Passed proposals

G4 (reposted content)

Speedy deletion criterion G4 should be reworded to the following: "A substantially identical copy, by any title, of an article that was deleted according to the deletion policy. This does not apply to content in userspace, content that was speedily deleted, or to content undeleted according to undeletion policy."

Passed with ~85% support. Click here to view results

1 (unremarkable people)

"An article about a real person that does not assert that person's importance or significance - people such as college professors or actors may be individually important in society; people such as students and bakers are not, or at least not for the reason of being a student or baker. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to VFD instead." should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Passed with ~74% support. Click here to view results

10 (transwiki cleanup)

"Any article that has been discussed at Votes for Deletion, where the outcome was to transwiki, and where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Passed with ~84% support. Click here to view results

11 (no content beyond title)

"Extremely short articles which contain no information other than a rephrasing of the title" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Passed with ~76% support. Click here to view results

13 (attack pages)

Short articles that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject

Passed with ~85% support. Click here to view results

A8: (blatantly copyright violating material)

An article that is a blatant copyright violation and meets these parameters:

Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service).
The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits.
Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none seems likely.
The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).

Passed with ~96% support. Click here to view results

Failed proposals

Test Run

Any changes to the criteria for speedy deletion that are made as a result of this proposal are subject to a test run. One month after they are instated, a revote will be called on any of them for which three or more registered users request it.
Failed with ~61% support. Click here to view results
Considered too easily abusable, and it would double the time and effort spent on creating a policy.

A1 (deprecate)

Speedy deletion criterion A1 should be deprecated.

Failed with ~16% support. Click here to view results
Most voters like the criterion as a catch-all category for generally useless articles, and preferred it to the suggested alternatives.

A2 (foreign languages)

Speedy deletion criterion A2 should be reworded to "Any article in a foreign language that has been listed on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English for fourteen days, and has not been translated".

Failed with ~42% support. Click here to view results
Translation of a lengthy article could plausibly take longer than 14 days, and our present translation procedure isn't particularly overloaded.

A2-b (foreign languages)

Speedy deletion criterion A2 should be reworded to include Any article which is an unintellegible attempted translation from another language.

Failed with ~31% support. Click here to view results
This was considered redundant with CSD#1: patent nonsense. An article that is unsalvageably unintellegible can be deleted regardless of whether it's a translation or not.

2 (unsourced biographies)

Biographical articles that do not explicitly cite a source; and that are about persons who now are (or now would be, were they still alive) aged 25 or under, or whose age is not given and cannot be inferred from the article to be over 25 now. should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~49% support. Click here to view results
Many people objected to the age restriction, considering it arbitrary.

3 (unremarkable bands)

"An article about a musician or music group that does not explicitly state fulfillment of at least one of the criteria from WP:MUSIC, or assert facts which obviously imply fulfillment of at least one of those criteria. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to VFD instead" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

This proposal has been reworded twice, to address issues raised on the earlier wordings. The first proposal failed with ~50% support. Click here to view results. The second proposal failed with ~53% support. Click here to view results.
Failed with ~69% support. Click here to view results
Several people objected to a policy referring to a guideline for its decisions. Suggestions included moving WP:MUSIC out of the WikiProject Music and tagging it as policy, or copy/pasting its criteria into the CSD criterion. Other people suggested that WP:MUSIC requires rewording.

4 (unremarkable websites)

"An article about a website that does not assert having had an impact beyond its core group of interested people, nor having had media coverage, nor having at least 5,000 users. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to VFD instead" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~58% support. Click here to view results
While some guidelines for websites would be useful, these ones were considered too subjective. Many people objected to the line of '5000 users' as too arbitrary.

5 (unremarkable clubs)

"Any article that claims to be about any local club (but not a chapter of a larger organization) and does not assert having influence outside the local community, nor having had media coverage" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~37% support. Click here to view results
Some people found this too inclusive, others found it too exclusive. This was generally considered too vague for a speedy deletion criterion, so VFD should be used instead.

6 (fan fiction)

"Any article that states that it describes a character or story from fiction, that was never published except on the internet or in a fan magazine, nor written by a published author" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~59% support. Click here to view results
While most people agree that most fan fiction is not encyclopedic, it is not generally obvious from an article whether it's about fan fiction or real fiction.

7 (RPG characters)

"Any article that states that it describes a character (but not a race, or type of creature) from any roleplaying game (including MUDs and MMORPGs), that is not also a real or fictional person outside that roleplaying game" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~41% support. Click here to view results
On the talk page, it was suggested that instead this proposal be restricted to player characters, to prevent characters that are part of the story from being deleted.

8 (duplicates of Wiktionary)

"Any article that has no content beyond that in Wiktionary" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~41% support. Click here to view results
While most people agree that a pure dictionary definition is not a very good article, it can nevertheless form the basis for a good article, and thus should not be deleted. In some cases, replacing it with a redirect or a ((wi)) tag may be appropriate.

9 (duplicates of Wikibooks/Wikisource)

"Any article that has no content beyond that in Wikibooks or Wikisource" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~50% support. Click here to view results
Many editors believe that these (especially Wikibooks) have or could have an overlap with Wikipedia. As with Wiktionary, soft redirects could be used.

12 (one sentence or less)

"Any article that contains one sentence or less of text (not counting external links or category tags)." should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~17% support. Click here to view results
Considered too arbitrary by many, and a lengthy sentence can say a lot about its subject.

14 (copied from the web)

"Articles consisting entirely of material copied from an existing web page, if such text is an advertisement, or unverifiable." should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~26% support. Click here to view results
Often, such articles already qualify as deletable for being a copyright violation.

I1 (images on WikiCommons)

Speedy deletion criterion I1 should be reworded to "Any image that is a duplicate of another image on Wikipedia or on WikiCommons (if allowed on WikiCommons by their license), in the same file format and the same or better in image size and quality, but only if all content on the image's description page is included in the description page on WikiCommons"

This proposal was reworded once to address issues raised against it. The original proposal failed with ~34% support. Click here to view results.
Failed with ~34% support. Click here to view results
While many people agree that images need not be both on Wikipedia and WikiCommons, there are a number of legal requirements that must be checked before such an image could actually be deleted, moreso because WC license is different from WP's. Thus, such images should go on WP:IFD.

C4 (duplicate categories)

"Any newly created category that serves the same function as an existing category (after all articles from the former have been moved to the latter)" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~47% support. Click here to view results
It has proven hard to word this in a proper and non-confusing way. Also, when two categories are redundant, WP:CFD should be employed to decide which one should stay.

T1 (prose templates)

Templates that without any doubt masquerade as article content, other than list boxes or series boxes should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.

Failed with ~33% support. Click here to view results
The wording confused many people, and people suggest that in several cases templates can in fact be valid article content. Also, TFD has a far smaller load than VFD.

P1 (Expeditious deletion for articles not asserting notability)

Proposed policy: An article about a real person, band or website that does not assert importance or significance of its subject may be tagged for expeditious deletion with a template. If after forty-eight hours no such assertion is added, the article may be deleted. If a disputed or controversial assertion is added, the article should be listed on votes for deletion.

This proposal was reworded once to address issues raised against it. The original proposal failed with ~11% support. Click here to view results.
Failed with ~43% support. Click here to view results

Z: The deletion process isn't broken, no need to fix it by extending CSD

Instances of instruction creep, of which this is one, should be resisted.

Failed with ~23% support. Click here to view results

Earlier proposal

For easy reference, these are the results of the earlier CSD proposal in January 2005.

Passed

Proposal I (Amount of content I) passed with ~84% support
"Any article whose contents consist only of an external link, "See also" section, book reference, category tag, template tag, or interwiki link."
Proposal VI (Requested deletion) passed with ~88% support
"Any article which is requested for deletion by the original author, provided the author reasonably explains that it was created by mistake, and the article was edited only by its author."
Proposal X (Correspondence) passed with ~95% support
"Any article which consists only of attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title."

Failed

Proposal II (Amount of content II) failed with ~60% support
Proposal III (Vanity articles) failed with ~44% support
Proposal IV (Dicdefs) failed with ~33% support
Proposal V (Copyright violations) failed with ~37% support
Proposal VII (Article forks) failed with ~7% support
Proposal VIII (Procedure) failed with ~28% support
Proposal IX (Deprecation) failed with ~2% support
Proposal XI (Unimproved vanity articles) failed with ~58% support

Proposals never put to vote

These suggestions were proposed in the earlier discussion or on this proposal's talk page, but were never put to a vote because there was significant objection to them from the start and/or the author withdrew the suggestion.

Articles

Neologisms. This has proven hard to word correctly.
Unenhanced articles that have been directly copied from an existing web page.
Articles that promote illegal activities, or are otherwise illegal.
All ordinary elementary and secondary schools where a well-known encyclopedic event did not occur or that do not have any famous alumni or is not especially historically significant to a particular locale.
Extremely short articles that are totally redundant and trivial
Any article that is less than N characters long for a given value of N
Future events: Per WP:NOT a crystal ball, most people tend to agree that speculation on future events doesn't belong here.
any work of fiction (book, game, movie, etc) not yet published
any building not yet built (e.g. planned radio masts, stuff like that).
articles about words formed on a predictable numeric system, e.g. 5478934 (number) or Binilnilium or septenquinquagintillion.

Templates

Any newly created template that serves the same function as an existed template, but has different layout or wording.
Any template that was only used in a set and limited number of places, if it was decided it would be better to substitute it

Alternate processes

Moving off any articles of three paragraphs or less onto a stubs for deletion page, and make the VfD page an articles for deletion.
Split VfD among several pages, so that people can watch only those pages for which they consider themselves authoritative (e.g. 'fiction', 'geography', 'people').

Procedural

If an article is voted for deletion 15-0, then it can be deleted after twelve hours from the last vote if no keep votes show up.
The text and edit history of deleted articles should be available, in protected form. Was discussed before and didn't achieve support then; it rather defies the point of deleting anything.
Allow the unlinking of deletion discussions from VfD if the following criteria apply: The article is under six calendar months old; the article doesn't qualify for a speedy delete; and there have been at least two (three?) good-faith keep votes.
Protect all pages that are deleted. Someone wanting to recreate an article at a "locked" title would have to get approval from an admin
Deletion of any page should not take more than 10 times the effort it took to create that page.

Test run

New criteria stays enforced for up to a minimum time of 1 week up to a maximum time of 10 weeks dependent on the leftover popular percentage over 70%.
A revote can only be called for when the test run is complete, and the number of requests match or exceed 10% of the number of vote originally tallied.
A maximum number of 2 revotes on the inclusion of specific criteria may be held in its lifetime, after which the criteria becomes canon, and should be considered as permanent as any other criteria for speedy deletion. Proposed modifactions to current criteria for speedy deletion are excepted of course, and are encouraged after the test run has completed.

Explanation

Votes for Deletion has tripled in size in the past year, and there is no reason to suppose it will shrink back again. This is a logical result from the growth and increased popularity of Wikipedia. Because deletion of an article is a drastic measure, it is important to be able to get feedback from as many people as possible, to ensure that no article is deleted without consensus. However, the sheer size of each day's VfD page makes it impractical for people to join the debate.

There has been discussion for the past month on Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load to see if this load could be reduced. One of the suggestions was to convince people to make fewer nominations, and effort has now been made to make inexperienced users aware of alternatives such as merging and common dispute templates. However, looking at past VfD results shows that about 70% of the nominations end up deleted per consensus. It follows that most nominations are appropriate.

Further looking at recent VfD discussions, it has become apparent that certain categories of articles appear frequently on VfD, and always get unanimous or near-unanimous votes to delete. Since the consensus about these articles is obvious, it would make a significant reduction in VfD load if they could be speedily deleted. The main question is whether a definition for the category can be cleanly worded to avoid false positives. The intent of this proposal is to do just that.

Some statistics[edit]

June 1st	115 nominations	22 kept	80 deleted	13 other
June 3rd	117 nominations	24 kept	81 deleted	12 other
June 5th	105 nominations	17 kept	79 deleted	9 other

(for comparison, January 1st has 50 nominations, January 3rd has 64, and January 5th has 62).

(more statistics, at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Reducing VfD load/Analysis)

Vanity by any other name[edit]

Vanity pages are among those most frequently nominated for deletion. Each day, there are up to several dozen articles about obscure people, bands or websites appear on VfD. The vast majority of these end up deleted. However, these are precisely the kind of articles that attract sockpuppet keep votes (example). Also, the fact that a vanity page will remain on Wikipedia for at least a week, and can attract a lot of attention in the process of removing it, could well serve as an incentive for people to create more vanity pages, which is hardly beneficial.

However, the term 'vanity' is ambiguous at best, and downright controversial at worst. There is not, nor should there be, a proposal to speedily delete vanity articles. There is, however, a proposal below using a far stricter wording than that.

Abuse[edit]

An important concern would be whether these criteria would be abused. To answer that, one should look at the current speedy criteria. It happens occasionally that the Template:Delete is wrongfully applied. However, it is exceedingly rare that an admin actually deletes something inappropriately, as the deletion log indicates. We have the Votes for Undeletion process to deal with errors, and VFU gets less than one request per day, on average, and in most of those cases the deletion is deemed valid.

Presently, CSD criteria are somewhat bent by some administrators, and this bending of the rules is seldom contested. The problem with bending rules is that it blurs the border between what is and is not covered by the rules. This proposal is meant to put an end to that, by putting a strict definition to cases that are currently vague or borderline. It is drawing the line. Anything not covered by the strict definition is off limits, and any administrator crossing it should be censured.

People are expected to use common sense before deleting anything, and it is expected that editors made administrators will display more common sense than most. If an article may be speedily deleted by these or any other criteria, that does not mean that anybody must do so. If the subject is noteworthy, it can instead be tagged for improvement.

Worthy subject[edit]

An oft-asked question is, what would happen if someone created an article of which the content would fall under one of the proposed criteria for speedy deletion, but of which the subject is notable. People may be afraid that deletion will keep the subject out of Wikipedia. There are a few things to consider here...

This actually only happens very rarely; by far most people, when writing about a worthy subject, include a couple of words why the subject is worthy, even if they only write a stub
Admins are never obligated to delete an article. They may always opt to rewrite it.
By the present CSDs, such deletions already happen. If one creates an article about Julius Ceasar, with the only content being "tomatoes are delicous!!!11!!", then that could be speedily deleted as patent nonsense.
As you can see from the above example, it's no big loss - no actual information is deleted.
And of course, the article can always be recreated. There are objections to recreations of deleted content, but not to creating new content at a deleted title. One of the proposals below seeks to clarify that further.
Finally, we have a lot of recent change patrollers that can and will fix a poor article on a worthy subject. Usually, adding one sentence or reference will ensure it will not be speedily deleted.