different. My question: does G4 apply to both wording and content, wording only, or wording and content? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

In general, it would depend on the reason for the deletion. Some reasons for deletion can be fixed by merely rewording the content, others cannot. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, my way of phrasing it is to ask whether the recreation has cured the reason(s) for deletion. And we also should expect that to be established by a pretty wide and clear margin, or else it should be taken to DRV for permission to recreate first. Otherwise, we'd just see rampant gaming of the system through repeat recreations and AFD becomes a joke. postdlf (talk) 01:53, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that "unimproved" is the key concern. Since regular users cannot see the deleted version, the only way they have to determine whether their contributions are improvements is if they meet the concerns of the deletion discussion. So if it still has the same problems, it can be G4ed. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 02:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Interesting, but I wonder what objective way we could use to judge improvement. "Sufficiently identical" can be shown objectively: compare the two articles and note how many changes. What about "improved"? After all, CSD is meant to be used "for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion", which implies that there is some measurable objective standard. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:31, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I think that the only means of judging improvement is that the new article has made some attempt at meeting the deletion rationale. "Sufficiently identical" I think is really just a limiting factor for the deleting admin, who can actually see both versions - if the replacement is significantly different from the previous one, it should go through XfD. If there has been some effort to meet the deletion rationale, then it should go through XfD. G4 is for those times when there really hasn't been any sort of movement towards making a better replacement for a previously problematic file. The objective criteria is that something has been done to meet the deletion rationale, and "sufficiently identical" is really a subjective constraint on the deleting admin. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:33, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• Fair enough, fair enough. I'm still convinced that the instance which prompted this question was not improper, but I understand now that my (quite strict) definition of what is G4-able is not what is currently accepted by the community. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

• There was a recent proposal at WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 50#Wording of G4 criterion (June–July 2013). Somewhat related discussions include WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 49#Three questions about removal of a tag (May 2013), WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 47#G4 for an article about an AFD'ed topic which has new sources (December 2012), and WT:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 47#G4 (September–October 2012). Flatscan (talk) 04:25, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Useful links, thank you. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:05, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi, today I came across a user who seems to specialize in creating redirect pages. Some of his edits might be useful, but many are completely unnecessary and don't follow the rules for naming articles. For example:

1. When there's an article "Title (film)", he creates a redirect page "Title (movie)", like with The Fighter (1952 movie), Retroactive (movie), Man's Best Friend (1993 movie),
2. He sometimes adds the year, when there is only one film with that title, eg. Nixon (1995 film),
3. He creates pages for actors with their full names, eg. Tate Buckley Donovan, Victor Joseph Garber (I checked on IMDb that Tate Donovan and Victor Garber were NEVER credited with their full names),
4. Paradise (Lil Suzy) redirects to Paradise (Lil Suzy album), Young and Beautiful (Lana Del Rey) to Young and Beautiful (Lana Del Rey song), and Scream (Usher) to Scream (Usher song), etc. – articles for those albums/songs are named correctly per MOS:ALBUM#Naming and I don't think a redirect page with just the artist's name in parentheses is useful in any way.

Which speedy deletion criteria do these pages meet? I've already requested the deletion of Paradise (Lil Suzy), but I'm not sure whether I gave the right reason. — Mayast (talk) 10:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Why would you want to delete those redirects? Agathoclea (talk) 10:32, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

And R2 is for cross namespace redirects. Which this is not. so I declined the speedy request. Agathoclea (talk) 10:37, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you point me in some direction, what a "cross namespace" redirect is? I'd like to educate myself ;)

In what way are those redirects helpful, in your opinion? Especially those regarding film, song and album titles (I can leave the actors alone ;)). There are clear rules for naming articles from those fields, and I believe the resulting names are very precisely saying what the article is about. I really don't see a point in creating a redirect page "Title (movie)" for every "Title (film)", or "Title (artist)" for every "Title (artist song)" and "Title (artist album)". But if I'm wrong, and redirects like that are necessary, I might start creating ones for the articles I've created, right away :D — Mayast (talk) 11:03, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

In the criterion for R2 it specifies what a cross name redirect is. It is any redirect from the mainspace (article space) to another namespace except Category:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Help: and Portal: In other words if a redirect was created at GB fan and it redirected to my user page User:GB fan that would be a cross name redirect. Are those redirects necessary? No. Do those redirects do any harm to the encyclopedia? No. Would I create those redirects? No. Is there any valid CSD criteria to delete them under? No. If nominated at RFD would they get deleted? No. While you or I might not find them necessary, someone else might find them useful, my suggestion is to not worry about them. GB fan 11:26, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I won't anymore :) Thank you very much for the explanation :) — Mayast (talk) 11:35, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

P.S. (cutdown version after editconflict with very good explanation above): Within article space we are encouraged to have any redirects that might make it easier to find the article in question including full names, alternative names and even common misspellings. Those are the ones you should create when creating an article yourself, to the extend that they are obvious to you. Where you are not convinced of the usefulness you don't need to feel compelled to create them. Agathoclea (talk) 11:37, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The answer to this question is that they don't qualify for speedy deletion, and should be discussed before being deleted. That having been said, many of these should probably be put into a bulk nomination at MfD. I'm not exactly sure of how to go about nominating essentially a whole class of redirects, but I would first engage the editor creating them and ask him/her to stop until we can get broader community input on whether those kinds of redirects are desirable. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 11:56, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

MfD would be the wrong place. It would be RfD, but check out Wikipedia:Rfd#Reasons_for_deleting first. Agathoclea (talk) 12:39, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Oops, I was meaning "XfD" and ended up with miscellany. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 12:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The examples you give are all redirects that should exist because they help people find the article when they search on a slightly different term to how we have named the article. For example although there are very clear guidelines about how to name articles about films and albums we cannot expect our readers to know what they are so we have a redirect so they don't need to. Thryduulf (talk) 15:10, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

• Per the concept surrounding Category:Redirects from misspellings, many of these probably should exist if they are a likely search term (can use stats.grok.se to check how much they are used), but they should all have ((R from misspellings)) on them to classify them as such. Technical 13 (talk) 19:55, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The recently-created CSD:G1 and other shortcuts were added to this page, then removed, then restored. These shortcuts are the subject of a deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion#CSD:G1.

If you want to discuss whether these shortcuts should be kept at all, please discuss it over there.

If you want to discuss what should be on this page in the event that the shortcuts are not deleted, please discuss it here or there. You may want to discuss it there because the option of "depreciation" - keeping the shortcut but deleting all uses of it on project and documentation pages - is on the table. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:10, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I would support reverting this page back to the historical WP:CSD# shortcuts now, and changing them back only if 1) the shortcuts are kept and not depricated and 2) there is a discussion here and a consensus to do so. However, I'm not going to undo the current CSD shortcuts on this page in the next 24 hours unless there is some clear (significantly more than a simple majority+0.5) support for the WP:CSD# format, and not after then unless there's a majority in support or the deletion discussion closes as delete or depricate. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

david, historically this page had no shortcuts before I added the CSD: pseudo-namespace. So, you would be reverting it to either no namespaces, leaving with the existing pseudo-namespace which is proving to be a highly likely search term according to stats, changing it to new shortcuts using a virtual-namespace that new users would have a harder time remembering, or changing it to new shortcuts which aren't much shorter. Technical 13 (talk) 21:44, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it did, they just weren't advertised: Any shortcut to the page as a whole becomes a shortcut to any section by appending # and the section title or anchor name. The anchors "G1" etc. have existed for years, which means WP:CSD#G1, WP:SD#G1, WP:SPEEDY#G1, as well as any historical shortcuts like WP:SPEEDYDELETE#G1 all go to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G1 and have done so for a long time. Until very recently, these weren't advertised, but they did work. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:59, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

They weren't advertised and hardly were used. The usage of the CSD: shortcuts exceeds in 13 days the usage of the old WP:CSD# method in 90 days by more than 300%. I think this speaks masses to the usefulness and the fact they should stay. Technical 13 (talk) 22:43, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The numbers are based in part, perhaps largely, on their use in templates. For a valid comparison, try this thought experiment: For 30 days, have the templates and WP:SPEEDY use the CSD: format and for 30 days have them use the WP:CSD# format and for 30 days have the templates use no shortcuts and remove the advertising of the shortcuts from WP:SPEEDY, but leave all of the redirects working. Then compare usage. Obviously, such an experiment should not be done, but think about the likely outcome. The likely outcome for the first two months is that the usages would be about equal, and for the third month the usages would be very low. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

If the pseudo-namespace is deleted, which it doesn't look like it will be at this point, there will at least be hit data on these in the future. The reason there was no data for before the 28th of August is because those pages never existed and 404s don't get page hits (but deleted pages do as they do actually exist). I'm sure that this would allow for a revisit in the near future if that is the outcome of this discussion. Technical 13 (talk) 13:22, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• This is demonstrably false. The page Brak Obama has never existed, and yet it gets hits recorded. Keφr 13:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I've used WP:A4 et al. for years. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Crisco, I'm sure you have for years as a seasoned editor where-as these/this new redirects/pns are more targeted for new editors that don't know what a pns, nsa, or ns is.
    • New editors are unlikely to know what csd or shortcuts are. They have to learn that anyway. (By the way: I refuted the "hardly ever used" argument at the deletion discussion page.) Keφr 13:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
      • This was in reply to Technical about "hardly ever used". Not sure I'd use CSD:A4 or whatever, simply as WP:A4 is faster, but will be at the RFD. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:40, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Just a note that I have closed the aforementioned RfD discussion as delete. Happy‑melon 12:20, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Do believable claims of things which are not credibly significant or credibly important qualify for A7, even if they are stated as if they were a claim of significance?

For example, if someone wrote an article about his local semi-professional baseball team that played in a league with other similar teams, that would not be A7-eligible. But if instead of a semi-professional team, if it was a purely recreational team organized by his local municipal parks department that played in a purely recreational league, that is a believable claim but in my mind not credibly significant or credibly important. Assuming that this was the only thing even resembling a claim of importance or significance, would A7 apply?

This question was inspired by a similar discussion at Talk:Brimsdown F.C. Note: The article is at AFD, so the talk page may disappear in 6-7 days. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:46, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not whether the claim is 'credibly significant', it's whether the claim itself is credible - hence why it says "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." GiantSnowman 16:52, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

To me, it reads as a '(credible)(claim of significance). A claim that it's a recreational Much Twittering Village Sunday League team is credible, but it's not really a claim of significance (outside the team themselves, their wives and their next opponents). Most of Much Twittering probably doesn't give a damn (except for wishing they'd be quieter when swearing at each other). Take it any other way, and "Shaun is awesome!!!!!!" could be regarded as a claim of significance. (He isn't, fairly obviously...) Peridon (talk) 17:53, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Question: when was the last time anyone deleted a user page under the U3 (non-free gallery) criterion?

 *crickets*

…exactly. Maybe we no longer need this criterion and the time has come to repeal it. On the other hand, given the frequency at which fake games or resumé-style pages are nominated at WP:MFD, perhaps we could add a new criterion: pages in user space of a user inactive for at least three months (the period can be adjusted; this is on the safety side, I would prefer one month, or even two weeks), who has no contributions outside their user space. Article drafts could be exempted from this criterion (although WP:STALEDRAFT gets mentioned a lot in MFD too, so maybe not; or we could exempt non-biography drafts, or drafts that would not fall under any speedy deletion criteria for articles if launched). I think these circumstances are rather clear indication that the user is using Wikipedia as a web host and has no interest in building an encyclopedia. Therefore we have no obligation to keep their page. Thoughts? Keφr 13:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree that CSD:U3 is fairly useless. I think that most pages that could be deleted under CSD:U3 also could be construed to qualify under CSD:G1, CSD:G2, or CSD:G6 anyways, so I counter propose that it be merged into CSD:G6 officially which would also add the benefit that "non-free galleries" in other namespaces, should they appear, are also deletable (with the exception of main/article space where they are governed by WP:NFCC).

I'm opposed to the idea of a new criteria that would effectively clean out most everyone's userspace if they go on wikibreak or get called up on active duty in the military or spend three months in the hospital because they got hit by a bus or something. I think if there is an issue with WP:STALEDRAFT, the simple thing to do is to ((subst:submit)) the draft to WP:AFC and let process run its course. Either there is enough to the draft that it gets accepted as is; it gets declined, sits there for six months, and gets deleted as CSD:G13; or someone finds it in that amount of time and does enough to resubmit and get it accepted. Two thirds of those outcomes are we get another acceptable article and the third is it gets CSDed in six months. Technical 13 (talk) 13:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I've drafted a few articles that I've not touched for weeks/months - partly because they are not currently notable but could well be in the near-future. GiantSnowman 14:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree that U3 would probably be best folded into something like G6, and also agree with Tech13 that user space content that is not otherwise problematic should not be deleted, even if the user is gone for years. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 14:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• You three might have probably missed the "no contributions outside userspace" condition (perhaps I could add "non-deleted" just to clarify). And if you still want to argue that these user pages should be kept even given that, then… well, if you are going to enroll in the military soon, why would you create a user page on Wikipedia? If you get hit by a bus, well, I feel sorry for you, but could you not just ask for a WP:REFUND? Look at the examples I gave — these are the main cases I had in mind. If kept, would these kinds of pages serve their purpose according to the WP:UP policy, which is "facilitating interaction and sharing between users"? User space does not belong to the user. Keφr 14:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I didn't miss that condition at all. The problem is, there is no way of knowing if the editor had edits outside of userspace that were deleted. It also doesn't make clear who's userspace, the editor could have side-bared their project to collaborate on another user's draft for three or four months, does that mean their stuff should be deleted? Why is it an issue to send those drafts to WP:AFC for review? Why should these people that worked hard on a draft have to request a WP:REFUND after just recovering from getting hit by a bus or any other reason? I agree that User space does not belong to the user, but I would like to add that simply deleting all of these drafts and content doesn't gain us anything and is counter-productive to building an encyclopedia. As a side note, Kephir, please review WP:EQ (especially the part about Editing another editor's signed talk page comments is generally frowned upon, even if the edit merely corrects spelling or grammar.). Technical 13 (talk) 14:58, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Fixing broken markup in other peoples comments is helpful. Nobody owns anything here, if it impedes discussion then it can be fixed. Regardless, Wikipedia isn't running out of server space is it? If something useless has been sitting there for 3 months it's not exactly an emergency to get rid of it, just routine housekeeping. So no reason for policy creep, just deal. Wikidemon (talk) 15:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Was that an "oppose"? Hard to tell. Well, the current wording of WP:CSD#G6 ("housekeeping" deletions) does not really cover this case. And going through the full WP:MFD process (whose discussions are somewhat underpopulated, and results predictable: deletion, in the vast majority of these cases) is more of a bureaucratic exercise than speedy deletion. Speedy deletions are supposed to reduce backlogs when a deletion is uncontroversial. You just have to come up with an objective criterion. This was my attempt at one. The wording can be clarified, the criterion restricted a bit. And why rush, you ask? This is not about server space. The deleted pages are stored in the database anyway. One of the reasons for deleting junk is that if we keep junk, we give the impression that we tolerate or even encourage junk. Current policy is quite clear what userpages are and are not. But policies are descriptive. If a policy is not upheld, then too bad for the policy. I mean literally, people will then come up with RfCs to overturn it. But yes, I can recognise opposing this proposal on the grounds of "policy creep" as a somewhat justified opinion. Still, it is not like we have no problem at all. Keφr 16:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

If the draft is valuable, it can be launched, or handed over to AfC. Nothing in the policy says that you have to nominate pages eligible for any given criterion. Administrators can decline speedy deletion requests, and pass the discussion to MFD. Policy is not computer code. We are not robots. At least I think I am not. Keφr 16:08, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• I agree that U3 should be made into a G criterion, but don't add it to G6 as that is already overloaded as it is. See the new section below for a specific proposal. I don't understand what benefits would be brought by speedy deleting userspace pages of temporarily absent contributors? Something like "Pages that are all of (a) not related to Wikipedia and (b) in the userspace of a user who has (1) made no contributions outside their own userspace for at least 12 months and (2) been warned of the potential deletion for at least 7 days. (all four criteria must be true)" might be safe, but I doubt that would be of any benefit at all. Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• I think that this proposal does have some legs on it, however 3 months is nowhere near enough time. CSD:G13 has a 6 month timeout on how long a in progress AfC page has to go stale before it can begin to be considered for speedy deletion (discluding any speedier things like COPYVIO/BLP-Attack). I could see a Speedy deletion process that Speedies userspace pages after 18 months of being stale (3x what AfC has) and that the user has been notified that the page is under scrutiny for being a abandoned/stale userspace page with no apparent purpose for 30 days (i.e. 18 months + 30 days before it can be nominated) to give the widest latitude for users to do something about the page. Obviously this would have to exclude the main User page, but subpage drafts that don't appear to be making any headway or are meaningless don't need to be webhosted by Wikipedia forever. Hasteur (talk) 17:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
• "crickets"?? Peridon (talk) 17:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I took this to be referring to the symbolism of crickets used in TV and radio to indicate a period of extended silence, similar to the way tumbleweed is used in Westerns. See Cricket (insect)#In popular culture and Tumbleweed#Symbolism. Thryduulf (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks. I don't watch TV, and the radio station I listen to uses actual silence. (Some other stations that are sometimes inflicted on me could do with periods of extended silence - mostly when the records aren't playing...) Peridon (talk) 11:29, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• I thought about extending some A-criterions to userspace drafts. Then I realised that the A-criterions are not really applicable to them, while the general criteria already are — just nobody seems willing to enforce them. (I remember once nominating a userpage which contained pure gibberish and broken markup on a "patent nonsense" criterion, and it was declined.) How about extending G1, G3 and G11 to "pages in userspace which look like articles and would fall under this criterion were they in the article namespace", but with the caveat that 0) they would not apply to pages that have been already discussed at MFD at least once and 1) the user in whose userspace those pages reside may contest deletion and remove the speedy tag, but must then take it to MFD.
• Also, lots of userspace pages at MFD are simply bizarre rankings or listing of statistics. Maybe create a criterion for "pages which consist primarily of rankings and excessive listings of statistics with no indication of context". Keφr 09:25, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Uh, that's not true that "no one enforces them". Especially for G11, it's a common trick for people to create an ad in userspace, and I suspect they hope that A: It's less likely to be noticed since it's not in mainspace, and B: They can then insert a link to it on a website and most people won't know it's not actually an article. I quite frequently G11 those—"G" means it's applicable regardless of namespace, and Wikipedia is not a free billboard. I probably would be a bit more forgiving of nonsense or gibberish in userspace, though, since that may be an editor making test edits in a userspace sandbox, and that's not a bad practice. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:00, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I would be opposed to a criteria that includes specifically "pages which consist primarily of rankings and excessive listings of statistics with no indication of context" on the basis that while these stats may not be appropriate in large quantities in articles, there is no reason that editors shouldn't be able to store that information in their user space while trying to improve an article using them. Technical 13 (talk) 17:14, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
    • If these statistics are not supposed to eventually land in articles, what is the point of keeping them in userspace? Keφr 17:23, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
      • While it may not be appropriate for a user to have multiple pages of stats or what have you in the article, it may be appropriate for them to pick out a handful of the most important stats to use in the article. So, a handful of the stats are suppose to eventually land in article, but not all of them. Technical 13 (talk) 17:30, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
        • I find it hard to believe that a user will not know which statistics are inclusion-worthy before adding them to the draft. (And if they do not — they must be educated.) But we could exempt these kinds of pages if they are clearly related to a topic with an existing article. Keφr 17:43, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
          • Ummm.. CREEPy... "You can't have rankings and excessive listings of statistics with no indication of context in your userspace draft unless they relate to a topic with an existing article" Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of creating a draft? Technical 13 (talk) 18:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
            • WP:CREEPy? I would say redundant. And no, it does not defeat the purpose of creating a draft. An encyclopaedia article is not supposed to be "a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject". An article draft should be a reasonable approximation of that ideal. I think we agree that an article consisting purely of rankings (like those that crop up on WP:MFD all the time) does not constitute a reasonable approximation. Also, speedy deletion criteria do not imply "you cannot have", but "if you do, expect deletion first, discussion next". There is also this thing called "editorial discretion". We need not always apply a rule just because we can. Keφr 18:18, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
              • I have numerous pages in my userspace with long lists of stuff that don't belong in mainspace; some of them even got deleted at AFD because of the WP:NOTDIRECTORY policy. I keep these pages for tracking purposes or to enable the use of the ((GeoGroupTemplate)) for a group of locations that wouldn't belong in mainspace, but it sounds like this proposal would result in their deletion. Nyttend (talk) 01:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Following on from the section above, here is a specific proposal to replace U2 "(Non-free galleries)" with a G14 criterion applicable also to other non-article namespaces and non-free content that is not images (e.g. sound files or extensive quotes from copyrighted textual works):

Non-article pages consisting mostly or entirely of non-free content

Any page, other than an encyclopaedia article, that consists mostly or entirely of "fair use" or non-free content (for example galleries of non-free images). Wikipedia's non-free content policy prohibits the use of non-free content outside of articles, this includes article talk pages and content in the userspace of the user who uploaded the material; use of content in the public domain or under a free license is acceptable in all namespaces. This criterion applies only to included non-free content, it does not apply to links to non-Free content.
Pages should not be deleted under this criterion if removing the non-free content or replacing it with a link would result in a viable page.

This probably needs rephrasing slightly, and would probably benefit from a link to where to get advice if you aren't sure whether something is acceptable or not.

An alternative possibility would be to fold this into G12 but my initial feeling is that it is worth keeping separate for simplicity. My philosophy with regards to CSD is a preference for a longer list of simpler criteria over a shorter list of more complicated criteria, but I recognise this isn't a universal view. Thryduulf (talk) 17:26, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I've struck my suggestion to merge this with G12 per Monty845's comment below. Thryduulf (talk) 18:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The problem with something like this is that you may actually have a stub article with a fair use (non-free) image, or a maintenance category that has only non-free content. These are just the sorts of exceptions I can think of off the top of my head. So while I appreciate trying to perform some housekeeping on the housekeeping criteria, I don't think this is the right approach. I do see the logic in folding U3 in with G12 instead of G6, though. It is a copyright infringement to use a non-free image in a non-fair use context, so it would fit. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 17:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well all articles are explicitly excluded, so stubs with fair use images present no problem. Categories shouldn't include non-free content, and the __NOGALLERY__ magic word can (and should) be used to stop categories of fair use images displaying the images (it links them instead), see Category:Fair use symbols for example. It would be very unusual for any maintenance categories that don't deal exclusively with non-free images to include non-free images (and no other type of non-free content would show up without being explicitly included on the category description page) at all, so I don't really see that as an issue. I can see the benefit of explicitly excluding the media description pages of non-free media (although that really should be common sense!), but I'm not sure how to express that concisely. Thryduulf (talk) 18:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Note that non-free is a broader category then images which may only be used in a fair-use context. We interpret non-free to include all images that are not licensed with one of our preferred licenses. For instance, CC BY-NC 3.0, which we are legally allowed to use on Wikipedia, but we still classify as non-free due to the non-commercial use condition. Under policy, we are only allowed to use such an image under a claim of fair use. To call non-fair use uses a copyright violation would not be accurate. Monty₈₄₅ 17:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

That means merging this or U3 into G12 would make that criterion very complicated and not all practical, so I have struck that suggestion. Thryduulf (talk) 18:03, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

So you propose to change a criterion which is almost never used into another criterion which would be almost never used? I fail to see any advantage of this new criterion over the old one. Keφr 18:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Kephir on this, CSD:G14 is not the way to go here, if it can't be squished into one of the existing existing ones, just drop it as a criterion. I still think that classifying it as a CSD:G2 (test page) or CSD:G6 (general cleanup) is appropriate. Technical 13 (talk) 19:00, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I very strongly oppose merging this into G2 or G6. Pages like this may be test pages, but almost all of them wont be. G6 is for routine, uncontroversial and technical deletions (and is already significantly overloaded and misused) and this is not any of those. If this could be merged with any existing criterion it would be G12 which would need to be broadened to cover fair use problems as well as copyright problems. Thryduulf (talk) 20:45, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• As worded this would allow the deletion of all non-free images, as a non-free file is a page consisting entirely of non-free content. Hut 8.5 20:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Good point. Does either version below solve the problem? Thryduulf (talk) 21:27, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

[v2.1] Non-article pages consisting mostly or entirely of non-free content

Any page, other than encyclopaedia articles, non-free media files and associated media description pages, that consists mostly or entirely of "fair use" or non-free content (for example galleries of non-free images). Wikipedia's non-free content policy prohibits the use of non-free content outside of articles, this includes article talk pages and content in the userspace of the user who uploaded the material; use of content in the public domain or under a free license is acceptable in all namespaces. This criterion applies only to included non-free content, it does not apply to links to non-Free content.
Pages should not be deleted under this criterion if removing the non-free content or replacing it with a link would result in a viable page.

[v2.2] Non-article pages consisting mostly or entirely of non-free content

Any page not in the article namespace that consists mostly or entirely of "fair use" or non-free content (for example galleries of non-free images). Wikipedia's non-free content policy prohibits the use of non-free content outside of articles, this includes article talk pages and content in the userspace of the user who uploaded the material; use of content in the public domain or under a free license is acceptable in all namespaces. This criterion applies only to included non-free content, it does not apply to links to non-Free content, files or description pages of non-free files.
Pages should not be deleted under this criterion if removing the non-free content or replacing it with a link would result in a viable page.

This shouldn't be a normal speedy. A 7-day speedy, maybe. A special PROD might be even better. Today, such things can be handled by following the instructions in Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Suspected or complicated infringement, which call for the text to be replaced with ((copyvio)) along with the suspected source and listing the page for attention in the appropriate section of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:22, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I can see the logic in a 7-day speedy, when I'm more awake I'll work out the best way to phrase that. As noted though this isn't just text but media as well, and not everything that is non-free is a copyright violation (e.g. cc-by-nc licensed material) so the copyright problems procedure is only applicable in a subset of issues this criterion would cover. Thryduulf (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Why say non-article? An article shouldn't be mostly non-free content either, but mostly the text written by Wikipedia contributors. Ego White Tray (talk) 23:18, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't just relate to text but to all non-free content and there are articles that legitimately consist of a high proportion of non-free material - for example a stub about a musical composition with a non-free image and a non-free sound sample. Outside the article namespace almost everything that consists almost entirely of non-free content should be deleted, but the same is not true of articles so excluding articles is necessary. Thryduulf (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

The statement "Wikipedia's non-free content policy prohibits the use of non-free content outside of articles" appears inaccurate. WP:NFCCP begins

There is no automatic entitlement to use non-free content in an article or elsewhere on Wikipedia. Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media [...]

(emphasis mine).

Ah right, I expanded the text in the versions above from what is currently in U3 which relates only to images. I'll reconcile them when I'm more awake if nobody beats me to it. Thryduulf (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Surely the proposed criterion is meant to solve some problem that isn't addressed by CSD G12 or the existing non-free content policies. I'm assuming the proposal was inspired by actual pages where non-free material is used in a harmful way, but existing policies don't allow correction or deletion. If the proposer were to give some examples of such pages, with the reasons why they're harmful and can't be fixed or removed, it would better demonstrate the need for this. —rybec 01:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

This isn't entirely my proposal, nor is it proposing a new criterion. It stems from separating out one of the two aspects of the discussion in the section above. Criterion U3 exists, and while it does not apparently get used much currently it is not duplicative of any other criterion and so pages that cover it would not be speedy deletable were it repealed. Actually though I suspect they would continue to get deleted but under criteria that do not apply (incorrect speedy deletions are very harmful because they undermine the whole philosophy of "deletion always requires consensus" CSD is just a codification of the very limited times when that consensus may be assumed rather than explicitly sought). I feel that expanding U3 to cover all non-free material in all non-article namespaces would be beneficial. Thryduulf (talk) 03:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• This is pointless as the situation seldom comes up. The non-free content can be removed be editing, and if it is truly harmful then WP:IAR could be used to delete it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:42, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

If it's a copyright vio, it already should qualify under G12, and somehow if it doesn't, PROD works just fine, as well. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 10:58, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:PROD applies only to article space. Keφr 11:01, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:IAR speedy deletion is never acceptable. If something does not fall under a speedy deletion criterion then it cannot, without exception, be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

WP:IAR is actually a policy. This will include ignoring speedy deletion rules if it actually improves the encyclopedia. This will have to take into account collateral harm to editors. For example I will regularly speedy delete spambot postings although there is no speedy delete criterion that applies if it is not obviously an advertisement. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:30, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a broad application of WP:G11. Nothing IAR-y here. Keφr 11:50, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I cannot imagine any spambot posting that would not fit at least one of G1, G3, G5, G11, A1 or A3. Indeed you'd have a hard time defending any spam page against G3. Thryduulf (talk) 14:06, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• This all sounds very messy. I'm fine with expanding U3 to other namespaces, but doing other changes than that would be messy. In particular, any attempts to include text in the criterion would probably just make it very complex. If the content violates copyright (because the use isn't fair), then I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use G12 (if there is no useful content) or RD1 (if there is useful content). --Stefan2 (talk) 20:29, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Note: This was moved here from Template talk:Db-meta Ego White Tray (talk) 04:49, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

If article speedy deletion criteria apply in portal space, why don't we just get rid of db-p1 and use the db-a* templates on portals when appropriate? Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:30, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• It probably would work just fine to expand the A criteria to include portals, but it kind of muddies the whole concept of general vs. namespace specific criteria, and there could be administrative reasons to keep portal deletions separate from article deletions. I would suggest forcing ((db-p1)) to take as a first parameter the article criteria, so it's always made explicit the basis upon which a P1 deletion is being made. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 06:19, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• However db-p1 is so rarely used that a very rare MFD could actually be more beneficial than having a longer list of criteria. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:12, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
• CSD:P1 does look like a "catch-all" for portal deletions. "Oh, well, it has to fit at least 1 of the A* criteria, delete it." I have no problems expanding the ((Db-p1)) template to require the specific A* criter(ia|ion) that are being claimed, and once I've done so in the sandbox, I'm sure that TTO, or AzaToth would be happy to enforce that parameter in Twinkle if they are asked nicely. Technical 13 (talk) 12:40, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

• Some stats: P2 has been used as a deletion reason 8 times since 21 January this year. In the same period of time, P1 was used 23 times, but (due to subpages) only four individual portals (Portal:Peter Godwin, Portal:Shrekeezy, Portal:Inna, and, presumably under the wrong CSD criterion, Portal:Contents/) were deleted under P1. The P1 criterion is rarely used, but it is used well. Common sense applies here as everywhere, and in my view, there is no need for more bureaucracy around P1 deletions. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:11, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Let me clarify: Shrekeezy was deleted under P2, but its subpages (like Portal:Shrekeezy/intro-header) were deleted under P1. Perhaps this does suggest we need more clarity... — This, that and the other (talk) 07:13, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
• Just because things aren't actually getting tagged as being deleted as CSD:P1 or CSD:P2 doesn't mean that it's not being used. According to http://stats.grok.se/en/latest30/CSD:P1 and http://stats.grok.se/en/latest30/CSD:P2, CSD:P1 has had 90 hits in the last 30 days and CSD:P2 has had 84. What I'm thinking is that things are getting tagged as it and the admins deleting them are just being lazy and hitting the first reason they see (Not that any admins actually do that o.O). Technical 13 (talk) 11:25, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

On a related note, I put some text saying to state the article criteria that qualifies and got reverted. I don't see a problem with asking people to specify it, but perhaps my wording was improper? Ego White Tray (talk) 02:25, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Time and again I see good articles deleted because of G5. Well, by good I mean "this article would not be speedied if not for the creator". There are two problems:

• technical: deletions are often done with insufficient edit summary; even through G5 requires that it is shown that a user created an article in spite of a particular topic ban, often neither the user nor the ban are mentioned in the summary. Sample problematic speedy: Gospel (Lao Che album); I am not sure how to check for other similar log entries, but we probably have hundreds or thousands of articles that were deleted with an edit summary that makes it hard to verify G5 was valid. To deal with this, in addition to some reminders to people using G5 that they need to provide additional information, we also may need to update some cyborg scripts that assist deletion so that they require proper parameters. We should also have a log of all G5 deletions so we could detect any potential abuse - as it stands, it would be easy for an admin to abuse their power to delete an article of a blocked user, cite G5, and move on, regardless of whether G5 was applicable or not (who ever checks this?).
• clarify: the "To qualify, the edit must be a violation of the user's block or ban. For example, pages created by a topic-banned user may be deleted if they come under that particular topic, but not if they are in some other topic" sentence is not clear. What if a user is not topic banned, but just banned or blocked? It's unclear whether this means "we can delete all they did" or "G5 applies only to topic banned users"
• principle: content should be deleted based only on its own merits, regardless of creator. Content by banned editors may still be beneficial. Personally I see the entire G5 as an ultimate tryumph of petty bureaucratic and punishment-driven mentality over the "let's build an encyclopedia" spirit. G5 states that we don't care about building an encyclopedia as much as about punishing those who transgressed and handing out punishment, saying "it doesn't matter how good your article is, we don't want you here, and we are willing to hurt our own project and the good of community to show you that". If a banned user creates content not welcome here, we should be able to delete it using our other policies, speedy or otherwise. G5 contributes nothing positive - it allows to circumvent all of our other policies, and delete articles regardless of their quality simply because of who the author is. As such, I see G5 as contrary to our mission of building an encyclopedia. (Even if you disagree with me here please consider my two prior points about the need to enforce and clarify this rule).

To summarize, I am putting forward three items for discussion:

• that we need to enforce our existing rules properly, and require proper G5 deletion summaries;
• that we need to clarify the current wording of G5; and
• whether G5 speedy deletion criteria shouldn't be retired entirely. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

1. Agree that it is good practice to link to a record of the block or ban being enforced. I do, however, object to "requiring" it, since this just invites wikilawyering. Either we trust admins to do due diligence and make sure that the nomination is legit or we don't.
2. I can't imagine how you could possibly read any ambiguity into the G5 wording. I can only surmise that you are trying to read exceptions into the plain wording.
3. G5 is vital to enforcing bans and blocks. It absolutely should not be removed under any circumstance. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 07:24, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Re 3: I think this is precisely the attitude that he wants to criticise here. Keφr 07:44, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

For the nominations of G5 there is often insufficient information about why G5 applies. We need to insist that the nomination includes a proper explanation, otherwise it will never get into the deletion reason. Perhaps we should not let G5 through unless there is a valid reason to delete. This should also include the reason why article created by this banned user are problematic, eg probable hoax, likely copyvio, non-notablility, paid edit-COI etc. The current slack nominations leave it up to the deleting administrator to figure out the reason. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:52, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

G5 applies to any content created in violation of a block or ban. Period. No other explanation is needed. Just as content added can be reverted without comment simply because it is a violation of a block or ban. There neither is, nor should be any distinction between content added to a pre-existing page and content added by creating a new page. G5 is how Wikipedia enforces the normal administration of blocks and bans when it happens to be a new page. If you want to change that all content added in violation of a block and ban can be removed for no other reason than it was added by a blocked or banned editor, then you have a much larger task than just starting a conversation on this page. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 09:30, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Regarding including the name of the banned user, yes this would be a good idea, but as above I don't think requiring it would do much good. The argument you make about logging all G5 deletions and checking them for abuse would also apply to every other kind of deletion, and we do maintain a log of all deletions. We do get through a large number of G5 deletions (several thousand in a year) and checking them all wouldn't be a great use of someone's time. I don't see how the second point has any ambiguity whatsoever - G5 applies to all pages created by banned or blocked users and any pages created by a topic banned editor within the topic they are banned from. Regarding the third point, if an editor is banned then we have taken a decision that the problems with their editing or conduct outweigh the positive value of their contributions. G5 is itself a natural extension of WP:BAN, which says that any edits by a banned editor may be removed for any reason at all. If that edit was creating a page then enforcing this policy requires that the page be deleted. Hut 8.5 09:00, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Even if the content that the banned editor created is encyclopedic sound, and if the same content would be created by another editor it wouldn't raise an eyebrow (in other words, it doesn't matter if an article is neutral, verifiable, notable, and passes all possible checks as long as the creator is banned)? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:50, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

This has been a longstanding point of discussion, and opinions are divided. I use G5 as a means to quickly delete pages that I think have to go, and if a page is created by a blocked or banned user in defiance of their block G5 provides a means to cut through the red tape that is generally required for a deletion of a page. Others use it differently. This is a somewhat perennial issue, and I don't think there is full consensus either way. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:56, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

The use of G5 is to get the message through to the blocked or banned user that they can't get away with it. This is sockpuppetry - obviously I'm not referring to topic banned users here. If a topic banned user comes up with something good, it would be best placed in user space and an RfC opened, which might lead to a revision of the topic ban. The indeffed or site banned user is unable to post without socking, and they are therefore in violation of the rules automatically. These users are largely banned or blocked because of having caused problems that outweighed any good they did (if any). When they sock, it's to carry on whatever it was they were doing. Letting them do it is invalidating the block of ban, and effectively reduces it to merely a change of account. The ones that DO create good content, and do it as socks, are likely to get away with it - because it's the posting of the same old (or similar) crap that gives away the sockmaster. Peridon (talk) 10:36, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

See, you're one of those others that use it differently. Like I said, opinions on G5 vary. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:21, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

For me, the indef block or ban is a preventive measure, and without G5 it's not preventive. I can't remember seeing a G5 tagged page that was worth saving. The rules on attribution would probably prevent a savable one being kept with the author's ID blanked. Of course, anyone wanting to save a G5 case only needs to quickly contribute more content to it, in which case the G5 fails as it is no longer one of those "which have no substantial edits by others". How many others, it doesn't say. Or even if 'other' rather than 'others' would do. Peridon (talk) 11:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you that we can use G5 to easily clean up stuff left by banned and indefinitely blocked editors without the need to discuss it any further, and dropping that possibility would remove much of the teeth of the banning policy. I find the idea of quickly editing the article and adding material to it before deleting it so that it doesn't meet the letter of the criterion anymore and you don't have to delete it bureaucratic up to the point of being silly. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:02, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I quite agree - that was a rather tongue in cheek suggestion as doing it might lead to suspicions of 'helping the enemy'... Peridon (talk) 19:07, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Peridon, I've recreated at least three aviation accident articles created by socks of banned user Ryan kirkpatrick. British European Airways Flight 706 is one example. Granted, many articles Ryan's socks have created weren't worth keeping. I wholeheartedly agree with WP:DENY but not all articles that meet G5 criteria are worthless....William 15:25, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

If this is too far indented, it's because I can't count the dots in this damned typeface. Recreation of a subject without reusing their material is fine. I don't know what the position would be if someone (who obviously isn't a sock...) reposted the same material under their name. Peridon (talk) 19:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

It would come under this policy section. Basically it is permitted, but the reposting editor takes full responsibility for the content, and for that reason alone it might be a bad idea. I admit I copied and pasted the colons. Hut 8.5 17:51, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Re: "just banned" is the equivalent of "being topic banned from the entire encyclopedia." The same goes for most blocks, albeit for a defined period of time. Sockpuppeting editors are only considered "banned or blocked" for G5 purposes as long as all known accounts are blocked (typically 1 account is blocked for a period of time and the rest are indefinitely blocked). Editors whose accounts are blocked for reasons like inappropriate usernames or which were blocked due to a password being compromised may have those accounts blocked indefinitely but they are allowed to create new accounts and write new articles even while the block is in place without violating G5. Likewise, such editors may turn a redirect into a full-fledged article as an IP-editor without violating G5. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:30, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

• Starting with the last question posed above, yes, we should keep this criterion. I agree with the sentiment that content should be judged on it's own merits in every single case except socks of banned or blocked users. Being soft on them will encourage them to continue socking. If the quality of their contribs was such that it excused any other behavior they wouldn't be banned in the first place. The other points I do not see as big enough issues to bother with new rules. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
• Despite the constant backlogs and overflow of many projects, I think that content that only qualifies for deletion under CSD:G5 should be sent to the appropriate project for review, revision, and restoration. I don't think that it should be outright deleted. Technical 13 (talk) 17:56, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I take the view that we should continue to enforce G5 without modification, so long as the article has been created by a blocked editor or by a proven sock of a blocked editor and where no meaningful contributions have been made by another veditor. Otherwise there is no value at all to blocking sockmasters.--Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 15:15, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Curious to get input on two levels on a proposal: (1) whether it's desirable, and (2) whether it's possible. Background Whenever I see a userspace page that's tagged with ((db-u1)), I'll check the page history to ensure that it was tagged by the creator, because it could potentially be a method of sneaky vandalism: if admins deleted u1 pages blindly, a vandal could go around and tag lots of people's userspace pages without their permission. I know that we have the "last edited by..." bit, but even then I always check, in the unlikely event that it's tagged by someone else and the creator didn't remove it, e.g. for fear of getting a ((uw-speedy1)).

Proposal What if we added a warning to the ((db-u1)) template, with the following features? (1) It's hidden by default but appears automatically. Somehow ((db-c1)) is set up to display a warning of "this category does not appear to be empty" when it's on a non-empty category; I'd like to see the same done here. (2) The warning appears whenever ((db-u1)) is placed on a page that has been edited by someone other that the creator, OR when it's placed on a page that's been edited by more than one person. This to be done rigourously, since adding conditions and caveats might complicate things greatly; if I use my alternate account to tag a page in my userspace, the warning comes up. (3) The warning says something like "This page has had at least one edit from another user at some point in its history. Check the page history before deleting".

Note that I'm not proposing two conditions for its appearance in (2); I'm suggesting one or the other, not knowing which would work better. Most db-u1 taggings by other editors are legitimate, whether because they're done by alternate accounts or because they're done in response to a request made somewhere else, e.g. you MFD a page and the creator says "delete it, I haven't needed it in years", so you go to the page and mark it for db-u1. That's why I'm proposing the text that I did, and one reason I'm asking that we not make exceptions for alternate accounts: the warning's only meant as a reminder and as a way of saving time on single-user-edited pages by helping me to avoid checking the history. Nyttend (talk) 02:12, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I've set up ((db-u1/sandbox)) to display a warning when the last editor isn't the user whose userspace the page is on. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:53, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know about lua coding, but there is no way to search history using classic template coding beyond the last to edit, which Jackmcbarn has sandboxed. No harm in the improvement, but at some point we just need to count on admins to not blindly push the delete button, and check to make sure the tagging is valid. I did encounter a case of and admin doing just that, but its been awhile. Monty₈₄₅ 03:25, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I thought U1 applied no matter how many editors. I've got a couple of rescued things in my user space - they were edited before I moved them in. A lot of people have edited my user page (some for good, some for evil) - if I decide to go Trappist, can I not request a U1 on it? What I check the history for is to see who nominated it. If it's an IP or another name, I always decline and message the 'owner' of the space. If it's the 'owner', I'll delete even if they didn't create it. Talk pages are different, of course. If it's got anyone else on it, then no - unless it's spam, attack or copyvio. But that wouldn't be tagged U1 usually.. Peridon (talk) 10:19, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• I like the concept, but ick... I don't like the current sandbox delivery. I actually did something similar with ((Db-g13)) that you are welcome to check out (you'll have to view source to see it unless you have the "only shown to admins css" activated. There is also a ticket in on Bugzilla which should "just about" to be pushed to Wikipedia that will allow users to specify a page (or possibly a revision) to test with using REVISIONfoo magic words. (you can find a link to the tick on my on-wiki bug tracking page). Technical 13 (talk) 10:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
• This sounds like it should be applying to db-G7 which does not have to be in userspace, but has to be only contributed by the nominator. The test on U1 should just test if nominating user is the owner of the userspace. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:03, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Good point - but even in G7, it doesn't have to be the sole editor's work. Adding apostrophes, cats and tags, or correcting typos, don't count at G7, so far as I am aware. It's content that counts there. I'm not sure a bot could decide that. They can be clever little beggars, though. Sometimes... Peridon (talk) 12:28, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Response to your previous comment: the thing with "no other editors" is that an admin can blindly delete User:Peridon/ugorgubrougbrdourgbdouugbdr if you're the only one who's edited it, since there's no way that someone could have mistagged it. If twenty people edit that page, and then you come around and tag it for U1, the page still qualifies just as much, but the history needs to be checked, because it would have been possible for someone else to tag it. Nyttend (talk) 12:41, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Actually, even with my warning, the admin still needs to check the page history, to make sure the page wasn't moved from somewhere else. I'm not sure if this is worth doing this at all if that can't be addressed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 12:44, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

• Okay, so I've made a little script to help us (Non-administrator) template coders that may be of interest to you Jack. If you add:

importScript( 'User:Technical 13/Scripts/admin eye.js' );//[[User:Technical 13/Scripts/admin eye.js]] See hidden elements intended for admins!

to your common.js (be sure to WP:BYPASS after), you will have a new item in your action bar up top (the dropdown with "Move" in it) that looks like "O.o". Clicking on that link will toggle the css that show's admins the hidden stuff intended only for them (I'm working on adding some code that will change the default Wikipedia logo in the top left corner to the same image with a mop if there is hidden stuff on the page).

Now, back on task of this discussion... All of the functions and such could be added to the admin CSD userscript (or to Twinkle for that purpose depending on what the admins want). In order to do this, I need to know what different admins are using as a script to assist them with CSD stuffs. Technical 13 (talk) 13:30, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally I do a raw edit, or just a .js I found a while ago (User:King of Hearts/closexfd.js). Vegaswikian (talk) 17:06, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Jack, I don't understand your objection of 12:44. If the page has been moved from somewhere else, either it will have been edited by someone else (thus triggering the warning), or it won't have been edited by someone else, in which case it's a G7 candidate as well as a U1 candidate. I don't understand why this is something that needs to be addressed. Nyttend (talk) 04:11, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

The issue is that if the page is moved in from somewhere else, the deleting admin needs to be careful that the page wasn't moved into userspace for the purpose of deleting it U1 (bad faith tagging), or moved or not, that it doesn't have contributions from another editor that are worth saving someplace outside of userspace (good faith tagging). If there is an article that would pass all relevant guidelines, and has multiple substantial contributors, the proper thing to do would be to move it to article space rather then deleting as requested. Monty₈₄₅ 04:38, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I know that, but why is that an issue that we'd have to resolve? The whole point of asking for this feature was to warn admins that they have to be careful; I wasn't envisioning this situation, but it's another example of why it would help for the template to say "This wasn't just edited by the editor who tagged it". Nyttend (talk) 04:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

@Nyttend: The template can only see the most recent editor. It can't see every editor the page has ever had (and neither can lua), so the page could have been edited by someone else at some point (such as if it were moved into userspace) and the warning wouldn't show. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:31, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• You're right Jack, currently there is no way (short of JavaScript) to know how many editors have worked on a page. Hopefully, T56610 will be implemented quickly and this will be possible in the future. Technical 13 (talk) 18:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• Hm, okay, thank you — I missed the fact that my original proposal wasn't possible. Now I understand why this is an issue. Thanks for the work! Nyttend (talk) 01:02, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I've recently tagged G13 on a couple of AfC things, and I've only just noticed something on the template. On the yellow box bit, it says who I am. OK. But underneath it says "I am unable to determine if it qualifies to be deleted per WP:CSD#G13; please check the page history.". That's simply not true. I know damn fine it's in AfC, and it's not been touched since 30 December 2011. That's why I tagged it. Check the history, yes a good idea. But I HAVE determined that it fits. This is using Twinkle, BTW, but that shouldn't make a difference. There's no way of changing the wording (like you can do with blocking notices) as in the edit window there's only the db-afc. Peridon (talk) 19:29, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

• Hello Peridon! I'll help you out here as I'm the one that added that (and have modified it many times at the request of CSD:G13 deleting administrators such as Sphilbrick. A few weeks (month) ago, I decided it would be great if the ((Db-g13)) template could be more useful to administrators in reviewing if drafts did indeed hit the six month mark qualifying them for G13. So, I added an "admin-only" section to the template that requires a new parameter to be passed to the template upon tagging. I know that HasteurBot and the Articles for creation helper script add this parameter when used, and I requested that the parameter be added to Twinkle as well.

From ((Db-g13)): "Place ((Db-g13|ts= timestamp)) at the top of the draft, where the timestamp is the ISO 8601 formatted date and time, equivalent to Y-m-dTH:i:sZ (YYYY-mm-ddTHH:ii:ssZ) or the magic word version of a timestamp which resembles YYYYMMDDHHmmss (YmdHis)"

There is another update coming to that template to add some handy buttons right in that "admin only" section to speed up processing as well. Happy editing! Technical 13 (talk) 19:40, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

(Ignore this if it isn't helpful, I'm preparing for a meeting, but glanced at this and wanted to share a thought.) If I understood Peridon correctly, there concenr is the use of the word "I" which leaves the impression that the tagger, i.e. Peridon couldn't figure it out. Isn't it the case that Peridon could, but the bot could not? Would it be as simple as modifying the wording to say that the bot was unable to parse the dates, or something along that line?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

• Ahh... If that is in fact the case, the rewording to "Missing parameter - Unable to calculate qualification to be deleted per..." should resolve the issue. Also of note, Twinkle has been updated to add the parameter as well (you should see it whenever the next update is made to Wikipedia from GitHub I would expect). Technical 13 (talk) 12:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I might be being a bit stupid here (having had a very long day...), but I'm even more confused than I was. What is the point of having a bot saying it can't read the last date of edit, when it's a human applied tag? If SomeonesBot can't read it, OK. Say so. If I'm telling Twinkle to tag it, there's no need for a bot to be reading it. Peridon (talk) 17:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Peridon The idea is to make the gathering of information as easy as possible for the Admin who has wandered in from the tracking categories. Hasteur (talk) 17:26, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Peridon Look at Template:Db-g13/testcases (especially if you have the "Admin eye" turned on so you can see what an admin would see in the extra box and how it will be useful to admins. Hasteur (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll look again - probably tomorrow. Heading for food, bath and bed... Peridon (talk) 18:17, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

HasteurBot is using "It MAY qualify to be deleted per WP:CSD#G13 as the edit before that occurred on December 29, 2011 (1.75 years ago).". That's OK by me. It calculates the last relevant edit date and time ago, and doesn't flatly say 'this is crap - bin it'. I can't see the point of postpone and delete buttons. Postpone is rare (and I would suggest userfying if anyone finds something worth saving as there's more chance of saving it that way), and delete already is there as a button for admins. I've put one article into my userspace so far - I've contacted the author and work is starting on it. With IP ones, REFUND is always possible if the author does reappear, which I consider unlikely. Peridon (talk) 08:27, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Those buttons are per the discussion at User talk:Sphilbrick#Postponing G13 nominations. FWIW, this is not HasteurBot that is creating these messages, it is the template itself on wiki as modified by me. HasteurBot just adds the parameter to the template (as does AFCH and Twinkle (as soon as it is sync on wiki)). :D Technical 13 (talk) 13:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I suppose building the bot's date checker into the template is out of the question. So can we have that ridiculous statement removed from the human use template? A human tagger IS able to check the date so it is incorrect in every case for humans. There's only a small number of taggers covering that area - I only tagged these because I was checking someone's contribs, but I did tag before the bot started shovelling them out, and I reckon SuperMarioMan is very unlikely to not have the date checked. Peridon (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

It says that F7 may be used in some cases where clearly incorrect information has been given:

A user has been using this to tag files which have the wrong fair use copyright tag but which obviously would satisfy WP:NFCC if the copyright tag were corrected. See these discussions:

• File talk:Card hunter logo.png#Contested deletion
• Special:PermanentLink/575809398#Misapplication of CSD
• Special:PermanentLink/575809398#Image tagging

Although a strict reading of the policy suggests that such tagging may be correct, I find it more disruptive than helpful, and instant speedy deletion isn't meant to apply for minor typos. Should we adjust the requirements for F7 to address this? I think that a better solution is to fix it or take the matter to FFD or use a slower tag such as ((subst:dfu)) with a clear explanation. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:45, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

In general, if fixing a problem correctly takes less than 1-2 minutes more than "fixing" it expeditiously, it should be fixed correctly. This means that if a speedy-deletion can be avoided by fixing a clearly-bad, clearly-fixable file-permissions template, the fix should be done and the speedy template removed. It doesn't take an admin to do this, but unless they are in a huge hurry (trying to clear a backlog on a tight timeline, for example) or they have some other reason (such as making a WP:POINT to educate an editor who, after many warnings, continues to use incorrect templates, rather than blocking that editor outright), admins should not be deleting such files. This doesn't need to be spelled out in the CSD page, it should be part of admin training. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:02, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• The issue's not the admins, the issue is the tagger. The current wording leaves the criteria open to abuse such as this. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:04, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Exactly. The uploaders are confused and stressed even if the admin decides to decline the deletion nomination. Deletion under the quoted provision is useful if it is obvious that the file can't be fixed, but should be avoided if there is just a minor typo. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:15, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This has come up before. Given that the guidelines already clearly say:

An article written in a foreign language or script. An article should not be speedily deleted just because it is not written in English. Instead it should be tagged with { {Not English} } and listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. It may be reconsidered after translation whether the article merits deletion, retention or improvement by means of a suitable tag.

Should there not be a mention to deleting editors to first click the wikidata interlinks to see whether more sources are there in the relevant local wp. I keep on seeing WP:A7 and other templates being misused by a significant number of deleting editors who have evidently failed to make this basic check. Given that Google translate makes most major wikidata links accessible editors can easily check whether the corresponding Ukrainian/Arabic/whatever article has sufficient sources and notability. Where currently is the advice to use wikidata on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion? I cannot see "Wikidata" "interwiki" "language" even mentioned? (Please ping me in html here if answering) In ictu oculi (talk) 03:49, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Note that this section was opened because I requested WP:A7 on an article, Như Quỳnh (actress), that a) was not written in Vietnamese nor copied from vi.wikipedia (this is what the guide says), and b) the article only presented the following text "Như Quỳnh (1954) is a Vietnamese actress.[1]" I'm not sure about her birth date, maybe it was 1950, but the then-content never explained why she is a notable person. Also, this may apply to Black Bob (horse), where someone can explain why the removal of CSD from pages you created is incorrect? Tbhotch.^™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 04:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I didn't name the example of Tbhotch's WP:A7 on Như Quỳnh (actress), CAVEAT: as a non admin I cannot see the history of what was deleted, nor the footnote reference which was in the article as deleted, but the wikidata link was there but it is a good illustration of why editors should not place a WP:A7 on a stub with a plainly visible wikidata link and copious footnotes in the original language.

Anway,

Back to the issue: The question is does Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion give or not give instruction to editors to take note of a wikidata link when one is there. As it stands the lack of mention of non-English sources and non-English wikipedia parallel articles is not promoting reference to non-English sources and non-English wikipedia parallel articles. And yet competent editors are expected to make such reference. So why aren't we advising it? In ictu oculi (talk) 07:15, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Given that we don't require editors adding A7 tags to look for additional sources on Google, or anywhere other than the article and talk page for that matter, it seems unreasonable to expect them to look for sources or assertions of significance in foreign language articles. The text quoted above has nothing whatsoever to do with this situation, and even if we did want to require that people doing speedy deletions look at foreign language articles the addition would not go into that paragraph. Hut 8.5 09:39, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Hut 8.5, since this affects very broadly Wikipedia's article stock, I should say that I am hoping to get 4 or 5 responses here. Although such a fundamental behaviour (clicking or not clicking the native article link before speedy deleting a stub) should really be something that has regular non-deletion active editors input every few years. I'd be interested to know if there has ever been a RfC to have wider input as to whether Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion should include advice to click/ignore the interwiki part of the article. Particulary since the wikidata link itself is itself part of the article creation being speedy deleted - it does not get there by magic, it is part of the article creator's creation, indicating and linking further content/sources, it takes approx 2-3 minutes to locate and add such links, it only takes 1 minute for a deleter to click it. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:49, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

The real question, In ictu oculi, is why you created such a thing in the first place. You knew it was completely unsuitable for English Wikipedia in that form. What was your intent?—Kww(talk) 15:09, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think I see the need to answer a question phrased like that. WP:AGF. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:19, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why you would avoid it, In ictu oculi. You understand Wikipedia contents and guidelines, and know what constitutes a valid stub. You are quite capable of creating valid articles in English. I have to assume that you can read and write Vietnamese, and a trivial stub of that size shouldn't have created any substantial translation issue. Why did you create a Vietnamese stub and then come here to complain when it was deleted?—Kww(talk) 15:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:07, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Could it possibly have been to make a point, In ictu oculi? Your non-responsiveness certainly makes me inclined to believe that you were being intentionally disruptive.—Kww(talk) 16:24, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I have nothing to say to you. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thus demonstrating your motivation. Don't repeat this.—Kww(talk) 17:16, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Unbelievable.... No, not demonstrating my motivation. Demonstrating my unwillingness to respond to a series of 4 posts bordering on personal attacks and showing an appalling lack of good faith. If instead of attacking you had asked civily for my opinion I would have given it. Since

I have observed several times that the guidance pages for deletions at all levels show a lack of WP:WORLDVIEW, a lack of willingness to consider non-English sources, lack of onus to follow actual notability criteria, and a lack of experience in deleting editors in actually contributing by creating articles. This is only opinion but is my opinion as a fellow editor and contributor whether you respect it or not. I am allowed to suggest that there should be a mention to deleting editors to first click the wikidata interlinks to see whether more sources are there in the relevant local wp. I meant what I said that keep on seeing WP:A7 and other templates being misused by a significant number of deleting editors who have evidently failed to make this basic check. And I believe they should make this basic check.

You disagree. Fine. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:27, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

No, not "fine". You intentionally created a Vietnamese language stub in order that you could later complain about its deletion. Not only a Vietnamese language stub, but a Vietnamese language stub with no online references, using only an incomplete reference to a Vietnamese language hard-copy source. All technically permissible, but intended to provoke a negative reaction. That's a quintessential WP:POINT violation. Repeat it, and you will be blocked until you agree not to do it again. You have a right to your opinion, but that doesn't extend to knowingly and intentionally creating articles that will be a burden on other editors, In ictu oculi.—Kww(talk) 17:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Kww

[Your bluelink timestamp=20130929024638 is not visible to non-admins]

I would have to say I am speechless. Can I ask where you got such an idea? Tbhotch never said this.

Firstly I never mentioned that stub

Secondly it is a stub I had completely forgotten about, I only created the stub in passing 10 days ago when disambiguating Như Quỳnh (singer), given that both Như Quỳnh have vi.wp articles and the actress is probably the more notable.

Thirdly, what sort of human being creates an article "intentionally" (your words) to attract deletion (how exactly does someone do that) then opens an old-subject thread on [Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion], so that he "could later complain about its deletion" but fails to mention the article that he intentionally created to get someone to A7 in order to start a thread which didn't mention it.

What you have said above is not logical.

And I would like to close this conversation here. In ictu oculi (talk) 18:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hut 8.5, while it is true that it is not expected of nominators, nominating and deleting are two different things. I think we need to explicitly state that deleters MUST check the other-language articles before deleting. It doesn't take that long to see that there's sources, so it's not like this would leave copyvios sitting around or anything. Ego White Tray (talk) 14:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't see why the deleting admin should be required to carry out such a check either. The speedy deletion process is not for hunting for sources on a topic, or deciding whether an encyclopedic article could potentially be written on a topic. That's what PROD and AFD are for. Speedy deletion is supposed to be a simple, clear check: does the article (and its previous versions) meet the criterion? As far as A7 goes, there is no requirement on nominators or deleting admins to take even the most basic steps to decide whether there are sources out there, such as typing the subject's name into Google. (Indeed if you feel the need to carry out such a check, the article probably isn't a good A7 candidate.) Hut 8.5 15:41, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Hut 8.5, CSD is for articles that are in such a terrible state that we loose essentially nothing by deleting them. If your stub cannot even pass A7, which is an incredibly low bar, you shouldn't have created it in the first place. Don't expect the reviewing admin to fix your article if you didn't even bother to say why the subject is important. Monty₈₄₅ 15:49, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

User:Monty845, not sure I understand what you are saying here: (a) It's the A7 poster's job to click the native article link, (b) it's the deleting admin's job, or (c) it is noone's job, the A7 poster shouldn't look and the A7 implementing admin shouldn't look. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:07, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm saying that any biographical article should, at the time of creation, contain enough information, on its face, to avoid being deleted A7. In my opinion, it is the article creator's job to click the link, and add enough information to satisfy A7, no one else should be expected to do so before it is deleted. You can easily do that in a one sentence stub, failing to do so leaves an article that just isn't helpful to readers. Monty₈₄₅ 16:22, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Then (c), thanks for the clear response. It will be interesting to see what range there is of responses among those who watch this page. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:00, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Hut 8.5 and Monty: the onus is on the article author to give a credible indication of why his subject is significant. The tagger and the reviewing admin may make further checks if something suggests possibilities, but are not required to do further research. Existence of IW links is a useful clue, though, and I have added a note to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Article namespace checklist. JohnCD (talk) 21:49, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Simplest answer: our inclusion criteria on the English project are much more strict than others. Therefore, to say it exists in some form on another language is not sufficient for inclusion on this one ES&L 11:11, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. Trying to blame the person who notices that you didn't bother to put in the effort to create a proper article is not how this works. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:46, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, in view of the personal attacks here and the intoduction of what appears to me a red herring, it's probably worth pointing out that normal New Page Patrol presumably already passed this so horrific and damaging Vietnamese People's Artist stub 5 days earlier when it was created, and that it was 5 days later when the editor who has followed me here expressed a sudden interest in placing Speedys and AFDs (... all of which are surviving let it be noted). At least another editor has checked his edit history and informs me that is not an experienced editor in this area, I take that to be the case. Any drama above is out of normal Page Patrol activity and irrelevant to this page per This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Criteria for speedy deletion page. (which is why I didn't raise it here).

Back to the topic, the purpose of coming here to suggest that WP:CSD, perhaps item 16, be expanded to mention the existence of the articles created with interlinks. User:JohnCD's addition to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Article namespace checklist is indeed helpful, and in effect closes the topic and fills the suggestion. However it might be worth considering whether something like the following A. is worthwhile:

16. An article written in a foreign language or script. An article should not be speedily deleted just because it is not written in English. Instead it should be tagged with { {Not English} } and listed at Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English. It may be reconsidered after translation whether the article merits deletion, retention or improvement by means of a suitable tag. Additionally, a an English language stub sourced with a foreign language reference, and/or a borderline English stub where the creator has provided a link to the native language article should not be ignored when nominating or implementing speedy deletion, it may be that, even without translation, the existence of a fuller version with references in another language suggests that, rather than tag an unpromising stub for deletion, it could be tagged with an "Expand" template such as { {Expand Spanish} }..

Alternatively, B. if there is consensus that a foreign source and link provided to the native language should be ignored, but it might seems inconsistent with attitude in 16 to some users. In which case some explanation may be helpful to Users to understand why a pasted article 100% in Arabic cannot be speedy deleted, but an English stub, with an Arabic source and link to the same 100% Arabic article on ar.wp can be deleted.

Option C. leave the existance or otherwise of article creations linked by creator to native language articles unmentioned either way, as at present. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:40, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The discussion of foreign-language sources is irrelevant. Foreign language sources are treated in exactly the same way as English-language sources. A link to a foreign-language version of Wikipedia is not going to prevent speedy deletion on the grounds that it's a source, because Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source for articles here. The fact that an article is written in a foreign language is in fact a reason to delete it, just not a reason to speedily delete it. If you were to create, say, an Arabic language article, it would be listed at WP:PNT, but if an Arabic speaker didn't translate it within about two weeks it would be nominated for deletion through PROD or AFD. Foreign-language articles are completely useless to most of our readers and are only permitted to remain here on the condition that they be quickly translated. If the content is available on another language Wikipedia then deleting the content here isn't going to impede the translation effort, which is why we have A2.

If an article doesn't meet our minimum standards for inclusion, including passing A7, then the fact that an acceptable article exists in a foreign language somewhere else is not going to prevent the page from being deleted. If you want a foreign language article to be translated and added here, then the proper thing to do is to request that the page be translated, not create a stub article not meeting our minimum requirements and hope that someone might bring it up to acceptable standards at some point in the future. Hut 8.5 09:51, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Hut8.5 - it is not irrelevant for me as an editor who fixes stubs. For your information I did a considerable amount of work Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left (we're talking anything up to 100 BLPs I would estimate) over several months earlier this year, and a regular factor was using the interwikis to do exactly that, translating, sourcing information and, copying across what usable sources there were. The point of my suggestion here is that the BLP queue at least gives 7 days to salvage the notable (which is only 10% but whatever) and my concern is that if there are any other editors like myself who fix source and expand stubs then placing A7s on stubs with evident notability only a click away with the wikipedia body does not help preserve that 10%. All a speedy on a notable subject with significant wikipedia work already done achieves is preventing editors like myself who can make use of the interwiki material from finding and improving notable articles. What is the rush? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

That's explicitly not what speedy deletion is for. Processes such as PROD and AFD have time delays to allow interested editors time to review the nomination, improve the article and contest the nomination if necessary. Speedy deletion is supposed to be used on articles which aren't good enough to bother with this. If you're suggesting getting rid of the main speedy deletion criteria and replacing them with PRODs then it isn't practical on logistical grounds alone - the number of PRODs would rocket. Hut 8.5 16:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Any idea what percentage of Speedy A7s have substantial foreign language interwiki articles? I wouldn't imagine it's more than 2 or 3% is it? Even in the BLP PROD queue such articles are 10% or less - I just salvaged a Colombian documentary maker from the BLP PROD queue and he was about the only one in 6th day of the queue with a foreign language interwiki. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:50, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

That a subject is sufficiently notable to merit an "acceptable" foreign language Wikipedia article, suggests that the subject is notable or important. I agree with User:In ictu oculi.--Toddy1 (talk) 07:54, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Foreign language Wikipedias may have wildly differing standards of notability from ours (or no standards at all). Even if they do have similar standards it doesn't mean those standards are consistently enforced. Articles on non-notable subjects here aren't guaranteed to be deleted quickly. The problem here is the principle that nominators or deleting admins for A7 shouldn't have to go hunting around elsewhere for evidence that the subject is important, significant or notable. Hut 8.5 09:15, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Hut 8.5 the interwiki is part of the article creation the A7 placer is supposed to be reviewing, it is part of the created article, added by the creator - it isn't "hunting around elsewhere" it is there, it just needs the A7-placer or A7-implement to move the cursor over it and click. If someone isn't able to do this should they be placing or implementing A7s in the first place? In ictu oculi (talk) 02:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Of course you are asking people to look elsewhere, you are asking them to look at one or more pages on another language Wikipedia, which is definitely not part of the article creation. The ease of clicking on a link has nothing to do with it. Typing the subject's name into Google is very little effort, but we don't ask people reviewing A7 nominations to do that. Furthermore, unless you're lucky enough to get a tagger/admin who understands the language of the interwiki link, you are also asking them to try to figure out what a page written in a foreign language says, along with (possibly) other pages that it links to. This is far from trivial. Hut 8.5 06:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I've always had the impression that the existence of an article on another Wikipedia didn't justify one here. Sort of on the principle of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but not the letter of it. Standards for notability are widely different, and things do escape the net. I sometimes feel that not all the Wikipedias are patrolled as tightly as this - and things can sometimes escape here too. Looking at another Wikipedia's article can be useful, on the other hand, even if you can't understand the language. If it's an near exact match in format and size, then it's the same thing and you can judge on the English version. If it's much longer with interesting pics and a long ref list (that isn't all their own site and YouTube...), then there's a possibility for improvement here and stubbing may well be the right course. I've tried to get refs for things from foreign articles quite often, and usually failed (and ended up adding them over there, even...). Our referencing policy is much stricter than most I've seen. Peridon (talk) 10:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Thankyou Peridon

Hut 8.5 I think this goes back to my question - Any idea what percentage of Speedy A7s have substantial foreign language interwiki articles? I wouldn't imagine it's more than 2 or 3% is it? What is the urgency about those 2 or 3% that A7 adders have to add the A7 without simply clicking to see if there's a substantial article with footnotes. As I said before it takes 2-3 minutes for an article creator to add a wikidata link, it takes 1 minute to click it. Why is it so important that A7 placers and implementers not look at the original article in the tiny number that have it? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

You don't seem to recognise that what you're asking for is fundamentally different from normal practice here. Speedy deletion is supposed to be a simple, quick check to see if an article complies with some minimal standards. The clue is in the name. The fact that an article complying with those minimum standards could potentially be written doesn't necessarily mean the article should not be deleted. If you are creating an article then you should make sure it meets those minimum standards, especially if you are aware of the fact we have them. Editors reviewing speedy deletion nominations are only asked to look at the contents of the article and (if applicable) contesting comments posted by the creator on the talk page. We don't expect them to go looking for potential sources for the article elsewhere. We don't expect them to spend time deciphering material in foreign languages. (It is perfectly possible for something to meet A7 while being "a substantial article with footnotes". It depends on what the article says and what the footnotes are.) We don't take time spend on something into consideration when deciding on whether to delete it anywhere else, and I don't see why we should do so here. Hut 8.5 07:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

In ictu oculi, what you don't seem to be understanding is that it is your job to do it right. You're an experienced enough editor to know what the expectations are. It is the job of the editor adding material to ensure it is referenced in the article, not with a vague handwave to references that might exist elsewhere. We cut some slack to new editors on that, but you're not a new editor. Next time, if you add an article, ensure that you are editing from reliable sources, and then cite them. If you do that, your articles are very unlikely to be nominated for speedy deletion, let alone be in fact deleted. If you can't do that, please don't come here to complain that someone didn't do it for you. Speedy deletion is for articles that are unsalvageable, and A7 is an awfully low bar to pass. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 07:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Consensus seems pretty clearly in favor of the addition of this criterion. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I know this has been pitched several times in the past, but maybe we can discuss again the idea of having a CSD criterion for stuff that's obviously made up (WP:MADEUP). ONE NIL/1 Nil is the one I found most recently, but if you watch the new pages feed you'll come across this sort of nonsense all the time - stated to be made up, or otherwise obviously made up, by the user who created the article, usually some sort of in-joke between middle school friends, etc. It's clearly never going to belong in an encyclopedia, so having to wait a week for a PROD while this gag page sticks around is frustrating. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:58, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

We already have G3. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:01, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

G3 wouldn't apply to those, they don't make any false claims, so its not a HOAX, and there is no indication it is bad faith vandalism. Monty₈₄₅ 21:05, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Some of the previous discussions seemed to suggest that it wouldn't count as a "hoax" because it "exists" even if it's a game made up by two bored kids that they decided to put on Wikipedia. Do you think G3 for this sort of thing is okay? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:06, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I was just going to say that. Hoaxes never were. These are something that, literally, someone made up one day - and it happened. And no-one else in the world gives a s***. No-one is going to record it in an RS. The perpetrators are going to grow up (well, not all of us do...) and try to forget it. These are very obvious to spot, and seem almost to follow a formula. I've deleted ONE NIL as an author request, but the other one is up (or was when I typed), and prod declined. (Speedy removed too - naughty...) Peridon (talk) 21:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should add Made-up one day to A7, that way there would either be a real claim of importance, which means no CSD, a fake claim of importance for HOAX deletion, or no claim of importance for A7 deletion... Monty₈₄₅ 21:19, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm OK with that. Look at it like this, had we been around in Victorian times, would we have wanted an article about some kid picking up the ball and running with it? Or a college coach knocking the bottom out of a peach basket and nailing it up? No. Not until the Rugby Union had been formed, and whatever they had for basketball. Any of these things that actually takes off will get an article in due time. Anuthing that has credible claims won't be deleted - but for now, we're heading for another AfD on 1 Nil that we don't really need. Peridon (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I notice this was just added to the G3 criterion. Since there doesn't seem to be consensus here for that (yet?), I've removed it for now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is a difference between a game or saying being made up, and a 'legend' being made up. The legends of the ghostly raccoon that haunts second base on any Thursday when the moon is full are hoaxes - 'made up' fairy tales (tails?). They come easily under G3. This is the probably happened, maybe three or four times, and is only known about by the four people involved (and the caretaker who had to replace the window) stuff. Blatantly obvious as any G3 hoax is - but not hoax. Peridon (talk) 22:26, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I think that should be A7 rather than G3, as someone mentioned before. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:33, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

No, I meant G3. The addition should be to A7 for things that are as blatantly made up as a G3 hoax is a load of cobblers. Peridon (talk) 09:38, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Not necessary, as HOAX and A7 together cover the bulk of such cases, assuming you treat "an actual claim of something the submitter thinks is notable but which in reality clearly is not" (e.g. Chasblaz Chazblaz is a board game Tommy and Jimmy invented on September 29, 2013.[citation provided: a mutual friend's Facebook page] Rules: ....) as an A7 violation. As for the rest, PROD usually does the trick unless the editor challenges it. Then it's off to AFD. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Except A7 doesn't apply to made-up board games (the subject isn't a real person, animal, organisation, web content or organised event), and if Tommy and Jimmy really did invent such a game it isn't a hoax, as every statement in the article is entirely accurate. In reality if you created such an article it would be speedied quickly under WP:IAR, and if sent to AfD the debate would be speedily closed very quickly. As policy is meant to reflect practice this means we ought to have a speedy deletion criterion for it. Hut 8.5 09:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

As repetedly discussed, WP:IAR is never a correct justification for speedy deletion. The substance of the request here I think could be dealt with by adding "sports" and/or "games" to the list of A7 topics. I don't know how frequently these come up, but if it is often enough that PROD/AfD can't handle it then it seems to be a good fit for that criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It's fairly frequent, including drinking games (how many times can Beer Pong be re-invented?) and 'fooled-you' games. Obviously, any credible claim to notability should preclude speedy, but anything invented by Wayne and Sharon two days previously - or even last week - has no chance of notability (except to Wayne and Sharon), and that's the sort of thing we're targeting. Utter no-hoper stuff. If something gets deleted, and shouldn't have been (like nearly happened to Bobble-head doll syndrome in a different area, of course), it can be restored upon application accompanied by RS. Peridon (talk) 11:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It is utter fiction that WP:IAR is never a correct justification for speedy deletion but I see no purpose in repeating the conversation. Anyway, I will resurrect the criterion I proposed to cover WP:NFT and neologisms which received some support in the past (though conversation thereafter fizzled):

An article which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered 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.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

That wording looks good, although I'd change "invented/coined" to "invented/coined/discovered" to cover some edge cases. As for IAR speedies, despite multiple people claiming to come up with things that should be IAR speedied I've never yet seen anything that should be speedy deleted at all costs (i.e. non-speedy deletion would be harmful) and was not already covered by an existing criterion (most commonly the examples given fall under G3). Thryduulf (talk) 13:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I've added in discovered, per your post; good addition--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC))

Looks good to me, too, with the extra word in. Is this going to be A4, A6 or A8 (all currently vacant), or A11? Assuming, that is, that we don't get a flood of objections... It's a bit much to add into A7, and it has its own conditions too. Peridon (talk) 13:44, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be A11. Numbers are not reused to avoid any confusion with historical deletion logs/discussions/etc. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd previously been thinking that an addition to A7 could be good, but Fuhgettaboutit has a good point about neologisms, too. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:22, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this fails to meet criterion 3 for new CSD: "Frequent: 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. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep." VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 14:46, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Uh, are you sure? I've come across way more made-up games and neologisms than I've ever come across actual hoaxes. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:50, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I see more of these than G1 or A9 (not counting the G1s where there is coherent text and the A9s where the tagger hasn't done a quick search and found the artiste's article - both being reasons for decline). Real G1 is quite rare, and A9 is fairly uncommon - most of A9 results from a band's article being deleted rather than new pages being created and they're still not common. The criterion is quite clear, and easy to interpret. Real blatant hoaxes are not common. We're not hidebound by Criterion 3 as the cases this new proposal is designed to cover are very obvious crap which don't involve points of view any more than G3 does or A7 and G1. I would say it's "easier, simpler and fairer" to CSD this stuff legitimately, rather than using 'test page' or stretching A7 so far that it creaks. I don't - some do. I've prodded this stuff sometimes only to see another admin speedy it. No, my memory doesn't extend to diffs. I work in CSD, and can't remember everything I delete. Peridon (talk) 16:09, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I also work a lot in deletions - and also control the work of the NPPers. I rather like Fuhghettaboutit's suggested text for the criterion and if there is to be a consensus for it, count me in. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:10, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I Support the addition, either as A11 or part of A7. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:36, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I've done some analysis of deletion logs, and I don't think the frequency argument stacks up. There are 10-20 deletions a month where the deletion summary either links to WP:NFT or uses words clearly referring to it. Some of these are PRODs, some cite other speedy deletion criteria and some don't cite any policy at all (and are presumably IAR deletions). At a quick glance most of these would qualify for A11 under the proposed wording above. I don't think this speedy deletion criterion would be the least used article criterion, but it may well be the second least used (ignoring G9, which is never used at all). Of course it's possible that if the rules explicitly allowed admins to make these sorts of deletions then the number of them would increase, and it may be that admins are making more such deletions at the moment without explicitly saying so. Hut 8.5 19:10, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I would say from my own experience that 'made up' stuff happens probably more frequently than G10 or G3. I think what we are discussing here, following Fuhghettaboutit's suggested text, is a case for a completely new 'G' criterion rather than looking to including it in an existing one, especially not A7. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Do you have anything to back that up? Cause Hut actually looked at the logs, and that's a lot more WP:RS and WP:V than what you "would say from your own experience" is "probably frequent". I'm not saying that this is a bad criterion, but our usage scenario is looking pretty limited, and avoiding instruction creep is part of the responsibility of this board. So is this actually necessary to keep from clogging AfD, or is this some editors who just don't want to go through PROD or AfD? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 02:37, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I do think this situation arises often enough to justify a speedy deletion criterion. The 10-20 figure is going to be an underestimate, because some deletions of this type are recorded as standard G3 or G1 deletions without any mention of WP:NFT at all (even though those criteria do not actually apply) and because it won't count any deletions done through AfD. To be consistent anyone who doesn't think this situation justifies a speedy deletion criterion should be looking to repeal one or more of the existing criteria - certainly A5 and possibly others. Hut 8.5 09:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

The fact that "NFT" is not mentioned in the logs tells you very little about frequency. From my experience, the majority of articles this would cover are WP:IAR deleted, but in the poor manner of not saying so; people just delete under an inapplicable criterion, such as G2 and G3, even though they don't apply. My guess is: multiply your finding of 10-20 a month "where the deletion summary either links to WP:NFT or uses words clearly referring to it" by a factor of 10. And then, of course, add in all the AfDs and MfDs this would have covered.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:23, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

• @Vanisaac:. I do not have anything to back it up, that's why I clearly stated 'from my own experience'. My experience is based however on having deleted literally thousands of pages over the years, and having tagged a lot more for deletion. I never IAR with my deletions or tags, and only use an appropriate CSD criterion, and if there isn't one, well, I just have to PROD it and hope for the best - I certainly would not clog up AfD with blatantly unsuitable articles. Note that my support of this new criterion is not that I just don't want to go through PROD or AfD. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:33, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

• Shall we add to the guideline? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:25, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I'd say 'yes', but what is going to be put? It's got to be worded carefully. Peridon (talk) 20:12, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

• Support a new A11 with Fuhghettaboutit's wording plus Thryduulf's addition. I think Fuhghettaboutit is right about frequency: there are a lot of these, but they are very inconsistently dealt with at present. Because they are so obviously unsuitable that people are keen to get rid of them: I have seen G2 test page, G3 vandalism/hoax, even G1 nonsense used, none of which are appropriate when the author is genuinely trying to share something he thinks interesting. Not infrequently I have declined a speedy, explained to the tagger why it needs PROD, only to see another admin speedy it anyway. A new A11 would let us be consistent. JohnCD (talk) 20:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

(I'm half adding this post so this doesn't get archived and disappear as it has the past few times it was brought up, since we look like we're most of the way home.) Will someone take the plunge and add it? I'm obviously involved and cannot. Or should we stick an RFC on top to seek wider opinion? --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:55, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Not that it wouldn't be obvious from the archives, but I fully support this. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:14, 20 October 2013 (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.

Going forward

Roscelese implemented this change earlier today. Less than an hour later Technical 13 reverted, with the edit summary "Covered by CSD:G1, CSD:G2, and CSD:G3" and no reference to this thread. Within 2 minutes Roscelese re-reverted. The CSD page should be stable. Edit warring, never a good thing, is particularly undesirable here. Please let us come to a consensus before changing, or not changing, the page further. DES ^(talk) 19:08, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

As to the merits of Technical 13's comment, "made up" things are often factual, soemone really did make them up. Therefore they aren't hoaxes. They are normally comprehensible prose, so G1 does not apply, they aren't "nonsense" in the CSD sense. And they aren't tests either, in that the poster really does want the page posted here. However, they are generally completely non-notable, and it is very unlikely that any would survive an AfD. That makes a separate CSD for them at least possible, in my view. DES ^(talk) 19:12, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Let me give an example. I saw a page on PROD not long ago, about an email/internet game that had been invented by the employees at a particular firm, and was being played there. It involved forwarding messages with the names of other workers and some sort of joke, as I recall. While I can't confirm it, i presume that thee people really do this, so it isn't a hoax. The article was not nonsense, anyone reading it would understand what it described. It even had a source, albeit a primary source, a company web page that described the game. This isn't a hoax, nor nonsense, nor a test. What it is is non-notable and unencyclopedic. So it should have been deleted, one way or another. The only question in my view is whether such things are frequent enough and sufficiently clearly defiend for this to be a proper and useful CSD. DES ^(talk) 19:19, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I should mention that there are a few cases of "things made up one day" that became notable. The clearest case I can think of is Flexagons. Conway's Game of Life perhaps would also have qualified, before it was publicized. DES ^(talk) 19:26, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

There does seem to be consensus to change the page. That's why I changed it. Technical's argument that A11 was redundant is not new, and your (correct) explanation of why it's not redundant is also not new. Several weeks' worth of discussion has already taken place, during which a consensus has emerged that A11 is useful and not redundant. I think that at this point, users who disagree need to present arguments on the talk page and attempt to reach a new consensus. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:47, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe there is a consensus here. The arguing has stopped, which is usually a sign that some sort of decision has been reached. Do we need to get an 'official' closer? I can't. being involved. Peridon (talk) 19:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

As to the number of cases seen, I reckon enough. Most, as is pointed out above, are IAR deleted under inappropriate criteria. Hoax - they often aren't. A7 - they aren't. No context and no content, test page, nonsense - they all get used. The idea here, as is pointed out above, is to stop this misuse of CSD and to prevent an increase of obviously unsuitable stuff landing at AfD when there's more important stuff to discuss there. As is pointed out above... Peridon (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• I've gone ahead and done a formal close, once I read the whole thread consensus was pretty obvious so there should be no further reversion without a new consensus being formed. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:19, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I've created Template:db-a11. Still working on doc pages and notices. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:53, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Okay, Template:db-a11, Template:db-a11/doc, Template:Db-madeup-notice, Template:Db-madeup-notice/doc, and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as obviously made up created. WP:A11 and Template:Db-madeup created as redirects. Template:Speedy deletion templates and Template:CSD-categories updated. Twinkle notified. What else needs done? Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:18, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• This is pure WP:CREEP as made up things are clearly already covered by CSD:G1, CSD:G2, CSD:G3, and CSD:A7 or CSD:A9. There was no RfC here, just a perennial proposal and a suggestion at the end saying that it "could be" done in a new criteria, which has not been throughly discussed. I strongly oppose such a new criteria to mirror an already existing criteria. If it is something someone made up then it already fails the "No indication of importance" A7 & A9 criteria. Let's not add another criteria that is already covered, please. Technical 13 (talk) 23:11, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Only certain categories are eligible under A7, though. If someone makes up some kind of game, no other criterion covers it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:18, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Covered, playing a "game" is an "event" as an event is defined as "something that happens or is regarded as happening; an occurrence, especially one of some importance."definition #1. Technical 13 (talk) 23:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
      • I think that's really stretching "event". Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:25, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
        • A7 doesn't say "event" it says "organized event" and it is pretty clear that it is talking about conferences, meetings, concerts and the like, not about playing a game. And A game can be described without any statement of a particular occasion when it has been played, so even by that stretched meaning, such a page would not be about an "event". DES ^(talk) 23:30, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
          • You might think so, but the criterion is "A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events)", all of the things in the parenthesis suggest "things like" and are as broadly construed as the deleting admin wants to take them as. Since these are all fairly uncontroversial anyways, there is no reason to not construe them broadly, and if someone objects and wants to take it to DrV or AfD, then that is their prerogative.
          • (edit conflict) DESiegel, nope, it says "A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events)" which most certainly can be broadly construed to anything that is an "event". Technical 13 (talk) 23:34, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
            • (ec) That is merely the heading, the actual wording of the relevant part of the criterion is "An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant, with the exception of educational institutions." That is the text that achieved consensus in the past, and in any case it is in my view clear that the interpretation you are suggesting does not have consensus. I would add that you say this applies if A7 is broadly construed. But all the CSD ar to be narrowly construed. The 3rd paragraph of the page says: "Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases." DES ^(talk) 23:45, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
            • Technical, everywhere I look it says "organized events" It says it on the policy page at WP:A7, it says it on the template, ((db-a7)). GB fan 23:46, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• (ec) Technical 13, no one but you seems to be objecting to this, and all of your arguments seem to be based on its perceived redundancy, not on any plausible harm this criterion would do. If you think that the discussion above was not enough to create consensus for this (and many prior CDSs have had much larger and more formal discussions to establish consensus), then i suggest that you start an RfC to see if there is or is not consensus for this change. Or simply advertisse this discussion and see if others agree with you or not. DES ^(talk) 23:36, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Harm? WP:CREEP. There is no reason to have three different criterion that are all "No indication of importance". It's confusing to new editors and entirely unnecessary. I would further propose that A7 and A9 be merged together and simply titled "No indication of importance (Including but not limited to: individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events, musical recordings, etc)" Technical 13 (talk) 23:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
    • (after ec) The whole point of CSD in general, and of A7 in particular, is that they are narrowly limited. I would object at least as strongly to "Including but not limited to" as you do to this, and I don't think it would get consensus -- previous debates on A7 accepted some sub-criteria and rejected others. Personally i would prefer if each sub-criterion had a separate A-number here. I don't see spelling out the speciifc criteria one at a time as WP:CREEP and I do see a broad, general CSD as a dangerous invitation to "IDONTLIKEIT" deletions. I have fought those before. DES ^(talk) 23:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

(e/c) I'm trying to figure out why you think this is redundant to the criterion you cite. Let's take a concrete example: a page I actually deleted, and examine it from the perspective of those criterion you think "A11" would be redundant with. The article is Bury Jack (deletion log entry). The content was (condensed):

Bury Jack is a card game created by <name redacted> on the 8th of September 2013 while he was camping, he spent 6 hours in his caravan before emerging and testing with friends he then edited and ... changed it from it's original name "<name redacted>" and added a gambling option so that it could be played in a casino ===How to Play=== you take all the aces out of the pack and align them vertically across the table... [followed by lots more instructions]...

Could this be properly deleted under any existing criterion you cite?

• CSD:G1 (patent nonsense): Absolutely not. The page is not nonsense at all. G1 is for "incoherent text or gibberish".
• CSD:G2 (test pages): Absolutely not. There's nothing here whatsoever to indicate it is a test, nor does the content even hint it might be. G2 is for clear test editing, pages with content like ''Italic text'' ~~~~ <ref></ref> '''Bold text'''
• CSD:G3 (vandalism including hoaxes). Much more than others, absolutely not. We have a long history of failing good faith (but misguided users) by labeling their misguided edits as vandalism when there's no indication of bad faith at all. Bad faith – a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia – is the heart of vandalism. Is this a hoax? You have no indication whatever that it is.
• CSD:A7 (and A9) (No indication of importance): Absolutely not. A7 is limited to articles on real person, individual animal(s), organizations, web content and organized event. If not within that list, A7 is inapplicable. A9, of course, is only for musical recordings where the artist lacks an article.

So, how is this "clearly" duplicative?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:47, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)(edit conflict)(edit conflict) Criteria A7 is "A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events)" -- Says "events", not "organized events". Did this camping trip happen, yes, it's an event. Did this person come up with this game, yes, it's an event. Can it be played at casino's as a gambling game, yes, it's an organized event. Clearly A7. Technical 13 (talk) 23:55, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• (ec) You keep quoting the header of the criterion, rather than its body text. The header is merely a summery, the body text spells out the actual situations to which teh particular CSD applies, and as I quoted above, and as anyone can see visiting the page, this says "organized event". Your persistence in this is either disingenuious, or seriously misguided, in my view. What do yoiu think the body of the criterion is for if not to precisely defien when and how it applies? DES ^(talk) 00:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• • I don't know what to say, other than that's an awful misinterpretation of what A7 is. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:56, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• Then apparently adding this A11 criteria is adding more CREEP where there is already too much confusing the criteria. So... Let's start an actual RfC since this seems to have become circular, there is no agreement, and apparently more editors' involvement is needed. Considering my rationale and claim that multiple "No indication of importance" are confusing and unclear and it is harmful to Wikipedia seems justified based on the fact that my interpretation is "an awful misinterpretation of what A7 is" according to an administrator, I request that this criteria be left off the page until the close of such an RfC. Technical 13 (talk) 00:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• Uh, you appear to be the only one confused. So, the answer to you being confused about CSD is for you to learn about CSD, not to hold another RFC and throw this one out. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 00:14, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• I was going to post something, but edit-conflicted with all these people who have covered pretty much everything I was gonna say. So, yeah, what they said (with particular emphasis on the principle that CSDs, adn particularly A7, are not construed broadly). Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:50, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

At the risk of starting up another argument, I have to say I'm not very keen on this new criterion - twice today I've used it by mistake when it appeared in the drop-down list, and that's the reason I've come to this debate late. Frankly, I can't conceive of any circumstances in which I would use it in preference to the similar criteria that are already available. I don't mind us keeping it if people want it but could we please consider changing the wording to make it clear how it differs from other criteria? Deb (talk) 11:27, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

arbitrary break

See #Non notable things below on this page for some discussion of why A7 is limited to specific categories of items. If Technical 13's view of "event" were upheld, this limitation would be seriously subverted. DES ^(talk) 00:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Theopolisme posted the following on my request to add this to Twinkle:

I do not have enough time to weigh in at the discussion on-wiki, but, tl;dr, I think that the A11 criterion is quite creepy and should not have been added without significantly more discussion. Some famous last words:
Or should we stick an RFC on top to seek wider opinion? --Fuhghettaboutit
Yeah, when you're making a new method for pages to be deleted, that's probably a good idea.
So, whilst I do not necessarily believe it to be "harmful", I do believe it should have been better advertised and discussed by more folks that just the WP:CSD regulars.

Posted it here in the interest of full disclosure. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:56, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: Eh, "forget about it" ;) Theopolisme (talk) 02:21, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• #RfC: Does Wikipedia need three different CSD criterion for "No indication of importance" or should they all be merged into one? -- RfC created. Feel free to post notices where-ever appropriate if I miss a few places. Technical 13 (talk) 02:04, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit war continues

I see that Technical 13 has again removed A11 from the project page, and has been promptly reverted. Technical 13 thre was a discussion clsoed as a consensus to add this above, and after that I see at least 5 editors supporting it, and no one but you objecting. This is gettign into edit war territory, please don't go there. DES ^(talk) 00:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• I maintain that this new criteria is harmful to Wikipedia, and believe if needed, it warrants an invocation of WP:IAR to protect the project and revert it again. Please, don't force me into that position and let's have an RfC and properly obtain consensus that there is just reason to cause WP:CREEP and lower editor retention as a result of increased confusion revolving which of the three criterion there are for a lack of a valid claim of importance as I maintain this proposed CSD criterion will do. Technical 13 (talk) 01:03, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• If you want an RfC, start one. I have already posted on WP:VPP asking for additional eyes on this issue. IAR does not justify editing against consensus, and you are clearly editing against at least a local consensus here. IAR also does not justify edit warring or 3RR violations. I strongly urge you not to engage in either. No one else seems to take the view you do of the harm this would cause to the project. DES ^(talk) 01:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
• Don't be ridiculous, T13. Unless this change is going to result in immediate, unquestionable destruction of the wiki (it will not), IAR does not trump consensus. Your claim of IAR really just looks like that good old-fashioned WP:IDONTLIKEIT in lipstick. Give it a rest. You're more than welcome to start a new discussion, but don't mess with this until your new discussion has come to a consensus in your favor. This consensus, she is a funny thing: you don't have to agree with her, like her, or even understand her, but you do have to respect her. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Fully protected

Page fully protected for 24 hours. -- KTC (talk) 07:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm encountering more articles tagged with CSD tags less than 10 minutes after the article has been created. Often these are start-level articles (more than a stub) and yet the author(s) is still adding references and notes. The article may not be ready for prime-time but it's not nonsense, vandalism or junk.
Is there any way to give freshly written articles some breathing room? 3 hours? 24 hours? It is discouraging for new editors to have their articles (not all of which are bad) deleted within hours of posting them. What's really discouraging is I'm not seeing those Editors who are posting CSD tags notifying the authors of deleted articles that those articles can be transferred to their Sandboxes so they can continue to be improved. All new editors know is they spent time working on an article, they posted it on Wikipedia and it got erased and they have to start from scratch.
So, what I'm also recommending is that authors should not only get a tag notifying them of article deletions but also a notice telling them how they can save the article to their Sandbox.
Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Which CSD reasons are being frequently used in this way? RJFJR (talk) 16:30, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

A technical solution would be for both the New Article Wizard and, for non-existant pages, the "Edit" button to pre-load ((inuse|until calculated time of 1 hour from the time the edit is saved to finish creating a new article))[[Category:Articles with in-use tags that expire at or after hour of expiration]] and have a bot that strips these out every hour. Of course people would be free to ignore the template, but hopefully they would not.

A social solution would be to encourage New Page Patrollers to only look at pages more than one hour old. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:36, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

So your social solution is to allow attack pages and copyright violations to sit untouched long enough for search engine bots to locate and index them? --Allen3 ^talk 16:43, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

In the midst of trying to start an article, the editor may inadvertently introduce such but will remove them (they should be careful to start, but let's AGF). The time window should be based on how recent the last edit was made - if there's a blatant copyvio sitting there for, say, 15 minutes from the last edit, then yes, tag it. But if it was only added a minute ago, give the editor time to edit it away. --MASEM (t) 16:50, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Allen3: Good point. I can tolerate copyvios for an hour (image copyvios frequently stay up 1-2 days "in case someone is about to use them") but BLP violations, attack pages, etc. need to be nabbed immediately. Short of having two classes of patrolling, one that can be done at any time (BLP/attack and probably copyvio) and one that should only be done after the article is un-edited for at least, say, an hour, I don't have a solution. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:56, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Allen3: Would you feel okay with a 1-hour delay if all newly created article pages (including pages newly moved into article space) were automatically tagged as "noindex" for several hours or a day, similar to the way that WP:AFC submissions are noindexed until they leave AFC. (Yes, there is at least one non-name web-archive site that doesn't honor nonindex, but the major ones do.) davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

My primary point is that some types of inappropriate article creations have the potential to cause harm outside of Wikipedia and the longer they stay visible the greater the potential harm. Adding "noindex" to new articles, while reducing problems with search engine indexing, would not solve all potential issues. Consider the common case of bored school kiddies posting attack pages. It only takes a minute or two for a cyberbully to goad a group of friends/classmates into viewing a newly created attack page. The only means at our disposal to prevent or minimize damage in this type of case is to delete the inappropriate material as quickly as practical. --Allen3 ^talk 20:50, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

This is one of those perennial "problems" that people are always trying to "fix". Speedy deletion is speedy for a reason. A good number of articles meeting speedy criteria (spam, attack page, A7) have little hope of being corrected, since there is something that the editor can't fix (i.e. a likely COI for a spam or attack page, and a lack of notability for an A7). Others exhibit tendencies in the editor that need to be corrected at once, like copyvios and incomprehensible/test/no context articles. (If someone is of the mindset that they can write an article that nobody has any hope of knowing what it's about, does that person really have the WP:COMPETENCE to be editing in the first place?) We have a lack of admins and patrollers as it is, adding new wrenches into the system will just serve to slow the whole thing down. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 17:59, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• Tagged in 60 seconds, or deleted in 60s? Sometimes its a case of I know a hopeless article when I see one. Do we really need to wait to tag "Monty is the coolest kid in his class" for A7 deletion? Still, it would be interesting to see statistics on the average times between creation, tagging, and deletion for different CSD criteria. Monty₈₄₅

• The situation varies with the criterion. Deleting pages under A1 or A3 moments after creation would be a bad idea as these criteria only apply if there is little content in the article, but the policy already recommends that people don't do this. For pages meeting A7 it's plausible that it only meets the criterion because the creator hasn't finished, but pages on (say) non-notable school students ought to be deleted shortly after creation, so any sort of rule wouldn't work. Other content such as spam, copyright violations, attack pages and vandalism should be deleted as quickly as possible, and for housekeeping deletions a waiting period would just be a waste of time. Hut 8.5 18:29, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anything needs to change here. We already have a rule for A1 and A3, and the rest are okay to delete immediately. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:16, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

There are two quite different issues. One is tagging. Tagging may be annoying, but it would make people move their ass fingers. Other is actually deleting. I'd rather assume that our admins are reasonably competent not to delete potentially good pages. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

true, in practice speedy must rely on an admin's judgement for what is truly hopeless. But unfortunately, not all admins have consistently good judgement, and not a single one of us is free from error. Like most admins, I balance my desire to let people build articles with the realization that once something escapes initial scrutiny, it may be around for years. The only effective practical solution to admins judging wrongly is trying to teach the admins who make frequent bad decisions, and reminding those who make occasional errors. I encourage those wishing to improve speedy to become admin themselves, so they can add to the number of people checking each other. 'DGG (at NYPL)' (talk) 01:39, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• If it is a copyright violation, then it should be deleted as quickly as possible. Even if the copyright violation is removed from the article, revision deletion should be used to remove the stuff from the article. Same with G10 candidates. However, immediate nomination over notability issues (A7, A9) does not seem to be in line with WP:POINT and may scare new editors away. In those cases, it's better to wait in case more information is added soon. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• The solution is better education of the New Page Patrollers (a perennial issue). The recommendations and instructions are all there in WP:NPP and WP:Deletion. We all have a responsibility to point offending patrollers to those pages. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Let's not forget some of the template tools we have:

 • ((uw-hasty)) – for a tagger's talk page, telling them they were too hasty in tagging under A1 and A3;

 • ((Hasty)) – placed in an article that is tagged immediately after creation, where the creator may be still actively working on the content, to give a 10 minute window to see if content will be added.

 • On educating in general, we have ((Sdd)), ((Sdd2)), ((Sdd3)) and ((notg4)).

If new pages patrollers were given a message from the declining admins every time a decline occurred specifying why the tagging was declined, our taggers would be better educated and they would be better at what they do. We do rely on them to do the initial separation of wheat from chaff so that we don't spend all day declining bad taggings. On the "hasty" front, unfortunately, timing is often not considered (and I am guilty of this myself). Assessment of whether a criteria tagged under or another fits is usually task number 1; then seeing what's on the talk page and in the history that would affect a decision, then maybe timing, but that's often just not looked at though it should be for any A1s and A3s and some A7s.

I no longer remember the result of past discussion on the technical feasibility, but I reaffirm my support for some type of software lag of ten minutes for A1s, A3s and A7s to place the article in CAT:CSD or maybe even better, to have each of the db templates for those criteria contain an automatic note stating that the tag has been in place "less than X minutes since creation", which would disappear after the specified time period had elapsed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:29, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The Page Curation toolbar provides an alert: Note: This page is only 1 minute old. Consider waiting to tag it, unless the issue is serious. I'ver never noticed if it provides for a larger number of minutes. I don't think it does, but it might be an idea to extend this to 10 minutes. I'm not sure, but I believe this to be the code or at least part of it. . Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:59, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the notice you refer to is displayed for all pages less than 30 minutes old (source code). Theopolisme (talk) 05:05, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Where would one find and edit or suggest an edit to pagetriage-tag-warning-notice?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:28, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Page Curation is probably your best bet. Theopolisme (talk) 15:55, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I enlisted a template coder's help and what has been worked out thus far is a note (only placed if Twinkle is used to tag) appearing in db-A1 and db-A3 that detects time since creation and places a note if tagged in under 15 minutes, in the form: '''Warning''': This page was created less than 15 minutes ago. Consensus is that articles should not be tagged under [[WP:CSD#A1|CSD:A1]] immediately after creation as they may be works in progress. 10 minutes is suggested as a bare minimum. See User talk:Technical 13#Template help.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

• Even more rules, warnings and templates. I don't think it's a good idea at all. Articles that are wrongfully tagged can be untagged by anybody (except the original author), admins on CSD patrol can refuse to delete, and CSD taggers should be more careful and can be warned by others. I honestly don't see the need for yet more rules or templates. Yintan  21:12, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

No additional rules, no additional templates and a passive warning that imposes no burden on anyone to place that reminds people of what already has consensus but we see is constantly a problem.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:45, 28 October 2013 (UTC)