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Speedying obvious copyvio's

Apologies if this has been brought up before (which it must have been) but;

Yesturday I noticed a user repeatedly uploading directly copyvio text (to add insult to injury they didn't even use a good source; some material was from britannica!), it was very frustrating that I couldn't just delete it, and had to tag each one properly and then list it on the copyvio page.

I can't think of any reason why I am allowed to delete articles that are nonsense or dont assert the persons notability etc. but am not allowed to delete even the most blatantly copy-and-paste can't-even-be-bothered-to-wikify copyvio material.

Surely we could say that if an article contains only copyvio material it is a speedy candidate? Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:39, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

As an example, see this which is from here. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 08:47, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Such a rule is impractical because deciding copyright violation can be tricky business that needs at least a few voices weighing in. Even something copied directly from a web page may have been done so with permission, or may have even been done by the copyright holder, which legally places it under the GFDL. Often, "obvious" copyright violations are in fact the other way around - a mirror illegally using Wikipedia content without any sign of credit. At the very least, the original author deserves a short period in which to explain themselves. That said, if a particular user repeatedly violates copyright after being warned and does not provide any reasonable justification, then action against the user is appropriate. Deco 09:33, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
  • "Obvious copyvios" should be speedily edited-and-overwritten with {{copyvio}}, and listed on WP:CP. Note that material from certain older editions of the Brittannica is public domain. Radiant_>|< 09:36, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
OK, let me deal with these points;
1)I would define obvious by the example i provided, e.g. 100% identical.
2)If done with permission it should say so, if there is any doubt then it should be dealt with in the normal way, I think we can safely assume some websites would never give us permission (e.g. Britannica)
3)Mirrors are not a problem, as a new page could not possibly be mirrored (assuming the copyvio is noticed when it is new).
4)As a very active member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles I am fully aware of what britannica stuff is public domain, 1911 stuff should and is always referenced as such.
thnaks -- Martin - The non-blue non-moose 09:57, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

If i were to make a proposal it would have these parameters;

  • Material is unquestionably copied (e.g. 100% identical).
  • Only contains copyvio material, and no material that is not copyvio.
  • No chance that we have permission.
  • Article is newer than 48 hours (to avoid mirror problem).
  • Deleter provides url of copied web page in deletion log.

Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:06, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

  • In response to your suggestion, I'd like to point out some flaws to what is otherwise a good idea - 1.if I change a few words, it will break your criterion but still be an obvious copyvio. 2.an article that says it is "used with permission" is not good enough; its original author must actually state that they release the material under the GFDL. 3.Maybe you should ask on WP:CP for their opinion; there was some earlier debate about that process being too bulky and somewhat backlogged. Radiant_>|< 10:13, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
(Sorry to reply in points, i know it seems a bit rude)
1) Obvious copyvio's that didnt meet the criterion would still go through the existing system, in the same way that lots of nearly-speedy-deletes still go through vfd, it wouldn't be 100% efficient, but it would be better. (we could also say 99% identical instead)
2)The existing system would still be still be in place and function as usual, in the same way that vfd functions along side speedy deleting articles. e.g. if claimed as "used with permission" but there is doubt, it would still go through the existing system.
3) I'll mention it on wp:cp now, thanks. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:25, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Preliminary proposal

Based on the discussion immediately above, i am considering a proposal to reduce the time and effort wasted in bureaucracy deleting copyvio material.

The proposal would be that new articles that meet the following criteria would be speedy delete candidates.

  • Only contains copyvio material, and no material that is not copyvio.
  • Material is unquestionably copied (e.g. virtually identical).
  • No chance that we have permission.
  • Article is newer than 48 hours (to avoid mirror problem).
  • Deleter provides url of copied web page in deletion log.

Please note that copyvio material that doesn't meet the criteria would just be dealt with in the usual way.

Please indicate whether you think this is a good proposal, even if you just write 'support' or 'oppose', or offer ideas on how it could be improved. Thank you!! Martin - The non-blue non-moose 20:48, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

  • I am uncomfortable with the subjectivity of the clause "No chance that we have permission." Speedy-deletes are for situations which are so clear and so non-controversial that almost any two admins can look at the same article and reach the same conclusion. How will that standard be established in a way that remains non-controversial and repeatable? Rossami (talk) 22:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Rossami, "No chance that we have permission." is not a clear enough standard. Also, IMO any such deletion ought to be delayed at least 48 hours to allow time for permission to be obtained or clarified, and that makes it not a true speedy. So as it stands, I Oppose this proposal. DES (talk) 23:13, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
    • If we do have permission, but it is not stated (which is very unlikely), then what does it matter? we can't go around assuming that we might have permission, Having copyvio stuff on here is against the law as well as being annoying remember. And in the very unlikely event what you are saying does happen, whats to stop the edittor re-uploading the content with permissions properly stated? Martin - The non-blue non-moose 06:20, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
  • If we get permission we can just copy the page from the source URL again, this seems like a good idea. Anything that reduces the WP:CP hassle is good. --fvw* 23:20, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
  • By "no chance that we have permission" do you mean that "the article doesn't state anything about us allowing to use it"? Radiant_>|< 07:09, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
    • Not necessarily, as with all admin duties, you have to use some common sense, if there is any doubt then it would just go through the present system. Often it is very obvious, I found three articles copied directly from the Encyclopedia Brittanica the other day (not public domain EB1911 btw), now I think we can be fairly sure that they didnt give us permission! If you think the wording could be impoved then that would be helpful. thanksMartin - The non-blue non-moose 07:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I strongly support this proposal. 99% of pages list on copyright problems get deleted, and even if some get speedy deleted by accident, the content already exists elsewhere on the web so it can be easily readded. One extra rule I would add is that this should only apply to unwikified text dumps. The vast majority of copyvios fall under this criteria, but having such a limit would essentially prevent mirrored articles from being deleted. Also if the creator knows enough to wikify an article it increases the chance they would know what is permissible to add to Wikipedia. - SimonP 13:58, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • I strongly oppose this proposal. It doesn't allow for discussion with new users who are actually the copyright holders, and haven't notified us of that fact. The listing on the WP:CP page allows for a cooling off period when this information can be provided and the copyvio boilerplate reverted. Zoe 21:09, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
    • I thinnk this is a valid concern, however 1) As pointed out above, the vast majority of stuff gets deleted, 2) They should have declared that they have permission, 3) It can (by definition) be re-posted very easily. 4) If there is any doubt then it would still go through the existing system. Admins are trusted with deleting other stuff, so why not this?
    • We waste a lot of energy dealing with copyvios when other material is dealt with far more harshly (e.g. biographies with notability not established). Copyvio material isn't just a waste of time, it is - I understand - illegal, and arguably wikipedias greatest problem. thanks Martin - The non-blue non-moose 21:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I oppose this proposal for the simple reason that there is no clear warning to contributors not to post copyrighted material. Nowhere in the process of getting to an edit box through normal channels, ie, by doing a title search or by clicking on a red link, is the user presented with a message stating that copyright rules apply. If people were notified that material violating copyright would be immediately deleted, perhaps we would not have to deal with so many tagged pages. Denni☯ 00:24, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
    • What skin are you using? Have a look at the BIG text below the edit box that says
    • DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
    • --fvw* 00:28, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
      • Oops. Did not scroll down far enough. Denni☯ 19:14, 2005 August 26 (UTC)
      • Yes, there is plenty of warning, plus copyvio stuff is illegal anyway, plus its not as if we keep copyvio stuff if the uploader didnt realise it is against the rules is it? it still gets deleted. I'm sorry but that isnt even a valid concern. If you think there is not enough warning, this is not the place to bring it up. Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:45, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I would support this if it was clear that the material, if reposted after being deleted, would go through the usual process for copyright violations rather than speedy deletion. That, or some other relatively simple way for uploaders to contest the deletion without going through VFU. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:09, 2005 August 29 (UTC)
Seems reasonable, thanks Martin - The non-blue non-moose 10:08, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Please see Wikipedia:Experimental Deletion/XD5. It's one of many proposals for an 'intermediary' form between speedy and regular deletion (basically, it means "delete this unless anybody disagrees"). Radiant_>|< 10:19, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • I strongly support the proposal, with the same proviso that Christopher Parham raised above. Speedy delete; but take through longer process if the poster contests the deletion. I think there's far too much caution here about this proposal. The majority of editors who invoke the copyvio procedure know full well what constitutes copyvio, and know about mirrors. Tearlach 03:36, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I support this proposal also - I work on WP:CP and we get lots of obvious ones. Being able to speedy even a few of them would be very helpful. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:14, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Context/content bolding

Wouldn't it make more sense to emphasise the whole words context and content rather than just the single differing letter? It would certainly make the bolding look less random to the casual reader, and would also show up better. Loganberry (Talk) 22:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

But the whole point of the exercise is stressing the letter difference, which you lose when stressing the entire word. I agree this looks a bit silly, but it does work. --fvw* 22:26, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
This originally arose out of a debate (or six) at VfU where the determination of an (in)valid speedy can turn on whether an article had content but no context, or vice-versa. The difference matters, and it's in the letter. Can underline them, if you like. -Splash 23:02, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, when writing for myself I'd always emphasise the whole word even in a case like this with only one letter's difference: for example, I'd write something like "There is a difference between stationary and stationery", and would never write "There is a difference between stationary and stationery". I really do think that the former is much clearer than the latter. But if the consensus is otherwise then I won't argue further. Loganberry (Talk) 12:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, or capitalize the letters, or make them red, or something. Radiant_>|< 07:49, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
Right now it just looks like a mistake or vandalism. I went to fix it and I'm sure many other editors have done so as well. -Willmcw 19:16, August 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • I've just thought up an easier way of stopping this and have protected the page. Most of this page's edits consist of "fixing" the bolding, or such nonsense as changing the name in the example attack page. In nearly all cases this page shouldn't be edited in the first place. Radiant_>|< 07:53, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • I too went to fix this. I think that protecting this page for this reason is more than a little silly. My suggestion would be to bold the parts of the word that you would emphasize if you wished to make the difference clear when reading aloud, i.e. context, content; stationary, stationery etc. Lupin 18:16, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Bogus fair use claims

There has been an ongoing problem with copyrighted images with bogus fair use claims, and Jimbo has suggested that such images should be speedied.

I propose these additions to the images criteria:

  1. Images uploaded after September 1, 2005 that lack source information.
  2. Images uploaded after September 1, 2005 that are taken from present-day news media or wire service reports.

There is no defensible fair use rationale for images from present-day news media, and these images pose a legal problem for the foundation. There has been a lengthy transition period during which uploaders of unsourced images were given an opportunity to supply a source. Everyone should be aware of the rules by now and, again, the unsourced images pose a legal problem.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we're going to get support for speedying images without source information, but for what it's worth I heartily support adding both criteria. As far as technical measures go, I'd also like to see uploading images not be allowed for new accounts, just like page moves. It would help against goatse vandalism and make sure that those uploading images have at least a faint inkling about what's going on. --fvw* 16:21, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree that "There is no defensible fair use rationale for images from present-day news media". The "histopric image" rationale will rarely apply (although a recent image of an even likely to become historic may use this rationale) but other reasons may well apply. Getting stricter with fair use claimes is probably a good idea. I can see requireing a spcific spelled-out rationale for fair use, not just a template on such images, and I can see removing unsourced images (but not under a speedy rule, new images should have their uplaoders notified and be given several days, say at least 72 hours to provide source and copyright status info). But removing "all images from present day news-media" is a major mistake IMO. Indeed widespread news use of an image may well make a fair-use claim rather more plausible than a more obscure image, and also means that the "commercial value" of the image is less likely to be impaired, one of the significant fair-use tests, provided that proper source acknowledgement is provided, and a proper fair-use rationale is supplied. DES (talk) 16:24, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I would be happy to defer to legal counsel or the foundation board on this. I don't believe that the "historic image" rationale holds water in the first place, but IANAL. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:28, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I would support a speedy criteria that applied to unsourced images uploaded by a user who had been warned once before about uploading unsourced images. For first time users, I think we can afford to use WP:PUI, but for repeat offenders, speedy it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 10:19, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, news images are ineligible for copyright in certain countries (I forget which). This rule cannot be applied universally. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 22:31, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Page protection

Never mind. I've no idea why this page was protected. I just can't make sense of it. The edit history of the previous seven days prior to protection doesn't seem to be more fraught than that of any other Wikipedia page I've ever seen. I unlisted it from WP:PP and unprotected. --Tony SidawayTalk 01:54, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

It was protected, if I'm not mistaken, becauae after the bold letters to emphasize the difference between context and content were added, several different people (four IIRC) thought that this was random vandalism and unbolded them only to be reverted -- at least one even after an HTML comment indiactign that the boldign was intentional had been added. This got to be annoying and someone protected the page. As policy pageas are usually fairly stable, the admin involved probably assumed this was the best response. DES (talk) 03:03, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Miscellaneous deletion / page protection

Note that Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion is now called Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion; please update all occurrences. I can't do it myself, it's protected (and I doubt it should be for much longer, looking at the history I don't feel the frequency of vandalism is high enough to warrant protection of a policy page). --IByte 15:49, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Unverified material doesn't count?

It seems that some users, in particular User:Geogre and User:Karmosin think that unverified claims can be ignored when considering if an article is a candidate for speedy deletion [1]. This is not my intrepretation, but perhaps it should be clarified. Kappa 13:30, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Are you being legalistic? There's no way to decide these things algorithmically. You can't make an article undeletable just by including the magic word "notable" within the article. There has to be a real claim of notability. The sysop decides whether such a real claim exists. Sysops, being human, are fallible, which is why we have Articles for Undeletion. If I saw a biography whose entire contents were
D. P. B. Smith claims to be a notable person
or
D. P. B. Smith is notable as the only human being to have served simultaneously as Pope and as United States President
or
D. P. B. Smith is notable for being President of the Lancaster, Wisconsin chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society
I would certainly consider these valid speedies. In the case of the first two, I'd delete them on sight. In the case of the third, I'd spend 60 seconds at http://www.spebsqsa.org and confirm that the society has no chapter in Lancaster, Wisconsin, then I'd delete it.
Anyone would, of course, be free to take such a action to Articles for Undeletion. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:58, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I'm talking about cases where the information looks dubious but can't be proved wrong, such as an apparent hoax about a village in a developing country. However I see that there will be borderline cases and I guess I will have to hope that admins exercise good judgement. Kappa 18:53, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


New proposal

See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Non-notable Internet entities. ~~ N (t/c) 20:10, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


Please use English.

Wik is supposed to be accessible for all. Seeing a text starting off with a word (sysops) that almost nobody but insiders knows is a real turn-off. this is especially disconcerting, when one continues reading about this Cyclops who can devour one's ten years of effort with-out and with-in a blink of the eye. Finding definitions of Wik and Web jargon remains difficult and time-consuming. (Wik is slow and very unstable on many systems, so that one is often afraid to try to find the definition for fear that the system will crash or the time involved in a (possibly unsuccessful) search will be too much. Kdammers 01:57, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

  • That's a good idea—it took me a while to figure out just what exactly was meant by A7 or G3. I eventually asked Zoe and she cleared things up for me. There's a glossary, but it doesn't cover that kind of stuff. It's been an unvoiced complaint of mine ever since I got started that WP is very hard to navigate if you haven't been here a while. I still find it hard to find out how to do things I need to do. It took me an hour to find web colors when I wanted to play around with different colored texts; I ended up finding it from m:Help:Table, of all places. I still don't know where the different usable fonts are stored or how I'm supposed to figure out how to do that stuff alone, where people find out about shortcuts like {{tl|insert template here}}, how I'm supposed to figure out how <div> works, etc. It's not mentioned in Wikipedia:How to edit a page or in the tutorial as far as I can tell. It's not obvious how to do things or how to figure out how to do things around here: mostly I just take a gander at the sources of WPns who know more about WikiMarkup than I do, but it's slow going and certainly frustrating and time-consuming. This might be another helpful step in the right direction. --Blackcap | talk 07:18, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
The main problem is just that there are more things to learn than well-written, clear documentation to explain them (yet). We could sure use a nice paragraph on the CSD page explaining the use of the terms, A7, G3, etc. Maybe I'll go write it... As for your other specific questions: fonts are handled by the viewers browser - not by the 'pedia; more than that I do not know. As for the many fun templates, I don't think there's a full list, but there's a semi-complete list at Wikipedia:Template messages; also, we don't have a nice tutorial on the use of >div>'s yet(or if we do, I don't know about it). More links to descriptive answers would seem like a Good Thing. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Hey, nice work on that paragraph. That'll help a lot, I think. And you're completely right—maybe I should start writing Help articles myself. --Blackcap | talk 16:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposal from Jimbo

Jimbo proposed the following additioon to the images category, but apparently added it to the established and accepted policy page by mistake:

Images in category "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown copyright status" which have been on the site for more than 7 days, regardless of when uploaded.

Moved here so it can be discussed properly.

Jimbo, a couple of discussion points from me: in IRC discussion you noted that this was intended only for the most egregarious cases, but the proposal doesn't say that, so you should probably reword it to say what you consider to be the most egregarious cases or provide at least some examples. You might also consider asking the contributor first and giving some time for them to provide the information desired. Perhaps might consider that before image categories most images were sourced from the uploader and those have been around quite a while and are not problematic, so there's no need to delete them, but your proposal, as written, would make them all instantly deletable without notice or question. You might also consider what to do about images like these, all tagged to make them immediately deletable under this proposal:

  • Image:CyndiLauperStay.jpg it's obviouly a fair use (an album cover) and has the source - the cover of the album. In spite of that, two different editors mistagged it.
  • Image:Edgewaterpresbyterian.jpg described as a personal photo, apparently is and that source as the uploader is given.
  • Image:EricMabius.jpg gives the movie source information and obvious fair use, yet still tagged as unknown.

From the look of the current selection, the images in the categories are too often mistagged items which are fine and aren't really what you're after with your "most egregarious" objective. Jamesday 06:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Jamesday, we've been asking users for a long time now. Of those that respond many muck up the process with outragious claims and repetative argument. This isn't something new, its just something that has been widely ignored because it wasn't causing anything to happen. When it comes down to it, we are unable to claim fair use when we can't even claim a source, and we are unable to claim the content is free if it we do not know if the provider held the copyright. Images lost will be replaced, Wikipedia doesn't stop existing if we lose a few images we shouldn't have, but it stops being "the Free encyclopedia" when it is chalk full of images which make it unfree. For every potentially fair use example you can provide there are dozens of examples where fair use could not be claimed. Images tagged as fair use should only be removed if there is no source information available, in any case. The great jihad against weak fairuse argument images comes after this is done... --Gmaxwell 07:30, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't think the change by Jimbo is a proposal... it's a decree. Coffee 09:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
Under this new policy, the image doesn't have to have been in Category:Images with unknown source for a week. Technically, I could take any image that was uploaded more than a week ago, add {{nosource}} to the description page, and it instantly becomes a candidate for speedy deletion. Obviously that isn't quite what Jimbo intended; but mistakes happen when you change policy by decree without any prior discussion.
I would suggest the policy ought to be
Files that have unknown source or copyright status, that have been tagged as such for more than a week.
This modified version is less objective, which is a good thing, because there is room for judgement on whether an image has a source and copyright status specified. Also, it clarifies that the policy applies to all media files, not just "images". dbenbenn | talk 16:56, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that would be a very sensible ammendment, it gives time for uploaders to properly tag their images. Otherwise, like you say, their images (which might otherwise be gfdl/pd/cc...) could just disappear one day without apparent explanation. Martin 17:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The wording on Jimbo's decree is very confusing. "...which have been on the site for more than 7 days, regardless of when uploaded". What does that even mean? Isn't the time since an image was uploaded and the time it's "been on the site" the same thing? And how long does it have to be in the category? This needs some rewording, IMO. Kaldari 22:07, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh wait, I get it. He means "been in the category for more than 7 days". Kaldari 22:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Actually I understood it to mean all images that have been on the site for more than 7 days (not "in the category"). I understood "regardless of when uploaded" to mean "This rule applies to all images, not just the ones uploaded since September 17". Coffee 18:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions and slang

There's a lot of articles being added that are very obvious dicdefs and slang. A lot of them have been AfD:ed and a lot of them have also been kept, but with very dubious motivations. People seem to have a lot of trouble confusing definitions of usage and just general meanings with encyclopedic content. I think that extremely notable and important slang and dicdefs with major culutural importance such as nigger or honor are very valid article subject here at Wikipedia, but when it comes to things like egg (person), svenne/blatte (Swedish ethnic slurs) and hella (slang) we've crossed the line to Urban Dictionary Land, not to mention an important language barrier. Particularly the last one is very disturbing to me, since that means we've become a repository for just about any slang in any language.

I think obviously non-notable slang should be a valid CSD candidate. The only problem is if people decide that literally any slang, not matter if it doesn't have an important cultural connotation of its own or is even widely recognized in the English-speaking world, is to be considered notable. Personally, I think the notability in this case should be extremely obvious, or it should be whisked away to Wiktionary.

I've started a centralized discussion at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Dictionary definitions, and I welcome your input.

Peter Isotalo 11:55, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Having a centralized policy discussion on this is probably a good idea. Tryingt o make it a speedy deletion criterion is IMO probably a bad idea. DES (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Warnings requested for unidentified images

Based on discussions at:

I would like to append to the following classification

...the following:

  • Because image deletion is not reversible, to avoid accidentally deleting properly licensed media and to avoid unnecessarily upsetting legitimate uploaders, the following request is made of adminsitrators deleting articles in these categories: Please make sure the uploader has been duly notified of the pending deletion by a message on their talk page, a reasonable amount of time (perhaps 7 days) before deleting. This gives them a chance to properly identify the original source and licensing terms.

It would be convenient for administrators if a bot were set up to automatically notify uploaders of images placed into these categories. If the bot notified uploaders within 24 hours of the image being put in the category, all the administrators would need to do is check that the article had been in the category for the requisite amount of time, and that the uploader did not comment on the image description page or associated talk page.

Manual notifications can currently be accomplished by administrators with the help of these sorted-by-author lists, for these and related categories:

-- Beland 03:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The "seven days" criterion is apparently an attempt to make a run around forming consensus. I've removed it; it's clear no thought was put into its potential consequences. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 21:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Jimbo doesn't have to "run around forming consensus", he can make whatever rules he likes. If you don't like this one, which I can understand, you have to talk to him about it. Kappa 23:20, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
However, I do agree with Beland's idea of mandating notification(see my comments at Category talk:Images with unknown source). I think that's a reasonable modification of the rule. Superm401 | Talk 00:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
There is far too much of a backlog of copyright violations to be wasting time putting notices on people's user pages and adding yet another waiting period. Everyone has been on notice that we cannot have unsourced, unlicensed, and other forms of copyright violating images for months now. We do not, and obviously cannot reasonably, require consensus for the deletion of copyright violations. This is being done to protect the legal interests of the Wikimedia Foundation and the project, and is endorsed by Jimbo. There are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of copyright violations in Image:, and we've known this for months now. Failure to act with all deliberate haste is unconscionable. Kelly Martin 01:34, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Yup, this is a major pain. I'm all for encouraging notification, but it shouldn't be made mandatory. There's just too much to be done. I'd be for adding a warning to the sitenotice about it though, as was suggested elsewhere. --fvw* 01:38, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Unless those who want 6000 warnings given out go and do it, or write themselves a bot, I am just going to start deleting these kinds of images. Jimbo says on his talk page that he thinks we should more likely be blocking these users than warning them! -Splashtalk 01:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I think this is a case where common sense applies. I've left notices where the uploader is an active contributor and the images are likely to be indeed legal. Where they are clearly copyvio or it is unlikely the contributor will ever return to tag the images, I've been deleting them. I'd rather we have no image than a probable copyvio. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 02:14, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. --Blackcap | talk 02:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
In my recent conversation with Jimbo on this topic he did stress that we should be mindful of the feelings of established contributors, especially with respect to older images (where people may have felt that "it's GFDL, I don't have to mention that because it's the default"). However, this is a "use common sense" situation, and the policy itself must not require warnings of any sort. As to writing a bot: it's not even possible to fully enumerate many of the image categories because of a bug in Mediawiki. The pymediawiki framework breaks when used for this purpose (as explained in one of my recent wikien-l posts). Until we get past the "emergency phase" of this project there isn't likely to be a bot. Kelly Martin 02:41, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree, what your asking is ludicrous, there is already a huge backlog on untagged and mistagged images and requiring notification would not only make the backlog worse it would make it harder for people to do their jobs when routing out images that should have been deleted months ago due to being unsourced and uncopyrighted. Jtkiefer T | @ | C ----- 05:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

While the main discussion took place at my talk page, I personally will delete and ask questions later if the uploader is no longer here. But, if the image was here for months, and untagged for months, I see no use in contacting. Plus, in the original message, Jimbo said to not contact the uploaders and probably block them anyways. Zach (Sound Off) 06:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, so I tried to do the contact the uploader about a deletion and the various reasons why. Well, this was what I got [2]. So, even if we do the right thing and tell people about a deletion, I still get told to fuck off. I am now thinking to go back to not telling people. Thoughts? Zach (Sound Off) 05:03, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

speedy placeholders instead of speedy deletes for images

I propose that instead of speedy deleting, we can just upload placeholder images over-top the "bad" images (untagged/unsourced). An admin could then "protect" the image if needed. Also, the image would obviously have to be removed manually from the article immediately before. But, that should be done regardless.

This would allow all users, not just admins, to deal with problem images. Admins would only be needed for protecting and unprotecting. No images would be permanently deleted, until all hope for the validity of the image was gone.

Doing this would produce very rapid results, since many more people would be involved, and the visual impact of an image being replaced would motivate the uploader to tag/source the image quickly, but they would be less angry, since they wouldn't have their image permanently deleted. It also would be easier to revert to the original image (from the placeholder), than to go digging for mirrored backup, which seems to be happening.

Since this sounds so obvious to me, there's probably an obvious reason why it's not done, that I wasn't aware of. If so, sorry in advance.

--rob 22:53, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I imagine its the same reason we speedy pages rather than blanking them. In this particular case, the infringing content would remain onwiki, and retrievable by anyone following the link in the history, and restorable with the click of a mouse. -Splashtalk 23:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
In my proposal, admins would protect the placeholders at least as quickly, and probably much more quickly, than they could delete the image. Also, there would have to be strong policy againt reverting an image before an admin was able to protect the placeholder. So, there would be no more problem of ill-used images than there is now. Also, once it's confirmed an image is hopeless it would be permanently deleted. Also, by forcing people to edit the actual article, everybody with the article on their watch list, becomes aware of the problem, and will try to fix it. Currently, I find if I (as a non-admin) replace a untagged/unsourced image with a proper one, the article might be quickly reverted. This approach would make that less likely. --rob 23:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC) Added we don't speedy copvio's, we put a replacement notice (like a placeholder) up for 5 days, which is a highly visible inducement to fix the problem. But the copyvio is still in history, and easily reverted. After the 5 days it's permanently deleted. Such notices are hard to ignore. --rob 23:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
We are about to start speedying copyvio. It is no quicker to protect an image than it is to delete it, since either way it needs to be removed from the article, and a reason given in the protection/deletion log. This really does just add more work — if people can't read the instructions they are presented with at upload time, then really it's their own fault. -Splashtalk 00:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

My main objection to this idea is just plain that it's more work. We have a lot of copyvio images to delete, and the sooner it's done, the better. I'd rather have a bit of hassle in the restoration of those few images that turn out to be usable than having to jump through any hoops whatsoever in getting rid of the bulk. --fvw* 23:34, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

How is it more work for admins? All the admin would have to do is protect the image after others uploaded the placeholder, and hopefully edited the article. Also, if there's obviously no hope for an image, or there's a good PD/GFDL replacement, than by all means do the speedy. My suggestion is quite similiar to text copyvio replacement notice. Also, a person acting in bad faith, and reverting back to an unallowed image is equally likely to re-upload another image (nothing stops them from doing that now). Both acts could be deemed equally disallowed, and dealt with. --rob 23:49, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
You're assuming that all speedy marking is done by non-admins. I think it's closer to the oposite. Also, tagging an image as a speedy deletion is a lot less work than uploading an image for the non-admins. --fvw* 00:32, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm not assuming that. As a non-admin, if I put the tag on the image, and remove/replace it out of the article, it's extremely likely that the article will quickly be reverted back to the "pretty" picture. The reverting editor has no idea about the tag, since after the reversion everything looks good to them (they just see the thumb, and probably don't visit the image page). When the offending picture is ultimately deleted, I'll have no idea, and the article will be left with a red-link. Meanwhile, the PD image I wanted to use as a replacement might be classified as an orphan. As a non-admin I see no purpose in replacing a copyrighted images with PD/GFDL images, if the change can so easily be reverted by other editors. --rob 01:22, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Alternate ideas, with similiar principal, but which may or may not be technically possible:

  • Roboticly put placeholders for images with certain "bad" tags and auto-protect them. Robotic deletion is too dangerous, but robotic "placeholding" is safely reversible.
  • Configure software to treat bad images like link spam. You can't save an article with blacklisted external links. Why can you save an article with a "black-listed" image?

Basically, what's needed is something that works quick but also allows for quick fixes of inevitable mistakes. --rob 00:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, yes. Jimbo, however, appears to want this done now rather than in a couple of MediaWiki releases' time. -Splashtalk 00:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Now that we got some fixes done to the categories themselves, we could run a bot that gets rid of the images. But even if we do the slow and careful method, we will still get an ear full from everyone who was affected by it. It has been a week since the new policy was in place and I still get an ear full. Zach (Sound Off) 02:01, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
Using a bot (backup/delete or placeholder) makes things less personal. People who have their images removed (regardless of how) need to understand it's not just some individual admin being tough. I've noticed a big divide in talks on this between admins; with some saying it's good to notify users first individually, and others saying it's necessary to act first (based on policy). To me, the "ask first" admins are unintentionally making the "act first" admins look bad. An automated approach (placeholder or backup/delete) has the advantage of consistency and fairness. Plus you can say "don't blame me, it's the robot". Also, I would assume such a bot (aka script) doesn't involve a new MediaWiki release. --rob 14:37, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Another problem with the current image red-link approach (fixed by placeholders): Everytime you click on an image-redlink, you don't see information on the old image (which might be helpful in seeing what the problem was and finding a legit replacement), but you do go to an upload screen, which seems to make it too easy for somebody to repeat their prior mistake. --rob 00:34, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually you go to a screen offering links both to the history of the deleted page - which will include all the edit summaries, including whatever info the original uploaded added at the time of uploading, and a (admittedly more obvious) link to the upload page. But, the likelyhood that the original uploader, or someone familiar with the original image, would be so much more tempted to re-upload an image without providing a source or license just because they are given a link to the upload page, seems far fetched to me. In any case, if the supporters of this want to go around putting placeholders up in place of already deleted images, or even, in place of not-yet-deleted images(as long as there is the un-sourced image tag is left, so the unsourced images can be deleted eventually), I'd be happy for you all to do it. The more the merrier. JesseW, the juggling janitor 01:51, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry to be a spoilsport, but no. This is not policy, it is not practise and it is not the right idea. Sorry. There are more than 12000 images to deal with. I do not think that adding additional entries to the histories along with 12000 blank images to the servers is a remotely sensible thing to do. It is Wikiwastage without good cause. We do not operate a pure-wiki deletion mechanism here, which this is akin to. Until we do, or until Jimbo amends his decree to allow this, it should emphatically not be done. Non-admins are able to help out here by goig through Belands lists (see WP:AN and the VP) and leaving talk: page messages to the users in question. This will certainly help divide up the workload if we feel we must do this (which, by the by, Jimbo says we needn't, but anyway). -Splashtalk 01:58, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Adding a copy of What's not patent nonsense to G1

I've noticed a lot of invalid speedies under CSD G1, "No meaningful content or history, text unsalvageably incoherent (e.g., random characters). See patent nonsense." - The Wikipedia:Patent nonsense page has a nice list of things that are often confused with patent nonsense; I'd like to add it to this page, to clarify CSG G1.

The specific wording I suggest is this: "No meaningful content or history, text unsalvageably incoherent (e.g., random characters). This does not include: copyvios, bad writing, partisan screeds, religious excogitations, immature material, flame bait, obscene remarks, vandalism as such, badly translated material, hoaxes, or fancruft, unless the material is actually unsalvagably incoherent. See patent nonsense."

If no one objects to this in a week, I will do it. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Fine by me. Zach (Sound Off) 04:59, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I have also noticed a lot of bad (or at least arguably bad) articles that do not qualify as "patent nonense" as per WP:PN beeing tagged with {{nonsense}} or deleted with the given reason of nonsense. I approve of the above proposal, but i doubt that it will have much effect. Can't hurt, though. DES (talk) 05:22, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
This is a good idea, but as DES says, I don't suppose it will stop people tagging. We should make more of the provision in WP:VAND that joke articles are G3 speedies, because a lot of the time that's what people really mean. -Splashtalk 14:54, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm thinking "patent nonsense" is the wrong word to use for G1. What we're talking about is gibberish, gobbledygook, word salad, whatever. I'd venture that most people think of as "nonsense" includes bullshit. "Fred Flintstonium is the 148th element, discovered in 1873 by Goethe." That's completely comprehensible, that's completely good English, and it's utter bullshit; most people's first reaction to it would be "what nonsense!". --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 15:19, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Considering the number of people who have supported this, I'm going to add it now. If anyone objects, then by all means they should feel free to remove it. As I had forgotten CSD G3 - Vandalism, I'm going to make one small change, clarifing that vandalism is speedyable, just under G3 not G1. Also, I'm going to update the {{nonsense}} tag to reflect the new wording. Thanks everyone! JesseW, the juggling janitor 16:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Feels like instruction creep to me. You're now taking a long paragraph to say exactly what was said in a single line before. People abused the tag before but I don't think it was out of ignorance of patent nonsense. I suspect that they will continue to abuse the tag.

Now that it's been added, I propose that we watch for use of the tag for a few days. If it's not reducing the misuse by a measurable amount, let's take it back out. Rossami (talk) 22:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Instruction creep? It was already in the instructions, it was just less visible. I don't think instruction creep is a fair description of making already applicable rules more visible. So what reason do you think people abused the tag for? And how exactly do you propose to measure it's effect in "reducing the misuse" - I expect it will mostly be used by admins, reviewing the category, choosing to not delete things tagged with {nonsense} because they can read the list of things it's not right on the page. How do you propose to measure this? JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
It absolutely isn't instruction creep. It's just a copy-paste of existing policy. How is that creep? -Splashtalk 23:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
You're right that it's not the classic form of instruction creep because it is not a new instruction but it is still creep-ish in the sense that it's more to read on a page already longer than ideal. It's creep in the sense that it's a second copy of content that is already stated perfectly clearly at Wikipedia:patent nonsense - which today is not a problem but which will become a problem as the two definitions drift apart (which experience tells us they will tend to do). To answer your question above, I think people abused the tag because they could. It was easy to say and rarely got challenged. The measure of "reducing the misuse" will be anecdotal reports of admins reviewing the category and finding fewer articles mistagged. Rossami (talk) 04:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Of course, while no one was looking, the actual content of {{db-nonsense}} was first reverted (by Ambi) and then rewritten (by me), both of us knowing nothing about this thread at the time. Dragons flight 23:16, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I like your shortened version. Thanks. I think Ambi's describing a cut and paste copy of an existing, (and AFAIK, well-respected) guideline as "nonsense" is - humourous, to say the least. Sort of sad, in another way. JesseW, the juggling janitor 23:23, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion notice on Watchlist

On my watchlist there is a notice about speedy deletion of photos. It isn't specific, so is this something that has been sent to every watchpage (and why the watchpage then?). I've looked at the lists of images with unknown source and copyright status and I don't see any of my photos there. So what is this about? Should I worry? :) DirkvdM 10:45, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not just you. Its a general notice. -- Ec5618 11:08, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Common sense speedy

I'm curious what the community's opinions are on a "common sense" speedy criterion. This would be for speedying things that obviously don't belong, but for which there is no specific CSD. I'm thinking it would be used for things like blatant spam or obvious hoaxes. Unfortunately such things sometimes currently end up in Afd, which is unneccessary.

I realize that deletions like this are already done sometimes, without benefit of a formal CSD. Would it be useful to add one, or is "common sense" the kind of thing we don't need a rule for (other than Wikipedia:Use common sense)? The main advantage I see of a formal CSD would be that such deletions are no longer considered "out of process" and subject to easy undeletion. Thoughts? Friday (talk) 14:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I'd be all for this, but am doubtful that it would receive wide support. Implicitly, all you need to common-sensically delete an article is a liberal dose of WP:IAR, but that generally doesn't help in arguments at VfU. android79 14:32, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I do consider that such speedy deletions are now out of process, and i will routinely take them to VfU if I come across them. I would strongly oppose such a vague "common sense" criterion. IMO the speedy delete criteria are and ought to be quite precise, and bendign them or undyuly broadening them is a mistake. You mention "obvious hoaxes", but frequently soemthing that one editor thinks is an obvious hoax is nothign of the sort. If it is an admitted or confirmed hoax it can be speedied as vandalism already, but there are too many false positives on haox detection for this to be a speedy criterion. You mention "blatent spam". if an "article" is simply a link and nothing more it can already be deleted under A3. A promotional article about a real company or product can often be rewritten to an NPOV article about the same subject. Soemtimes the subject isn't notable, but IMO that decision takes AfD, and can't be properly made in a speedy deletion context. I'm not sure what other kinds of things you think "obviously don't belong" but aren't subject to current speedy deletion, and that fact -- that I don't know what you or any other person using such a criterion would consider that it applied to, is why I can not imagine agreeing to it. I would favor adding appropriate narrowly targeted additional speedy criteria -- for example non-notable bands. But not a general catch-all such as this -- I fear it would indeed catch all, or at least far too much that should not be caught. DES (talk) 14:42, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I would add that i do not consider that WP:IAR could ever justify an otherwise out-of-process deletion, and if someone cites that page (I don't consider it a policy) in support of such an action, I am inclided to discount their other arguments -- IME it is only cited by people whose cases are otherwise too weak to stand examination. DES (talk) 14:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree, IAR is overused and sometimes abused, but it does have a point about red tape and bureaucracy. If I "common-sense-speedy" an article that doesn't quite fit any one CSD but obviously doesn't belong and would receive near-unanimous support to delete at AfD, and you bring that up at VfU, who's getting in the way of writing a quality encyclopedia? android79 15:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • You're absolutely right, such a thing is prone to wide interpretation or even abuse. As an alternative, what if such articles were tagged as speedy AND listed on Afd, but able to be speedied as soon as there were (for example) 3 different editors agreeing it was speedy material and nobody opposing? Yes, people could sock their way around this, but we already depend on admins to deal with sock voters. Automatically taking out-of-process speedies to VfU seems a bit silly to me- are we here to follow rigid processes, or are we here to make an encyclopedia? If someone's judgement cannot be trusted in this area, they ought not be allowed to delete at all. I think Afd should be reserved for articles where there will be actual serious discussion of whether or not to keep them, and my "common sense speedy" idea is aimed at things that would not have such a discussion. I realize it's a judgement call, but we already depend on human judgement all over the place, so I don't see that as a bad thing. Friday (talk) 15:03, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • PS. Or, for a simpler idea, instead of using Afd, what if such speedies were done only with the consent of say, 2-3 admins instead of just one? Surely this would cut down on abuse. Friday (talk) 15:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd be a bit nervous of speedying 'hoaxes' - what seems like a hoax may turn out to be true. (I'm also fed up with removing speedy tags that say 'spam' or 'advert'.) But the 'patent nonsense' criterion perhaps needs to allow for some common sense. As Wikipedia grows (10% per month) afd isn't going to upscale in dealing with all the junk (see my thoughts here). If someone takes 30 seconds to create an article which says only 'Queen Elizabeth II has an evil clone created in 1492, who is good in bed' (nonsense, but coherent enough not to be patent nonsense) - should an admin take the time to send it to afd, where other editors will waste their time voting? (And why are we having a debate about Penis Van Lesbian?) We need to accept that afd will not upscale. Incidently, I'm a lot less nervous about speedying borderlines from afd, where the speedy is transparent. --Doc (?) 20:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
    • To the contrary, it does classify as patent nonsense. Wikipedia:Patent nonsense provides the following definition: 1. Total nonsense - i.e. text or random characters that have no assignable meaning at all. This includes things like "1`- 5bl[9 1vn]304 0=10am[0v9a1 7", where random keys of the keyboard have been pressed; 2. Content that, while apparently meaningful after a fashion, is so completely and irredeemably confused that no intelligent person can be expected to make sense of it." In my opinion, it does clearly fall into #2. - Mike Rosoft 17:19, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Just to chime in. Regarding a common sense criteria - I would oppose, for all the reasons DES said so clearly. Regarding the Queen Elizabeth type things - yes, I would really like to see a nicely specific, clear criteria for, shall we call it: laughable nonsense. I'm not sure how to phrase it though.... JesseW, the juggling janitor 21:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
  • WP:CSD#G9 in conjunction with WP:NOT covers this already. If it's obviously WP:NOT, then it can be G9'd.--Mm35173 21:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
    • This last statement is absolutely not true. Application of WP:NOT is a judgment call. Judgment calls get decided through the full AFD discussion process. Speedy deletions are narrowly crafted to those specific cases which are so clear and unabiguous that any admin can be expected to recognize the situation and apply it in exactly the same way. For a simple example of why you can't use a conjunction of CSD G9 and WP:NOT, look at the precedents around one of the oldest clauses on WP:NOT - Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Yet entries are routinely tagged in good faith as mere dicdefs and those taggings are contested, again in good faith. Some dicdef articles are expanded and retained, some are transwiki'd and some are deleted. This could never be reduced to a speedy criterion. Rossami (talk) 21:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Someone recently attempted to speedy a neologism "Mer" under G9. I took mit to WP:DRV (formerly VfU) and I think it would have been undelted, but it was recreted with different content in a way which made the issue moot. I would take other similar speeies there in future. DES (talk) 22:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
  • IAR already covers the many commonsense speedies that are done each day. It would probably be a bad idea to formalize these speedies into a category such as "commonsense" because the normal IAR mechanism combined with a good dose of WP:DICK takes care of it all. In short, DES has the right idea. If you come across a speedy that shouldn't have been done, either undelete it or send it to VFU. --Tony SidawayTalk 22:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The "If" clause of A7

I have started a discussion at the village pump about how the "if" clause in A7 should be read given that I have seen it be interpreted in a number of different ways be different users and admins. Dragons flight 19:28, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I thinki this discussion, which i thank you for reviving, although i disagree on several issues, more proeprly belongs here. i have restore the section on it from the arvchives below, as discussion was still ongoing, and IMO should not be archived while this is the case. DES (talk) 15:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Why do we treat text and images so differently? It makes no sense to me. If I created a textual entry, I can expect, mostly because of the "DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK..." boilerplate, that the entry will not be deleted for copyright reasons. If I uploaded an image under the same circumstances, I can expect the image, per CSD, to vanish. "Assume guilty before proving innocent" is not appropriate or necessary for wikipedia images any more than it's appropriate for wikipedia text, AFAICT. Is there a major difference to the laws protecting these 2 media that warrants the different attitude? Has WPs actual experience with the two media been vastly different? Not AFAIK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Possibly_unfree_images#Poll:_Use_of_page provides an unanswered (but admittedly rather heated) argument supporting my view, and none opposing it. IMO, it's appropriate that the policy be supported with a rational argument, or changed. Elvey 00:30, 17 October 2005 (UTC) Comments?

Found some intelligent related dicusssion at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Avoid_Copyright_Paranoia, but there's no explanation for WP:CSD I4.

One difference is that txt that is largely factual can fairly easily be rewritten to be non-infringing. However, an infringing image is pretty much hopeless, any edit would simply produce an infringing derivitive work. Anotehr difference is that we have lots of infringing images, because image download from websites is easy and image creation is realatively hard, while creation of new text is much easier. Another reason is that text copyvios can often be found via web searches, while there is no easy way to search for a matching image. Thus we need to be harder on images than on text, although the law is pretty much the same for each. DES (talk) 02:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Another difference is that a lot of text copyvios can be quickly found by googleing. A third difference is most text is in article space where it gets plenty of exposure, image space may not. Perhaps we should have a copyvio library (for both forms) to catch repeat offences automaticaly.... Rich Farmbrough 14:40, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

G4 Criteria

I noticed this recent change to the G4 criteria. But I can't find any discussion on this talk page. I think the change needs to be reversed, because the new criteria is possibly encouraging people to remove Afd tags and replace them with {{deleteagain}} tags... to nominate articles for speedy deletion which don't meet any of the other criteria for speedy deletion (I.E. Were potentially improper speedies in the past), for the sole reason that articles have been supposedly speedy deleted in the past. I have several times in recent memory observed {{deleteagain}} tags being placed upon articles that while they were indeed speedy deleted, the content was not quite the same, had never appeared on Afd clearly, and did not meet any of the CSD criteria, other than possibly G4, due to this recent change, which no longer exempts a previous speedy from a reason to nominate. --Mysidia (talk) 00:33, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

That was the orignal intent of G4, see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/G4, the bullet points in the preamble (which were substantively part of the vote), the discussion during the voting and on the talk page. If you write "ksdfhkdjshf" once, and it is speedied, it can be speedied again if you write it again. If content is speediable once it is speediable twice. Being speedied does not protect the article from being respeedied if it still meets one of the criteria. The content does not have to be verbatim, only substantially identical. There was a discussion here regarding the change you mention: Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive4#Some thoughts on the G4 criterion. -Splashtalk 03:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
If it was speedied once as patent nonsense, then it should be speedied again as patent nonsense, not speedied again because it was speedied before, as sometimes articles are speedied improperly, and something like it happened to be wiped before, is a grossly inadequate reasoning for speedy deletion. --Mysidia (talk) 09:03, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Hi Mysidia. There was indeed an extensive discussion over the recent textual change to G4. The current version of G4 does not change, in any way, the intent and scope of the previous version of G4. It was written purely to make the meaning of G4 clear, as the previous version was giving rise to an enormous amount of confusion owing to the way it was written. The problem that you raise in your first entry is one possible misunderstanding of the old G4; the new version explicitly makes clear that all articles that are substantial recreations of previously speedily deleted articles can only be deleted again if the prior deletion was valid and met a CSD criterion. If editors are misusing G4, the fault lies not with the new version of the rule (which in fact makes it clearer than it used to be that such misuse is wrong), but rather with the editors, who should be encouraged to read and understand the CSDs before applying them. Regards—encephalon 09:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC) NB. Disclosure: I wrote the text of G4 that is currently used, with excellent help from Splash in particular.
  • Incidentally, regarding,
I have several times in recent memory observed {{deleteagain}} tags being placed upon articles that while they were indeed speedy deleted, the content was not quite the same, had never appeared on Afd clearly, and did not meet any of the CSD criteria, other than possibly G4, due to this recent change, which no longer exempts a previous speedy from a reason to nominate.
Please note that
  1. any article that "did not meet any of the CSD criteria" cannot be deleted under the new G4, which as I've said makes this explicitly clear, unlike the old G4, and
  2. no version of G4 has ever exempted a previous speedy from re-deletion. If there was a rule that explicitly prevented articles which had previously been speedied from being speedied again, then if someone created "hkhgwwawsbdhs" twice, an admin would be compelled to take the recreation to AfD.
Just to be clear! Thanks—encephalon 09:53, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Also, Mysidia, the criterion as written is quite clear that the admin must be sure it was "appropriately deleted before deleting it again": if the speedy was wrong once, it would be wrong to speedy it again. -Splashtalk 13:20, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
When tagging a previously-speedied, essentially-identical article, the editor has two options: use the original CSD criterion from the previous incarnation, or use CSD:G4. There is a clear advantage to the latter; by using G4 rather than, say, A5 again, the editor is essentially telling the admin scanning CAT:CSD that not only does the editor think it's a speedy candidate, but an admin who previously reviewed the article also thought so. Yes, legitimate articles do, occasionally, get speedied away; this is why it is a good idea that not the same admin be the one to delete it every time. Owen× ☎ 15:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
No, that's actually a misunderstanding of the purpose of G4. It is to cover AfDs (and copyvios). If an article is to speedied, it must be done so under the relevant CSD. Adding G4 as a reason for re-speedying a previous speedy is a bad idea since it discourages the admin from checking which criterion it might really fit. The first bullet point in G4 is quite explicit on the point that it must meet some other CSD. -Splashtalk 15:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
The change does remove language that made it clear a previous speedy was not a reason: This does not apply to content in userspace, content that was speedily deleted or to content undeleted according to undeletion policy. Of course, other criteria than this one may still apply to such pages. --- now those who nominate articles for speedy deletion are justified in interpreting G4 to apply to articles where "View Deleted" edits appears in the history as a previous speedy --- In other words, under the original language, its past speedy deletion cannot be the reason to justify a speedy deletion under G4, or to suggest that a past decision made on the spot to delete an article by the same name is beyond reproach.
The new version is different, it can perpetuate or easily allow a misunderstanding of the intent for G4 to form, and puts the burden only on the admin, whereas non-admins too are able to "decorate" articles with speedy delete tags --- the worst case occurs when these Speedy Deletion decorations pre-empt or have no regard for any Afd discussion that may be starting. --Mysidia (talk) 20:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Hi again Mysidia. Thanks for your interesting post. While your concern is understandable, I think there is in fact no reason to be with respect to G4, and I'll attempt to explain why. Please note firstly that every article that is deleted from Wikipedia—whether through AfD, or SD, or RfD, or the copyvio process—is deleted because it is thought to contravene some basic WP article policy or law. They may be unverifiable, or copyright violations, or products of original research, or contravene some other important policies. If these articles are recreated, they are re-deleted, unless changes have been made to them so that they are no longer objectionable (in which case they are not [substantially similar] recreations, but really different articles). Note that the reason they are re-deleted is always that they violate one or more of the above fundamental policies, not because they once happen to have been written on WP.
  • What then is the purpose of G4? G4 exists for one reason and one reason only—it is a declaration that if an article has been legitimately found to be unsuitable for WP at some time in the past, but is recreated again despite this determination, it may be speedily deleted without expending valuable resources going through a renewed discussion, once more. G4 is recognition that the community has dealt with a problem before, either through deliberation in an open, common avenue (such as the _fDs), or through the lawful actions of individuals the community has appointed to act on its behalf (administrators), and doesn't need to expend resources to reach that same decision every time the problem is recreated.
  • As I said in the extensive discussion that took place over the new G4, an article is never deleted simply because it is a recreation per se; it is always deleted because it is poorly suited for WP. G4 is merely a method to delete articles efficiently whose unsuitability has already been determined in the past.
  • You write that you are concerned that articles are being nominated for speedy deletion because they appear to have been deleted before, and that this "puts the burden only on the admin". Please remember that all speedy deletion is in fact the province of administrators—they are the only WPns who are able to delete articles, and they have always been the ones with "the burden." Every admin who comes across a speedy delete tag (or decides to speedily delete something he finds himself) is always burdened with the responsibility of determining whether or not a criterion applies. If someone placed a SD tag on Canada, say because it was once accidentally deleted in the past and they wrongly believe it should therefore be deleted again, this does not mean an admin can come along and simply redelete the article without considering precisely how well the appropriate policy applies. And in this case the policy will stop him completely. It clearly and explicitly says that articles which were speedily deleted in the past cannot be simply redeleted without thought; rather, the administrator must make sure that the article (still) lies in violation of a CSD before he can delete it. If the prior deletion was a mistake, and the article in fact perfectly overcomes all CSDs, no amount of "decorations" by editors can compell him to delete it. (And if an editor does mistakenly delete an article for whatever CSD or WP:DEL misinterpretation, there already exists an excellent mechanism to reverse such errors—simply nominate it at VfU and it will be restored in a heartbeat.)
  • You suggest that the old version of G4 prevented articles from being deleted for the reason that they were once speedied, but the new G4 however allows it. This is incorrect. Both versions intend that any article that is speedily deleted must be found to have contravened one of the applicable CSDs, and cannot be simply deleted before this is determined; the new version makes this explicitly clear, and also avoids a very confusing clause in the old version that made it appear that any article previously speedied cannot be speedied if recreated despite remaining in complete violation of a CSD. For example, it seemed to state that if an admin found a recreation of a speedied article "asdbkfnbiuewnfjkf", he'd be barred from speedying it, which of course is patently absurd. The old version in fact never actually intended this; no version of G4 has ever sought to confer an "immunity" of sorts on speedied articles simply because they were once speedied, but because the old G4 was rather poorly worded this was a constant source of confusion. The new version seems to rectify all these technical problems of the old, and received an overwhelming consensus in support (in fact it was virtually unanimous). Regards—encephalon 06:02, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Template for new A8 criterion

I've created {{db-copyvio}} to be used as a shortcut {{db}} template for the new CSD, deletion of blatant copyvios. It looks like this, after a bit of tweaking by Splash:

This page meets Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion. The given reason is: This article and all its revisions are a blatant copyright infringement from the website of a commercial content provider: [{{{1}}} {{{1}}}], with no assertion of permission.

If you disagree with its speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page or at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. If this page obviously does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, or you intend to fix it, please remove this notice, but do not remove this notice from articles that you have created yourself.

Administrators, remember to check if anything links here and the page history (last edit) before deleting. Also, verify if the author of this page has been notified about our copyright policy.

Should pages be tagged with {{copyvio}} and with {{db-copyvio}} at the same time? Titoxd 02:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

No, that would be unnecessary. {{copyvio}} is for those needing investigation at WP:CP which is no longer all copyvios. Additionally, the text of an A8 candidate should not be blanked as it is with a correct applicaiton of {copyvio}. -Splashtalk 03:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I removed the duplicated use of {{{1}}}; all real URLs(that we would use) need to start with http:// and that (unless guarded by nowiki tags) automatically links itself; so there is no need to duplicate it in single bracket external link style. Bad HTML habits. ;-) Otherwise, it looks very good. Thanks! JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

How do I use CSD I5?

How do I tell when an image was last used in an article? -Splashtalk 13:43, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

You can't, just like you can't tell whether a category has been empty for more than 24 hours (C2). I think you're expected to take a reasonable guess. --fvw* 13:57, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Check the contributions of the person who tagged the image a CSD. If his previous edit was to remove it from an article (which is the abuse that the time limit is probably meant to catch), then it's probably been less than a week. :) —Cryptic (talk) 02:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Likewise on Categories. On categories especially, check the history. If the category has been around for a while, or has a history of more than just one or two edits, you may assume that it once did contain articles. Incidentally, I believe this criterion (Category empty for >24h) is flawed anyway: consider a populated category, depopulated by an editor and then tagged as a speedy and then deleted after 24h. That's just a cheap way to cicumvent the deletion process at WP:CFD. And it's not only a theoretical possibility either; it has happened recently at Category:Field Marshals of Nazi Germany (see the talk page). Lupo 06:27, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I strongly agree, and have queried this clause in the Categories CSDs several times, but noone seems especially interested. In fact, what you describe happens not at all infrequently on CfD. We should remove that clause altogether, imo. -Splashtalk 00:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Are there any plans to implement some kind of "related history" for categories (and other stuff too)? If not we should suggest it. Categories should defenently contain a "log" of when articles are added or removed from the category. A simmilar system for wikilinks could also be usefull (a "link log" wich register whenever someome add or remove a link to something). --Sherool 11:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Please clarify for me 48 hours condition of CSD A8

I regularly weed through the pages on WP:DEP, which brings to attention a number of copyvios which are weeks to monthes old but haven't been touched. I've noticed some of my copyvios have recently had the speedy copyvio tag added (and I've also received a notice about speedy) even though the articles are much older than 48 hours. So how serious is the 48 hours condition? Should I be using the speedy on the older untouched yet still just as blatant copyvios? What's the reasoning for the 48 hours condition anyway? Whitejay251 00:32, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, A8 just passed, and it was decided at the proposal page (Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material) that older copyvios could be speedied if they existed before A8 was created, but not if they were created after A8. So, an article that was created a month ago that meets all of the criterions in A8 apart from the 48 hours but could be tagged and speedied, but a page created three days ago meeting all other criterions couldn't (because A8 already existed). I'm pretty sure about this, someone correct me if I'm wrong. --Blackcap | talk 00:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I work on CP often, and appreciate the help this will provide. However, I would like to strongly protest the retrospectivity, although I missed that debate at the time. The copyvio tag gives the author 7 days to mend their ways. It's unfair to summarily change that via another process to 48 hours. Those that were reported before the effect of A8 should remain immune from it. -Splashtalk 00:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
The main reason for the 48 hours was to avoid hitting mirrors, not to give uploaders time to mend their ways. i would hold that if the original {{copyvio}} tag was put on within 48 hours of the inital page creation the rule is satisfied. The condition reads The material is identified within 48 hours of upload It seems to me that when the inital copyvio tag is placed, or a complaint is made, the copyvio materiel has been identified. DES (talk) 01:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Criteria for categories

How is C1 to be applied? One cannot tell whether a category ever contained articles from looking at the category. And if it has no articles presently, it may be hard to guess or otherwise find the articles it once contained. We would need software support for this: the software would need to give us some indication what articles were added/removed from the category when. Lupo 07:34, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

On C2, please see #How do I use CSD I5? above. This criterion is so badly flawed that I'll be bold and just remove it tomorrow morning if nobody yells "stop" and makes a good case for keeping it until then. (Categories that once contained articles must go through WP:CFD. Period.) Lupo 07:34, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to say "stop," simply on the grounds that something like this ought to be talked and thought about before just removing it. The purpose of this CSD, I figure, is to be able to speedy delete categories that no longer serve a purpose. It does so rather badly. So, instead of deleting it, why not think of something that works better? I'd do it myself, but I'm awfully tired and am heading off to bed. I'll see if I can do this tomorrow. --Blackcap | talk 07:41, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Inducing discussion was the purpose of my post :-) I did think of something better: don't speedy such categories, let them go through WP:CFD. We may reconsider speedying such cases when and if we have the necessary software support, and when and if WP:CFD is bogged down. Lupo 07:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't get that: obviously you were suggesting that they got through CFD (don't know why I didn't think of that) :). Never mind. If the software would support this, then it would be fine, but as now should go. Same with I5. --Blackcap | talk 17:51, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree, it wasn't the best of CSDs to begin with and the fact that it can easily be abused just makes it worse. --fvw* 13:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a fundamental flaw with the CSD of empty cats after 24 hours, if you compare it to closing procedures on Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion_policies. If a discussion is closed no consensus, and it is empty, it should not be deleted for 30 days, that's a bit longer than 24 hours. I am not saying empty cats shouldn't be deleted, but I am running around repopulating categories that users orphan just to put a {{cfd}} tag on. If anything I think it should at least be upped to 72 hours. ∞Who?¿? 03:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Since I don't see any fundamental objection to my doing so, I have removed the former criterion C2 (Categories empty >24h). I have also added a cautionary note on C1. Removing C2 should stop the problems with that criterion. If somebody wants it back, we'd first have to figure out what it was intended to accomplish, and then how to phrase it in a foolproof way. Lupo 07:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem with the changes you have made. Lets see how it goes with others and CFD practices. ∞Who?¿? 07:39, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I have set the minimum time to 72 hours and added a sub-rule that it doesn't apply to categories listed on CFD. See this discussion for further info. «»Who?¿?meta 23:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

A7 tagging - offensive?

A7 speedies are normally tagged with {{nn-bio}} or {{db|nn notable bio etc}} etc. But I'm a little concerned about the identical tag {{nobody}}. When a new user creates an unsuitable, but good-faith, article about themselves, their favourite teacher, or worse their highly esteemed deceased grandfather it is bad enough that it will be deleted (as it must), but to tag the person as a 'nobody' seems unduly and unnecessarily harsh. Does anyone agree, and if so, how do we propose this for deletion? (I obviously don't want to delete the templete nn-bio.) --Doc (?) 08:55, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that does strike me as biting the newbies a little, I'd support its demise on RfD. --fvw* 08:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree as well. -- Kjkolb 06:14, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Now listed on WP:RfD--Doc (?) 07:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Regarding CSD I1 and "fair use"

Acording to the fair use doctrine part of the "excuse" to use copyrighted images is that it's a "low resolution" version right? So IMHO the current wording of I1 is a little misleading:

An image which is a redundant (all pixels the same or scaled-down) copy of something else on Wikipedia and as long as all inward links have been changed to the image being retained.

This clearly indicate that bigger images are prefered. However it should make an exception for fair use images (not sure how to best word it). Just though I'd mention it, recently I listed big redundant and orphan fair use image on speedy deletion, but instead of being deleted the big image was put into the articles the smaller image was used in and then the smaller image was deleted instead. Not gonna make a big deal out of that, the difference was not that big, but IMHO it might be in order to make it more clear that as long as they are big enough to show the subject in question a scaled down/cropped image should actualy be prefered over a bigger/full size version when claiming "fair use". --Sherool 20:15, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Excellent point. In such cases the larger version should be deleted (even speedy deleted). We actually need guidelines to define how big is big enough, and how big is to big. If the smaller image is big enough, and the bigger one is to big, definately delete the bigger one if it's "fairuse". I also think its a mistake to leave it up to indivudals to decide what's "high resolution", as everybody has their own definition. --rob 21:17, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Personaly I would say that fair use images should not be any bigger than how they appear in the article. I think that would be a very good rule of thumb while not adding too much "instruction creep". So basicaly if an image is too big to use in full size (add "framed" atribute to test), then the image is too big and should be scaled down. That should be a fairly easy rule to follow. The particulars would probably be best discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use though. I just think CSD I1 should mention that "smaller is better" when it comes to fair use. --Sherool 21:54, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Another possible type of speediable redirect?

Over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting someone has just discovered an article which redirects to a stub template (Simpsons-stub). I don't know how you all feel about that here, but I suspect that there is never a valid reason for an article to redirect to a template or vice versa - perhaps the CSD should be extended to cover these weird cases? Grutness...wha? 00:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I've speedied a number of cross-namespace redirects, usually those that fall under CSD R2 or R4. Clearly R2 is too restrictive: as a hypothetical example, there's probably no good reason to have a redirect from, say, the User talk: namespace to the Image: namespace, and I would not hesitate to speedy them. I wouldn't mind rephrasing CSD R2 to say something like "any cross-namespace redirect that does not serve a useful purpose", but I'm sure it will come under attack from two sides: those who believe that one should not rely too much on individual judgement will prefer a more specific version that can be interpreted narrowly; and those who are comfortable with trusting that admins have only the best and noblest of intentions will point to Wikipedia:Ignore all rules for blanket permission to delete such redirects. --MarkSweep✍ 02:09, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I've read between the lines here, and hope the latter group holds sway in this case ;) Grutness...wha? 05:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Linking to individual criteria

There now is a shortcut to link to any single criterion, such as WP:CSD#A7 or WP:CSD#G1. Hope this helps. – ABCD✉ 02:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal - Criterion T1

Due to the constant influx of these templates at WP:TFD and the nasty implications of their very exisitence, I propose the following:

  • Any media licensing template which documents a license that clearly does not permit commercial use and has no linking pages from the Image: namespace which were created before May 19, 2005.

These templates surface daily, and once they exist, newbies tend to believe that they legitimize media uploads that are prohibited and are CSDable under I3. --Mm35173 20:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I object to this. Not a proper use of speedy deleteion. DES (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Could you expand on that a little? Whilst I'm still thinking about this proposal, one use of the speedy deletions is to remove articles and other items that potentially damage the project. This is why we speedy unacceptably-licensed images and attack pages. These templates are certainly in that kind of category, and we would already speedy any image that the hypothetical templates turned up on, no? -Splashtalk 21:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
It could be considered too big of a judgment call to be a speedy. ~~ N (t/c) 00:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
It's pretty easy to see if it restricts itself to non-commercial usage. They almost always use exactly those terms. -Splashtalk 00:35, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is an example of what we are trying to prevent (this template would probably be misleadingly titled Template:PD-LAGov):

This image is from the web site of the State of Louisiana, and is public domain.
The State has made the content of certain pages of its websites available to the public. Anyone may view, copy or distribute information found within these web pages (not including the design or layout of the pages) for personal or informational use without owing an obligation to the State if the documents are not modified in any respect, and unless otherwise stated on the particular materials or information to which a restriction on free use applies. The State makes no warranty, however, that the materials contained within these pages are free from copyright claims, or other restrictions or limitations on free use or display. The State disclaims any liability for the improper or incorrect use of information obtained from its websites.

Editors create templates like these, and other editors who don't understand what the legal nuances mean begin to upload anything they find from the louisiana.gov domain. Many people figure that since somebody put it on the PD tags list, that it has been reviewed and is legit. Note that some content may have been uploaded under this type of license before May 19, and in that case, we would make it inelligible for speedy. But, if no content at all links to a license like this, or if only content uploaded after May 19 links to it, then get it off Wikipedia so the mess doesn't grow. Leaving something like this out there is like leaving a banana peel on the floor. --Mm35173 13:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

  • They should be speedily deleted because of the proliferation risk you cite (not only of the tag but of content that will be moved to Wikipedia if the tag is allowed to remain). There is no reason to have a debate on these tags; they either are or aren't compatible, and my vote or yours doesn't matter; hence speedy is a good idea. Tempshill 22:24, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposal: Obvious spam

Every day, articles are nominated for speedy deletion, and speedied, on the grounds that they're "spam". Though this is a standard, everyday practice, there's a slight problem: "spam" is not a speedy criterion. This has led to a lot of confusion. For example, there are plenty of cases where a spam article will be listed on AFD, then speedied. Or someone will add a speedy tag like {{db|spam}} or {{db|advertising}}, which might be removed. Spam articles often meet other CSDs, but this isn't always the case.

Ultimately, almost all spam articles get deleted, most of them speedily. Obviously, the community has decided there's no place for spam on Wikipedia. To minimize confusion and reflect actual practice, I propose the following new speedy criterion (A9 if another article criterion isn't added before this one):

Short articles that serve only to promote a product, service, business, website or other entity, and are written in blatantly promotional language. If this assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD.

We can throw this in next time there's a vote on new speedy criteria. sɪzlæk [ +t, +c, +m, +e ] 10:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd support that. Although I think you need to add a non-notable clause, and drop the "short article" long spams should go as well. thanks Martin 12:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd support it as well, and also for long spams like Martin suggested. I don't like the notable clause so much because there are spam articles with no salvageable content for potentially notable companies. Then, somebody has to completely rewrite the thing. Essentially, a notable company is forcing us (through our policies) to write a good article on them because they spammed Wikipedia. You can see this happen of AfD sometimes. It would be better to just delete the spam article, as it can be recreated when someone is willing to put the effort into making a good article. How about something like:
Short articles that serve only to promote a product, service, business, website or other entity, and are written in blatantly promotional language, even a notable one, if there is almost no usable content. If this assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AFD. -- Kjkolb 13:46, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict with Ten's comment. Posting it here because it's a reply to above, not to his comment.) I am somewhat uncomfortable with this standard. I have seen far too many articles nominated for deletion as "spam" just because they were about a company or product that the nominator didn't appear to like. Remember that the first draft will very often be written by someone with strong feelings about the company. If their strong feelings are favorable, they may choose language that someone else would misinterpret as "blatantly promotional". The determination that an article is "spam" is a value judgment that I would prefer to be made by more than a single admin. I'm okay in theory with the speedy-deletion of "obvious spam" but am very skeptical that we can write a bright-line distinction to identify such obvious spam. The language above is very ambiguous. I would prefer to build from the standards that are under development at WP:CORP. Rossami (talk) 14:31, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I note that often these 'articles' are nothing more than cut & paste promotional material from corporate web sites. They technically don't meet the 'copyvio' speedy criterion–the companies aren't usually content providers–but there's usually not explicit permission to release the ads under the GFDL. Should we explicitly recognize articles that are substantially similar to external product descriptions and ads in the proposed spam speedy criterion? If someone can't be bothered to write something original for Wikipedia, then we shouldn't have to host it. (These articles are a proper subset of the articles described in the proposed criterion; I just think they're particularly egregious abuses and deserve special recognition.) I think we'd still get the majority of the ads speedied, and there would be less opportunity for whinging about poor admin judgement.

Articles which are substantially similar or identical to externally-hosted product literature... or something like that. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
That's okay with me as a compromise. I used the "no usable content" part because sometimes its nothing but hype with no encyclopedic information and even a decent stub could not be made without additional research. Also, another reason that the above (Ten) may not be speediable, is that they may not be caught in time. -- Kjkolb 15:03, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed exception to I3

There are photographs which are on Wikipedia which have been uploaded under a restrictive license which does not permit commercial use after May 19, all of which currently meet CSD-I3. I tagged one such image, which was the official photo of the premier of a Canadian provence, with {{db|CSD I3}}, which according to policy was the appropriate thing to do.

User:Bearcat disputed my action, saying that the photo was entitled to fair-use debate. I tend to agree at this point. Therefore, I propose the following exception to I3:

  • Exception. If the use(s) of the image appear(s) to possibly satisfy fair-use criteria, instead tag with {{I3 fair use}}.

The template to be used would look something like:

{{I3 fair use}}

--Mm35173 16:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Seems like overkill. Better just to clarify here that I3 doesn't apply to images with a fair use rationale. —Cryptic (talk) 23:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
Yup, but please remove the licence info from the image page in that case, since it'll only confuse things for some people. --fvw* 23:26, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Why doesn't A8 apply to blatant copyvio images, too?

Can anyone explain why CSD:A8 doesn't apply to blatant copyvio images? I cannot for the life of me fathom why not. For example, today someone uploaded "Image:Keeley.jpg", a topless model shot from page3.com with the Page 3 logo on it. Tempshill 22:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Because there is no such thing as a blatant copyvio image, as they can be claimed as fair use. There are other criteria that do enable images to be speedy deleted however. thanks Martin 22:18, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's so clear cut. If someone uploaded a 2048 pixel-wide poster of Britney Spears, we'd delete it in a jiffy and rightly so. That would be a blatant copyvio. The reason, I think, is that different parts of Wikipedia handle images and text. Copyright problems handles mainly text. Images and media for deletion handles pictures. The new A8 came about, I understand, primarily because somebody decided that the former wasn't processing copyright infringing articles fast enough. By coincidence, there has recently been a change in approach to copyright violating images. Fair use images and unlicensed uploads are being subjected to a pretty extreme clampdown.

There are technical reasons not to give administrators a free hand deleting images. When an image is deleted, it's gone. No getting it back. When a text item such as an article, a talk page, or a template, is deleted, then it can still be undeleted in seconds. --Tony SidawayTalk 22:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

That's why blatant copyvio images should be speedily deleted and not just suspected or even likely copyvio images. I would trust the admins to be able to make judgments on this matter, especially when the uploader isn't using one of the (very unacceptably overused) fair use tags. I would add that there's not a lot of harm done if a blatant copyvio is deleted; the uploader just uploads it again from the website he stole it from, and perhaps adds a copyright tag the way he's supposed to. Tempshill 22:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually Tony it was that clear cut, that is why I removed images from the proposal when I made it. Martin 16:28, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Neologism

I just got a pretty bad neologism, tagged as {{db|neologism}}, which as far as I can't tell isn't actually a CSD. The text was:

Mer. (mûr) n. 

  1. Everything and nothing ... At the same time
  2. An expression of disdain or mockery, as in "Mer, you're fat, mer."
  3. or Mer, Palmer has no much time on his hands Mer

   * This word and it's usage originated at Carmel High School, in Mundelein, Il.

Which I think is worth getting rid of, and I'm deleting it as a G9, but any thoughts on neologisms? Ëvilphoenix Burn! 02:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Abaddon the Despoiler

Should this be a CSD, or, more accurately, should it be SD'd? I can see that G1 could be construed to apply, but I don't think it was intended to be used for talk pages. The article talk page was on CSD for well over half an hour, so others must have hesitated. Rich Farmbrough 14:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

The history contains nothing of any conceivable use to Wikipedia, so it can be deleted. But it isn't that important. Very few talk pages should ever need to be deleted. --Tony SidawayTalk 14:40, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Sexually explicit images

OK, I know Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors. However, federal law says that if Wikipedia is going to incorporate images of sexually explicit activities which were transported across state lines (not originated in FL), then there have to be records containing the subject's name (and any previous name(s)) and date of birth, and we have to have evidence that we obtained this data from bonafide identification documents. We have no such mechanism in place for keeping such records, and our image upload requirements do not address this. Current policy requires that users respect state law, but not federal. I think this is very, very dangerous from a legal standpoint. Therefore, I propose:

  • Photographs and non-animated motion pictures uploaded to Wikipedia which contain explicit depiction of sexual conduct of actual people are to be speedy deleted.

I know this is not popular, but for example look at Image:Masturbation.jpg. It was clearly created out-of-state (User:Markaci says he's from Canada). If a federal prosecutor wanted to press charges, at best it could be a nasty legal bill, and at worst, 5 years in prison for a board member. --Mm35173 16:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I did not create Image:Masturbation.jpg! See its commons page, please. ~⌈Markaci⌋ 2005-10-23 T 13:53:51 Z
If an attempte were to be made to apply the above quoted law to a truly encyclopedic use of such an image, it would I think pretty clearly fail as being in conflict with first admendment protections. I would oppose any such policy. I will pledge in advance a contribution to a defence fund if any such case should ever be filed. DES (talk) 17:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
DESiegel, "pretty clearly fail"? You are not a lawyer. With the above statement, you are actually suggesting that Wikipedia engage in a protracted legal battle with the U.S. government to try and overturn established federal law (which has been upheld in court) on First Amendment grounds. This would cost an astronomical sum, for little added value. Unless your personal contribution is US$500,000 or more, I don't think your suggestion can be taken seriously. The law being cited is meant to prevent minors from being utilized as actors in commercial porn; I think it was inspired by the Traci Lords case. It's followed by all the commercial porn companies and websites. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and it strikes me that it does expose Wikipedia to liability. I support Mm35173's speedy delete policy, with the addition that if the proper documents can be verifiably supplied, such images would stay, in accordance with "Wikipedia is not censored for minors". Tempshill 18:36, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
I am not a lawyer, but I don't think that the first amendment protection defense would fly, because the offense is not in publishing the image. The offense is in not keeping the records. The law was very carefully crafted on this point. The law in no way prevents the publication of sexually explicit images of adults; it just says that you must keep verifiable records of the names and ages of the people in the images. In theory, we could do that, but we would probably have to require the names and ages plus an upload of the drivers' license or other photographic identification of the subject. The information (including the ID) has to be made available to the attorney general. We don't have any mechanism for "private" storage of images for these purposes. Anyway, I think it is a very bad idea to expose Wikimedia Foundation to that kind of liability, including imprisonment. Until we have a system that makes compliance with this law easy and secure, I think we ought not host these images. Perhaps a board member would like to weigh in on this? -- Mm35173 19:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
It is true that I am not a lawyer, although I have long been interested in and fairly closely follow legal and particularly First Admendment issues. If the foundatiuon's legal staff advises that we need such a policy, I would fell differently about the matter. Farnkly my vuew is that it is highjly unlikly that any such case would ever be brought. The law was, as you corrently state, aimed at commercial purveyors of erotica/porn. There have been many court decisions that not merely dos the First Admendment block laws which explicitly prohibit publication, it also blocks laws that unduly burden content creators and distributors. Such a law is not an undue burden for a film producer or other commercial creator, as a rule, because they would normally deal directly or indirectly with the models. That is not the case for a tertiary source such as wikipedia. Now there are not many cases where an image of explicit sexual activity is a proper, encyclopedic illustration to a proper encyclopedic article (the well known autofellatio image is one of the few, IMO). We quite posisbley should be particualrly cautions not to use such images except where they are clearly warrented by their encyclopedic context (use and context are issues that the courts pay attntion to). Also, if we do not use such images unsourced, we will in most cases be able to point to the source who will have needed records.
If Jimbo, or the Board, or the Foundation legal staff, feel the need to decree or even strongly reccomend such a policy, so be it. But if we are goping to impose this by the usual standards of communinity consensus, then i feel constrained to strongly oppose it. DES (talk) 19:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
No. This is a legal issue, therefore the final decision needs to be made by someone with legal training. I believe this issue (and this very law) were brought up in the Autofellatio fight, and the the verdict was that we don't need to worry about it. --Carnildo 21:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Agree. Wouldn't the SLAPS test apply? ~~ N (t/c) 00:00, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
The argument for why it wouldn't is that this is a federally-mandated record-keeping issue, not a free speech issue. I think we're all in over our heads here, but I hope that somebody with the foundation is looking at this issue seriously. -- SCZenz 00:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I figure it's Jimbo's job to worry about this. He probably has the most to lose... and I expect that, Bomis having been in the erotic images business, he's probably pretty well informed about where the pitfalls are and how deep they are. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
If the lawyers say we need to have identification then I am sure we can arrange that. Speedy deletion doesnt seem to be the answer, just a simple legal opinion and a process for identification. I am sure that necessary ID documents can be sent to permissions@wikimedia.org rather than publically displayed on the wiki... Justinc 00:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't the Foundation has a closed mailing list specifically for legal discussions, with actual lawyers on it (legal-l IIRC)? This discussion should probably be sent to it. --cesarb 00:49, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

It's Juriwiki-l. --cesarb 00:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh for the love of god not again. This whole proposal is a waste of electrons. If memory serves, during the autofellatio fight Jimbo said that we could go so far as to put up hardcore pornography and not worry about legal reprucssions. Somehow I don't really have a lot of faith in Mm35173's "I'm not a lawyer but here's my legal opinion" statements. Unless these proposals are coming from someone who is actually a member of the bar, I think they should be promptly ignored. →Raul654 01:40, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Please assume good faith here. I do not advocate adding this criterion if we can find another solution. If we can keep the necessary records, that would be great, but would the content then be truly reproducable? We can license it for distribution under the GFDL, but someone else reproducing the content would also need those records. I know that would be their problem technically, but I contend that the content would not really be free as in libre. If Wikimedia's legal experts say that it's nothing to worry about, then fine. But a plain reading of the law shows that the status quo exposes Wikimedia to certian liability, and I think that I am right to raise the concern. It is not a waste of electrons. If it turns out that the law isn't worth worrying about, then so be it, and we are better off knowing that and having it out in the open. If not, then let's fix the problem in a way that doesn't jeopardize the whole point of Wikipedia: to make a free encyclopedia.--Mm35173 03:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
The GFDL allows for "invariant sections". ~~ N (t/c) 14:33, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
That doesn't make much sense. If that were true, then someone could put up a porn site, claim it was an encyclopedia, and avoid all legal restrictions. I would rather leave it up to someone who knows, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions either way. -- SCZenz 01:59, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
No, for something to be exempt from obscenity laws it has to have redeeming social, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. WP definitely has one or more of those, but again, whether those provide an exemption from the laws we're talking about here is unknown. ~~ N (t/c) 14:33, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Actually, since this does seem to have some legal backing, it can't hurt to ask the juriwiki. I know that Michael Snow is a part of it, so maybe you should ask him about his opinion first? Titoxd(?!?) 03:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

To clarify, USC Title 18 Section 2257 states that:

"Whoever produces any book, magazine, periodical, film, videotape, or other matter which—
(1) contains one or more visual depictions made after November 1, 1990 of actual sexually explicit conduct; and
(2) is produced in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, or is shipped or transported or is intended for shipment or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce;
shall create and maintain individually identifiable records pertaining to every performer portrayed in such a visual depiction."
First off, this means that any images created before November of 1990 are fair game. Any copyrighted sexually explicit images that were "borrowed" from pornographic content providers (such as Image:DanniAshe1.jpg) already have to comply with this law (the companies or parties producing these images usually appoint a "Custodian of Records"). In such cases it is not (solely) Wikipedia's responsibility to maintain these records. For these reasons alone the proposed speedy criterion is an unnecessary and reactionary move.
GFDL images (such as Image:Masturbation.jpg)are a different matter, there you get to the question of the Internet's standing regarding interstate commerce and first amendment protection. There is apparently some wiggle room [3]. --Anetode 09:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia is obviously a created work (other matter) - there is significant precedent for websites being considered works in fixed medium under copyright law. It is obviously produced, in part, with materials not from Florida. Some of the depictions of sexually explicit conduct were obviously made after November 1, 1990, becuase they are high-resolution digital photographs (not scanned, and, yes, you can tell if they are scanned, because there are artifacts of inconsistencies of photographic paper at high resolutions). I'm sure we could use copies of those records which our sources have gathered, but are we doing that? --Mm35173 14:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
As others have said above: This has been discussed previously, at length, back when the original controversy over sexually explict images took place. Serious legal minds (i.e. real lawyers, people who actually know the law) opinioned that it was not an issue. The person who would be most liable if it was an issue--Jimbo--indicated that it wasn't a problem. There is nothing more to say here. --Aquillion 04:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Oh, sure, you can just go and follow sound legal advice, but then what about all the fun of nescient speculation? :) --Anetode 11:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
In what sense is the Foundation the producer of this material, rather than the distributer? After all, you local corner shop owner doesn't face 5 years in jail just because he doesn't have copies of the driver's licenses of every model in Penthouse... I would suggest a (very polite) letter to the Attorney-General's office. Physchim62 04:54, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
The Foundation is the creator of Wikipedia, which is a new work. The shelves at the corner adult video store do not constitute a work, but an encyclopedia is definitely a work. That's the difference.--24.176.68.73 20:21, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Here's a thought we should consider - what if Jimbo is wrong about our legal right to stream hardcore porn on the main page 24/7 without fear of legal repurcusions? Johntex\talk 21:44, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
  • As stated above, this law does not relate to internet traffic, it pertains specifically to mailed materials, as interstate commerce does not apply to anything sent over the internet. This has been argued in Supreme Court, and is why there are currently no taxes for interstate use of the internet (which is a seperate discussion). «»Who?¿?meta 11:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Having a bunch of images that can't be sent through the mails seems contrary to our goal of a free encyclopedia, IMHO. I think that we should consider our reusers here as well. Having said that, speedy deletion is completely the wrong way of handling this, because the definition is vague enough that a discussion is required to make sure an image actually qualifies. JYolkowski // talk 22:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • A general comment: might I humbly suggest that, instead of making fun of people acting in good faith who didn't know about a previous discussion of this issue, someone could have posted a link to the old discussion? -- SCZenz 14:46, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm strictly against the deletion of pictures with sexual content. I can't understand why there are people so prude about one of the most natural things of all. helohe 16:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. Perennial question, and the perennial answer is that WP:NOT censored. Radiant_>|< 10:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, but it is censored for the protection of Wikipedia. For example, images cannot be incorporated into Wikipedia if that incorporation would be in violation of U.S. copyright law, in order to protect Wikipedia from civil litigation and criminal prosecution. I am suggesting we do the same for other U.S. federal laws as well. 24.176.68.73 20:21, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Case G9 - "other policies"

Case G9 read "Pages eligible for deletion by other policies, and/or for which consensus for deletion has been achieved by other means." It was added by Kim Bruning on 26 Aug 2005 with the comment "General - explicitly stating that CSD does not override all other policy and does not override local consensus. (this should be common sense, but there you go)". It was not discussed on the Talk page but at the time, it seemed to make sense and we all let it go.

This case is now being misused as justification for speedy-deletions far beyond the scope of anything we've discussed before. For example, a user above made the argument that it can be used in conjunction with WP:NOT. Another made an argument that it can be used against neologisms. We have never allowed such things to be so casually speedy-deleted. We have always required them to go through the community scrutiny of a full V/AFD discussion.

I've removed the clause so we can discuss it here for a while. We might need a "common sense" speedy criterion but this is apparently not the right wording for it. Rossami (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

User:Rossami just delted G9, I suppsoe due to the discussion on "commonsense speedies" above. But I think G9 has a valid purpose. For example, If there is a deletion discussion but the clsoe is screwed up or orpahaned, G9 authorizes a speedy delte of the page with a delete consensus.

However, G9 should probably be reworded to make it clearer when it does and does not apply.

How about: "Pages for which a specific consensus to delete was demonstated in a discussion, poll, or survey, in accordance with appropiate policy may be speedy delted. Also, any accepted policy which specifically authorizes the deletion of a page under particular cirumstances is a reason to speedy delete such a page if those circumstances apply." (This might apply to a policy about images linked only to deleted pages, for example.) DES (talk) 22:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think G9 is necessary. Other policies provide for the deletion of other pages and other materials, and its inclusion here was simply a license to delete a page that someone wanted to delete at the time. -Splashtalk 22:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I think removing G9 was a great idea. I think that all criteria for speedies should be here; no policy should be able to independently justify speedies from the CSD policy. The way it was written, you could use other policies to speedy. --Mm35173 03:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with that removal. Speedy deletion criteria are a touchy issue, and should be added through well scrutinized discussions. When I saw G9, I didn't understand what it really meant. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:06, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

  • I'm not really opposed to its removal, but just wanted to point out it was added in light of the VFD restructuring debate. Its intent, I believe, was that if someone proposes a test run for an alternative deletion process, this G9 would allow it to be actually used (assuming it's widely advertised and such). Radiant_>|< 10:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I have difficulty in imagining a class of page that we generally agree should be speediable, but which is nevertheless not covered by a pre-G9 CSD. Can someone provide an example of a page that was "correctly" speedied under G9, but which was not actionable under the other criteria? encephalon 19:59, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we should ask questions like "has this been correctly speedied under G9". Rather, my intent was to point out that criteria for speedy deletion MUST NOT (see: RFC 2119) interfere with the normal operation of other parts of the wiki. Kim Bruning 16:18, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Propose Category rule 4

Categories created specifically to hold Userpage sub pages.

The category name space is not a place for this. All username subpages should be either listified on a user sub-page and/or in their watchlist. They serve no encylopedic purpose and do not need to be categorized. This does not pertain to the user templates or the various Wikipedian categories, only to such categories such as previous CFD cat Category:User:Yar Kramer/Category! D. «»Who?¿?meta 00:41, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Well until they start adding ency cats to them, which is how they are found a lot of times. «»Who?¿?meta 00:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Sounds like a good idea, at least in principle. Per WP:VAIN and WP:NOT a webhost, there are limits to what people should be doing in their userspace. I think we should make an exception for categories for somebody's main user page (such as "Wikipedians from <country>"). Radiant_>|< 10:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Needless restriction. If they start putting them in encyclopedic cats, just take them out and tell them to stop. Kappa 14:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The rule is not needed, as people can already be asked to not use their user page, for purely personal purposes. CSD should be kept short and focussed, so anybody can quickly read every point, and we shouldn't allow the list to grow piece-by-piece over trivial matters, to the extent where major rules are lost in a list of minor ones. --rob 19:48, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Hmm. I agree with Who in the sense that I can see why this is odd; however, the use of the category space for this purpose is likely to be so exceptionally limited, and so unlikely to do any kind of damage to the encyclopedia, that I don't see the need to ban it. encephalon 20:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed rewording of I4 and I5

I propose that insted of "listed in the category" for seven days, I4 say "has been tagged with a template that places it in the category" for seven days, aas this is easier to verify, and is how we actually do this anyway.

I also propose that instead of "not used in any article for seven days" (which there is no way to verify anyway) I5 should say "has been tqagged with a tempalte which places it in Category:Orphaned fairuse images for at least seven days, and not curently used in any article."

Note that {{or-fu}} and {{or-fu-re}} currently place images in the above category. I suggest using them to documet the start of a 7-day "orphan" period. I am doing so currently. DES (talk) 03:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

that's ok for I5, but there is no requirement that I4 (no source) should be orphaned for 7 days. Maybe once the backlog has been cleared we could do this, but I dont think it is practical now. Justinc 16:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Acccording to the current wording of I4 Images in category "Images with unknown source" or "Images with unknown copyright status" which have been in the category for more than 7 days, regardless of when uploaded. They don't have to be orphaned for 7 days, they do have to be listed for 7 days. I am saying that rather than say they must have been in the category, since cats have no history that tells you when an article was included, we instead say that they must have been tagged for this time period. Currently they are normaly include din the category by being tagged, so this is in normal cases not a functional change in how we work. DES (talk) 17:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Ah yes thats fine. Justinc 18:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Interpretation of WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios)

It has become clear to me from a number of discussions on VfD/ AfD and on VfU that people are interpreting WP:CSD A7 (non-notable bios) inconsistently, and disputes over proper interpretation recur. I think we need to form consensus over proper interpretation of this particular speedy deletion criterion. Some editors are insisting that a claim of notability must be substantiated and verified to count under A7. Others take the position that simply adding an adjective such as "famous" or "notable" makes a claim of notability and exempts an article from A7. Yet others have argued that A7 should apply to the creative endeavors of non-notable people. I think all of these contentions are mistaken. Therefore I propose the following commentary on A7. If this (possibly in a modified form) gains consensus support, I think it should be considered a guideline, and guide future applications of A7. DES (talk) 00:12, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

My Proposal:

General Principles

  1. A claim of notability is a statement made in an article that, if true, would persuade some significant proportion of likely people who might discuss and vote on AfD that the subject is notable.
  2. A claim of notability is a substantive statement that is potentially verifiable Mere use of adjectives such as "notable", "famous", "exceptional" or the like is not enough to make a claim of notability.
  3. However, a claim need not be proved, nor sourced, nor even accurate. Debates over the truth, verification, or required sources for a claim belong on AfD or on the article's talk page as part of article improvement. They are not grounds for speedy deletion.
  4. For purposes of WP:CSD A7, any claim must be assumed to be true. If the claim is disputed, or if there is a claim but the editor or admin is unsure if the degree of notability involved is sufficient to warrant an article, then WP:CSD A7 should not be used. Instead edit and expand the article, or list it on AfD, or use other cleanup techniques.
  5. A7 applies strictly to articles that purport to be about individual real people. It does not apply to fictional characters, nor to groups of any sort. If the reality of the person is disputed, take the matter to AfD.

Positive Examples

  1. A statement that a person holds or has held any elected governmental office is a claim of notability. So is a statement that a person holds any appointed office in a regional (state, province, or the like) or national government. (Examples: "John Doe was elected mayor of Dullstown in 1998." "Fern Francis was the Secretary of Transportation of New Jersey fom 1990 to 2003.")
  2. A statement that a person has been a national or regional officer of any organization that is itself notable is a claim of notability. (Examples: "Jane Smith was national Secretary of the ACLU in 2001." Fred Flintstone became the president of the Colorado Red Cross in 1997, and still holds that position as of 2005.")
  3. A statement that a person has published one or more books (unless they are said to be self-published or vanity published, or this is clearly implied) or multiple magazine or journal articles or stories is a claim of notability.
  4. A statement that a person is a musician or singer fulfilling any of the WP:MUSIC criteria is a claim of notability.
  5. A statement that a person has received coverage in mainstream print or electronic media is a claim of notability. So is any statement that clearly implies that any such coverage must have occurred.
  6. A statement that a person has won any sort of national or regional competition, or placed in the top group in a national competition is a claim of notability.
  7. A statement that other members of an individual's profession generally recognize the person as an authority is a claim of notability.

Negative Examples

  1. As a general rule, stating that a person is a member of a profession or occupation is not in itself a claim of notability. This applies whether the profession is school teacher, college professor, writer, lawyer, politician, musician, singer, military officer, scientist, software developer, or whatever. Achievements in a profession or occupation are another matter.
  2. A statement that a person is experienced in or skilled at a profession is not a claim of notability.
  3. A statement that a person is a student, whether at the primary, secondary, university undergraduate, or post graduate level is not a claim of notability. Nor is a statement that a person has a good academic record as such a student.
  4. A statement that a person has been an officer or active member in a purely local organization, or a local chapter or branch of a wider organization, is not a claim of notability per se unless the local organization or chapter is itself clearly notable.
  5. A statement that a person has founded or been active in an organization is not a claim of notability unless the organization itself is generally recognized as notable, or there is some plausible indication of the organization's notability in the article or its links.
  6. While the truth of a claim is not at issue, obviously absurd statements such as "John Doe was born in 1802 and developed the jet engine, the microchip, and the potter's wheel" or "Richard Roe is the currently reigning king of the world" are not claims of notability for the purpose of A7.

Consequences

An article tagged for speedy deletion under A7, that contains a claim of notability as described above, may be untagged by any editor, and should not be deleted on those grounds by any admin. If deleted under A7, such an article may be undeleted in accordance with the undeletion policy.

Note that the mere fact that a claim of notability is made is not a sufficient reason for the article to be retained during the AfD, process. There the plausibility, verifiability, and importance of the claim may be assessed. These examples are only for the purpose of deciding when to apply WP:CSD Criterion A7.

Examples of recent AfDs/VfUs highlighting differing views of A7

Discussion

(Please discuss the above proposal here)

  • I think the above-proposed guidelines will significantly reduce the inconsistency and confusion about A7, and generally help apply it sensibly. I also think that the Wikipedia: Deletion of vanity articles page is both poorly named, and does not well reflect the consensus of those who supported the proposal that became A7. It is poorly named because not all A7 deletions are about "vanity" -- that raises the question of intentions.. It was rather rapidly drafted after A7 passed, when some people realized that the examples with the A7 draft were not sufficient. DES (talk) 00:12, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree with "For purposes of WP:CSD A7, any claim must be assumed to be true." I don't think this will actually lead to gaming the system on the part of people creating articles, although in theory it could. There are surely situations in which a sysop can be sure enough that the claim is false to justify taking action. I think the discussion is very hypothetical, but as long as we're being hypothetical, take the example I gave above:
D. P. B. Smith is notable for being President of the Lancaster, Wisconsin chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society
  • Are you seriously suggesting that if the Barbershop Harmony Society's website shows no chapter in Lancaster, Wisconsin, that nevertheless "the claim must be assumed to be true?"
I'll take this; yes, for purposes of speedying. "Presumed true" might be better phrasing; but the argument over whether the list in the BHS website is complete (I've seen enough organization websites not to expect completeness, let alone presume it) is for AfD. Septentrionalis 02:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
Or to but it another way, If the claim could plausibly be true on its face, its actual' truth or falisty is irrelevant for speedy deletion purposes only. This why the original A7 proposal used the word "claim". This is because accurately determining truth or falsity is not reliably possible with only one or two pwoplw involved. if the issue is one of truth or falsity it is one for AfD, not for a speedy deletion. On AfD evidence of truth or falsity can be presented and examined. In that forum, no such presumption would apply. That is the difference, adn thsi is what this proposal aims to make clear. DES (talk) 05:10, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Similarly, criteria such as "A statement that a person has published one or more books (unless they are said to be self-published or vanity published)" have great potential for mischief. If a sysop isn't supposed to be able to tell whether the Barbershop Harmony Society has a chapter in Lancaster, Wisconsin, which is a fairly simple true-or-false matter, how is he or she supposed to know whether a book by Million Monkeys Press is actually self-published by Geoffrey Falk or not? True, it only has one title. True, it doesn't have a credit card merchant account, accepting only PayPal. But that does not prove it is self-published, or that "Million Monkeys Press" is a vanity press.
Note the proposal said "said to be" self-published. If you can think of better wording, or a better example, please present it. Or do you think that "admittedly" self-published books are notable? At the least, this will settle teh matter when obviously non-self-published books are involved. For example, while the absence of an Amazon listing does not prove self-publication, the presence of one pretty well disproves it, and thus settles the issue of whether A7 applies. DES (talk) 05:10, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm coming in here rather late in the game, but you should know that a former classmate of mine self-published a book she wrote but still manages to sell it on Amazon-- an Amazon listing isn't proof that a book wasn't self-published. Crypticfirefly 05:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The proposal, although well conceived, represents major, major instruction creep. Sysops will speedy what they like, and when they screw up people will use Articles for Undeletion. As always. And people will bring properly deleted articles to AfU. As always. And the people who object to criterion A7 on principle will continue to object to it. As always.
I always suspoect that when people cite "instruction creep" they really mean "I don't like this, but I can't find any good arguments." Far too many of the wikipedia procedures are IMO underdocumented and under-precise, the kind of thing that worked well when this was a much smaller project. DES (talk) 05:10, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
I see this as a possible sign of a lack of acculturation to Wikipedia. Yes, I'm serious. If you want to insert explicit instructions into every process, you haven't been fully acculturated to Wikipedia. Please cease the incessant instruction creep. Part of assume good faith is assuming that people will generally try to improve Wikipedia through their actions. This includes admins. Assume good faith, and a bit of intelligence on the part of admins, and you won't have a problem. Expect a few objections to your admin actions. Expect to object occasionally to the admin actions of others. It's natural, and don't take it personally. You cannot inoculate something as fluid as this project from such minor conflicts by imposing Wikilaw into every corner; in doing so, all you're really doing is imposing your POV regarding the rules when in fact multiple POVs allow people to get along better most of the time, and to have a ready, easy excuse on hand to use to diffuse things when there is a conflict. "Well, I was trying to improve Wikipedia by... and this falls under the general guidelines because... so maybe we can come to agreement." rather than "Can't you read simple instructions? It clearly says... and you did... WTF are you thinking?" See the difference? Instruction creep is among the worst evils on Wikipedia. Unfocused 09:14, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
  • And I seriously doubt that any votes in AfU or VfU will change as a result of pointing to the proposed criteria.
Did the WP:MUSIC criteria change votes on when a bad is notable on VfD? Yes they did. People got used to them, and now they are being applied to such cases almost automatically with little individual debate. i hope that the same thing will happen with these notability guidelines. Can I guarentee it? of course not. I think it's worth a try. DES (talk) 05:10, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

(This section was refactored slightly to make it easier to read).

  • I note that CSD A7 then refers me to vanity where it states Only those articles where there is no remotely plausible assertion of notability.... (Emphasis mine.) I do understand the stated concerns, but at this stage am leaning more towards "trust the admins". Can we have some links where this has been a problem about a particular article? I'd like to see this "in the wild" as it were.
    brenneman(t)(c) 12:53, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I would like to add that there are often articles that make implausible claims. e.g. "Will Morton became governor of Arkansas at age eight" and the like. There is a need for judgement in applying these criteria. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I think this looks good, at first glance. For clarity, I'd like to add the rather obvious "Any statement that a person will be notable in the future, such as 'John Doe will one day receive the Nobel prize in physics for his ground-breaking theories on time travel' is not a claim of notability for the purpose of A7. / Alarm 18:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I tentatively support this proposal, and more weakly support killing the "Deletion of vanity articles" page. Like WP:MUSIC, I think this has potential to get most editors who care about this sort of thing to use more-or-less the same standards, without getting policy micromanagement in the way of routine processes. Barno 19:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I suppose what I really want is a drastic rewrite of the "Deletion of vanity articles" page plus a page move replacing most of its contgent with this the content of this proposal (as modified by this discussion). Then the {{db-bio}} tag would link to the resulting text. DES (talk) 19:42, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I support A7 because I think there's a lot less controversy over nn biographical articles (or for band vanity, which sadly did not have its possible CSD pass) than there is for schools and other more controversial topics. TheUninvited raised a good point that we need a CSD for articles people who make implausible claims to notability. I don't know if you remember articles like Chris labosky (its AfD link), but it started off as student vanity and turned ugly. This was before A7 was passed, and I and several voters were talking about how we wanted the article speedied, while all the while, sockpuppets of the author were casting "Do Not Delete" vote after "Do Not Delete" vote. Articles and AfDs like that one are why A7 is useful. :-) --Idont Havaname 22:46, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm a fan generally of this writeup and concur that clarification on A7 would be nice so that a distinct standard can be cited -- as noted, WP:MUSIC is an excellent case of this. Anyway, on your Positive #4, I think revision is needed: Without a speedy for band vanity (which, as noted elsewhere, failed to pass), I don't see how we can establish "musician in a group that meets WP:MUSIC" as protection. In and of itself it's fine, but it implies that a musician in a group that does not meet WP:MUSIC lacks that same protection. As it stands, I find the current common practice of AfD'ing a band and member articles concurrently to be appropriate, as member notability usually revolves around the determination of band notability. All this rambling is to say I'd prefer a positive example "musician / singer is an inherent claim of notability" with an overriding negative example "a musician / singer of a band deleted through AfD is not a claim of notability." This protects new articles which lack a context judgement but speeds the cleanup process for band vanity that leaves a lot of associated articles behind. — Lomn | Talk / RfC 18:05, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, "Musician in a group that does not meet WP:MUSIC" I want inrrepted as not being a claim of notability. An article about the group itself cannot be speedy deleted unless and until a band-vanity proposal is passed. But merely saying that someone "is a musician" does not make that person notable, any more than saying that the person "is a plumber" or "is a college professor". Only if the person is a nmotable musician (or at lest an apparently notable one) does the person's musionhood make the person notabel, and for that the WP:MUSIC guidelines form a reasonabel standard, i think. DES (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Some concerns

(refactored for readability—encephalonὲγκέφαλον  21:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC))

  • David, good to see someone of your skill tackle what remains the most contentious CSD. This a good effort, but I disagree with some of it.
The core of this proposal, the sentence which is its central tenet and to which all else are caveats and addenda, is your General Principles #1:
A claim of notability is a statement made in an article that, if true, would persuade some significant proportion of likely people who might discuss and vote on AfD that the subject is notable.
Because of its critical importance to your scheme, this sentence should be a strong and unambiguous definition. I do not think it is, however.
  1. The first problem with this definition is that it is vague in its limits. What does "some significant proportion" mean? If a sysop on NP patrol finds a page with claims that many WPns would not consider claims to notability, but can think of 1 WPn who definitely would, is that page an A7 candidate? How many AfD regulars fulfill "some significant proportion"?
  2. The second (closely related) problem concerns the definition itself. Essentially, it reduces to: "A claim of notability is one which at least some people on AfD will believe is a claim of notability" (if it were factual). It is possible to construct claims which will confound this definition, making it for practical purposes unhelpful. Let's use the Seth Schoen AfD for example. You participated in that AfD, invoked this rule, and concluded that Seth Schoen was speediable under A7. Yet, I can clearly conceive of several WPns who would say that, if Schoen's claims in the article were factual, he would indeed in their view be notable. How do you reconcile this? This is the biggest weakness of the proposal.
  3. Despite what you say about instruction creep, I think that criticism might be fair, David. A7 is just one rule in the CSD. But because this characterization (general principle #1) is vague, it requires a large number of explanations, supports, and addenda to make it work: in the list above, you have 5 general principles, 7 positive examples, and 6 negative examples. All this is in support of one CSD.
  4. It seems to me that to make A7 unambiguous, it needs to be sitting at one of the extremes: either at a very low bar, or a high one. An example of a high bar might be, "any article about a person that does not substantiate any claims to notability of its subject by reference to an independent primary or secondary source." Of course, hell will freeze over before such a bar is accepted on WP :). At the opposite end, we could apply a very low bar which will amount to saying that any kind of assertion that the subject is notable cannot be deleted with A7. I think it makes sense to aim for this end, for practical and philosophical reasons. Your proposal brings A7 somehwere in between; in between however, can be a very hot, tumultuous place.
  5. I think your general principle #2 is very valuable. I sense that a form of it can be used to tighten up the problems with the currently used A7.
  6. Finally, do note that what you're proposing is not necessarily a clarification of the A7 that was agreed upon. It is arguable that the intent of the rule is being altered. This is thus a huge exercise that will require widespread discussion and consensus before any edits to the current A7 will be seen as legitimate by the community. I would caution against moving pages and such before this is fully discussed, "voted" on (to use what has become a very contentious word), and accepted. Best wishes, David.—encephalonὲγκέφαλον  22:39:27, 2005-09-12 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your detailed comments, Encephalon. I agree that general principle number 1 is at the heart of my proposed guidelines. I could attach numbers to "some significant proportion". Perhaps saying 10 to 20% would catch the spirit of what I had in mind. But in soem sense it would be false precision, because there is no way to know how many people would be presuaded on an AfD without running one. Your second point is correct, but it is really an intended feature. I am not trying here to impose a cahnge on the overall consensus on who is notable, but rather to try to summerize the existing consensus for futurte referencee. Ultimately speedy deletion is intended to delete only things on which the decision of the regular deletion process can be predicted in advance with pretty good assurance. If we speedy-deelte something that would probably have been kept on AfD, the process is not workign properly. So the idea is to define notability ultimately by what people have doen and continue to do on AfD in similer cases, and by prdictions of what they are likely to do. The detailed examples do try to shape this a bit, to provide a format for consensus that can later be pointed to, but they are not really intended to swing the practice towards a more deletionis or towards a more inclusionist trend. Rather they are intended to let us stopp having the same arguments with the same results over and over,, but instead to settle them and let us get on with writing wikipedia -- subject of course to reconsidering the answers when we choose to do so.
  • You are corrent that I wanted to plave the bar a bit higher than "any statement implying any vaguse assertion of notability" but much lower than "fully sourced and verified notability". The latter is not only unpassable, but a bad idea if it could be passed, just like the recent proposal to speedy-delete articels without source citations. It prevents poor starts from growing into good articels. But IMO the former sets the bar too low, and winds up making AfD waste time on lots of pages sure to be deleted in the end. Thjis is what I want to avoid, and what I think A7 was intented to avoid when it passed.
  • Yes this does require a bit of spelling out. But I think once it becoems accepted practice, it will not need to be referred to too often, and pulled out and parsed in detail even less often. I think and hope that if we establish a consensus, tht consensus will becoem part of the general practice, and people will be mostly following it with only the occasional need to refer to the detailed principles and examples. I guess my reaction above was that I think people are far too ready to yell "instruction creep" whenever very simple cut&dried procedures and polices don't work, whenerver things need a bit of spelling out.
  • I am really not trying to change what I percive the intent of A7 to have been. Certianly soemthing like this is what I thought I was supporting when I argued for and then voted for A7. Soem clarifications are the result of what we have seen as the poractice under A7 since it was passed. In any case this is a proposal. I am not trying to start actign on it, nor to start moving pages or re-wording templates until and unless there is celar and widespread support for it. i don't know if we will need to have a formal poll -- i would hope that consensus would be so clear that there would obviously be no need for one. But quite possibly a poll will be a good idea. But not until the proposal has been throughly discussed and seems to have significant support. Ther is no point in opening a poll unless there seems a significant chance of its passing in a case like this, i think. DES (talk) 14:24, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Great thoughts David. Some quick comments. I agree with and/or understand where you're coming from in much of the last three paragraphs. I do think that the objection to general principles #1 is significant—for the very important reason that very few of us will agree on what constitutes notability in all cases. When this is so, a rule that is predicated on notions of notability held by "some significant proportion" of WPns will likely lead to some confusion—and very likely to increased calls of "bad speedies" (something I believe all of us want to avoid). Formulating a standard that cleanly picks off via speedy deletion all the garbage that flows into WP, without also throwing out some of the good, is very hard to do, mainly because it is often difficult for one sysop in the dead of the night to decide on his/her own whether subject X just about qualifies for notability as determined by some significant proportion of us. I really do think the bar must be set at as clear a line as possible (ie. at an "extreme" limit, in this case at the low end). I like your general principle #2 a lot; I suspect that serious consideration to using a version of it to clarify the existing A7, with the addition of some clarifying examples similar to the ones you have above, may achieve a good result.—encephalonὲγκέφαλον  22:04, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This came up in DES's RFA, so I want to add some of the comments I made there to this thread, partly refactored:

In my opinion, A7 should be construed much more narrowly than General Priniciples #1. The only question we should be asking is whether the article makes statements attempting to explain why the person is important or significant. If yes, then it is not a candidate for speedy in my opinion and should be directed to AFD. Any judgment about whether the claims being made are sufficient to persuade people that a subject is notable is inevitably the provenance of AFD. Obviously, DES didn't know that I find writing the DeCSS Haiku to be an inherently notable action, instead he put himself in the position of guessing whether other people would find the statements about Schoen to be sufficient evidence of notability, which strikes me as a significant problem.
Maybe these actions are not uncommon and there are many people abusing A7 in this way, but I certainly would not have voted for it if I knew that people would be subsistuting their own judgment rather than AFD's when it comes to deciding whether a given set of the claims about what makes a person important and significant are notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia. Obviously, if an article says: "John Smith is a tailor for Ohio with 3 children and 2 dogs", that isn't trying to be notable and should be speedied. An article that says: Mike Kinkella is a star quarterback and 3 time MVP of his local arena football league, certainly is trying to sound notable and deserves to be discussed on AFD. (Incidentally, I agree it should be deleted, just not that it could be speedied.)
Making judgments about the validity of notability claims should have no business in the speedy process.

Dragons flight 18:21, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Oppose all speedy creep

  • Oppose each and every extension, enlargement, or addition to CSD. These are bad solutions to serious problems; they destroy more than they protect.
NOTE: For the purpose of (VotingIsEvil) voting, my comment should always be counted as a vote opposing any proposal that gives any new latitude to speedy. Conversely, any proposal that narrows or restricts its scope has my support.
THIS IS A PERMANENT POSITION. DO NOT DELETE IT. Thank You! — Xiong熊talk* 22:58, 2005 September 12 (UTC)
It is myu intent and thought that the above proposal neither expands nor contracts the scope of A7, but merely stabalizes it. In some of the examples it eould confirm a disputed application of A7, in others it would make it clar that an attempt was made to apply it improperly. The idea is to have the mean unchanged while reducing the varience, in statistical terms. DES (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I disagree. As Wikipedia becomes more popular, we will have to deal with ever increasing quantities of ads, vitriol, POV and just plain nonsense. To send all of it through AfD will ensure that a good quantity of it gets through and Wikipedia will get a reputation as a collection of useless, unreliable garbage. We will need systems in place to remove this trash quickly and effectively without removing valuable content. Well written, enhanced CSD policies are the best way to do this.--Outlander 16:37, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • I believe that any statement by an editor that refers to their "PERMANENT POSITION" should be given less weight in the discussion. Although all of us hold strong views someitmes, we need to be careful never to close off the possibility of changing our mind or bending in the spirit of compromise and consensus. Johntex\talk 21:38, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Tension between Speedy and AfD

A large part of the difficulty with any speedy category is that they are rooted in argument that has internal contradiction.

  • They are intended with regard to nn-bios to avoid a five-day wait and a unanimous Afd resulting in delete - thus general princliple 1.
  • However, during AfD and article can undergo expansion, becoming "worthy" of keeping, and we want to avoid placing the burden on the admin to do that expansion xemselves - thus all the other general princliples.

Everything else (which I mostly agree with in principle) is to codify the push between these two, to strike a balance. But since that balance is often highly contentious even in AfD, I think we're unlikely to formalize it here, other than as a LCD. Thus this can only drive the "bar" lower, which (except for one) I think we do not want.

Having looked over the examples (thank you for those!) I'm now leaning further into the "trust the admin" zone. If an article does not present credible evidence of notability I think it should be a speedy candidate.

Strenghten VfU and clean of the vanity article page, but let's not touch the actual criterion.
brenneman(t)(c) 23:50, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you about the tension and the general purpose of my proposed principles. I point out that some people are currently arguing that any statemetn impling notability, "credible" or not, bars A7. I also point out that it is not solely a matter of admins. non-admins apply speedy tags, and non-admins can and do remove them again if they see them before an admin acts. Also it isn't so much a matter of not trusting admins, as giving them a better guideline follow, so that they know what we are trusting them to do -- then trusting them to follow it. I hope you are wriong that this is unable to get agreement except to drive the bar lower -- that is not my intentDES (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

TwoThree quick things:

  • I both understand and applaud your efforts in this area. Should have said that before.
  • By "trust" I mean "give plenty of lattitude in use of admin powers", really.
  • I've just realised (seeing the words "bad speedy" above) that some of the most vocal opponents to speedies are admins.
    brenneman(t)(c) 23:46, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I have nothing to add to the discussion of the specific proposals you have made, but I would like to note that I don't feel it a bad idea to suggest guidelines for speedy criteria. I note for instance that criterion G1 is probably the most widely abused of all, employed not only to cover legitimate cases like"asdfasdfasdf", but in the extreme, perfectly reasonable articles with which a user may disagree. In the middle is a large number of articles which may display rampant silliness or even malicious intent but which in fact are not, by Wikipedia's definition, patent nonsense at all. Expanding the description of G1 in the form of adding guidelines, while not likely to eliminate its abuse entirely, would probably reduce the number of articles so tagged, which is a step in the right direction. In my opinion, such expansion is not instruction creep: those who choose to follow guidelines will, and others won't. At the same time, guidelines aid those to whom policy is not clear. Where is the harm in that? (I'm sure someone will be glad to tell me:) ) Denni☯ 02:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Counter-proposal

I disagree with the proposal listed above (except for the bits about assuming whether a claim is true or false), but rather than just unconstructively disagreeing with everything I'm going to make my own:

  • A claim that a person is a member of any group (profession, occupation, etc.) is a statement of notability if:
    • Membership in the group is not very common (Example: Not everyone's a rock musician. Counterexamples: Everyone's a student at some point in their life, everyone in New York City is a resident of New York)
    • It is possible for someone to be notable simply by being a member of that group (Example: Some professors are notable simply for being professors. Counterexample: No students are notable simply for being students).
  • Any claim made in the article should be considered to be true unless it is so ludicrous that it couldn't possibly be so.
  • Anyone may remove an A7 CSD tag providing they place the article on AfD.

Comments? JYolkowski // talk 19:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I think this leaves the bar too low. For exaple i strongly object to the idea that simply being a rock musician or a college professor means that a person is notable. Some rock misicians and college professors are notable. Most are not. An articel must in soem way indicatre why a particualr rocker or prof is notable. "John Jones is a rockmusician. He plays with AnotherGarageBand." and "Jane Wilson is a professor at AnyState College." should be subject to speedy deletion, IF those were the entire articles in question. DES (talk) 20:51, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

  • One profession that probably is inherently notable, for Wikipedia purposes, is professional athletes. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
    I disagree with that sweeping statement. There are 12,000 professional golfers in Europe alone. Being a "professional athlete" merely means that you are paid to play the sport. Most professional athletes are work-a-day joes in minor leagues or second-string players in larger leagues. They serve an important role and are respected players but do not automatically deserve articles in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
    However, I would not disagree with the argument that "being a professional athlete is enough of a claim of notability that this speedy-delete criterion should not apply." Rossami (talk) 22:08, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
    Yes, sorry, that is actually what I meant, inherently notable in the sense that being a professional athlete is always a claim to notability, not in the sense that it always implies sufficient notability for the article to be kept. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:13, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
    While I don't really like that, I can accept that a statement that a person is a professional athelete is a claim of notability, as is perhaps the statement that a psron is a professionally published author, or that a person is an astronaut. I think these (and whatever otehrs we feel the need to add to this list) should be listed exceptions to the generl prinsiple that merely statign a person's profession is not a claim of notability, whoch should otherwise remain intact. I hope people can agree with me on this. DES (talk) 21:54, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
    Looks like discussion about this has pretty much died now, but I'd like to just voice my approval and support of the proposal in general, as well as this addition in particular. I've certainly found that the interpretation of A7 tends to vary wildly and, as it is not very well defined, that's caused certain conflicts. If A7 leads to unnecessary argument about what it entails, that just defeats the very purpose of its existence; if anything, I actually think that adopting this proposal would lead to fewer articles being speedied, because this more clearly defines what it does not apply to. I very much like the idea of having a more specific definition to what counts as an assertion of notability and I think that as far as the smooth handling of the ever-increasing AfD workload goes, that's going to be a huge help. -- Captain Disdain 11:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
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