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Non notable things

If we come across an article dedicated to a non notable instance of something - not a person, event or named animal - It doesn't seem to fit into the current A7 groups and yet it is an unremarkable named version of a thing. Specific example is Gateway Station (Aliens). I can imagine an article on space stations and those which turn up in fiction but a whole article to a station barely mentioned in a film and whose name has no importance in that film seems like something it should be possible to tag for speedy deletion and not have to go through AfD for... Is this a missing option in A7 or an intentional decision? I'm just wondering if it should be added? Antiqueight confer 17:07, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

A7 only applies to subjects falling in the listed classes, and not to anything else, including fictional types of space station. This is intentional. The restricted application of A7 is because these subjects are thought to be such that it is easy to decide what is and is not an assertion of significance within those areas. For any other topics you have to use WP:PROD or WP:AFD if you want the page to be deleted. Incidentally A7 isn't about determining notability - it's supposed to be a lower bar than notability, and it is perfectly possible for something to be non-notable but not qualify for A7. Hut 8.5 21:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
Strictly, to pass A7 there must be a credible claim to significance. Presumably the person that posts the thing believes it, so it's down to the reviewing admin to decide how credible this is - or if there IS a claim to significance made. It does seem a bit daft that an article can be A7ed if it's about a company, but not if it's about the only product made by that company. I would assume that somewhere in the past this was decided in a discussion here. It could be changed in a discussion here. You probably stand a better chance on the Lottery... Peridon (talk) 11:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes - is there anywhere I can go to better understand the logic behind the current A7 selection? It would seem to me it should be easier to decide what is and is not significant when talking about a fictional space station than a person (And I'm a big fan of fictional space stations..) Surely this kind of thing is exactly where a lower bar than notability should exist. It seems for example to be unclear in that it applies to articles about web content but not to creative works including books. But in today's world web content can be a creative work..The grouping seems arbitrary and if possible I would like to understand where to go to get a better grip on why it is not (if not). I'm new here and need to understand so I stop making mistakes or to start a discussion for change.Antiqueight confer 19:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
The vast majority of YouTube home-produced stuff is less than significant, with notable exceptions such as Smosh. Most blogs and wordpress sites are not significant. I would say that's a very possible reason for web content being in there. There's far more of this stuff than of books. Non-notable books appearing here are the self-published ones (you'll get to recognise the outfits like lulu, AuthorHouse, CreateSpace and so on - do a check at Amazon for the publisher and Google that if you don't recognise it, and if the book isn't at Amazon it's a total no-hoper), but many of the articles go as spam, copyvio or A7 because the article name is the author's not the book (and they're non-notable). Prod sees off the rest. Regular published but obscure and little or nothing at Google stuff can also go to prod, if spam or copyvio don't get 'em. You're welcome to come to me with queries. I'm not the voice of God, but I've deleted over 29,000 pages (some by request, of course), restored about 100, and can't remember losing a case at DRV, so I may know a bit. Just don't ask me about uploading files or writing .js things. Or how to get an article to featured status. Peridon (talk) 20:30, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
A7 fist applied only to people, mostly to take care of articles by high-shcool students about themselves or friends. "Steeve is an amazing dood" sort of thing. Then groups were added, largely to take care of garage-band articles. Other kinds of articles have been added one at a time as there was a percived need, each after fairly extensive discussion. In general only categories in which 1) a lot of junk articles get created, 2) the chance of false positives (short poorly written articles about what turn out to be notable topics) seems low, 3) specialist expertise is not needed to sort junk form non-junk, and 4) a clear bright-line distinction can be drawn between subjects that can be A7'd and ones that cannot are included in A7. There has been resistance to adding creative works, like songs or records, or fictional works, like space stations. Largely the argument has been that these are more likely to be in fact notable but not readily recognized as such by 1 or two people. Of course, consensus can always change. DES (talk) 15:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Quoting myself from a few years ago about one of the reasons we have the things in the A7 list we do, and not others (we were specifically discussing the proposed addition of films to A7): "It's not just the prevalence of the topics within A7's reach but how often those topics are used for unremarkable articles that warrants inclusion in the list; this does not fall into that category. It's in the very nature of people to post about themselves, their pets, friends, groups, organizations and their webpages. It is not nearly so common for people to try to create articles on unremarkable films. In other words, if you looked at 1,000 of the last articles posted about people that did not indicate importance, and 1,000 of the last articles posted about films that did not indicate importance, you'd find that a much higher percentage of the films were actually notable, even if the people did not indicate the importance in what they wrote. That's a good reason not to add this to A7s ambit."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:45, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Addition to G13: Restored articles at 3 month mark, if unedited; 1 month mark if sill unedited

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

We made G13 but provided no mechanism for further deletions if nothing's done after restoration. Here's language I propose we add after the current text of G13:

If an AfC draft is undeleted and then remains unedited for a further period of three months it may be deleted again under this criterion. Any request to undelete a second time must be accompanied by specific proposed edits for improvement. If no improvement edits are made within one month of a second restoration, it may be deleted under this criterion and any further undeletion request shall not be considered uncontroversial.

The background here is that we uncontroversially undelete G13s upon request, mostly through WP:REFUND. We tell people how to request restoration whenever we delete through {{Db-afc-notice}} and we also have Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13. So how often are these restorations being edited after restoration? I looked at samples from the beginning of June that are still live in chronological order and as of today (more than four months later) only one had any edits were made after restoration:

✗Restored on June 2, 2013‎ Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Steve Kravac;
✗Restored on June 2, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/DENIM GARMENT WET PROCESSING;
✗Restored on June 2, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/SPACEWatch (software);
✗Restored on June 2, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Christopher Howard;
✗Restored on June 3, 2013 User:Jmcfarland27/Chris Diorio;
✗Restored on June 5, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Secrest, Wardle, Lynch, Hampton, Truex and Morley;
✗Restored on June 8, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Indiana State Association of Middle Eastern Teachers and Dancers, Inc.;
✓Restored on June 8, 2013‎ Green Ginger - (Changes made and moved to mainspace);
✗Restored on June 9, 2013 Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Endorphin Power company

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:47, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

If a page is restored, then it is edited right after it is restored (as the admin will need to remove the {{db-g13}} template). Wouldn't the least complicated solution simply be to decide that the page is deletable as G13 6 months after it was restored? This gives the editor some time to fix the submission, and it doesn't need any additional tools to identify the article as it will end up together with other submissions which were abandoned at the same time as this one was restored. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that would make sense. It's possible that a page might be deleted under G13 without being tagged, but I suppose we could just agree to count the restoration of the page as an "edit". Hut 8.5 16:27, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) We can spell it out, but I think it's obvious this does not refer to the admin who restores editing to remove the G13 template. Of course an AfC draft can be deleted again at the six month mark. This doesn't change that. The point is that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of proposed articles unsuitable for the mainspace. Since people are restoring and then doing nothing, they are going right down that path, first getting another six months, and they can indefinitely keep requesting restoration.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:28, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
That problem can be prevented by using MfD. If a page is restored too many times, take it to WP:MFD and get it permanently deleted. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:32, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
You might as well have said, "all articles we speedy delete can be taken to AfD, so let's get rid of speedy deletion. We can't because we have finite resources. Why would we want to burden our resources by taking all of these to MfD?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
That's ridiculous. With my solution, only the contested ones would go to MfD. However, with your solution, all submissions ould have to go there. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
No, you have no solution (just the status quo), where unsuitable articles can potentially remain indefinitely unless they're taken to MfD. No draft need go to MfD at all were we to institute this. Not sure what you're understanding is, but it's not what the plain meaning of the proposed language results in.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)For every AfC page that's in Category:AfC submissions by date my Bot goes through and looks at the last edit date of the page. AfC submissions show up in that category (or subcategories of) when there's at least 1 AfC decline or draft template on it. Once the page goes past the 6 month window, the bot notifies the creator that their submission is in danger of being nominated for deletion. At least 30 days after the notification, if the page still exists and hasn't been edited in the meantime the bot will make the G13 nomination. Either the page will be deleted or will be not deleted. If the page does get deleted, when it's requested undelete, the page modification time will be recent because the admin removes the G13 nomination banner. If the page gets edited prior to the 30 days window, the bot will toss the record of potential and wait patiently for the next G13 eligibility window.
If the admin comes in to delete on G13 and sees that it's already been deleted once for G13 rationale the admin is going to be more aware of the lack of progress. When the page gets petitioned for at UND, the person requesting the restore is going to have some more explaining about why the article has been successfully G13ed twice. Hasteur (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
True, it may be that admins will look at the page history with a critical eye and the second or third time, simply decline without a strong showing of imminent improvement (though I don't think we should allow drafts to sit for 1½ years to find out), but we've set the processes around G13 as allowing uncontroversial deletion upon request, somewhat like a prod removal so I also see just re-ups over and over. What I will do is simply see how this pans out over time. If the real world shows very few of these, great, and if there are many in a few years I will re-propose some version based upon the proof in the pudding.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree that there doesn't need to be any additional creep added to this. I'd consider the petition to request the undelete as an activity with intent to improve the article (under AGF) and say that would be justification for the six month timer to be restarted. Technical 13 (talk) 16:46, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't see this as being necessary per the above. As long as the restored page is considered an AFC submission either due to the presence of an AFC submission template or its location in the pseudo-AFC namespace (i.e. WT:Articles for creation/ or in exceptional or historical cases, WP:Articles for creation/ or obvious mis-spellings of either one), it gets a new 6-month clock. If it is WP:USERFIED and the AFC template removed, it is treated like a WP:Userspace draft and is not subject to G13 at all. Unlike WP:Proposed deletion, there is no "limit one use only" limit on G13. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 16:50, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
  • No to WP:CREEP. If you get a REFUND, the clock starts over again. If there are actual problems with those AfCs, then they should get removed on that criteria. But they aren't abandoned - someone cared enough to ask for them back, so something's happening. If you want to make a list of these articles for the AfC project to pay some attention to them, please do so, but having a few that get undeleted and G13ed after another 6 months is a miniscule annoyance in comparison to the ungodly mess that is all the actually abandoned AfC drafts. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:39, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The reason driving the introduction of G13 was tens of thousands of abandoned drafts. A request for restoration completely sets the page apart from these other tens of thousands. How many are there? Why not talk to the user who requested restoration? Are they an infrequent editor? Speedy deletion during an absence is very unwelcoming on your return. Why not userfy, if not already done, and replace the latest version with {{Inactive userpage blanked}}? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:36, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Nah, just have the timer restart, and don't bother with smothering everything with new layers and layers of red tape. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 05:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I didn't read the entire page, but let's not run into wp:creep. As Stefan2 notes, doing nothing means it will be eligible for G13 in six months. Works for me.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:01, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I will join in the oppose here. Just keep the same rule, no improvement in 6 months again then G13 can apply again. If the user asks for undelete a second time and there was no editing then we can decline that at that point. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 19:29, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose also; the number being restored is not so great that we need any special rule for them, just let the six-month ticker start again. If in a year or so we find there is a significant number being undeleted a second or third time, we can reconsider. JohnCD (talk) 19:53, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per JohnCD above. Let's avoid the instruction creep and making everything unnecessarily complicated. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:36, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose (this change). This reminds me of the problems with G13 overall. We need a global Draft space, and the AfC drafts are the closest thing we have to it now: nothing that is a draft needs ever be deleted, unless it contains spam or abuse (in which case it would be removed promptly under other criteria). – SJ + 22:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

CSD G8

I've noted that some editors, notably Aleenf1 add CSD G8 templates to pages that are clearly not in the intended sprit of G8. That is, they are not situations where someone has deleted an article, and failed to delete the talk page of the article. When those exist, I agree they are CSD eligible, and practically a maintenance issue, meaning they can be deleted and there should be no need to inform the creator (as they presumably were informed at the time the article was proposed for deletion.)

In contrast, pages such as:

are attempts to create an article by an editor who may not know about AfC.

When deleted as CSD G8, this means that the editor has their work deleted without any notification. This is extremely rude. We pretend to care about editor retention, and new editor welcomes, so let's see if we can deliver.

My preference is that someone explain to me how to move it into AfC space, so the editors monitoring those submissions can welcome the editor, and provide suitable advice.

I've requested this multiple time with no answers:

I've requested that Aleen stop tagging them, as I believe the tag is incorrect:

to no avail.

While I think the best approach is to move them to AfC space, absent getting advice on how to do that, can I get consensus that these pages should not be tagged as G8, as that was not the intention of the category? I see this as a stopgap measure, and it doesn't solve the underlying problem, but I've tried the right approach and failed miserably, so I'm not trying to see if I can at least stop the deletion of the pages.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:47, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

If something has been created at the wrong location, then I think that it should be moved to the correct location instead of being deleted. G8 looks very wrong here. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I thought it would be easy to move to AfC space. In fact, I bet it is, but I tried and it didn't work, so I am trying to find out how to do it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:10, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
What do you mean? Doesn't Special:MovePage work? --Stefan2 (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I've tried moving before, but that failed.
I just tried now, with Libero Cecchini and it worked, so I must have done something different before.
It is now at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Libero Cecchini--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:30, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Good! Let's just hope that the author still uses the same IP address so that the author sees your talk page notification. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
After moving a page into AfC, you need to add {{subst:AFC draft|username}} to the top, giving the username or IP of the author; otherwise the system thinks you are the author. An author on a dynamic IP may never see any messages you leave, so perhaps it is a good idea to leave the redirect on the orphaned talk page. It could be tagged {{g8-exempt}}, but I don't know if that actually has any effect. JohnCD (talk) 19:25, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think we should clutter up article talk space with redirects to AfC forever. I'd be more open to that idea if it had some kind of automatic expiration. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:27, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Try inserting something like {{#ifexpr | {{CURRENTYEAR}} < 2014 | {{g8-exempt}} | {{db-g8}} }}. This should make the page exempt from G8 for the rest of the year and then nominate it for speedy deletion next year (although cache may postpone the speedy deletion nomination a bit). --Stefan2 (talk) 22:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Just delete the leftover redirect and put the new location in the deletion log. When the editor goes to the non-existent page he will see the last entry in the deletion log. No muss, no fuss. If you think it is necessary, create and delete the corresponding article and leave a similar entry in the deletion log. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:57, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Or just move without a redirect. The log for the page will still show it when you try to revisit it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I WP:BOLDly added "and pages that should be moved to a different location" to the list of exceptions. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:48, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
    • While we are talking about the exceptions, how about making another adjustment there? It says that G8 doesn't apply to the user or user talk pages. While I understand why we don't want to delete user talk pages for users without user pages, I don't see why broken redirects should remain forever. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:00, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
      • Broken redirects in user space can sometimes be useful, especially when paired up against move- and deletion-logs. When they are not, then G8, G6, or MFD is probably the best way to handle it. When in doubt, don't speedy. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 21:56, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Excessive denials of requests in userspace

If you review speedy tags, please apply a little common sense and extra care to pages tagged in userspace. We have had quite a few MfD nominations lately that are completely uncontroversial, would generally qualify under G3 or other criteria, and the only reason they are at MfD is because someone denied a speedy.

Be aware that what might look like valid draft article content is often "fantasy reality show", "fantasy sports", or other "fantasy" garbage. There is suspicion that a web forum or page somewhere is encouraging users to host such content here in their userspace. This probably should be considered hoax content under G3, and in any case, the deletion of such is utterly uncontroversial with regard to well established consensus, so a speedy should not be denied, even if the tagger might have chosen an inappropriate reason. Gigs (talk) 15:04, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

  • I would not consider such things as hoaxes, they appear to me to be more like test edits in user space, which I don't believe qualify as CSD:G3, nor do they qualify as CSD:G2 which exempts user space. Technical 13 (talk) 18:06, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I tend to agree with Technical 13, a hoax must be an attempt to deceive that is, an intentional presentation of something as factual which is in fact non-factual or incorrect. I for on tend to be quite strict about the CSD, unless a page plainly fits one of them, i will decline. If it is jsut a matter of which criterion applies, I will often re-tag, but if none do in my view, i will decline. Speedys are meant to be bright-line criteria. DES (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
    • There doesn't need to be intent to deceive. The CSD even lists in its text "obvious misinformation". These "fantasy game" pages often include real people's or teams names with false information. Here's a typical example. User:34freaks/sandbox This user's only edits are to this "Fantasy TV" page, which contains his own incorrect predictions about the last season Big Brother. There's nothing here to indicate that this information is something someone made up.
    • It took me all of 1 minute to find this page, they are somewhat common and often go unnoticed, since the editors involved are often only here to abuse Wikipedia for hosting their Fantasy Sport rankings. There's nothing controversial about speedily deleting these pages, and it does nothing but waste time to force them to all go through MfD. If the worry is about biting newbies, the public shaming of MfD is much worse than a quick deletion and a note about why it was deleted. Gigs (talk) 20:31, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
      • I completely disagree. In the past i have, successfully, taken out-of-process speedy deletions to deletion review, and the general consensus was that if it isn't clearly within one of the established criteria, it shouldn't be speedy deleted. The User:34freaks/sandbox page does not as far as I can see, fit any of the speedy criteria. If it were tagged and i noticed it, i would decline and advise the tagger not to do that again. If it were actually speedy deleted, I would be at least tempted to bring it up at DRV. If I noticed a pattern of such deletions, I would surely bring them up at DRV, and quite possibly at an RFC/U as well. I believe that quite a few editors agree with this position, and in fact I think there is general consensus that the CSD are to be interpreted strictly and narrowly. Such deletions are in fact controversial. Doing them by MfD might not be. DES (talk) 20:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
        • That's circular logic, and process wonkery of the highest order. If a deletion is uncontroversial because the material is clearly inappropriate, it doesn't become a controversial deletion because of some overly literal interpretation of rules, the rules we are bound by policy to ignore when following them would accomplish nothing useful, or as in this case, cause active harm to the project.
        • Make a real case for why we should keep a page with utterly no encyclopedic purpose that contains misleading and completely false information about living people around for 7 extra days, subjecting a newbie to public comment on their inappropriate actions that they probably didn't even realize were inappropriate, and in the process creating more work for other editors. Gigs (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
          • The first real argument is that with only one or two people involved, speedy deletion is prone to error and abuse, and so should only be used in the clear-cut, pre-authorized cases. The second argument is that deletion is never acceptable unless by consensus. The CSD are the few cases where consensus has been obtained in advance. They can be added to by obtaining fresh consensus (as was done just above for the new A11), but otherwise local consensus must be obtained at a discussion or by some other mechanism (such as PROD). Consensus to delete can not be assumed outside the CSD, it must be demonstrated. My point is not that such deletions would be contentious because they are out of process (which might be circular reasoning), they would be contentious because multiple editors object to such a procedure, and because consensus has not been obtained either at the time or in advance. One or two editors do not establish any sort of consensus. Finaly i presume you intend "process wonkery" to be negative. As a strong supporter of Wikipedia:Process is Important, I disagree. DES (talk) 21:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I agree with User:DESiegel that CSD criteria need to be interpreted tightly. Loose interpretation will feed loss of confidence in the notion that adminstrators do not have a special role above carrying out technically restrictly functions according to very clear consensus.
I disagree with the underlying notion that misuse of userspace requires administrative action, namely deletion by CSD or deletion by MfD. So many pages that go to MfD could be blanked with an edit summary: "Inappropriate, <reason>". If it was worth writing an MfD rationale, it is worth first writing that rationale on the user's talk page, concluding by asking them to tag it with {{db-u1}}.
If the history is in anyway problematic, a CSD criterion applies.
If the user is inactive, the situation is solved. Blanked pages in active user's userspace are not a problem.
If the user is active, the user deserves the respect of a userpage note before an MfD nomination, and the chance to demonstrate an increased appreciation of Wikipedia policy, or to otherwise explain the situation.
MfD should be a quiet backwater, and it is frequently overused. Of all the forums, it is the least relevant to the quality of mainspace, but it is the easiest place to carelessly insult other volunteers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:37, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
In my experience, most users won't respond to a message that their userpage is inappropriate, other than a CSD or MfD notice, so I'm not sure how well that would work. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
That's right. don't expect a response to the message, but be very happy if you get one. Sometimes, the user is actually meaning well but confused. No, look for the response to your blanking of their userspace page. If they ignore it, leaving it blank, enough is done. If they revert your blanking without a decent explanation, then come to MfD for backup. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Most inappropriate content shouldn't even be visible in the page history. See also Charmlet's comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Farhad shahnawaz. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:48, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Exactly how is having "fantasy games" in the page history harmful? Copyvios, BLP violatiosn, attack pages, yes those should not stay around even in the history. I will add that I disagree with Charmlet's argument that you link to and would have suggested KEEPing the AfC version in the debate you link to. DES (talk) 00:09, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
"Inappropriate content" can refer to to different things to different people.

If promotional content does not meet WP:CSD#G11, then it is not so bad that it cannot be lost in the history.

User_talk:Farhad_shahnawaz shows an unfortunately high ratio of templated messages to human messages. However, the user failed to respond to reasonable messages at: 16:21, 20 September 2013 (UTC), 16:36, 20 September 2013 (UTC), 20:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC), 17:26, 21 September 2013 (UTC). Therefore, a prompt MfD nomination is not inappropriate. A nomination that begins "A WP:FAKEARTICLE by an WP:SPA", where the material has been reposted (after mainspace speedy deletion) and the user has failed to respond to reasonable messages, is perfectly reasonable. This user even received warnings for disruptive editing! This is not the sort of case I was talking about. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed that "inappropriate content" can mean different things, but this thread is about "fantasy reality show", "fantasy sports", or other "fantasy" garbage not about copyvios or even fake articles (which i think do little harm if tagged with {{userspace draft}}, but that is a different issue). DES (talk) 00:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • How can something that is fantasy be proven to be false? Are you inside the head of the person who's this is a fantasy of? Unless you can show some kind of reasonable assertion that this is in fact not their fantasy, there is no hoax. This then defaults to test pages where the editor may be learning how to learn the various wiki-formatting mark-ups, and being in userspace they are excluded from G2 as such. If they are in some way offensive or violate another criterion, mark them as such, blank them, or bring them to MfD. Technical 13 (talk) 01:13, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    • I'm not really sure what you are getting at. These pages generally publish predictions about winners or made up teams and results, almost always presented as if it were factual. These aren't test pages, these people usually are abusing Wikipedia as a web host to play a game that has nothing to do with Wikipedia, and almost never edit any page outside their user space. It's an extra complicating factor that often these pages wind up hosting false information about living people and teams, as the season progresses and their predictions turn out to be wrong.
    • How would you feel if I created a "Fantasy RfA" page that showed you failing RfA with a vote of 10 supports and 100 opposes, with no disclaimer or any hint that it's just something I made up? Gigs (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

A7 et al and Inherent notability

Why don't we just admit that some types of subjects qualify as inherently notable? We keep dancing around this because no one wants to admit it, and it's not documented anywhere, but it's true in practice. This is the reason we wound up with multiple criteria like A7 in the first place is because we keep trying to carve around the inherently notable subjects. Start a new notability guideline that list inherently notable subjects, and then just make A7 say it has to have a credible claim of notability, unless it's within the bounds of the inherently notable guideline.

Trying to define inherently notable subjects in the CSD is one reason these criteria are so long as well. It's not the right place to do it. It needs to be documented as a notability guideline. Gigs (talk) 17:41, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem in my view isn't the inherently notable subjects (if we agree there are any, I don't think there should be, myself). The problem is those topics where subjects are NOT inherently notable, but promising topics that should not be speedy deleted can not be reliably separate from those that have no chance at an AfD by a single admin or a NPP tagger plus an admin. That is the area where A7 should not apply, and it covers the majority of topic areas. There are only two words in the current CSD texts devoted to topics treated as inherently notable, those being "except schools". The complexities of A7 are to spell out in areas where topics are NOT inherently notable, just how much significance need be demonstrated to avoid a speedy, and which topic areas should be speedied for such reasons at all. For example, not all books are notable, but there was consensus that book article should not be subject to speedy under A7, because articles on non-notable books are not so common (as on bands or people), and because stub articles that may turn out worth while are harder to separate from junk than articles about bands are. Look up the debates on the creation and step-by-step expansion of A7 for LOTS for detail on this. DES (talk) 18:05, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
We don't use inherent notability on WP. In terms of CSD, there might be inherent importance which is sufficient to avoid the CSD tag (eg the book example above), but when it comes to putting an article to the test of WP:N, inherent notability doesn't work. --MASEM (t) 18:08, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
The concept of inherent notability is pretty pointless, as anything that we might reasonably consider inherently notable is certain to be already covered by the GNG. One might say, "All movies that win the Best Picture Oscar are inherently notable." Perfectly reasonable, but any such movies would easily pass the GNG, making a seperate declaration redundant and unnecessary WP:CREEP. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:34, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
It's slightly more than two words - it's "with the exception of educational institutions". Inherent notability is accepted as meaning high schools (and local equivalents) and universities. This doesn't prevent deletion for spam, attack or copyvio for those. It does mean you can't A7 a primary school. That has to be prodded. So far as I an aware, inherent notability applies to places (but not to places like Acacia Close, Bloggsville which only has six houses in it), high schools and unis, railway stations (but not bus stations), and politicians at Congressman/MP/SMP/MLA etc level and above (for national entities or reasonably self-governing states (the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, whatever Alabama has and so on - but not members of county bodies). It can be a problem deciding sometimes what level someone is at - but it's not impossible. Those are the ones I can think of. There may be more. Some people think CEOs are, but I disagree. Many rappers claim to be CEOs of record labels and entertainment companies when they're 13 and have one mixtape in progress. The ones I mentioned have a pretty clear yes/no line. CEOs don't - nor do bishops. Peridon (talk) 18:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
True. Ans note that for inhabited places in particular, some considered "inherently notable" might not pass the GNG without that consideration. The same is true for rivers, i think, DES (talk) 19:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Comment on the term "Inherent notability" - Nothing is considered "inherently notable" by Wiki-statute. Some things are "generally understood" to be "practically inherently notable" or "practically presumed notable by virtue of its classification" by "wiki-case-law" in the forms of deletion-discussion outcomes which almost never result in "delete" or "redirect" (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes) combined with the fact that there are a large number of such articles. Examples include legally-incorporated inhabited places (e.g. towns), most accredited 12th-grade-diploma-granting high schools and most bachelors-degree-or-advanced-degree-granting colleges and universities, generally recognized taxonomic divisions of life which have two or more species and/or notable sub-species, etc. For these items, all it takes is a reliable source stating the item exists and it will almost always survive AFD unless that source is discredited or shown to be out-of-date (e.g. if pre-redirect edit of Paluxysaurus had gone to AFD, the result would likely be "redirect" instead of "keep," per updated scientific information). Since AFDs are by definition a result of then-current consensuses, and because consensus can change, what is "practically inherently notable" today may not be "practically inherently notable" a year from now. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:45, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Inherent claim of significance - That's where we should be going. Merely being a book, education institution, place, type of life, and some other things, by itself is a claim of significance. As A7 reminds us, this is a lower claim than notability. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:14, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Definitely not books. Too many variables there. Even things published by the regular publishers aren't always notable. And as for some of the other stuff... Peridon (talk) 19:44, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Sorry I stepped away from this thread, but to those claiming there isn't "inherent notability", I think if you step back from the contentious history of that particular term, you'd find that we do indeed have certain subjects that we treat as inherently notable, in that they do not need to have "demonstrated notability" in order to not be deleted. Challenge your conception and the long standing meme that "Wikipedia does not recognize inherent notability", and look at de-facto policy and practice out there in the article space.
  • Regarding the difference between "significance" and "notability", I consider "significance" to be one of the two prongs of notability. I think our concept of notability ultimately conflates and encompasses two completely different things, which is one (completely valid) reason we've avoided using the term here.
  • That said, "inherent notability", in practice, requires neither significance nor coverage. An article on a short connector highway that has very little written about it that is not particularly significant nor has drawn significant coverage, would likely not be deleted. That doesn't mean it can't be deleted or merged by consensus, so if you interpret my use of "inherent notability" to mean complete immunity from deletion, that's not what I mean. Gigs (talk) 16:11, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I think its clear that A7 should not be used for an article that would be kept at AfD, and this would appear to be so utterly obvious that it shouldn't be necessary to say it specifically. But if there is confusion about this, perhaps it does need to be stated, though I would use the phrase "sufficiently encyclopedic " The reason for keeping the word "notability" out of A7 is to avoid problems with our disagreements about notability. DGG ( talk ) 00:28, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
    • No, "notability" has a pretty well-defined meaning on Wikipedia: a subject is notable if and only if reliable third-party sources cover it. Those who disagree with that have probably never read WP:V or WP:GNG. Avoiding "notability" in speedy deletion criteria is a consequence of the fact a "speedy" process is not appropriate for establishing notability. Finding sources to determine notability is hard, and editors need to be able to object to claims that it is impossible.
    However, there are subjects which are likely to be spammed about, and running them through the whole notability process would be probably overwhelming for the community. So, for convenience, we demand a "claim of significance" in the hopes that it will be a correlate of what we call here "notability". As the banner on the top of this very page states, the speedy deletion process is intended to weed out things which "obviously" should be deleted, in order to relieve the XfD processes.
    There is simply no need to resort to such ill-defined concepts as "inherent notability" in order to explain the ideas behind current policy. Keφr 11:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Confusion of G4 and G6 of the CSD

It sometime appears that G4 of the CSD is not to be confused with the G4 channel and G6 of the CSD is not to be confused with Like a G6, a song by Far East Movement. Can I add the {{distinguish}} template to these sections? --[[Tariqmudallal · my talk]] 03:33, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary. The G4 and G6 pages already include pointers to this page. Hut 8.5 07:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Can I add these to the disambiguation pages of G4 and G6: the CSD links? --[[Tariqmudallal · my talk]] 14:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
There are already hatnotes at the head of those two disambiguation pages. JohnCD (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think is it a good idea to litter article space with wikipedia slang. I don't think it is much harder to type WP:G4 than G4 in chat pages. WP:Consensus is much not the same as Consensus and WP:Truth cannot be farther from Truth, but do we need to litter main space with our lingo? Staszek Lem (talk) 18:55, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem is with new editors who may not know about the WP: prefix. If such an editor reads "G4" in some deletion summary or project page and wants to know what it means then they're going to type it into the search box, and the page they get as a result ought to point them to the right place. Hut 8.5 22:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Per WP:SELFREF links to project-space pages should either be external links (when mentioned in the prose of an article) or wrapped in {{selfref}} templates (e.g, when they are hatnotes). This is so that such links can easily be excluded from print editions and on the sites of reusers who don't need or want anything other than our aritcles. Thryduulf (talk) 00:33, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Complaint

I will probably get attacked for saying this, but I don't see why people have to go around speedily deleting articles on Wikipedia. I'ts not as though these articles are using up lots of disk space or something. Just now I wanted to see what Wikipedia can tell me about an add-on called Collusion, so I looked at Collusion (disambiguation) and sure enough there was a link to Collusion (software). But the link was red. Clicking on it, I found that it had been speedily deleted. Someone decided it wasn't notable. What was the point of that? Did it serve mankind to delete it? No. It just meant that I am unable to read what someone went to the trouble to write! It's not only a disservice to the human race, it's also very annoying to the person who wrote the article -- especially when the writer has no way to recover what he wrote. Why not just live and let live? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not going to attack you. I can understand why you might feel as you do. However there are reasons why speedy deletion exists. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That means it is a tertiary source, it summarizes what other sources have already written about subjects. When there is a subject that no one has written much about, Wikipedia can't cover it. WE say that such a topic is not "notable". Also there are various types of content that Wikipedia does not want, such as advertising, copyright infringement, pages that do nothing but attack people, and so on. See What Wikipedia is Not for more details. Now, why speedy deletion? When an article or a page very clearly falls under one of the categories of pages that Wikipedia can't host, an admin is allowed to delete it without going through a full deletion discussion, provided it falls into one of the narrow speedy deletion criteria. Do admins make mistakes? we are human of course we do. The criteria are narrow precisely to reduce the chances of mistakes, but they can and so still happen. Now Collusion (software) was deleted under WP:CSD#A7 which means not merely that it wasn't notable, but that there was no indication in the article of why it might be important or significant. If you (or anyone) can find places where reliable sources have written about this topic -- more than just a passing mention, some significant coverage please -- then a new article can be created or the old one undeleted and improved. I don't know if you will agree with these policies, but until and unless the Wikipedia community at large decides to change them, those are our policies. DES (talk) 14:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I should add that if the editor who wrote a delet4ed article posts at WP:REFUND or asks me or any of many other admins, a copy of the content will usually be provided, unless it was a copyright infringement, defamation, or something of that sort. DES (talk) 14:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I will further add that i looked at the previous content of that article and it was only two sentances long, giving a very general description with no details. It also was posted by a user whose user name included the word "Collusion", which makes it look like an attempt at advertising. DES (talk) 14:40, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
There is a longer article on the subject at dewiki, which still refers to Collusion as 'experimental', and whose best referencing is The Guardian using it for some project, followed by two German papers doing something similar. The German article was created by a regular looking editor not an SPA with a suspicious name. There's nothing to stop anyone seeing the red link and creating a new article. The one that was deleted wasn't up to enwiki standard. It's always open to people to ask for more details of why their article went. Some don't bother, some accept the reasons, some go on to repost and end up blocked with a salted title. In the last case, anyone with a bit of evidence and refs can request unsalting in order to make a proper article. Peridon (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
To answer another point - no, it wouldn't do much harm in the case of Collusion. But there has to be a line drawn. Do you really want articles proclaiming "Shawn is awesooommmmmeeee!!!"? Should they stay up for seven days' discussion making us look silly? Standards have been drawn up and fought over by the community. At least, by those who take part in such things - as in any organisation there are those who end up on committees and those who complain loudly about the committees (or here, those taking part in discussions versus those who don't until afterwards...). Collusion fell on the wrong side of the line. Peridon (talk) 15:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your answers. I don't want to argue about whether Collusion is notable or not -- it was just an example. Another example of an article being deleted (not speedy) is RollBack RX. Just now I wanted to reread the article to remind myself about something, and it's gone. Again, some people took it upon themselves to get rid of this article because they didn't think the software was "notable". Why can't they have mercy on those of us who would like to have the article?
A couple months ago I spent hours writing an article about a book, and it got speedily deleted because some administrator hadn't heard of the book and thought my summary was "original research". Or maybe he didn't like what the book says, I don't know. What do you think of that? (The article was Operation Trojan Horse.) Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
OK. Deletion was because the admin thought it was advertising. I must admit that when I see a chapter by chapter analysis, I think 'Hmmm. Plugging...'. Something more along the lines of The Mothman Prophecies would stand a better chance - with a ref or two about the book itself rather than about Keel. Mike didn't say he'd never heard of it, unless there was more talk I've not seen. He did say 'very, very long', and that's my point (made above before I read his comments) about The Mothman Prophecies being a model. Say more about the book rather giving than a contents list of what's in it. Critical reception, etc. Pros and cons. Have another go - but start off in your user space. Peridon (talk) 16:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In such a case there are ways forward. If you think the admin deleted that article, or any article, incorrectly, the suggested first step is to send a message to the admin asking him or her to look again, and giving some reasons why you think the page should not have been deleted. There is also WP:REFUND which you might want to look at. and finally there is deletion review, where contested deletion decisions are reviewed. The vast majority of speedy deletions are of junk that would simply clog up Wikipedia, and make it that much harder to find anything of interest. No one of them would stress the serves, all of them together might, and more likely, make the search less useful. And even more likely, reduce the reputation of Wikipedia and compromise its goals. All that said, some admins are too quick on the trigger -- I have argued with taggers and deleters over such issues a number of times, and in at least one case filed a full-blown conduct dispute over what I saw as improper speedy deletions. That was several years ago. If you think a page or pages has been improperly deleted, bring it to the attention of the community in one of the ways I mentioned, or talk to an admin who is willing to look into the matter on your behalf. If you really think the policy allowing speedy deletes in general, or WP:CSD#A7 (no indication of significance)] is wrong, then start a discussion or an RFC to change the policy. Speedy deletion criteria have been both added and removed in the past -- consensus can change. DES (talk) 16:45, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that the book article probably shouldn't have been speedy-deleted, though you're being extremely misleading about why it was deleted. It wasn't "because some administrator hadn't heard of the book" or because of original research, it was deleted as advertising or promotion. In my opinion, after the fact, it WASN'T advertising or promotion and should not have been speedied as such. That said, it was also far from a neutral, encyclopedic article about the book. You asked the admin and they forwarded you the article text to work on and pointed you to deletion review process. In my opinion an article on that book is likely possible but the deleted material would be of minimal help in creating one. If you do want to try again I'll echo Peridon's advice and suggest looking at some other articles on nonfiction books to get a feel for what the article should look like. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not being "extremely misleading". He repeats the charges of original research and non-notability at Talk:John Keel. I tried to show that it was notable, but he wouldn't accept my reference, and calls it "this obscure book", as though he knows which books in the world are notable. He did accuse me of "advertising", as though I am John Keel! He accuses me ([1]) of uncritically repeating the author's claims and assertions, which makes me think he deleted it because he thinks the book is junk. When he sent me the text of my article, he called it "nothing worth keeping". He won't let me put a link in the article on the author to the summary I wrote.
Maybe I should contest it. But I hate wasting my time fighting against people who are dead set against allowing an article to "pollute" Wikipedia. It happened to me earlier on an article called Timeline of the future. These people (maybe you) claim to be just enforcing the policies of Wikipedia, but everybody has his own personal motivations. When they were born they were not given the life mission of enforcing Wikipedia policy! Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:58, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I understand that you are frustrated. But that tone does not encourage people to work with you, in my view. The policies here on Wikipedia are the results of community discussion and practice, and many people think that they ought to be enforced. (also they can always be changed, if people are persuaded to do so.) When someone accepts the role of admin, to some extent that person is accepting the job of enforcing such policies. DES (talk) 14:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Well this article should not have been deleted under the A7 criterion as that criterion does not apply to software. GorillaWarfare should know not to use that criterion. Though being a spam is a reson to speedy delete. But then again the speedy deleted article was not too promotional either. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I have undeleted Collusion (software) and I am working on it in a user page to create a fully referenced article. I hope to have it live before too long. DES (talk) 14:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
It is now live again at Collusion (software). There is a significant difference, in my view. DES (talk) 21:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Looking good, and now at Lightbeam (software) as it seems to not be experimental any more. (Not my doing...) Peridon (talk) 13:24, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Nor mine, a good catch. It shows what happens when an editor sets out to source something. If the creator had done this, it probably would not have been deleted. By the way, i left a msg for GorillaWarfare and got a response that the deletion had been a mistake. A quick look at GorillaWarfare's deletion log seems to indicate an isolated error, as we all make from time to time. Had Eric Kvaalen raised the issue with GorillaWarfare, it might well have been undelted sooner. But one can never be sure what would have happened. DES (talk) 15:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Change wording of A11

Several people in the discussions above have misunderstood A11 to refer to something untrue or non-existent, "made up" in the sense of "fiction" or even "lies". I sugest that we change the title to "Obviously invented" and add the following sentence or something like it: "This is not intended for Hoaxes (see #G3) but for things that were or may have been actually created, but have no notice or significance except among a small group of people." Any comments? DES (talk) 17:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I've had to explain to a couple of people that what they tagged A11 was actually a G3. I like 'were or may have been'. It's stuff that can't be proved to be a hoax. It's stuff that a couple of well-oiled students were likely to have thought up, or a couple of high school kids getting bored in an IT lesson showing off, or similar. It's not the 'let's fool those people at Wikipedia - they can't be really cool enough to tell that we've made this up or they'd be doing something else with their time' stuff. That's G3. As also is most stuff that says things like 'little is known about the Inflamed Lizards Secret Society' and so on. A11 stuff SAYS that Sharon and Wayne invented it. AGF and delete it. 8-) Peridon (talk) 18:11, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds good, but can we make it shorter? How about just adding "Note: This is not intended for Hoaxes (see [[#G3]])."? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:40, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Quite possibly my suggestion above was too wordy, but I do think we need not only what A11 isn't (a hoax) but to reiterate what it IS, for contrast. DES (talk) 17:47, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
What to call the criterion was never part of the discussion. I don't think the misinterpretation can reasonably be made if people actually read the criterion, but the headline text "Obviously made up" alone does foster such a misinterpretation (people not reading the actual criteria and then just going with what they think it might mean is a strange but very real phenomenon seen again and again). I support both clarifications suggested, and recommend we split the baby between DES and Peridon davidwr by using the short note in the criterion, with a footnote to a larger explanation. I suggest for the footnote: Unlike a hoax, subject to deletion as vandalism under CSD G3 as a bad faith attempt to fool, CSD A11 is for topics that were or may have been actually created and are real, but have no notice or significance except among a small group of people, e.g. a new invented drinking game or new word.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:21, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I think that was davidwr (not indented) rather than me. I've dealt with a couple of typos. Peridon (talk) 18:50, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Whoops, sorry, fixed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 19:20, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

New criterion: "Essay/work of literature"

I propose that we create a new criterion for speedy deletion, namely one which applies to articles written like essays, books, poems, personal reflections, or anything like that, rather than like encyclopedia articles, and was wondering if the Wikipedia community thought this was a good idea, or that it was already covered by existing criteria, or whatever. I am proposing it because I have seen a lot of new pages written like this. Jinkinson talk to me 02:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Bad idea - it's too subjective. WP:SOFIXIT, WP:AFD, and WP:PROD are the way to handle this. In the few cases where they apply, BLPPROD and existing CSD's can also be used. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:56, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with David. It's hard to pin down and rather subjective. Even with books that are self-published, there's always the odd one or two that are of note. With essays, you can sometimes get them as promotional (if they are pushing rather than discussing), and the same applies to books. Essays can also be got rid of if their subject already exists and the essay doesn't add anything of value. I'd sooner see something for insignificant software, which is a damn nuisance, but that's going to be hard to define unless lack of reliable independent sources is included in the criterion. Peridon (talk) 10:47, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
CSD is not competent to judge the reliability or independence of sources and only rarely the availability of them. Thryduulf (talk) 11:16, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Essays can often the the start of an article, and not that many would be on non-notable topics, and in anycase there are not so many to be a problem. Software crops up here, but I think most CSD taggers will not really be able to assess whether or not it should be kept, so we had better allow software the prod timeout. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with davidwr's and Graeme Bartlett's comments above. An essay on a notable topic may well be the start of a valid article on that topic. Pages that are not possible article seeds that would fit the proposed criterion may well be deletable as promotional or as copyvios. The rest can be delt with via PROD or AfD. This is too subjective for one or two pairs of eyes. DES (talk) 14:24, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The photo labeled improperly

This photo is NOT Kingsford Smith,Ulm,Lyon and Warner. I do not know who is in the Photo But it is NOT the above. There are many photos of the 4 crewmen of the Southern Cross's Trans Pacific Flight, But that is Not one. James Warner was my father,and I speak with knowledge. I can provide a correct picture.

George Tom Warner, 12:18, 12 November 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomwar2 (talk • contribs)

No one here has the slightest idea what you could possibly be talking about. Please contact the person who actually made the alteration. You can click on the "history" tab, and use the "prev" button to see what changes were made by each of a page's editors. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 12:45, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It could help if you told us which photo in which article. There are over four million articles on Wikipedia. By the way - on talk pages please sign posts with four ~ things. That puts up a signature and datestamp like this: Peridon (talk) 12:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It appears that This is the Commons image in question, This is its original source and this is the short debate about it. What any of it has to do with WP:SPEEDY is your own guess. - X201 (talk) 13:09, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The picture in question would seem to be File:Historic Flight Southern Cross Flight (8091720198).jpg used at Southern Cross (aircraft)#Trans-Pacific flight. There is already discussion about that image at Talk:Southern Cross (aircraft)#Photograph of four airmen, so I will copy this message there. Thryduulf (talk) 13:16, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposed new criterion for BLP violations

Consensus does not favor this addition to the CSD. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:00, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

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

It has become apparent from discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#AndyTheGrump_blanking_articles that the current wording of CSD G10 may be too narrow to encompass all violations of the biographies of living persons policy which may require the immediate removal of an article from public view. I am therefore proposing a new CSD. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

G14. Only contents is BLP violations

Any article for which the entirety of the current revision and every prior revision contravenes the biographies of living persons policy. This criterion also covers cases in which every revision of an article would be subject to speedy deletion under another criterion if the BLP violations were removed. If matters seem especially pressing, administrators have discretion to examine only a representative sample of the prior revisions of a page before deleting it.

Support:

  1. Support as proposer. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. Oppose How is this any better than G10? It covers all serious cases, and BLPPROD covers all non-serious ones. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:16, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
    G10 allows deletions for BLP reasons only of "entirely negative in tone and unsourced" articles. If an article is chock-full of controversial and unsourced, but not necessarily negative, assertions, blatant misrepresentation of sources, etc, it doesn't qualify. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
  2. (edit conflict)Oppose We already have WP:CSD#G10 for attack pages. WP:BLP already says (in the WP:BLPDEL section: "If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion." and later "Page deletion is normally a last resort. If a dispute centers around a page's inclusion (e.g., because of questionable notability or where the subject has requested deletion), this is addressed via deletion discussions rather than by summary deletion. Summary deletion is appropriate when the page contains unsourced negative material or is written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be rewritten or restored to an earlier version of an acceptable standard. The deleting administrator should be prepared to explain the action to others, by e-mail if the material is sensitive." (Emphasis added.) The suggestion that deletion be followed by a discussion, and the other highlighted sections, do not well accord with the usual practice for CSDs. Adding this as a CSD would not increase the authority of Admins, as BLP already grants any needed authority, and would only confuse things, in my view. DES (talk) 23:18, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
    If articles can be summarily deleted for BLP reasons even when not "entirely negative in tone and unsourced" as in CSD G10, we would do well to avoid confusion by explicitly acknowledging this in the CSD. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
    I would add that anything which encourages further actions like the blanking mentioned above is in my view not a good thing. DES (talk) 23:21, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
    @DavidLeighEllis no other CSD has a requirement to open a discussion afterwards, while the BLP "summary deletion" appears to have such a requirement. I don't think we want the NPP squad tagging pages for this -- only if an editor seriously tries to edit and finds no possible way to do so would such "summary deletion" be reasonable, and frankly I find it hard to imagine the article that cannot be reduced to a one- or two-sentence stub that is BLP-compliant. If any change is to be made, i would favor removing the "summary deletion" section from WP:BLP. DES (talk) 23:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
  3. Oppose as redundant to G10, which covers pages "that disparage, threaten, intimidate or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose". I can't think of any BLP violation that would need speedy deletion that would not fall under at least one of those. Thryduulf (talk) 23:41, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
  4. Oppose per DES as contra WP:BLPDEL, and unnecessary in light of G10. No good reason to expand CSD beyond that. postdlf (talk) 23:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
  5. Oppose WP:BLP says that summary deletion of BLPs should be a last resort, and the only cases explicitly noted are those that would qualify for G10 (it contains non-neutral material or contains unsourced negative material). Complex cases involving alleged misrepresentation of sources are exactly the kind of thing that speedy deletion is not suited for. Hut 8.5 00:03, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Neutral:

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

A7 script?

I happened to see a banner/tag (not sure what the correct wiki-term is) on zulily:

(A7: Article about a company, corporation, organization, or group which does not indicate the importance or significance of the subject (CSDH))

but I don't remember ever seeing CSDH mentioned before. I clicked on CSDH to see what the message is, but I am still perplexed. Just curious, can anyone educate me? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 14:40, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

It appears that this is the "CSD Helper" script, created by Ale jrb. S/He describes this as "A script that helps admins delete speedy deletions much more quickly, including changing rationales, and assists everyone in declining/contesting speedy deletions and changing speedy deletions to PRODs." It is apprently for the use of admins in deleting pages under the speedy deletion criteria or in otherwise dealing with pages tagged for such deletion. If so, no one who is not an admin will have use for it. Many editors use Wikipedia:Twinkle or other scripts to tag pages for speedy deletion (among other uses), and at least some admins use it for deleting such pages. DES (talk) 15:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

One of those "fun" borderline claims of significance cases for examination

Good day,

Coffee and myself had an exchange about where to draw the line on claims of significance. I'd like to bring broader attention to this version of the Genie Pace article, which bears one reference stating that it has been signed by a label that currently doesn't have an article itself (nor does its founder, and the article under the label's name is clearly not the same and should probably be moved elsewhere anyway). There's one offline reference dating back to 1957, and google archive searches come up dry on this artist. I'm rusty with CSDs other than G12 myself, and would appreciate any insight about where current practice stands for such situations. MLauba (Talk) 16:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

First of all, since this is in userspace, not articlespace (mainspace) none of the Ann criteria can be applied at this time. Of course, I presume the intent is to move this to mainspace sooner or later, preferably sooner.
If this were in mainspace, and were tagged for A7, I would decline on the grounds that being signed to a label and producing recordings for them is at least a claim of significance. However if this were in mainspace and were taken to AfD on the grounds of lack of notability it might well be deleted. It certainly does not explicitly pas WP:MUSIC as it stands, nor the WP:GNG. Finding and adding additional references to reliable sources would be a huge help. Unfortunately, refs from this period may well be offline and thus harder to find. (I am fairly narrow about A7, some admins would probably delete this as it stands if in mainspace.) DES (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. Indeed, for the purpose of this discussion, I'd appreciate if other comments could treat this as if it were in mainspace instead of sandboxed - take this as a rusty admin requesting guidance on today's best practice. MLauba (Talk) 16:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
DESiegel: So, (as Mlauba I'm trying to learn from this discussion), if I understand what you're saying... a musician being signed to a label, no matter if it's an independent label which by their very nature can be created by anyone, should be considered to constitute a claim of significance? — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 18:01, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I would say so, yes, Coffee. It isn't enough to establish notability, but it is enough to indicate there is some chance that notability might' be established with further research. Once that is true, speedy deletion under A7 is, in my view, no longer appropriate: more eyes are needed. This is even more true when we are talking about a label from the 1950s and 60s, when it was not quite so easy for "anyone" to establish a label, and when significant reviews and coverage, if it exists, may well not be online. It is even more true when the statement is not just that a musician was signed but that multiple works, including at least one album, was produced. Still not proof of notability, but a sign that it may be there. I have developed or helped develop articles that were less promising into clearly established articles. Take a look at this old version of an article then tagged with A7-Band. Would you delete it as it then stood? Then take a look at the current version. DES (talk) 19:00, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I have (boldly) moved the article back into mainspace. I hope that's okay. Candleabracadabra (talk) 17:20, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Unless you are doing that because you want this deleted, I think the move unfortunate, as I do not think this would pass AfD as it stands, while it might well pass after more research. Of course if the editors involved have concluded that no more sources can or will be found, then perhaps best to get the AfD discussion over with. I urge you to reconsider, Candleabracadabra. DES (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Articles are sometimes improved during deletion discussions. I don't see why it needed to be in a sandbox? I think it can be handled appropriately as a mainspace article. Candleabracadabra (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes articles are not uncommonly improved during a deletion discussion. But when there seems good reason the think that offline research will be needed, it is IMO rather less likely. I also think that moving a draft out of someone else's userspace, without as far as I can see, discussing it with the user in whose space the article was, nor the initial drafter, does not seem like a friendly or collegial act to me. WP:UP says "In general, it is usual to avoid substantially editing another's user and user talk pages other than where it is likely edits are expected and/or will be helpful." I again urge you to reconsider this action, Candleabracadabra. I know this is part of a larger dispute involving several editors, but I hope that is not influencing your actions here. DES (talk) 18:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any dispute regarding the article. If someone wants to take it to a deletion discussion I suppose they can do so. Keeping it in userspace makes it more touchy to edit and improve. I haven't seen any objections made by the article's creator or MLauba who moved it to userspace. It seems to me that the only issues raised so far are whether it should have been speedied (consensus seems clear that there were assertions of notability) and whether it is in fact notable. I don't like to mess with people's userspace and discussing the example seemed to be comlicated by the article being in userspace (causing all sorts of hypotheticals). Now it is in mainspace and we can deal with it properly. If there is coverage of the independent label merging it into an article on that subject would be an option. Although I think she may have been recorded by multiple labels during her career? Candleabracadabra (talk) 19:58, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I didn't give too much background about this particular article as I'm interested in the case study, but the context is at AN. Simply put, the article was speedied, and in a broader discussion around what constitutes a claim of significance, this one was mentioned. I undeleted and userified for the purpose of a review - simply undeleting on my own volition and restoring to mainspace when I'm not confident in my reading of current practice would not have been sound adminning. However, sandboxing deleted articles for the duration is perfectly normal. There's no issue with Candleabracadabra moving it back, but doing it myself directly without sounding out practice here would not have been right - I can't both ask for a review because I'm not confident in my judgement and impose it over the work of a colleague. MLauba (Talk) 21:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Back to examination of "significance"

Admins, and others, differ on just what sort of statement in an article constitutes a "claim of significance" sufficient to prevent A7 (and A9 and A11) speedy deletion. However, here are some points that I thong should be fairly widely accepted:

  1. A claim of significance need not be supported by any cited sources, much less by inline cites to reliable sources.
  2. A claim of significance need not amount to a statement that, if sourced, would establish notability.
  3. Therefore, a claim of significance need not pass any of the general or specialized notability guidelines, such as WP:GNG, WP:MUSIC, or WP:BIO.
  4. A claim of significance need not be self-evidently true, but should not be patently false. A blatant hoax, or a claim so improbable that no one but a conspiracy theorist would believe it is not a plausible claim of significance.
    I think all those are pretty generally agreed to. Now for some that might not get as general approval:
  5. Any statement which, if reliably sourced, would be likely to persuade some of the commentators at a typical AfD to keep the article is a claim of significance.
  6. Any statement which plausibly indicates that additional research (possibly offline, possibly in specialized sources) has a reasonable chance of establishing notability is a claim of significance.

Any comments? DES (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Number 6 is pretty close to the loosey-goosey thing that I look for. Basically, my mental test is two parts: a) is this reasonably plausible? b) assuming this were true, would this cause a person to be notable? So, a claim that the person is the King of Mars would satisfy b, since a person who's King of Mars would almost certainly have coverage in sources that would constitute notability, but of course it fails a, since it's not plausible. Conversely, an article describing a subject whose main claim to fame is that they've been the top of their class for the last four years would pass a, since it's quite plausible for that to be true, but not pass b, since that kind of thing is not likely to lead to notability. Now, that's not a perfect heuristic, particularly where things like companies are concerned, but if that's coupled with a fruitless search for sources on my part, it works reasonably well, I find. Basically, if I haven't found any sources (after looking), and the article gives me no reason to think that there would be any sources, then it's not making a claim of significance for me. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 21:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
  • It seems (as far as my experience has been) that most admins seem to have a slightly differing interpretation of it (or gray area), in much the same way Writ Keeper has explained. I would likewise imagine that articles, like the one that brought us here, have been deleted in the past by admins who did not think/know/agree that a record label on it's own would justify a claim to significance. Therefore, the thing I'd like to see most is if we can firm up the idea (hopefully in this policy) of what a "claim of significance" actually is (besides the givens of 1-4... the gray area is what I'm concerned with). — Coffee // have a cup // essay // 23:22, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
  • There will always be a grey area. Eliminating it entirely is a waste of time and effort. Trying to identify where the "clearly considered okay by a clear majority of editors" ends and "there is no consensus if this is okay or not okay" begins and where that grey area ends and "clearly considered NOT okay by a clear majority of editors begins" is a discussion worth having. As long as the "grey area" for A7- and other speedy-deletion criteria is clearly in the "would fail at AFC hands-down" territory then the difference is pretty much academic. However, if the "grey area" for A7- and other speedy-criteria overlap with the "grey area" or "clearly would pass" area of an AFC discussion, then we have a serious problem and we will need to tighten up A7. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Should CSD T2 and CSD T3 also apply to pages in the Module namespace?

This namespace is composed of Lua scripting that essentially acts as a template. In addition, since some templates are set up to be a complete #invoke (transclusion) pages in the module space, this connection seems to point that pages in the Module space might become a primary "Template" space in the future. So, what are thoughts and concerns about this possibility? Steel1943 (talk) 07:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Right now, there is not a problem with there being several invalid pages in the module space. But then again, like the portal space CSD criteria, it wouldn't hurt to have a "fail safe", and I like the idea of using a similar criteria wording as the portal space criteria. Steel1943 (talk) 01:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) @Technical 13: I'm referring to the current criteria stated in CSD T2 and CSD T3; with the way that they are presently worded, could apply to pages in the Module namespace. Also, it seems that new Wikipedia policies are being created that group the Template and Module namespaces together; an example of this is the fact that the template editor user right applies to both templates and modules. (But, then again, the template editor right, in the future, could be split into one right for templates and another right for modules; with the way Wikipedia evolves, one never knows.) Steel1943 (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Not that this is the place or time for a discussion about it, but I would prefer TE to go the other way around to add MediaWiki and User namespaces as well instead of being split up. If this was to happen then T2 and T3 may very well need to become G criteria. Anyways.... Technical 13 (talk) 02:04, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
There is a technical distinction: modules have to be placed in the Module namespace to work, and so users cannot keep modules they are working on within their user space. As such the T3 criterion as it stands, including orphaned pages, may not be fully appropriate. isaacl (talk) 13:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Streamlined process for Oversight regarding private information of minors?

Hi all, and apologies that this topic has been brought forward too often - however with different aim.

I am writing this mainly not to ask for a new CSD, but to ask where to put his request ;-) or how to handle such cases. I just figured that CSD would be the best spot to catch editors considered with such a topic. If there is a page that describes an established process or policy for such cases (or a page where I can ask for such a policy), I'd appreciate a link to that page. Otherwise - well, see the following proposal(s).

Here's the matter: Minors often create new pages about themselves with personal information on it (no pages cited because we shouldn't attract attention to them). Although most of these pages can be speedily deleted as per lack of significance, we may need a possibility for sufficiently suppressing such information, particularly in case the article about the minor is significant and cannot be speedily deleted. I'm not sure whether speedy deletion would even do the job. In any case, whenever such a page is speedily deleted, it should also be oversighted, and to that end, the speedy deletion criterions should state this. Please read through to the end before refusing this proposal suggestion on grounds of rarity or redundancy.

As said, minors often create articles about themselves. However, they may also be significant enough so that there is already an article bout them. They may have entered personal information into the their BLP themselves, or it may have been entered by others. As I read it, this constitutes a severe case of WP:OUTING and even qualifies for WP:OVERSIGHT as per WP:REVDEL#HIDINGBEFORESIGHT. However, I see no place to ask for such, except a case-to-case request for oversight, which sems not to be done and would be impractical considering the sheer amount of such articles.

Such an article would not fall under WP:CHILDPROTECT - because it's the child who edits, not an adult - or WP:ATTACK and similar - because it's the subject of the article themselves who edits, thus not intent to attack or libel. Neither would it come under WP:BLPPRIVACY because the information is not sensitive enough to be considered offensive or dangerous for adult living persons, as considered in WP:BLP. However, childern often include the name of their school and their full name on such pages, which may already be enough to identify them as per the safety guidelines for young editors.

Also, we should not need consensus and not wait for deletion discussion or edit review process as per WP:CHILDPROTECT and WP:BLPPRIVACY (and as per common sense... it's about protecting a child, not about improving wikipedia, and WMF legal counsel has surely given some input on the matter, even though I can't find it).

It would admittedly be a rare occasion of a notable minor to enter that information into an article about themselves, and therefore not immediately eligible for a CSD. However I currently find no criterion that would apply to other editors entering the full name of the minor, their school's name and similar information into an article about that minor. In all such cases, we would still need consensus to remove and suppress such information.

Therefore, I suggest updating the respective CSD criteria (see above) to cover such cases, as well as to advise administrators deleting such pages to enter them for oversight.

Please note that this is different from WP:CHILD which is about user pages, not pages in article namespace.

If there is a page to ask for streamlined oversight, or to ask for making streamlined oversight eligible in such cases, then sorry for the request. Please point me there with a link.

Hope to get some constructive comments! --Se'taan (talk) 07:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The last thing we would want to do with a child's personal information is advertise it in a CSD-like manner. That is why there is no such thing as "request for oversight", and we instead require case-by-case reports. You can email the oversight team, or any individual oversighter, or you can try to ping the oversight team on IRC in #wikipedia-en or #wikipedia-revdel. If there are any particular examples you have questions about, you can email me or the oversight team for a private conversation. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi Someguy, and thanks for the comment. Indeed a good call that this would draw even more attention to private information. However I didn't want to suggest a new CSD for such cases, so maybe I should clarify: What I meant was, we might add to WP:CSD#A7 and WP:BLPPRIVACY a formulation that advises anyone using them to also consider asking for oversight. We might additionally extend their formulations such that they can be applied to a child's personal information - this latter suggestion is totally optional, or at least not tied to the first. However, I see that even this might draw additional attention to it.
So, if I got it right, oversight has to be asked for always on case-by-case basis? Is there no possibility to "mark" a page for oversight (giving a reason), then the oversighters (and only them) seeing it on their notice board or mailing list and, if necessary, getting back to the patroller who marked it for oversight? That would make it a lot easier to get all those new pages oversighted. When they are speedily deleted, the information is still somewhere, right...? Thanks again for the constructive answer! --Se'taan (talk) 19:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Right. If there were a way to "mark" pages for oversight, non-oversighters would see these marks, and would draw unwanted attention to the pages via the Streisand effect. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes. No matter how the marking as "consider possible oversight" were done, it would call attention to the fact that there is information there that we don't want to call attention to. However, there is also another reason why this suggestion seems to me to be a non-starter. The whole suggestion is premised on the belief that "speedy deletion" is quicker than a request for oversight. In my experience the opposite it true. "Speedy" deletion is sometimes genuinely speedy, taking place within a few minutes, but very often it takes hours, and it is by no means unknown (though not exactly common) for it to take more than a day. By contrast, every time I have ever requested oversight I have always received a very quick response. That is to say, the present system is much more of a "Streamlined process" than the proposed new system would be. It therefore seems to me that the suggested change would be completely counterproductive, in two different ways. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
And when it does come to a potential need to admin delete, either the whole page or some revisions, you can still use G6 or hide it in the sea of A7s or RD5 other valid deletion if its just a revision. And if you need to ask for speedy deletion for this reason, don't do it by tagging, but do something like email or IM a currently active administrator. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I think that the best way to handle this is to ping some WMF developers (Brion VIBBER—Steven (WMF)‎—Fabrice Florin (WMF)—Matma Rex—Bsitu) and see if there is a way to modify the core (since it's no longer an extension) functionality of oversight so that any user can mark a page as an oversight candidate and only oversighters can see it. Maybe even via a ping through the Echo/notifications system? If this is a possibility, anyone I've pinged here (or didn't ping and knows it is doable), feel free to add a bugzilla: ticket and just add a {{tracker|}} here. Thanks! Technical 13 (talk) 03:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • That seems like an excellent idea. Oversighters are the only users who can see suppression logs, so there is certainly precedent for logged actions that are invisible to most users. This would also allow the requesting and viewing of requests to occur entirely on-wiki, which would be a nice simplification. I would certainly upvote any bugzilla ticket on the matter. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Can I suggest that some oversighters be asked about what they think of this proposal, before any requests are made to the MediaWiki developers? isaacl (talk) 03:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm seeing a couple of suggestions being put forth in this section, and I'm not sure which you wanted comment on, so I'll comment on them all. First, the idea that CSD instructions should be updated to mention that private information should be suppressed as well as deleted: not a terrible idea. If there are speedies happening where they contain private or libelous information, and the deleting admin doesn't realize that oversight should be contacted, it can't hurt to have the policy spell it out.

    Second, the idea that suppressing content (or requesting it be suppressed) requires onwiki deliberation or that a child's personal information can't be deleted/suppressed if they've self-posted it: in general, both of these are false. Oversight requests should be placed on something resembling an "act first, think later" timeframe - if you have reason to think something needs to be oversighted, you should be contacting us privately first thing. We don't mind having to decline false positives (and we usually do it nicely!), and we would much rather deal with those than with finding out weeks later that something suppressible has been live onwiki because someone wasn't sure if they were allowed to ask us. And when it comes to minors, you should be even more conservative: we have an entire suppression criterion for self-disclosures by (apparent) minors.

    And now on to Technical 13's suggestion of an onwiki, private log of oversight requests: I think this could be useful. I'm imagining something rather like the Pending Changes log, where someone with the userright can go and see a list of what's been requested. The log would definitely have to have its access restricted, the same as the Suppression Log does, but I can envision an onwiki request system working quite well. The Article Feedback Tool (hi, Fabrice!) has an onwiki button for requesting suppression of a given piece of feedback; I wonder if something like that could be ported over to page histories so individual diffs (for anything but new, problematic-since-edit-one pages, marking a diff is much more informative to the oversight team than just flagging a page) could be similarly tagged. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Does Wikipedia need three different CSD criterion for "No indication of importance" or should they all be merged into one?

Closing per request on WP:ANRFC and that there have been no new edits for a number of days. There is consensus that CSD criteria A7, A9 and A11 remain separate with no change made to them. Users who supported merging generally argued that A7 and A9 could be merged because they both deal with an no indication of importance, users opposing this view stated that A9 also includes the requirement that the artist not have an article on Wikipedia and a merge would most likely confuse or remove this provision. Users opposing a merge stated that the criteria are all different and merging them could lead to confusion. They also argued that there is no problem with how they are currently defined, and having separate criteria allows a much more in depth description of when the criteria can be applied. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

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

Currently, there are three criterion they say essentially the same thing.

  1. CSD:A7 - No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events)
  2. CSD:A9 - No indication of importance (musical recordings)
  3. CSD:A11 - Obviously made up (No indication of importance)

All of which have descriptions which state:

An article about ... that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant...

This is detrimental to Wikipedia as it is created against all of what is WP:CREEP and seems to ignore WP:NOTBURO.

The question posed by this RfC is: Should CSD:A7, CSD:A9, and CSD:A11 all be merged into one clear CSD criterion or should they be left as is? 02:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Support merging and clarifying

  1. As proposer Technical 13 (talk) 02:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  2. Merge A7 and A9, but keep A11 separate; there are subtle differences in content that may be factual but just not showing why it is important (which may be later improved and possibly a reason to restore the content and contributions), and content that is completely made up and should never come back. --MASEM (t) 02:14, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  3. Per masem, A7 and A9 should be merged, but A11 isn't the same. "A Twhakcy is the greatest thing ever that over 50% of the people in the USA own. It is a device that causes your hair to move by itself that was developed in Mrs. Smith's 5th period algebra", contains a claim of importance but it clearly made up, and is exactly the type of article that A11 is about. Gigs (talk) 17:00, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
    I think that is not a credible claim of importance. DES (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
    Right, which is why A11 puts emphasis on the credibility of the claim, where the other ones seem to have less emphasis on credibility and more focus on the existence of a claim. Gigs (talk) 17:18, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
    A7 says " The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines." A9 should probably add this wording. I think the intent is the same on that issue in all 3, and if the wording needs adjustment it can be tweeked. DES (talk) 17:29, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support the proposal - I'd like to see them all merged with a longer explanatory note. Deb (talk) 20:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
    Why? How will that improve the clarity of what is eligible and what is not? Thryduulf (talk) 08:07, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
    Maybe you don't spend as much time actually doing deletions as I do. It's unhelpful when there's a huge long swathe of them in the drop-down menu, many of which are similarly worded. Deb (talk) 09:21, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
    Then we should improve the wording in the drop-down menu. There are a long list of different CSDs because they have different eligibility criteria - merging them would require the note to be more complicated not simpler as it would have to list each one separately. The drop-down list should really just be an aide-mémoire for someone doing a lot of tagging. The actual criteria are the words used at WP:CSD not the drop-down summary. If you don't understand that then you really ought not be doing CSD work. Thryduulf (talk) 10:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
  5. Support per WP:CREEP. As we are a general encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone, we should have simple general rules, not a multiplying set of special cases. The basic idea seems simple enough - that an article should make some minimal claim of notability (not importance). How hard is that? Warden (talk) 09:39, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
    Because that is not the idea at all. All articles should make some minimal case of importance (which is a lower standard than notability), however what constitutes a credible claim of importance differs by subject, and so only for some subjects is it possible for an admin to make a reliable judgement about what is and is not credible. Those listed in A7 are easy to judge in almost all cases based on the criteria listed there, musical recordings are easy to judge based on different criteria which is why it is separate. A11 is about something different entirely - that is about whether the topic seems made up, rather than whether there is a claim or importance. Thryduulf (talk) 10:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
  6. Partial support - Combine A7 and A9 but keep A11 separate as mentioned above. There is a difference between something that exists but is not very important (e.g. your pet cat or the song you keep on a flash drive but never released) and something that doesn't actually exist. öBrambleberry of RiverClan 15:05, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
  7. Partial Support. Combine A7 and A9, but leave A11 alone. There's a slight difference between the two. For example, "A yure is a machine that was made by [name of creator]. Currently, many big companies want it." Shows notability, but fails A11. buffbills7701 00:47, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
    No, if it shows notability, it passes A11. That one would be a prod case as (if that was the sum total of the article) it showed (barely) credible significance but not notability. A11 is for the new religion created in Deadwood Flats High by Sharon, Lucy and Ayesha some time last week. Like Scientology, Islam and Christianity did, it may achieve notability some day from an unpromising beginning. For now, it's made up one day. No references (apart from Lucy's boyfriend Shawn's blog). The new word 'shtrulf' (which means a pimple on the end of the nose, a cat scratch mark on a door or the state of having two flat tyres and one spare wheel) is also A11. Inventions (in terms of machines that exist rather than ideas) are for prod, unless obvious hoaxes like the machine that will ice buns at the same time as it applies tar to the road, or possibly the reworkings of the standard perpetual motion machines. Peridon (talk) 10:46, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support a merger of A11 into A7. The A7 criteria already lists "does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance", which should cover criteria A11 (Which is essentially WP:NFT in CSD form) as well since made-up topics are unlikely to have any believable notability claim. Content that is completely made up (Mentioned as a distinction criteria several times above) would either belong under G3 (If it is clearly a joke / hoax) or at AFD, if the content is questionable but not so obviously out of line that it can be called out for being straight nonsense. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 14:05, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Support separate criteria

  1. A9's actual criteria is "An article about a musical recording that has no corresponding article about its recording artist" along with no indication of importance, so it shouldn't be merged with A7.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    So you dispute that they both relate to articles with no indication of importance despite the fact that they have the same No indication of importance (something)? Technical 13 (talk) 02:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    I think Sarek might mean that without a separate A9, any musical recording with no indication of importance could be speedy-deleted -- when right now, only musical recordings with no indication of importance and no artist article can be speedied. I'm not a deletion expert but I'm assuming that this language is meant to say that recordings by an artist with an article always need to go to AFD. But feel free to correct me, anyone. equazcion → 02:37, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
    Not using the proposed all-in-one no indication of importance proposal below, A9 still exists, it's just wrapped into a single inclusive criteria. Technical 13 (talk) 02:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    restoring earlier fried comment Every article-based CSD criteria relates to articles with no credible assertion of importance. If there is one, no a-level CSD criteria will apply. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:13, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    A2, A5, and A10 could all have a credible assertion of importance and still be deleted. A1 and A3, simply deal with blank or near blank pages with no content or context, which could "technically" have a credible assertion of importance based on the title and still be deletable. Only A7, A9, and now A11 relate to articles with no credible assertion of importance. Technical 13 (talk) 03:59, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  2. While I did not support the original A11 proposal, it certainly does not belong with A7, since it deals with a completely different idea of notability, with different tests and conditions on application. A9 is a completely separate criterion, with unequivocally unique nuance and conditions, and absolutely should never be merged with A7 or any other criterion, for that matter. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  3. One of these things is not like the others: there are things that may give no indication of importance or significance but are not obviously made up, so these three things are not all equivalent. "Obviously made up" is a tighter restriction that "no indication of significance"; "no indication of significance" is mentioned in the criterion because it is a necessary requirement to meet the criterion, but it is not a sufficient requirement to meet the criterion. In other words, A11 doesn't just mean A7 with no category restrictions. Things like movies: they may not give any indication of importance or significance, but they are also not obviously made up, so they don't fit the A11 criterion, despite lacking significance. So, no, merging these would lose this kind of thing. (Also, is it physically possible for this RfC to be any less neutrally-worded? I mean, jeez.)Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 02:19, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    I'm pretty sure that "Obviously" is defined as a weasel word. What's obvious to one person may not be to another and we should certainly avoid using such wording in our policies, especially ones that result in deletion of articles. Without that inconclusive word, all that is left of A11 is "no indication of importance" in which is does not differ from the other two. Furthermore, since "made-up" falls under what Wikipedia is not, A11 shouldn't exist in the first place. This leaves us with a discussion of whether or not A7 and A9 should be merged. With a minimal difference between the two of a few words which can easily be parenthesized (that's really a word, huh) to keep it clear, there is no reason to not merge them. Technical 13 (talk) 03:52, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    Apparently it falls under Clearly, obviously, naturally, and of course all presume too much about the reader's knowledge and perspective and are often excess verbiage. Wikipedia should not take a view as to whether an event was fortunate or not. and so I've BOLDly removed the inappropriate verbiage. Technical 13 (talk) 04:04, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    Agai you are looking at the header and not the body of the criterion where the actual rule is. "Obviously" is short for "which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally" so the indication of madde-upness, if I may use such a term, must be in the article itself, ether explicitly or by unmistakabel implication. That is leass weaselly than "indication of importance" in my view. DES (talk) 12:41, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  4. A11 as I see it is noticeably different from the other CSD criteria to deserve its own deletion template. Lumping it together with notability seems to blur the original intent of the A7 templates, which I do not approve of. —mc10 (t/c) 02:48, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    A7 isn't about notability, it is about "no indication of importance". A11 is also about "no indication of importance". All of these "no indication of importance" criteria allow encourage the same result of speedy deletion, so why not lump them all together? Technical 13 (talk) 02:59, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  5. This is a wholly inappropriately worded RFC, advocating the conclusion wished to be reached in both the title and the statement** (and bears little relation to the subject it was apparently supposed to be focused on). Anyway, keep all three separate. The three are far from saying "essentially the same thing". A9 and A7 could possibly be merged together but rather than making it simpler, we would lose clarity and make it more complex for people to learn the criterion and tag appropriately. As well, talk page warnings notices would have to be made much more complex, as would db-a7 and the deletion dropdown would be impossible. Whereas A7 has a defined list of topics that are subject to the same basis for deletion, A9 has an entire extra layer – a condition precedent that no article on the artist exist. Placing that in one criterion with the others that have no such requirement would confuse in both directions. It's bad enough how often taggers can't seem to parse A9 already, with it being stand-alone. Meanwhile, A11 is entirely unlike A7 and A9 and could never co-exist without a much greater degree of confusion. The heart of A11 is that it be on a subject made up/coined/discovered; it's addressed to NFT (and roping in neologisms which have plagued us since I started here in 2005). The indication of importance is an add on to avoid deleting topics that are "made up" but have gained notability nevertheless, so it hearkens to one aspect of A7, but its quintessence is addressed to a quite removed sphere of inquiry.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:25, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    **The problem with doing it in this way is that it taints the entire discussion and in large part makes what you want determined impossible. To wit, if consensus is against you, it's even more so, because the participants overcame the biased RfC title and statement; if consensus appears for your side, it's invalid because it started with the biased statement. In point of fact, were this RfC to reach an apparent consensus to combine the three, I would not accept it as a valid consensus because of its corrupted origin.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  6. Solution looking for a problem. Current system works fine. Jclemens (talk) 05:18, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  7. Possibly we could merge them, but the resulting criterion would be long, confusing and unwieldy. It's always going to be possible to reduce the number of criteria by merging different ones together if you don't mind the reduction in clarity, but it isn't a good idea. Hut 8.5 07:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  8. Per Fuhghettaboutit, who has said just what I was working out how to say. JohnCD (talk) 08:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  9. They do not "say essentially the same thing". A7 and A9 are close enough that merging them would not be disastrous, but there are essential differences, and it is simpler to have two criteria than to have one that has ifs and buts to make it cover different situations differently. A11 is very different from the others, as already discussed at length before this request for comment was created, and merging it with either or both of the others would be very unhelpful. I also note that this request for comment was created by an editor who at first chose not to take part in the discussion which led to the creation of A11, then, when it was created as a result of consensus, unilaterally removed it without discussion, edit warred to keep it removed, when it became clear that wasn't going to work belatedly started arguing his case on this page, when it became clear that consensus in the discussion he was now taking part in was against him, started this request for comment. This looks to me like a case of forum shopping, combined with a reluctance to accept consensus. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  10. If A11 is to remain (which ought to have been the subject of this RfC, but isn't), it should be separate. In fact I would favor splitting A7 so that each sub-criterion (people, groups, etc) was a separate CSD with its own number. I want each CSD to be narrow and focused. But the various A7 sub-criteria all have more in common than they do with A9 or A11. A7s are all about specific categories of real things that have articles written about them with "no indication of significance" (a lower bar than notability please note. A9 is similar except that it has the very special pre-condition that a related article (about the artist) does not exist. (Frankly I wouldn't have favored A9, but it now has consensus.) A11 has the special condition that it is for "An article which plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally" as well as one which "does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant." This is clearly based on WP:NOT#OR and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. This is also a condition neither A7 nor A9 have, nd should be separate because a different process must be gone through to place or validate a tag for such a CSD. DES (talk) 12:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  11. Although similar, they are all different and serve different purposes. Merging them would cause problems and there doesn't seem to be a significant problem with them as is.Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  12. These would be terribly unclear and opaque if merged into a single criterion. Speedy deletion criteria are meant to be simple and as unambiguous as possible. If that means having a few more of them, that's a trade well worth making. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:37, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  13. Per above, and per User:Jclemens: solution in search of a problem. This discussion is a waste of time. Keφr 19:38, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  14. The criteria are already complex and took plenty of effort to negotiate. Merging will make them so hard to understand that page patrollers would get them wrong. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  15. Keep them separate. There's enough confusion with Page Curation's 'lack of significance' leading people to apply it way outside the current A7. A9 - I often do a quick check and decline because there WAS an article for the group (the record sometimes gets deleted anyway - but at discussion or prod). That's not a simple significance or no significance. It's a no significance AND no article for the performer. It's a dual requirement. A11 is to end the deletion of these things ("...invented by Shawn and Sharon at Bloggsville High last Thursday...") that are being deleted under wrong criteria because they are extremely obviously non-encyclopaedic. They are often IAR deleted under other criteria. Believe me, they are obvious. And, believe me, if someone comes up and says here's evidence that you're wrong, we will very happily restore. It doesn't happen any more often than I win the lottery. The posters do frequently object - but with no evidence whatever (or maybe a blog that's suspiciously new...). But the things may well be genuine as having been invented as stated and not being hoaxes. But they've no place here. Peridon (talk) 22:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  16. While they superficially may seem similar they actually cover different things. A11 covers articles about any subject that have obviously been made up by the author, regardless of whether any importance or significance is claimed ("This game my friend and I invented last week is now the most popular lunchtime activity in all primary schools in Honolulu" is deletable under A11 but not under A7 or A9). A7 is limited to the explicitly listed subjects and requires there to be no assertion of importance or significance, it doesn't matter whether it is obviously made up or not (e.g. "Boris Knight is a 25 year old bank teller, presently working for Lloyds Bank in Shrewsbury. In his spare time he likes doing jigsaw puzzles, reading Jilly Cooper novels and listening to death metal music." can be speedy deleted under A7 but not A9 or A11). A9 is similar to A7 but very strictly limited to musical recordings because the eligibility criteria are different; merging the two has been rejected several times in the past because they either remove the distinction between them or (as in proposal 2 below) make the distinction less clear for taggers and admins. Thryduulf (talk) 09:33, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  17. They are different, and keeping them separate helps editors to pin down which, if any, applies in a particular case. There is nothing to be gained from combining them, which would only muddy the waters. PamD 13:20, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  18. The three criteria do have a similarity, no indication of importance or significance. A9 and A11 add additional restrictions when the classes of articles they apply to can be deleted. The claim is that having three separate criteria is unclear, and merging them into a single criteria will make it clearer, I believe it will do the opposite. If they were combined the current A9 and A11 pieces would require that additional clarification be weaved into the criterion. This would muddy up the criterion and cause confusion. With CSD breaking the criteria down into smaller pieces is better as it allows a specific wording without having to clarify what applies to portions of the criterion and not to other portions. GB fan 14:22, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  19. Consensus has always been to view CSD criteria as narrowly as possible, and most CSD criteria end up with multiple tests to ensure the candidate article should really be deleted speedily. As such, the A9 criteria that apply specifically to music articles exist as it's own category due to the level of detail required to sufficiently test these kinds of articles. Any attempt to combine these will either make a single A-category CSD which has dozens of lines of tests and explanations ("An article about x without y,z,or,q—or an article about a without b and c—or an article about g without h, i, j, k, and l..."), or it will make CSD categories very broad and require broad interpretation. The former is awkward and would make CSD more confusing, the latter is against years and years of established consensus. CSD criteria are to be narrowly applied, and if that means we need 100 CSD criteria cover all the CSD cases, then that's fine with me. Livit⇑Eh?/What? 16:21, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  20. The separate criteria may be similar, but there are differences. The case has not been made that having the separate criteria is a problem. I can't see much advantage in merge, at the cost of reduced stability of the criteria. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:25, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
  21. Per others. On the surface, they appear to be the same, but there are differences. United States Man (talk) 03:57, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
  22. I would keep the old A7 standard intact without any change at all. The reason is that it has accumulated a large body of interpretation in the many years it has been in use, and among admins the use of it has become pretty standard. I think we need to specifically state the sort of articles it will apply to, as the current separate criteria do, and not say "any article" or even (as suggested below) "any article except...." Even if we list exceptions, it's hard specifying everything. For example, we currently regard all named populated places with a present or past real existence as notable, but the current wording leaves them susceptible to A7, which is a contradiction. Similarly, the proposal would subject products in A7; this has been rejected several times, because this is a little too specialized for any admin to properly judge. In the other direction, we currently do speedy delete some sort of created works if the created works are web content, but this is so special a use that it needs to be specifically stated.
    I don't think the merge of A9 necessary. I usually do not work on that sort of article, but it's meaning is so specialized it should be kept distinct.
    And I am not happy about A11--I think we need to reconsider it-- too much depends upon the wording of the article--it is rare that the person admits it: they say rather, "A.B. has invented the concept of X, which means .... " without stating their relationship to A.B. As worded, it will apply to very little, and if interpreted more broadly, A.B. might after all be an authority. For any sort of concept, I'm not comfortable relying on my own judgement unless it is patently absurd, and I;d rather the community see it on Prod. Such prods are very rarely challenged. DGG ( talk ) 05:06, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
  23. The problem isn't that there's an apparent overlap between the three criteria, but that the areas the criteria leave untouched are important. For instance, we don't allow A9 CSDs for book articles. And prior to A9, we didn't even allow ones for songs. Rolling these criteria together would probably require us to explicitly spell out what isn't covered, since it becomes harder to have simple reductions of the criteria. A7 applies to people and organizations, A9 applies to musical creations, and A11 applies to things that don't quite meet hoax criteria. And while I could see rolling A7 and A9 together from the standpoint of statutory construction, I cannot see the purpose of rolling A11 into either. And if the proposal is that we require all articles to make some claim of importance, I adamantly oppose such a requirement as prohibitively difficult to enforce on articles that are about, for instance, concepts. CSD isn't some alternate WP:N process, nor should it be. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 17:31, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
  24. CSD#A7 and #A9 are more about what's not listed that what's spelled out. If we want to include schools, books, population settlements, and the rest, we need to have discussions about each. A11 is entirely different than A7 and A9. The wording of the proposal is simply too broad. KrakatoaKatie 05:01, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
  25. I agree with Jclemens, this is a solution looking for a problem and the current system works. - tucoxn\talk 02:01, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  26. Speedy deletion criteria have been merged in the past when there was considerable overlap between them. But that's not the case here. An article that qualifies for A7 will never qualify for A9, for example, and A11 is an entirely different type of test than the other two (fundamentally, it's a challenge to veracity, not notability). That the three criteria have similar wording does not making them similar, and most certainly does not make them the same. Most of all, because of the nature of the CSD process, it's better to have two or three clearly worded criteria than one that is expansive but semantically complex. Or, said more briefly: what we have works. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:42, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
    Squeamish Ossifrage, I would disagree with one point in your comment, You said of A11 that "fundamentally, it's a challenge to veracity". As I understand it, not so. A11 is for things accurate but utterly trivial, specifically for things that the article creator or soemoen else he knows has invented. Perhaps the phrase "made up" is confusing here, see WP:MADEUP. This is for newly coined words with no evidence of widespread use, newly invented games of a purely personal or local nature, and the like. See examples in the discussion above. DES (talk) 13:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
    Agreed. A11 is for things that under AGF could be genuine but not significant or even (mostly) verifiable - one way or the other. They could become significant, as per the fruit basket nailed to the wall example I gave above, which is now a high financial turnover area. Until they do, A11 applies. Peridon (talk) 10:34, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
  27. the very biased opening statement of this RFC has it backwards on the subject of WP:CREEP. Getting rid of a rule altogether is one thing, but merging three kind-of-related rules into one incredibly complicated rule is exactly the wrong thing to do. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:12, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
  28. A11 in particular has little to do with the other two. "Blatant hoax" is not "failing to establish notability". KonveyorBelt 17:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
    However, Konveyor Belt (and others), I would point out that A11 has nothing to do with hoaxes (we already have a CSD for those), it is about things made up in the sense of "invented" as per WP:MADEUP, not in the sense of "lied about". Perhaps we need to change the wording, as several people have had this confusion. DES (talk) 23:09, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  29. Keep all three separate on the grounds that merging them would necessarily WP:CREEP their now quite limited applicability into something broader, and that cleaning up the rules is bad grounds for such a broadening. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
  30. Keep them separate: they all address separate topics, so there's little to be gained by combining them. This seems like a solution in search of a problem. Bfigura (talk) 02:57, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  31. Support keeping them separate. Solution in search of a problem. We also need to look at these CSD criteria from the perspective of the New Page Patrollers - the more choices they have, the less likely they are to make mistakes. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
  32. Support keeping multiple reasons for speedy delete. As Kudpung says, that minimizes mistakes. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Does Wikipedia need three different CSD criterion for "No indication of importance" or should they all be merged into one? - threaded discussion

  • Please change the title/intro of this RfC...in its current form it is hardly a "brief, neutral statement of the issue". Theopolisme (talk) 02:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The correct question is, if an article contains No indication of importance, do we take different actions based on the subject of the article. If no, then one criteria would seem to be sufficient. So for the discussion to proceed, why did we initially restrict A7 and why was A9 added as a new criteria and not folded into A7? Yea, the answers are buried in the archives, but if the question is being raised, the logic there needs to be explained. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    • The result of all three is either deleted as CSD met, or declined. Same action, same results, same reason. Technical 13 (talk) 03:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
      • The result can be the same, but that does not mean we should not have three different reasons. Did you even read the request I made? You are pushing this and apparently you don't care how we got here. I'm not willing to reject previous consensus without understanding how we got from 1 to 2 reasons. So without that, I would not be able to support removing what is already in place. Note well that all of the CSD codes result in deletion or a decline. So why not reduce everything to one? Vegaswikian (talk) 05:12, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
A9 is separate because it's a double criterion. No significanse AND redlinked performer. A7 is a straightforward no sig in the limited framework of A7 (companies but not products, etc). Peridon (talk) 22:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • It's completely nonsensical for CSD policy to be used to overturn consensus to change CSD policy. Jackmcbarn (talk) 12:27, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • No, it is not a valid argument, because WP:NOTCSD is secondary to the actual list of speedy criteria, its purpose being to emphasis, with examples, that anything not covered by the list is not a valid speedy. The existence of NOTCSD does not prevent us from forming a consensus to add a new criterion like A11 to the list, though the wording of NOTCSD may need modifying as a result, e.g. by adding A11 at #6. JohnCD (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't see where FUTURE comes in. We don't have articles for things that haven't got present or past notability. The things A11 is aimed at haven't got present or past notability. They haven't even got significance outside a small group of friends (or such). Yes, some things do become notable - hell, most things that are notable started off small. A school coach nailing a broken fruit basket to the wall and encouraging the students to throw things at it wouldn't make the grade. Not until it achieved widespread coverage because loads of other people were verifiably throwing things at baskets and people were even paying to see them do it. I've just invented pimswit. Well, I will have very soon. Should I put up an article about it? Peridon (talk) 21:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

This whole thing is kinda hard to follow, so just commenting on the bits that stood out for me. Firstly, I have no idea what "credible" is supposed to mean. I think that word should be linked to some explanation. Second, per Writ Keeper below, lumping related stuff together that will need to nevertheless be described via separate, explicit statements, doesn't seem like it would actually simplify things. I'm not sure if it would really complicate them all that much either; nevertheless, if they were lumped as suggested, I could see similar separate anchor links and nomenclatures developing nonetheless for easy reference -- so I'd say they might as well just remain separate. Third, Technical 13 does make an interesting point about #A11 seeming to conflict with WP:NOTCSD. I wonder if that came up at all during the proposal. I think a separate discussion should probably be started about that, assuming someone wants to (won't be me, I'm more of an idea rat). equazcion → 03:21, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. WP:NOTCSD says "The following are not by themselves sufficient to justify speedy deletion." That means that the reasons on the list do not justify deletion of things outside the curret set of speedy deletion criteria. When there is consensus to expand the set of CSDs, the scope of WP:NOTCSD automaticly is reduced by whatever has been added. WP:NOTCSD could be replaced by "Nothing not listed above is a reason for speedy deletion. We Really Mean it!" DES (talk) 22:29, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm, I wonder where you got that reference from? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 03:29, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm a big Dilbert fan and know that particular comic from my own experiences, but wow yeah your use definitely must've dug its way into my subconscious. equazcion → 03:36, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • Can someone please explain to a newb like me what is the difference between "not important" and "not notable" ... in plain English if possible? 66.97.209.215 (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
    "Notable" is a technical term on Wikipedia, it means something that generally ought to have an article. Most often it means something that has been written about in independent published reliable sources (another technical term here), although there are other ways of demonstrating "notability". On the other hand "important: or "significant" have there more or less ordinary meanings in this context. That is why we say that something may be significant or important but not notable. if it is important but obscure, so that no one has written about it, it may not be notable. This is ultimately because Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, which means it summarizes what has been written elsewhere about things, it does not publish original research. That is why 'I know because I was there' is not a valid Wikipedia source, the answer is 'Get it published elsewhere and someone may then cite it.' DES (talk) 20:59, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Topics on Wikipedia are not required to be important and so we should not have CSD wording which suggests that this is required. For example, the recent FA, Ramaria botrytis, is graded by relevant projects as "Low importance" and it is easy to find other examples. The real requirement is notability, meaning that people have written about the topic. This is a general requirement and so we shouldn't make arcane distinctions between types of topic such as music and organisations. Warden (talk) 10:52, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
    • "Importance" or "significance" (I prefer significance) in a CSD context means some indication that the topic might be notable. It is generally said to be a "lower bar" than full notability. Thus we don't insist that notability be fully established to avoid a speedy deletion, only that there be a credible claim of significance. This is because weighing sources and making judgements to fully establish notability is not a job to be delegated to one admin or one admin and one editor. For soem topics we insit on at least that credible cliam being present, because we hjave found over time that a lot of jung articles are created on those topics, and it is fairly objective to see if such a claim has been made. On other topic even evaluating a claim is too complex to be a speedy deletion criterion. DES (talk) 18:08, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed replacement criteria

Proposal 1

A(7, 9, 11, or 12 -- doesn't really matter): No indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events, musical recordings, or things that fall under WP:FUTURE) An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event(with the exception of educational institutions.[1]) or "made-up" (invention?) that would fall under WP:FUTURE or a musical recording (with no corresponding article about its recording artist) and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. This criterion does not apply to species of animals, only to individual animal(s). The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.

  • {{db-a7}}, {{db-person}} – for people, {{db-band}} – for bands, {{db-club}} – for clubs, societies and groups, {{db-inc}} – for companies, corporations and organizations, {{db-web}} – for websites, {{db-animal}} – for individual animals, {{db-event}} - for events , {{db-album}} - for albums , {{db-song}} - for songs , {{db-madeup}} - for made-up things
  • It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Technical 13 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 24 October 2013‎

Would the person who proposed this please state that they did so below and sign? I have no idea who wrote this Ego White Tray (talk) 03:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal 2

A?: No indication of importance: An article that make no credible claim of importance or significance. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion never applies to species, books, any kind of creative works, or educational institutions. It does not apply to musical recordings unless the artist has no article. Do not apply this criterion to any article that makes a claim of significance unless the claim is so ludicrous that no one would believe it.

  • It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion.

Ego White Tray (talk) 03:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Discussion for proposed replacement

  • Well, "things that fall under WP:FUTURE" is not the same as "things made up". Perhaps you're thinking of WP:MADEUP? Regardless, I think it's a bit silly to link to a whole 'nother article in the CSD description. And on a more philosophical bent: you seem to be no longer disputing the necessity of the new criterion. Now, it seems that you just want to extend A7 instead of creating a new criterion. If that's so, why is it better/less complex to expand A7 instead of adding a new criterion? It just makes A7 even more complex and hard to understand. Adding a new criterion isn't really any more complex than adding a new category to A7, particularly when the new category is less-defined (in the case of A11) or more complex (in the case of A9) than the other A7 categories. It's just separating the criteria out a bit more, which I would say is a decrease of complexity, not an increase. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 02:41, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Proposal 1 is an enormous extension of A11 and would be an extremely bad idea. The criterion currently refers to WP:MADEUP and requires that the article indicate the subject was created by the article creator or someone they know. That's a very narrow, objective standard and not at all like the proposal, which would extend the criterion to anything covered by WP:CRYSTAL. Any article discussing what the deleting admin believes to be unverifiable speculation about future events could be speedily deleted. That's a far more subjective standard, which is why the decision is left to AfD. WP:MADEUP and WP:CRYSTAL are definitely not the same thing. Proposal 2, which I assume is a proposal to remove the scope requirements from A7 entirely, is a perennially rejected proposal here. Hut 8.5 07:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Proposal 1 shows just why it is better to have separate simple criteria covering these different cases rather than try to cram them into one complicated one. JohnCD (talk) 09:04, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Proposal 1 merely combines an muddles the existing A7, A9, and A11. It adds no utility, but by removing soem of the clarifying body text of the various criteria, would lead to increased confusion and contention, to no benefit at all. It also assumes that one complex rule is somehow better than three simpler rules, for no reasom that i can understand. Proposal 2 is a huge increase in the range of things speedy deletable. See #Non notable things, above, and the archives of this page for good reasons not to do that. I oopose both proposals strongly. DES (talk) 22:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, I explicitly put into proposal 2 that it's not the same as notable, but considering that everyone that everyone pretty much ignores that with A7, i suppose they'd ignore it with my idea too. Ego White Tray (talk) 06:22, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Ego White Tray, but you broadened it to every kind of article with a few listed exceptions. Articles about small villages, for example would be subject to speedy deletion under this proposal, as would articles about individual buildings that are not schools. And a literally infinate number of other cases, when you went from "only this list" to "everything but that list". Not a sound idea, IMO. DES (talk) 14:09, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Proposal 1 is possibly the best example I've ever seen about why the CSD criteria should be kept simple. Proposal 2 is a bit better, but it offers no benefits over what we currently have and the limiting requirement for musical recordings is less obvious so it is more likely to lead to incorrect tagging and/or deletions so I can't support either. Thryduulf (talk) 09:08, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Proposal 2 is way better than 1 - but I still prefer separation. Peridon (talk) 15:35, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I agree with Peridon. JohnCD (talk) 12:53, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
    Actually in my view Proposal 2 is even worse than proposal 1. 1 Simply muddies the existing CSD, losing clarity and increasing confusion. 2 Actually changes them, making a much greater range of articles speedyible for failing to assert importance. It would mean that new stubs on all topics (with a very few exceptions) would need to assert importance or face speedy deletion -- a very undesirable outcome in my opinion. DES (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Having read these proposals I have been looking around this rather confusing page looking for the right place to say "not broken, why try to fix?". Hopefully this is it. Ben MacDui 20:02, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Propose closing this

The above RfC had now been opem for a month, more or less. I have not seen any new arguments, on either side, in some time. I think it is time to close this. Obviously i am too involved to be a closer, but I hope someone both uninvolved and experienced with SDs and with closing discussions closes this shortly. DES (talk) 22:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

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

Placement

Should these be placed at top of page, or talk page?98.74.156.204 (talk) 02:07, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

If by "these" you mean speedy deletion tags, they should be at the top of an article or other page, unless you are suggesting the deletion of a talk page.. A suggestion tha an article be speedy deleted is very significant to any possible reader. A reader may have info or refs to add, or may need to be informed that an article or page has (allegedly at least) a problem so severe that speedy deletion has been suggested. And many article creators won't knoew to go to a talk page without a very clear pointer there, such as the tags now give. DES (talk) 06:36, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
If this is a query about current procedure, the answer above is correct. If it's a call for discussion on where to put them, then I would be strongly in favour of keeping them on the article page. On the talk page, they won't be seen by many people (assuming 'many people' will even be visiting an article tagged for speedy deletion...). Peridon (talk) 11:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Deletion discussion that never had a page to discuss

So, at Miscellany for Deletion, someone found the page Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masked Loser and nominated for deletion. The page Masked Loser didn't exist then, and doesn't exist now and has never existed. So, would the deletion discussion page qualify as a "page dependent on a non-existent page"? Ego White Tray (talk) 03:48, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually the page did exist for a short while because there are 5 deleted edits at the page. It was created 22:10, 27 September 2004 by Masked Loser and was last edited 22:39, 27 September 2004. I do not know why there isn't a log entry though. GB fan 04:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The page was tagged for speedy deletion, and presumably deleted in accord with the tag. I think some log entries have been lost from that fat back. The deleted version of the page would pretty clearly be deleted one way or another fairly promptly were it to be created today. The AfD page seems to have been created by User:Masked Loser perhaps as some sort of protest over the pending speedy deletion. DES (talk) 04:09, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

A11 wording

I think "made up" works better than "invented". How 'bout "contrived"? Also, I like the explanation of the difference between A11 and "hoax". Dlohcierekim 16:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I think "invented" works better than "made up", even if it is not ideal. Myself, I changed it to "original creation", which was reverted. I explained myself at User talk:Kephir#WP:CSD#A11; I shall not repeat it. (And "contrived" I have usually seen when referring to hypothetical situations, so this usage would be rather… contrived.) Keφr 18:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
'Invented' could also cover inventions (that is, mechanical inventions) too. 'Contrived' has other connotations - implying hard work somewhere along the line and/or deviousness. 'Made up' carries an implication of insignificance that 'invented' doesn't. Peridon (talk) 19:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd just like to chime in that I like the use of invented. Made-up comes across as insulting which is not such the case with invented. Ego White Tray (talk) 21:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I like "made up" because it doesn't sound like an actual invention. My only concern with it is its confusion with G3. I think the best solution would be a different wording completely, but I haven't seen a better one yet. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, there is still confusion. G3 is for things that clearly couldn't be real, but A11 is for things that could be (but only Wayne and Sharon and their mates know about it). A G3 may not be blatantly obvious to everyone - but it must be obvious to at least one tagger and one admin. An A11 should really be obvious to everyone - because the article SAYS (in one way or another) that this was made up by Wayne and Sharon on Thursday 23rd. And the talk page claims that it's spreading fast around Groggtown MA and MUST NOT BE DELETED. A hoax will claim that it was invented in 1798 but the app didn't come out until 1834. Peridon (talk) 11:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)


"Categories"

Is there a particular reason that this is the only section on a separate page? Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 07:19, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

One reason why it should not be a separate page has just been demonstrated... someone reverting an edit didn't notice that a very similar edit was made there too. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 11:15, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

So apparently this is kept separate because of a single transclusion besides the one here - that on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy. Now that I've answered my own question, the new question is: anyone have any idea as to how to fix this? I don't want to break that page, of course, but the current situation seems very inconsistent. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Check out WP:SELECTIVETRANSCLUSION. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 20:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip! I have now performed the merge. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 21:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Expand a9 Criteria

I think A9 should be expanded to include non notable, films and other media productions not related to the Internet. An example would be Jilmil Jonak (film) that would have qualified under that criteria except it is by a studio that does not have an article and has no credible claim to significance. What does everyone think? Hell In A Bucket (talk) 08:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Bands are almost always going to be more notable than their individual albums. Films are often going to be a lot more notable than the studio that produces them. I could conceivably see it being sensible to apply it to other art forms where the artist is likely to be more notable than the art (paintings? sculptures?), but films don't work that way. WilyD 08:51, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
      • I don't see why it's likely to be needed. Especially given the example, which a tiny bit of investigation reveals stars an actor with a Wikipedia article anyhow. Any A9-equivalent for films would exclude films starring notable actors. WilyD 09:04, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I can't imagine this criteria being acceptable for anything other than musical recordings. The problem with paintings and sculptures and the like is, once you get before 1900 or so, there are a lot of very significant works that are totally anonymous, or obviously under a pen name when the real artist is unknown, or the only known work by an artist that scholars know nothing about, or a work with questioned or disputed authorship. In all of those cases, it would be completely reasonable to have an article on the work without an article on the artist. A9 works because it is limited to recordings, therefore keeping it to recent works whose authors are almost always known. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:53, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
If the work of art IS significant, it would would pass A9 anyway. This extension would apply, as does the current A9, only to insignificant items by insignificant creators. The sculptor of the Venus de Milo wouldn't have an article but for that statue, and by Wikipedia standards is otherwise non-notable. (Obviously one hell of a sculptor, but he lost out in the long term publicity game and didn't bother to build up reliable independent sources for himself...) But the statue would have an article. The difficulty lies in assessing the significance. The Venus, no problems. (Really ought to be Aphrodite, though... But Venus is the common name.) But when faced with 'Aphrodite' by Stieg Bocksmøller (incorporating printed source references), what does one do? (Yes, I know. Go somewhere else and delete something one knows about...) Current recordings (the majority of A9's catch) can be expected to be Googleable. Try Googling for 'Aphrodite' and you'll be overwhelmed by Greek restaurants, hotels and gawd knows what else. More expert input is needed. Records caught by A9 tend to be advance publicity by a non-notable performer for his/her debut, or left-overs from a group's deletion, and in both cases, recent stuff (in 'Venus' terms, at least...) and probably promotional in intent anyway. Peridon (talk) 12:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
It seems there will be no expansion, I don't mind shutting down the thread or leave it open formore discussion. I'm ok either way. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 12:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

hasty deletion tagging again

I see a lot of CSD taggings at < 10 minutes from creation. I thought we had agreed to give new articles at least 10 minutes. Before I anger people by slapping {{{hasty}}} tags on these, thought I'd reopen the discussion. Dlohcierekim 00:13, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Are you talking about A1 and A3's, or other tags? Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Is this related to the note you left on my talk page? --| Uncle Milty | talk | 00:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
At Unclemitty-- no. Not at all. Just trying to open a discussion. Non issue as it's gone. Not related to this post, No, I'm seeing hasty CSD taggings most of the time now. I think it applies to A7 as well. People do not always understand or are awkward and just need a breathing space to get their articles together. Slapping a CSD tag on a 2 minute article could frustrate the creator to the point of not being able to edit constructively. I'm specifically not talking a bout G10 or G3. Those article creators seem to have not trouble organizing their thoughts. Dlohcierekim 00:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
As far as I know, pages can be tagged as A7 immediately. Only A1 and A3 have waiting periods. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
@Dlohcierekim, you placed a hasty tag on an article I marked for deletion earlier today. If I recall, it was an A7-company, which I tagged four minutes after it was published. You added the hasty tag 10 minutes after it was published. I have been operating under the 10 minute guideline for A1 and A3, but as far as I know, there is no guideline that applies to every new page.
Also, editors are supposed to create articles that meet our very minimal guidelines.They are warned when they open the editor, so why do you think that there is a need for 10 more minutes? Can you show evidence that during that 10 minutes window of time, most/many/some/any articles are actually improved? That has not been my experience, and I've reviewed quite a few new articles. - MrX 01:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
@MrX- I know from your sending the template to MfD that you find it distasteful. The purpose is to slow down admins from making hasty deletions. If people are finding it offensive, and I've used it in the past w/o giving offense, then I won't use it. Dlohcierekim 01:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
To return to the original question-- should we be tagging for CSD articles that have been created only a couple of minutes before? Dlohcierekim 01:36, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I think admins wait anyway. If there is a problem with hasty deletion, the page reviewers are the first line of defense, but admins have the final say. Perhaps the issue here is with admins having a hair trigger, although I honest haven't observed that myself.
Yes, I think there are some cases where articles should be tagged immediately: obvious vandalism, attack pages, obvious hoaxes, obvious advertising, blocked/banned users, foreign language article on another project, duplicate article on en.wiki, and possibly more. There is a huge backlog of unreviewed pages now, and since pages are marked reviewed when they are tagged with maintenance tags, it's very easy for really inferior pages to slip through the cracks. In fact, I've been working from both the front and the back of the queue and have found some alarmingly bad articles that have existed for more than a month. - MrX 01:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
And I think that basically all of the A criteria should be given a good hour before getting tagged. The A criteria are all CSD criteria based on their being non-controversial, rather than their being critical - in direct contrast to most of the G criteria. But the persistent problem ends up being especially A1 and A3 where trigger-happy deletionists tag-and-bag right out from under the nose of a contributor who presses save on an intermediary version of something they are writing. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:35, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I think it's fine that you do it your way, and I do it my way, as long as we all work within existing guidelines. But I don't want your preferences to become constraints on me. If we need something more formal than the existing loose guidelines, then someone can propose it in an RfC.- MrX 04:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
But we do have a guideline that's supposed to constrain you: it's the ten minute rule. When someone, like you apparently, ignores it, instead of dragging you to ANI over not following procedure, we can just put a {{hasty}} tag on it, so the admin knows that any action needs to be delayed. I'm not sure why you don't prefer it this way, but it's basically about as painless as I can imagine it ever being. If these things get deleted out from under contributors' noses, they come here, and we have to find a way to fix it. So I don't have the luxury of pretending that NPP screwups didn't happen, and while live-and-let-live may be a nice idea, it's not actually a legitimate way of dealing with this problem. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Hold the phone, I'm not ignoring anything. My understanding is that the 10 minute "rule" (more of a guideline) applies to A1 and A3. Please link to this all-encompassing rule that you claim I am ignoring. - MrX 04:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it's a footnote to A1 and A3 that uses weasel words to avoid making a false claim to consensus:"though there is no set time requirement, a ten-minute delay before tagging under this criterion is suggested as good practice." It's only on A1 and A3, and I don't think there's actual consensus for it there.—Kww(talk) 04:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but did I not explicitly call it a guideline, in the fifth word of my previous response? What part of this are you not understanding? If you tag something too early, it can get a hasty tag. I would prefer that you wait an hour for all the A criteria, but because A1 and A3 end up getting tagged-and-bagged so often, they're the ones that get mentioned in {{uw-hasty}}, which also talks about the 10-15 minute courtesy period guideline. Quite frankly, I've wasted entirely too much time trying to convince you to extend even the barest of courtesy to article creators and to the people of this board who have to deal with them when you screw up. Ignore it if you have absolutely no regard for other editors, or follow it if you do. Your choice. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
No need for the hyperbole. It's quite possible to respect editors and expect them to have the courtesy to look at the articles on the website they are editing and make an effort to make their contribution look reasonably close to the ones that are already there, even on the first try.—Kww(talk) 04:44, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
@Vanisaac:I respect your right to patrol new pages however you want, but you haven't convinced me of the superiority of your approach. I'm also not convinced that the way I'm doing it is anything but a net positive. - MrX 05:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm not trying to convince you. I'm telling you your actions cause problems, and that a simple act of courtesy helps mitigate those problems. Make no mistake, your refusal to accept this puts you down squarely under "absolutely no regard for other editors". VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 05:51, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Sure, but doing this is driving away many potential new editors, which is generally regarded as a problem. You can teach kids to swim by throwing them off the end of a dock, but the success ratio is nothing to be proud of. WilyD 12:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

to make myself clearer, I'm referencing Wikipedia:NPP#Be_nice_to_the_newbies. Dlohcierekim 04:28, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I am always of the opinion where is the guidelines that give them more leeway then an experienced editor has as applies to GNG? If an article isn't ready for mainspace it should't be there. If the deleting Admin sees that the article is less then 10 minutes old and they want to move it to their sandbox with a note why that is understandable but why lower our standard of policing articles thereby lowering quality? The user formerly known as Hell In A Bucket (talk) 04:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
CSD applies only to those with no indication of significance. If there is an indication of significance but the subject does not meet GNG we PROD. I am referring to this paragraph-- Please do not be too hasty with certain speedy deletions, especially those lacking context (CSD A1) or content (CSD A3). Research has shown that writers unfamiliar with Wikipedia guidelines should be accorded at least 10 to 15 minutes to fix the article before it is nominated for speedy deletion. If you see a page that has been tagged too hastily, please notify the tagger about their hasty deletion with the {{uw-hasty}} template. The template {{hasty|placed above existing speedy tag to inform admins to of hasty tagging and to wait}} can also be added to the tagged article to flag that it was hastily tagged. Dlohcierekim 04:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
A key to the template states "credible" claim. Prod's for the most part is a waste of time. If they won't read the csd template they probably won't read the PROD template and if they do they will remove it anyways. AFD or CSD is a far better option. The only PROD that realistically serves a purpose in my opinion is the BLP prod. The User Formerly Known as Hell In A Bucket (talk) 04:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
@Dlohcierekim: Yes, that is the guideline that I have been operating under. However, there are cases where it is obvious that an article does not meet our guidelines, not because it's incomplete, but because it's spam, vandalism, copy-pasta, etc. I allow a great deal of latitude if I think an article has a chance at meeting our guidelines. Conversely, if someone is going to use the hasty tag in an article, they need to read the content, see if the creator has an obvious COI and make an informed judgement. - MrX 04:51, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Kww, Hell In A Bucket and Jackmcbarn have pretty much summed up my own views. I'm open to having my views changed, but not without some solid reasoning and some factual data. - MrX 05:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

If it is spam, vandalism, copy-paste, or attack, it is specifically excluded from the 10 minute rule. Dlohcierekim 05:10, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • To be honest, I think it depends. I don't see the point in waiting ten minutes to tag--or even delete--an article written by a 10-year-old about themselves or a classmate; it's clear from the outset that the article is never going to fly, no matter how much time we give it, and I don't see how it's any kinder to wait a certain amount of time before acting on it, despite the fact that it only qualifies under A7. If something is very obviously never going to become a reasonable article, there is no need for a wait. An article about someone's company, say, is different; there, waiting makes sense, even if it ends up being deleted, and even if we're pretty sure that's going to happen from the beginning. It's context-sensitive, and I would be a sad panda if we made an absolute rule about it either way. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 05:21, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I believe in independent thinking, the problem I have with a set time is that people take it to an extreme and act like it's one of the ten commandments and ignore everything else to that exclusion. A great example is Schools, some are simply not notable, people often quote "per WP:OUTCOMES" and ignore that the project itself says that they still must pass GNG. I foresee a similar problem resulting from an arbitrary time and I can see it happening saying you didn't want long enough so the CSD is invalid. Incidently congrats on adminship again WK. The User Formerly Known as Hell In A Bucket (talk) 05:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Noone is saying the CSD is invalid. Just saying an article might not need tagging if we give it a moment. Sure, there will always be the glaringly obvious ain't gonna go nowhere posts. Not as many as there used to be, though. Since the goal is to build the encyclopedia, I have no problem waiting 10 minutes before I tag for CSD. I just roll up and down the feed page till I find one that needs attention. I used to use the time looking for sourcing to try to save what was saveable. Could still do that. Lost some of my fire over the years. Dlohcierekim 06:44, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
As WK points out, there are different circumstances. On A7, I usually won't delete in under about 45 minutes. Unless... If it's obviously a no-hoper even if left for a week (a 10 year old talking about his/her schooling and pets, an under graduate whose main claim to fame appears to be a school award for 100% attendance, or a band formed in November 2013 in Deadman's Swamp MO whose drummer wrote the article and which is looking for a new lead vocalist...), then I'll delete sooner. Especially if my view has been confirmed by a talk page posting claiming the right to an article because they are going to be famous if only they get a page here, or because it's someone's birthday. It could be a good idea to userfy some of the more borderline stuff, and explain what's wrong with it. There again, I've done that a few times and found that they just abandoned the things. A no content should be delayed - but if there's only a repeat of the subject's name and that subject is a person, it won't get expanded anyway. Just trying to get their name on Wikipedia. Hundreds of the damn things still emerging from AfC. Peridon (talk) 11:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Ridonculous. We have userspace drafts and WP:AFC for a reason. ANY live article needs to be "survivable" from the very first time you click "save page" in articlespace. We have WP:NPP for a reason - and articles that fail the simplest of requirements shouldn't be in articlespace. If it can't pass, build it elsewhere ES&L 12:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
    • I can think of very little that would be (and has been) more successful in driving off new editors than deleting their work minutes after they create it. Hobit (talk) 14:57, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
true confession it feels like a slap in the face. Not a little tap. A full-swing, backhanded lick. Dlohcierekim 15:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
If they don't read the welcome or the policies behind it...that's a rough one...The User Formerly Known as Hell In A Bucket (talk) 15:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Most people do not get a welcome until after their first few edits, not everyone sees the user talk message, not everyone who does reads it, and very few people who read the welcome will read any of the policies. We must assume that a new contributor knows exactly nothing about our policies than "anyone can edit". Even those who read the notice above the edit window are only told that contributions must be verifable not verfied (because it doesn't have to be verified). We absolutely cannot expect people to be familiar with policies, guidelines, processes and know how to comply with them until they have been here a while (days and several tens of edits at least). Nothing should be speedily deleted in les than 10 minutes unless it is (a) illegal (including copyvios and defamation), (b) submitted in bad faith (including vandalism and contribs from banned users), or (c) clearly not an attempt at the correct content for the namespace (e.g. test edits in main space, articles in template space). Thryduulf (talk) 15:23, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Actually, the edit window instructions also state: "Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article." and "When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted."
Why wait 10 minutes? Why not an hour or a day? The problem that you raise could be addressed with automation. A new user signs up: take them to their talk page with a welcome message already there. Problem solved.
A new user creates an new article: publish it in their sandbox with a big button that says "are you really sure that this ready for the world to see, because if it's not, it will probably be deleted". Problem solved. - MrX 15:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
That's ridiculous. Expecting every new user to read the "my first article" page is every bit as ridiculous as expecting any of us to read the license agreement before downloading a software program. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Right. We certainly shouldn't expect encyclopedia editors to read anything (instructions, stop signs, pill bottles, legal agreements...). - MrX 15:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Really? Any evidence that is driving off editors that would otherwise be valuable contributors? Let's compile some statistics. How many of these editors are here to promote a single, non-notable subject, and then make no other edits? How many new users persistently create the same article over and over again despite speedy deletions, often using slightly different titles to avoid scrutiny or salting? This argument that speedy deletions are a plague upon Wikipedia are unfounded and lacking in evidence. Writ Keeper and Peridon have conveyed my approach much more eloquently that I have. If we have users who are indisputably too aggressive with deletions, then coach the users; don't create feel-good processes that hinder chipping away at the 14,000+ unreviewed pages. - MrX 15:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Well I will say that Thryduulf has a point and sometimes I do have to remind myself that I started off with bad purposes here when I first started. I liked to read the website but I got pissed after my favorite author died and the publicist company was going to continue his books. I started out vandalizing that article, it was a rough start for sure as my first 3 blocks show. I started out bad faith and ended up (hopefully) being a good contributor. A lot of the people write articles start out with a good faith reasons for wanting to contribute (not talking about obvious vandals). I'm still against a set time limit though, that should be left to the administrator to monitor. If we can't expect them to have good judgement why the hell should they have the bit to begin with? The User Formerly Known as Hell In A Bucket (talk) 15:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I learned early on that BE BOLD may be a pillar, but it's a bit cracked in places. It's the first thing some of us see when we go from reading to writing. To expect a new editor to have a firm grasp of all the policies is not realistic.16:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC) Dlohcierekim
  • Most people don't get a welcome: This is entirely the fault of the Foundation for not providing a proper landing page for new users that explains clearly and concisely what they can and cannot do here. There are, and have been for a long time, concerns expressed about the quality of New Page Patrolling: this is the fault of the community - see current thread at WT:NPP. Most admins are quite quick to decline an inappropriate CSD. Most admins are - fortunately - very quick to delete the unmitigated crap which accounts to anything between 50 and 80% of the daily input of around 1,000 articles (excluding autopatroled); there's nothing that justifies keeping such pages for a second longer than necessary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:33, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually, it's the fault of the Foundation for not requiring new users to familiarize themselves with the place before creating, as the community wanted. That could save a lot of patrolling work and a lot of hurt new editor feelings, but that's over and done and is extremely unlikely to ever happen. Yes, we want to attract and retain new editors, but do we want to attract and retain those who have no interest in reading and heeding advice that's clearly presented several times, no matter what creation avenue they take? And are they more likely to read and follow such advice if it's presented a few minutes later? I suspect the answer to both of those questions is "no". Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I concur with all that. ACTRIAL was born out the need to address huge backlogs at NPP and poor patrolling. It was rejected on the grounds of conflicting with a founding policy, even though it proposed testing only a very minor restriction. As a consolation, the Foundation quickly offered us the new system for patrolling new pages, an excellent development but it did not address the core issues of too few patrollers, and too little experience. The only solutions are to either better educate the patrollers or to insist that they meet some minimum criteria of experience before being allowed to patrol. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:42, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I have some questions: Some are saying they are unsure of the consensus for a waiting period. I thought there was consensus, but do not know where any single, formal discussion took place to verify that. It appears to be a well supported view that some take as common sense, though that may not always necessarily mean consensus. In the CSD A1 and A3 templates, why don't we have the cat handler in a clock-controlled #ifexpr, or, perhaps better, make the note (already inside the clock-controlled #ifexpr) say how many minutes ago the page was created, instead of only "less than 15 minutes ago"? Why is it not more like {{hasty}}'s notice? (I !voted to keep {{hasty}} in the TfD, and feel it is needed at least until there is a comparable system for notifying admins in the relevant CSD templates.) Like above commentators doubting the consensus for such notes, I don't know where the discussions about them occurred, or if they were simply bold edits supporting the consensus without discussion. I support the notes in general, but think they could better reflect consensus, (perhaps saying this is common courtesy, instead of consensus, if that is technically the case,) while being more useful to the admin. —PC-XT+ 07:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Earlier MrX requested evidence that hasty tagging was driving off productive editors. Although this was sent to AfD not CSD, it did have a chilling effect on a productive editor. She has not edited since the article was proposed for deletion. The article was tagged for deletion 8 minutes after creation. A mad scramble for sourcing ensued, and now someone else will need to finish the article. Dlohcierekim 16:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Are we allowed to delete particles now? The nuclear authorities won't come after us? Peridon (talk) 12:11, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
damn tremors Dlohcierekim 15:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that was hasty and unfortunate. Hopefully, Tco03displays has learned from the experience and hopefully Carees will return. One of my first articles was tagged for speedy deletion nine minutes after it was created, so I'm very empathetic about the impact it can have on new users. - MrX 16:36, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

CSD T4 proposal

I would like to propose a new CSD T4, with this wording. Such templates are always deleted at TfD per WP:NENAN, and it is my opinion that much time could be saved by having this as a speedy deletion criterion.--Launchballer 19:07, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Since NENAN is an essay, not policy, I would object to it being the basis of a CSD. That having been said, I think there could be an argument that an upper-bound of three would probably be sufficiently uncontestable, but I don't think it would be frequent enough to merit a new criterion. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
So if I was to repropose it with simply 'three' instead of 'five', would you object?--Launchballer 20:02, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
I'd need to see evidence that such templates are frequently discussed and that they are always deleted (never expanded or merged for example). Thryduulf (talk) 20:05, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any strong opinion on the criterion itself (I doubt it's sufficiently common to warrant a criterion), the creation of templates should follow acceptance of the policy change, not pre-empt it. As such I have delete the newly-created {{db-t4}} and doc subpage. Of course if the criterion is accepted, they should be undeleted. Happy‑melon 20:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Here's the proposer's wording, for ease of discussion:
T4. Small navboxes.
Navigation boxes that contain fewer than five major links, not including 'see also' rows. See also Wikipedia:Not everything needs a navbox.
Small navboxes (with, say, three or fewer blue links) are invariably deleted at TFD - there may have been rare exceptions but none spring to mind. It's certainly "objective", "frequent" and "nonredundant". The only concern lies in the "uncontestable" part.
I would support this with two changes:
  • change "fewer than five major links" to "fewer than three blue links, excluding the navbox title" (I would also support minor variations to this, e.g. "fewer than three links" (blue or red) or "fewer than three, including the title" or "three or fewer")
  • broaden the last bit to "'see also' or 'related XYZ' rows"
— This, that and the other (talk) 00:04, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
When WP:NENAN's 5 links rule is used to nominate a template, some seem surprised to find it opposed. Navboxes with less then 3 blue links are never kept that way, (unless there are rare exceptions,) but the TfD discussion helps to know what to do with them. Most of them are deleted or merged to other navboxes, and the rest are standardized and expanded to include more links instead of deleting as premature. It could be appropriate to delete these under a criterion allowing the template to be recreated when 3 or more blue links are included. One potential small problem with this is that merging may be more appropriate, or standardization needed, and TfD discussion is a good place to find out. Likewise, navboxes with 3 or 4 bluelinks are deleted, merged, or expanded, but they may also be kept. Maybe 5% are kept as is because they cannot be expanded, and an acceptable merge candidate cannot be found, but they are supported as useful. I wouldn't support speedy deletion in those cases. Therefore, I basically agree with User:This, that and the other. —PC-XT+ 03:59, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose First, WP:NENAN, as mentioned above, is an essay, not a policy or guideline. Plus, NENAN itself says "A good, but not set-in-stone rule to follow is the rule of five" - so the cited essay doesn't even treat it as a hard rule. Also, navbox templates with four or fewer links frequently receive keep votes at Templates for discussion - current examples can be seen at Nov 30, and Dec 1. Navboxes with fewer links, for example, are good to keep if it's likely that more articles will be added, or if it could be merged to a broader navbox, or if the articles aren't otherwise linked. The only criteria this could possibly meet is that it's common - it is quite common, but the delete votes are far from unanimous. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:29, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose current wording, expressing concern about exceptions and potential loss of standardization and gain of template creep, but open to solutions as described above —PC-XT+ 03:59, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
  • strong oppose because it fails requirement 2 for speedy deletion criteria: "It must be the case that almost all [pages] that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus." (emphasis in original). It is clear from PC-XT's links and comments that templates are that these templates frequently not deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 10:45, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
I didn't actually provide example links, but many can be found here: since 2006 2013 only I know of a few other relevant TfD discussions which are not included on that list, but I doubt they would influence the statistics very much, and it could be hard to look them up at this point. I will try, if requested, though. —PC-XT+ 03:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
A page with one NENAN discussion tends to have others, as well. Almost all of them are in the list I gave above. I would like to link one relevant example, in particular, because User:Thincat concisely described the problem of using WP:NENAN in deletion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_June_11#Template:Satariel. As for the hard to find discussions, there are a few short ones without those specific words that I don't remember being on a page with other NENAN discussions, and there are very few that have been retracted by deleting the discussion, and so are buried in a history, somewhere. —PC-XT+ 06:36, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. WP:NENAN is an essay which does not discuss deletion at all. The only time the word is used is in the essay's navigation box where the essay is included under "construction". Its focus is on recommending that navboxes should not be used thoughtlessly and with that I agree. Please improve the articles in which the navigation is unsatisfactory. Thincat (talk) 10:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons given by others. Also, see the "Template:Lumpkin County, Georgia" section of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 February 20. This is a great example of a situation in which a template "failed" NENAN but was kept because it was part of a huge scheme and because it was easily expandable. Nyttend (talk) 20:15, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

G5 and in-use categories

WP:CSD#G5 (creations by banned users) already has an exemption for transcluded templates ("G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates."). I propose that categories that are in-use on multiple articles and which are not blatantly useless should also be excluded. The WP:Banning policy already has the following:

Since categorization can impact many pages, and deletion of a category without merging can leave pages orphaned, you should carefully consider what to do with categories created by a banned user. Blatantly useless categories can be speedy-deleted, as well as any categories which clearly violate existing category standards. Care should nonetheless be taken to see if articles need to be merged to a parent category before the speedy deletion. Categories created by a banned user which may be useful or fit into a larger category scheme should be tagged for discussion and possible merging using the categories for discussion process instead of deleting them outright.

Specifically I propose to replace the sentence about templates with:

  • G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates or to categories that may be useful or suitable for merging. Such pages should be nominated at TfD or CfD respectively instead.'

I'm not convinced that the wording can't be improved though. Thryduulf (talk) 01:20, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Categories usually have little content. So if you want to stick a finger in the eye of the banned user you can delete and then recreate the category immediately. If the category was problemeatic then delete it anyway. Anyway I support the idea of this new wording. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:30, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The original wording has an exemption for (all?) transcluded templates, but the proposed wording would allow exceptions. Are there ever cases where speedily deleting a transcluded template is OK?- MrX 14:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support, maybe linking to the ban policy for reference —PC-XT+ 02:36, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. This reinforces the core policy requirement that the good of the encyclopedia comes before spiting the banned user. This will also reinforce the inappropriateness of removing said useful categories from pages: if you're not allowed to delete a category, you definitely shouldn't be emptying it. I don't understand MrX's objection: the original wording says "should not be applied", and the proposal also says "should not be applied". The proposal basically tacks a bunch of words onto the end of the sentence without changing what was already there. Nyttend (talk) 14:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
    I'm not really objecting, I'm just trying to get clarification. Is it ever OK to speedily delete a transcluded template? In other words, would it break things? If not, the wording should read: "G5 should never be applied to transcluded templates. It should also not be applied to categories that may be useful or suitable for merging. Such pages should be nominated at TfD or CfD respectively instead." - MrX 15:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but that seems to be a difference without a distinction. I wrote the template transculsion exception in G5 after a particularly egregious incident of an entire wikiproject going offline because its infobox was mangled by an inattentive no-longer admin, and would certainly support the strengthening of the language if it weren't unequivocal, but for the life of me, I can't see how "should not be applied" is falling short in any way that "should never be applied" isn't as well. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I think the point of contention may be the subject to which "that may be useful or suitable for merging" applies. Perhaps to remove ambiguity, the exclusion of categories should be described in a separate sentence. isaacl (talk) 19:28, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm really not trying to be clueless here. These policies need to be crystal clear, otherwise users can misinterpret them and make mistakes.
My understanding as of now is that there are sometimes cases where it is OK to speedily delete transcluded templates, for example, if the templates and all of its transclusions were created by the blocked/banner user. The original wording excluded any such exceptions, so mark me as support for the new wording. Common sense and WP:BE would seem to apply: Don't delete content if does more harm than good. - MrX 20:32, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
It wasn't my intention to alter the meaning of the template exemption, but now you mention it I can see that it does. I can't off the top of my head think of any situation where it would be OK to speedily delete a transcluded template by a banned user that would also apply to the creation of any other user (e.g. template created purely for vandalism can be speedily deleted under G3 regardless of transclusion status or author. That said I'm OK with either wording - one sentence giving exceptions to templates and categories or two sentences giving exceptions only to categories. Thryduulf (talk) 15:32, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Drafts

When and where will the discussion take place concerning use of CSD in draft space? Dlohcierekim 13:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

@Dlohcierekim, Steven (WMF): Do you foresee at this time any special considerations for the draft namespace? I've spent a moment thinking about it and nothing jumps out at me. One issue (and what may have led you to post this thread possibly) is that the text of WP:DRAFTS currently states, misleadingly:

"the complete deletion policy for drafts has not been decided. Currently, speedy deletion critera G13 applies only to Articles for Creation, according to deletion policy. It may be appropriate to, in the spirit of ignore all rules, to apply some speedy deletion criteria to drafts — particularly drafts that are empty for an extended period of time, contain copyright violations, defame living people, or are completely incomprehensible."

This probably should be removed entirely. The G in the G criteria (G1, G2, G3, etc.) stands for "general" and is headed by the fact that "These apply to all namespaces...", so the statement is redundant and implies that we need to make some change to make drafts subject to criteria they would be already subject to with no change whatsoever (and states would need to invoke WP:IAR to do so, when we do not). As for G13, it's possible we will need to make some change but it seems to me we will need to see how Drafts will interface with AfC. I thought drafts would function with AfC just as they do now, but we would get rid of the huge clunky name hack that puts them in the Wikipedia talk namespace. The current language of G13 would only need the addition of "and draft" for clarity.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:32, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Ignore all rules is antithetical to CSD in that someone will think you too bold. So we will need to adjust the CSD to deal with the new draft space. G10 obviously applies. G11 and G12 less so as it is draft space and the draft a work in progress. A10 seems applicable with modification. G5 seems to not apply to templates(?), but should apply to drafts. Not sure about A11. The rest of the A criteria don't seem to supply. Or will we need a whole new Set of Dx categories? Dlohcierekim 16:24, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I completely disagree that IAR is antithetical, but that's beyond the scope (you did understand that I was criticizing the language for saying that we needed to use IAR when we don't, right? [I have made that more clear above]). The point is that the above-quoted statement from WP:DRAFTS is all wrong and no IAR is involved. The G criteria apply to all namespaces. Full stop. G10, G11, and G12, simply apply. The exception in G5 is not about a namespace, and is not about all templates but only transcluded templates. None of the "A" (standing for Article) criteria would apply unless we made a change to them (just as we would have needed to make such a change to make them apply to draft AfCs as they currently exist). I personally see no need for any special cases for any of the A criteria, unless some great difference emerges in the draft namespace, from what we see currently in userspace drafts and AFC submissions.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:40, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Quick update: I've refactored the text in that help page to specifically mention that general CSD criteria apply, with the exception of G13 (since that portion specifically mentions AFC, and I don't think we should rush to apply the same time period by default). Better? I do foresee some future special considerations for drafts namespace. One of the advantages of a proper namespace is that we can apply better technical changes to it. So, purely as an example, if we want drafts to expire after 3-6 months, we could A) notify authors that their draft is about to expire B) potentially automatically delete drafts after some time has passed. Also, in my personal CSD patrolling as an admin, I sometimes see people trying to apply article CSD criteria to drafts, like advertising or notability. I think this is inappropriate for drafts, and should be avoided. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:04, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Also, I should be clear: I wrote Wikipedia:Drafts as a help page primarily, and don't intend to be dictating official policy on my work time at WMF. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:10, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
The reason why G13 is a G criterion, however, is that it was always intended to apply, no matter what namespace you find it in. If AfCs are migrated to the draft namespace, nothing has changed, and they are still subject to deletion after 6 months, just like an AfC in user space is. The only additions not found in the G criteria that I can forsee possibly needing would be a housekeeping D1 - non-AfC drafts older than (6 months/a year), and a duplication D2 - drafts of subjects with already existing mainspace articles (maybe give these a few days to a week sp the draft namespace can be used as a kind of article sandbox). But these are all premature, as we can't know if they are frequent enough to warrant a new CSD. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 18:22, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
@Steven (WMF):. (e/c) Regarding tagging drafts with any "A" criterion, well, yes, I agree its inappropriate, but that's simply because it's a patent misapplication of the criteria there or anywhere else that's not in the mainspace. As for AfC, won't AfC be switching to the draft namespace -- won't people still be creating article through the AfC project and/or writing a draft and then placing {{submit}}? If so, then all we would need to do is add "and draft" right before "namespace" to the current language, which was intended to apply to any AfC submission, so doing so would I think be ministerial and uncontroversial. G13 would thus apply to all such AfC drafts in the draft namespace, and concomitantly, the only thing we might wish to consider is possibly expanding G13 (and possibly for a different time period) to cover drafts that were not submitted through AfC. (I very much doubt anyone took your edit there as in your official capacity but the clarification doesn't hurt)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:25, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
@Vanisaac: Yeah, if a draft follows the AfC process, G13 would apply. But I wouldn't assume that all drafts will follow that process. The RFC did not require that drafts follow AfC's review process, and there is probably much that needs to be adapted and fixed before AfC reviews can work on the Draft namespace. Regarding, D2 (drafts of an already existing subject) if drafts of pages that already exist are not wanted, we can work on preventing a lot of this by technically disallowing draft creation if the page title already exists in mainspace. Do folks think we should do that? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:59, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
I was going to say that disallow is too strong. But in thinking about this, if the article already exists, the editor should be notified of that and get a suggestion to improve the existing article. Another issue that we would have is if there are multiple subjects that share a name. So we are really seeing an article on a new topic. So disallowing would not be correct. In the latter case, a page with some form of disambiguation is needed. So the warning would read something like, "This article name already exists in the main name space. If your are writing about what is covered in link to existing article, please improve that article. If this is a new article on a different subject, the title needs to be disambiguated." Vegaswikian (talk) 23:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
Yep, I think that's probably a sound way of approaching the problem. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
I broadly agree with Vegaswikian's suggestion, although there will either need to be some explanation of what we mean by "disambiguated" or a different form of words, and maybe a note about talk pages. Perhaps something like:
"This article name already exists in the main name space. If your are writing about what is covered in [[:link to existing article]], please improve that article or you can make suggestions on its [[:talk:existing article|talk page]]. If this is a new article on a different subject, you will need to use a different title, see [[Wikipedia:Simplified summary of article titles policy]] for guidance. After publication, the title can be changed using the [[Wikipedia:Requested moves]] procedure if appropriate."
We also need to decide how to deal with redirects, probably just a slightly different version of the normal message:
"This article name already exists in the main name space as a [[help:redirect|redirect]] to [[redirect target]]. If your are writing about what is covered in that article, please improve it or you can make suggestions on its [[:talk:existing article|talk page]]. If this is a new article on a different subject, you will need to use a different title, see [[Wikipedia:Simplified summary of article titles policy]] for guidance. After publication, the title can be changed using the [[Wikipedia:Requested moves]] procedure if appropriate."
As usual with my suggestions though it is likely possible to make the messages more concise! Thryduulf (talk) 20:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Delete javascript page

How can a user request deletion of a javascript page in his user space? Jc3s5h (talk) 14:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

As far as I remember, {{db-u1}} should place the page in the appropriate category, even if it does not render the template's contents. Keφr 14:58, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Jc3s5h, Kephir is correct. Technical 13 (talk) 12:36, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Two questions about G5 scope

Transcluded templates are exempt – but what about populated categories, or files that are actively being used in articles?

To me, it seems a bit petty (perhaps even POINT-y) to speedy-delete such pages simply because they have been created by, say, a block-evading sockpuppet, when they would be at no risk of speedy deletion if created by a user in good standing (e.g., a free file presents no copyright or licensing concerns, or a non-free file fully satisfies all NFCC; a category is encylopaedic and has adequate potential for population). I've tagged a couple of images under G5 in the past, but only because they were un-used and had already been tagged for delayed deletion on un-related grounds. Could the second sentence of this criterion's description be revised to illustrate other situations where G5 may be undesirable?

Also – specifically concerning pages created by sockpuppets who are engaged in block evasion – should the relationship between page creator and sockmaster ideally be confirmed (e.g., by CheckUser)? If the page creator ends up being blocked as a suspected sockpuppet only, based on WP:DUCK/behavioural evidence, are pages that have been created and edited exclusively by them just as eligible for G5? SuperMarioMan 04:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

G5 is just how we enforce bans and blocks. It's the equivalent of reverting a banned editor's contributions on sight, just applied to page creation. Bans apply to ALL EDITS, whether good or bad, but there is an incredibly simple and elegant means by which any editor in good standing can cleanse a banned editor's contribution: use it. Edit the page to incorporate the tainted contribution. Transclude the template - Check the archives, I'm the one that got that explicitly put in after I had transcluded a family of templates through a wikiproject infobox which then got deleted out from under me, throwing errors onto several hundred articles all at once. I don't work with images all that much, so I couldn't say whether using images should be extended the same courtesy or not, but my gut says that images get deleted all the time, and bots do a good job of cleaning up any messes. Also, remember that categories can still be used, even if the page doesn't exist, so that's a non-issue, and needs to be treated like any other content page.
As for your second point, although it's a common misconception, Checkuser is not a "confirmation" of a sockpuppet, it's just another piece of evidence. It can be a particularly damning piece of evidence in some cases - if someone has a dedicated static IP, for example - or as just another piece of the puzzle - if the same ISP shows up, or edits come from the same city. In the end, there is really no such thing as a confirmed sockpuppet, they are all just suspected sockpuppets. The DUCK test is not an on-the-cheap guess, it is the primary means of identifying sockpuppets. It's only when DUCK is inconclusive that we would ever move on to a checkuser. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 08:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Quite true. Frankly I disapprove of the "revert on sight" policy. I won't do it, and when I become aware of such an edit (rarely, as I don't follow such issues much) I will often adopt/endorse it, as Vanisaac describes above. A minor peice of pedantry, in addition to suspected sockpuppets there are a few admitted sockpuppets, where a user has openly acknowledged sock-puppetry. But that is rare. I do think some editors are over ready to call DUCK on what seems to me slight evidence. DES (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The problem is that some users, upon being banned or indef blocked, decide to try and prove that we need them back by socking and then pointing to the socks contributions as evidence that they are able to contribute positively. In almost all cases, we already knew they were capable of doing that, but there were behavioral issues that were sent to outweigh their positive contribs. And so, the community decided that {{banned means banned}}. Period. Ignoring or endorsing block evasion only encourages socking. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
  • It's clear, then, that not being in mainspace should be no protection. I'll stress that the examples offered in my opening post are hypothetical, and not from my actual tagging experience; I can't remember, on the very few occasions when I've been in that situation, neglecting to tag a non-mainspace page for G5 when the conditions of the criterion were satisfied. It occurs to me that an administrator who has blocked a user for sockpuppetry ought to do a check of created pages, then delete the ones that have been edited exclusively or near-exclusively by the blocked creator, but I suppose that these kinds of pages fall through the cracks from time to time. SuperMarioMan 03:52, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
  • So can we delete the page Most played rivalries in NCAA Division I FBS for that reason? Banned means banned, so the contribution of the blocked user that created that article shouldn't be allowed to stay on WP. --162.239.236.97 (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
No. There are significant contributions from other editors, so it is not eligible for G5. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:37, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Non-human typo redirect

Due largely to WP:TOPRED, we have had two batches of improbable typos redirects being mass created, resulting in a large discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive257#Mass_creation_of_very_improbable_redirects. In short, the cause is essentially non-human typos. i.e. some computer program somewhere is linking to '[article name]m' or linking to Guillain\xE2\x80\x93Barr\xC3\xA9 syndrome (which is hex encoded unicode) instead of Guillain–Barré syndrome. WP:TOPRED is a great resource created by User:West.andrew.g, but IMO it is being misused and I have no doubt it will continue to list strange anomolies caused by computer programs, and contributors are going to 'fix' them. I believe the simple fix is to clarify that 'R3. Implausible typos' is applicable to computer encodings or computer generated misspellings. John Vandenberg (chat) 02:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Everyone who comes to the site does so through a computer program, and every non-trivial program contains an error. If we wish to prevent people from reaching the site through buggy software, shutting down the site is the simplest way.

As I said at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2013_December_9, in one 25-hour period in November, there were "\x" requests for 114,000 distinct pages on the English Wikipedia, and there were more than 4.6 million such requests arriving at the various WMF sites. These requests have been increasing in frequency since September 2011 or earlier. I've proposed at bugzilla:58316 that they be automatically decoded by the Mediawiki software. It's clear that a request for Robinson_Can%C3%B3 should be satisfied by serving up the Robinson_Canó article, and the Mediawiki software does this. A request for Robinson_Can\xC3\xB3 is incorrect because it uses a Javascript encoding rather than an HTML encoding, but it's clearly a request for the same article and ought to be treated identically. The 150 redirects nominated at RfD are an attempt to make a few popular articles reachable through incorrect software. —rybec 05:15, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

R3 applies to all improbable typos, and constructions such as "[article name]m" are improbable typos (made by a programmer). Constructions such as Robinson_Can\xC3\xB3 are not typos but encoding errors and are not covered by R3, nor should they be in my opinion (per Rybec). Thryduulf (talk) 12:20, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that these redirects should be deleted (and never be created: maybe WP:TOPRED could have a way to remove entries that are obviously not helpful to have to remove the temptation to create bad redirects). However, that doesn't necessarily make this a good CSD ("implausible typo" is traditionally overused anyway). —Kusma (t·c) 13:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
A better fix: Don't treat these like improbably typos, but don't automatically forward them to the "correct" place either. Instead, if there is a page at Robinson_Can\xC3\xB3 then go to that page, otherwise put up a magic "404 - you will be forwarded soon" page similar to what you get if you leave the "wiki" out of the URL, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/foo. By having a "magic 404" instead of having a redirect or auto-forwarding the page silently, this will alert the reader that there is a problem, and hopefully eventually someone will alert the webmaster of the page hosting the bad link. By having a "magic 404" instead of a redlink, the reader will get to where he needs to go. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:45, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
This sounds like a good approach for the \xXX and other encoding issues. We would need to see whether the sequence '\xXX' ever occurs in the title of a page (other than redirects to the decoded version). I think it would be less feasible to build a 404 handler for the [title]n, [title]m and [title]p redirects. John Vandenberg (chat) 04:40, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I think the current R3 also applies to "software typos" like \x encoding errors. They are typos from human user's perspective. All should be just speedily deleted. jni (talk) 15:37, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Two possible new criteria?

I've been brainstorming today on how to reduce some of the issues that Articles for Creation suffers from (sizeable approval backlogs, excessive amounts of PR content, and a languishing long tail of articles that will never make it), and one of the ideas I came up with was a couple of possible CSD criteria. Or rather, the sort of vague notion of a couple of possible CSD criteria which might maybe be workable with some filling-out. I'd like to float a trial balloon and get some input on how promising any of these ideas sounds. This is not currently a proposal to adopt any of these; I just want to get a sense of whether any of them even approach workability. Tweaks, critiques, adjustments, counter-proposals, and the like are more than welcome; I've already bounced some of these around with @Nick, Secret, Nonsenseferret, and Huon:, so I'm pinging them so they can reiterate their thoughts if they want. This seemed like a discussion that encompasses the work of a couple of projects and boards, so I decided to plunk it here; please feel free to cross-notify other places of this discussion if it's felt to be necessary. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

An AfC Submission that cannot be made suitable for inclusion, even after revision

There's a couple possible directions to take this:

  1. "Submissions which no amount of editing can make suitable for inclusion", which is to say submissions that would irredeemably meet A7 or A11 if they were in article space - "My dog Sparky is awesome, he has black spots and eats his lunch with me every day", "Dingleherp is a game Tanya and Jamie invented yesterday on the playground", etc. Currently, "A" CSD criteria are generally not applied to AfC submissions (there are some exceptions, and some users disagree with this, but the general feeling, as I understand it, is that "A" criteria are for article-space pages, not work-in-progress AfC submissions), and as a result we find pages which will never be successful articles, but which deletion policy is unclear, at best, on. A new criterion could be created to address this, or A7 and A11 could be adjusted to explicitly include AfC submissions that cannot be made to pass even with editing.
  2. "Submissions which remain unsuitable for inclusion, even after [$number] attempts at revision", which is to say that we would pick a number of submissions of an AfC after which, if the submission continues to not be suitable for inclusion, the submission would be deleted. This would be a pretty significant change to the AfC workflow, but may be worth considering as we seem to very often field fifth, tenth, etc tries at AfC submissions from submitters who clearly don't understand what a suitable article looks like. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I like your first idea. Perhaps it could be phrased as "G14: Pages that clearly demonstrate a lack of notability of their subjects". I don't like the second idea. It seems a bit BITEy to delete a draft just because it's failed too many times. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
When I used to do new page patrol, I took note of what I would call, "articles that make an assertion of non-notability. Basically the examples Fluff listed, as well as such things as "HerpDerp is an up and coming rapper, currently working underground, with no records out yet", or "Zipzap is a band i started in my garage with my friends. Maybe one day someone besides my mom will hear us play". This reminds me that there have been many attempts to make an "A" criterion for "things made up in school one day" and they all failed for one reason or another (When the hell did A11 get created??). Someguy1221 (talk) 02:59, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Technically, the submissions described in this section are (if sufficently egregious) can be dealt with under G1/G2/G3. They also can be dealt with by semi-protecting the submission (to try and get the submitter to commit some other violation or move on). Depending on how clean the "Pending Review" backlog is, a article could rack up 10 declined in the space of a few days, therefore I consider a CSD after N attempts to also be a not so good idea. Finally if an article is that bad, there's always a MFD discussion that can occur if it's patently obvious that the submission isn't going to be promoted. Hasteur (talk) 04:17, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
A11 crept in comparatively recently... It amazes me that so much total crap managed to survive at AfC without getting tagged as vandalism, hoax, or copyvio. Possibly AGF ruled without the necessary streak of cynicism. The non-notable (or non-significant) ones are more of a problem to sort. I don't know how many get to large numbers of rewrites, but would think that if they get to more than five there's either no hope for the subject, or no hope for the writer. Or both... Peridon (talk) 12:23, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose The first would be possible, but I frankly don't see the need for it. Let it sit until G13 applies, or use MfD. I frankly think it will be over used, just as A7 often is, if it is added. If it is added, make it the first new D (draft) criterion. I would stronly oppose any broadenign of the A- criteria to qapply outside article space without a project-wide RFC (and I would oppose on such an RFC). The second suggestion I strongly oppose in any form. There is no deadline for the time or number of rewrites needed. All of AfC is NOINDEXed so none of this shows up in Google or other compliant search engines. I would undo without discussion any semi-protection of any AfC draft that was not due to actual vandalism. (A11 is fairly recent, look in the recent archives of this page for the related RFC.) DES (talk) 14:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
    The "why bother" aspect of this is that if we just decline an AfC, it tells the submitter, "Here's the problem with what you have. Feel free to re-vamp and resubmit." As a result, people are re-submitting (and re-submitting, and re-submitting) things which, no matter how fantastically they're written, can never be passed into the encyclopedia. Having a deletion criterion to address this sort of thing would avoid reviewers having to spend time (re)evaluating submissions which will never be acceptable. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:00, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • First idea seems sensible, second idea less optimum. I think of example submissions like this Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Roxy_Tobin, and this Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Jacqueline_de_Vos, which I nominated for speedy deletion yesterday, and it was rightly turned down according to the rules as they currently stand. It is an article about someone's pet dog. No amount of rework is going to fix this, and I can't help thinking that a quick deletion now of this material will save effort in the long run since it won't require someone else to reconsider it in six months time. The effect of allowing this type of deletion will also mean the backlog of articles which need some rework will be shorter and it will consist of articles with genuine promise. Re the second idea, if I have understood it correctly, it is intended to limit the number of iterations allowed at AFC - I think I am opposed to that because if we think of AFC as an iterative coaching/development process then philosophically more iterations = more feedback = more learning opportunities = a good chance of creating editors that will really be a credit to the encyclopedia. It is precisely the opportunity for coaching that is lost if we just dump all possible AFC potentials to article space and let them sink or swim. --nonsense ferret 22:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I'd oppose both of those bullets if this were an actual proposal. The first just seems like a waste of time, just let the G13 process clean those up. The second would have too many false positives. It is possible for something to look like completely insignificant crap but have WP:RS to make it notable. Just because it takes the author 100 submissions to get those RS and get the citations in order and whatnot does not make it not Wikipedia worthy. Also, I've seen a lot of times when one author just doesn't get it and submits a draft 20 times without changing anything, abandons it and someone else comes along a few month later and makes a GA out of it. Finally on that note, who's going to keep track of every submissions submit count? The way the template is set up, I've seen 5 or 10 submit templates on the page at one time because the author didn't see it was already (re)submitted at the bottom of the page. I'm also of the impression that if a "10 submission" limit is set, it is simply going to encourage authors to delete the decline templates which makes the job of the reviewer seeing progress even harder and slows down the process to dig through the history and find those declines. Technical 13 (talk) 01:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  • We don't have enough helpers to deal with 100 submissions of one article - as you know, we've got a significant backlog that isn't really shrinking. I'd hope we get through a fair number of submissions during the next push over Christmas and into January, but it's stop gap stuff. The proposals Finnegan, I and a few others have come up with here are ultimately designed to make more helpers available for editors likely to stay around and edit beyond their one new article in the fullness of time. If we had three or four times the number of helpers and a small or non existent backlog, I doubt we would be here today. Nick (talk) 01:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  • We're talking about 100 submissions of one draft here, not 100 different drafts. There is still no way to accurately track the number of times a draft has been submitted and it would still encourage authors to delete the decline templates making them harder to process. Technical 13 (talk) 12:39, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
It requires largely the same amount of time for volunteers to carry out 100 reviews, whether it's the same draft submitted 100 times, or 100 new articles, unless you're fortunate enough to have the same reviewer review each submission of the same article, in which case it does get a little quicker.
It's really man hours we're short off, so we need to do something to ease the workload and reduce the backlog we've got, hence the various ideas we've come up with - preventing people from submitting drafts that will never pass the inclusion criteria after a smaller number of attempts and attempting to weed out COI and paid editing, so that time and effort can be lavished on both editors and articles that would be important additions to the project.
We're also going to have to look at the AfC process, to see if we can make it easier for people to write articles in the first place. Things like http://tools.wmflabs.org/makeref/ and Magnus's other tools http://tools.wmflabs.org/magnustools/ don't get nearly enough promotion through the AfC process, yet they could significantly ease the task of writing a first article and getting into the way of editing, and that in turn will make it a lot easier to review articles. Nick (talk) 15:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Support #1: if a subject truly has no chance of acceptance, there's no point in leaving it hanging around until it happens to go six months without an edit. After G13 was instituted, I noticed one draft about someone's not-yet-notable band that had been brought to MfD. One of the band members kept polishing the article, so G13 didn't apply. The criterion in this proposal is far more valid than "has not been edited in six months".

Oppose #2: AfC people have ways of dealing with overzealous resubmission.

(I took the liberty of adding the numbers.) —rybec 04:40, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Support #1: We must relax the A* criteria so they work for cases like "My dog Spot is truly great and he eats lots of dog food from ZYZ Market which is the best shop in the world!" in AfC. In practise this kind of stuff is currently speedy deleted from AfC-space, no matter what the rules in detail say.
Oppose #2: Too big change to current workflow, unsure what the impacts would be. jni (talk) 07:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Support #1, Oppose #2: Per my comments above. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:26, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

An article/an AfC submission clearly written by its subject or its subject's representative

This would be a very large change in approach, both to deletion and to paid editing, so let me stress again that I'm throwing this up for discussion about its suitability and implications, rather than expecting anyone to support/oppose something I'm basically flinging at the wall.

First, background: The current interaction of COI, help pages, and AfC guidelines result in many heavily-COI editors (article subjects, PR representatives, people who were hired to create an article) using AfC as a route to article creation. This is within current policy, and is in fact encouraged by it; however, as a result, AfC is deluged with paid editors who are both extremely persistent and extremely naive. I would venture to say that the bulk of traffic that AfC and its concomitant IRC help channels handle is submissions by article subjects or their representatives, and extremely few of the resulting submissions are suitable for inclusion in a neutral encyclopedia. As a result, AfC has become The Land of PR Fluff - unless it's a blatant G11 (and there is a vast gulf of space between the "cannot be fixed without a complete rewrite" of G11 and the "as it stands, this article is a no-go; you need to NPOV-ify it" of not-quite-meeting-G11 in AfC space), any article gets a minimum of six months free in AfC space before it faces deletion (the current backlog of declined-for-being-spammy AfC submissions, for example, stands at 3,732, few of which will be deleted before the six-month clock of G13 kicks in). Help channels are inundated with cases like (made up) user:BusinessCorpInc wanting help understanding how Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/BusinessCorpInc can be rephrased to get passed at AfC; in nearly all of these cases, it's obvious that the subject/subject's representative is not equipped to create a suitable encyclopedia article, even if the topic is notable, and the constant need to deal with these cases eats up both reviewer time and reviewer energy.

Now, possible applications. In my perfect Fluffernutter-runs-the-world system, this criterion would hold true for the entire encyclopedia - it's my personal feeling that article subjects and their representatives should not be creating their own articles, period. If a topic is adequately notable, it will be created by someone else; if it isn't, Wikipedia is not a webhost for article subjects to increase their internet profile. However, in AfC space, these articles form a particular type of quagmire, where we can't approve them, we can't delete them without stepping outside policy, and we must continually wade through them to get to anything else. So there are two possible ways a CSD criterion like this could be implemented: encyclopedia-wide (which would essentially change COI/Paid Editing policy, and bar paid article creation), or AfC-specifically (which would be a lesser change to COI/PE policy, and would have the effect of removing the six-month-minimum "grace period" that puff pieces get by forcing them to live or die in mainspace instead).

And on to implementation notes. What does "clearly written by its subject or its subject's representative" mean? How "clearly"? My sense is that if we wanted to implement this criterion, much low-hanging fruit could be picked from three groups: usernames that represent the article subject (user:JoeAtBusinessCorpInc creating an article named "Business Corp Inc"), users who identify themselves as subjects or representatives (this is extremely common on the IRC help channel; it's quite typical to have a user pop in with "My boss assigned me this article about our company, so can you help me make it get accepted?"), and articles written from the perspective of "we" ("Business Corp Inc is a widget manufacturer. We create widgets for..."). This criterion would not be intended to lead to investigations of users' identities; it would only apply in cases where it was clear from username or editing behavior. This does run the risk of paid editors noticing and obscuring their origin, but my personal sense is that the paid editors who read and obey the rules would realize that their creation wasn't permitted, and the ones who don't read and obey the rules a) will continue to be obvious and b) would be ignoring any and all applicable policies anyway.

Ok, guys, do your worst. What works, of all of what I've just said? What doesn't? What parts are utterly insane? What needs changing?A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 01:55, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

If you want to speedy AfC's from people with COI, we'd then effectively be banning all COI editors. Didn't we recently try to do something like this outside AfC and fail? Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, no. You're absolutely free to think this goes too far in any case, but the distinction here for me is between "Business Corp Inc creates its own article, with its own content" and "There exists an article on Business Corp Inc, and BCI wants to edit/change/correct the information that's there." An article subject wanting their article to be accurate, and thus pursuing changes to it, is acceptable to me. An article subject creating their own article, using their own (obviously not NPOV) words, when no one else has found the topic notable enough to write about, is a step too far for me. This proposal wouldn't ban COI editing; it would ban COI article creation only. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. We want COI editors to go through AfC, so that it can get cleaned up before getting submitted to the mainspace. COI editors are not going to magically go away, so we want to give them a means of submitting content (see {{request edit}}) but still have editorial safeguards before the content gets added. I can think of no venue more appropriate to that task than AfC. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:02, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose concur with Vanisaac. Dlohcierekim 03:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Conditional support if this was applied like G5, where admins could choose to delete or not delete at their discretion. --Rschen7754 03:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
    Um... G5 is "Creations by banned/blocked users", G6 is "Uncontraversial maintenance", and G4 is "Recreate after Deleted from a *fD discussion"
    Um... I'm aware of what the criteria are, and I meant G5. --Rschen7754 22:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • oppose Sometimes the submissions that come from COI editors are actually well written and neutral. I do raise the concern when I discover a submission that is questionable and that the name or statements of the creator rise to the level of concern for the editor's purpose (We're creating an article on our company so it can bump negative press). I'll make comment on it and ask the editor how they intend to reconcile the Advocacy that they're attempting with wiki policies. Hasteur (talk) 04:22, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Editors in the COI area can produce sound articles with a little encouragement (and a veiled big stick...). Most can't, being too steeped in PR speak, but they're no loss. They wouldn't edit anything else anyway. The ones that listen and learn realise that they will NOT be allowed to advertise, and that having a neutral article is preferable to no article at all. The dyed in the wool PR types won't listen, and can't see why they should follow the rules (and usually don't get the article...). Occasionally, an editor who started off advertising here becomes a regular editor, after they decide to listen and understand. Peridon (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Continuing to allow paid advocacy editors free rein in mainspace on articles that already exist, while removing their ability to propose new articles, is wrong-headed. We already have enough occasions where we have to tell people "well, your competitor's article was created in 2006, when standards were different; also, WP:OSE. So tough." With this, we'd have an avalanche of it, only with "created before 2014" instead of "in 2006". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 12:34, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose' This is axactly the best way to allow COI and paid editors to submit drafts for review by independant volunteers. It can accept the good and weed out the bad, making use of COI editors instead of playing wack-a-mole. Badly wrongheaded proposal. DES (talk) 14:04, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

If there's no appetite to prevent those with an obvious (and frequently declared) COI from creating articles, then we're going to have to look into ways of tracking the edits from those who have a COI, to make use of their work and to make sure obviously problematic content is modified or removed as appropriate. I've often thought about a new usergroup that self declared PR and promotional editors could be added into, so than an automatic tag may be applied to their edits. I'd envisage something similar to (diff | hist) . . Jimbo's Christmas Decorations‎; 20:00:00 . . (+1,234)‎ . . ‎Jimbo's Christmas Company (talk | contribs | block)‎ (→‎Add details about 2013 Christmas tinsel) (Tag:COI) [rollback]. so that editors can check the edit, just a sort of heads up as you were. Editors would be under no obligation or requirement to revert or delete if the addition meets the usually accepted standards, it would just be a way to spot something that might need a quick check from the Watchlist and Recent Changes feeds. Any thoughts on that ? Nick (talk) 21:43, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Nick IMO, paints a giant day-glow target on the COIed-editors for any random editor having a bad day to have a free kick at. Ideally COI concerns should be approached from a Veil of ignorance position of reviewing the contributions for problems and then lifting the veil to determine if the editor's inherent nature (COI) can be remedied. Hasteur (talk) 21:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Helping COI editors can be a frustrating and thankless drudge, much like an enthusiastic teacher trying to convey the wonder of science to reluctant pupils who say "I'm not interested in science at all, it is boring, I just want to do the absolutely minimum to get the grade I need so that my parents will buy me a new car.". It is that tension between reviewers who see the intrinsic value in the collection and classification of knowledge, and those submitters who only instrumentally value the opportunity to promote their business that is pretty unresolvable. COI editors won't ever go away, but if coached through the process with patience, I think their contributions on notable subjects can be of benefit to the encyclopedia. That they are biased in some way is not that fundamentally different to the bias of someone writing about their favourite band or author, and for that reason I probably wouldn't want to see them banned from AfC, as after all it is the best (and only?) place to offer the sort of coaching that will produce worthwhile content. However, I do wonder whether the thanklessness of the job of reviewer in these circumstances will ultimately be its undoing if AfC cannot retain sufficient knowledgeable reviewers to manage the volume of submissions in the long term.--nonsense ferret 22:19, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. This is a good opportunity for User:Fluffernutter, User:Nick, and User:Secret to get involved in the help channel, where we assist new editors who are trying to create new articles. It is definitely worth spending some time in the trenches, so to speak, before laying down the law (or trying to) for others. For every proposal, there's a need for the basic humility to recognise others' views. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
    If you have views to share on the suggestions above, Demiurge, it would be great if you'd share them along with everyone else. This is exactly the place and time to discuss whether any of those possible criteria for speedy deletion are useful and how/if they could be adapted. Less so is it the place or time to discuss your personal opinions of specific editors, however. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I don't know why my name is included in this conversation, I agree with Fluffernutter here, there's no need to attack editors for no apparent reason. I'm very critical of the help channel yes, but that's because we don't have enough reliable helpers that are active but instead rely on inexperienced ones. Me, Nick, Fluff and all the other admins help while we can but sometimes enough is enough with some of the nonsense going on there. Secret account 00:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
I'd also strongly oppose this as a proposal per many of the other opposes. AfC offers coi editors a way to create an article about themselves that passes WP:NPOV, and is a good thing. Removing this ability just leaves them the alternative of creating non-NPOV articles in article space over and over and creating sock accounts to do so if needed. It sets them up for failure as a new editor and I think that is an entirely wrong direction. Technical 13 (talk) 01:13, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@Technical 13: well said. Dlohcierekim 18:54, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed CSD:R3 - Redirects to disambiguation pages that do not match any topic on the page.

I propose a speedy deletion criteria for redirects to disambiguation pages that do not match any topic on the page. Some examples are Christopher (Fireman) Burke, which currently redirects to the disambiguation page, Chris Burke, and Badri (1999 film), which currently redirects to the disambiguation page, Badri. The first page lists five subjects, none of whom is a fireman, or has ever been a fireman, or is nicknamed "Fireman"; there does not appear to be any notable person by this name. The second page lists a Badri (2000 film) and a Badri (2001 film), but there does not appear to be a 1999 film by that name at all. Both of these titles also fail WP:DABMENTION, as there is no mention of such a person or film in any Wikipedia article, and therefore nothing to put on the disambiguation page to help readers find such a topic.

Some redirects to disambiguation pages are permissible, such as John Smith (politician) redirecting to John Smith, because there are multiple politicians named John Smith. However, where a title redirects to a disambiguation page, and there is no topic on the disambiguation page that matches that redirect, this provides no navigational aid, and can cause confusion. If the topic is missing from the encyclopedia, it may useful to have a red link indicating that the article needs to be written, while it is useless to have a redirect to a disambiguation page containing no information on the topic.

At worst, these redirects may represent efforts to sneak non-notable material into the encyclopedia, if for example there is an obscure garage band member named Christopher Burke and nicknamed "Fireman"; or an unreleased home movie made in 1999 and titled Badri. In these cases, if the articles were created with no information indicating notability, the article would be subject to CSD:A7. A redirect that offers no information at all about the subject, and targets a disambiguation page that contains no information about the subject, should not be treated any differently. bd2412 T 01:56, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I would allow this as a "speedy" with the caveat that the deleting administrator must verify that there is nothing in the edit or deletion history of either the redirect or the disambiguation page that explains why this redirect ever had a reason to exist, OR that such a reason is not likely to occur. Here's a hypothetical example: John C. Doe and John D. Doe are politicians and both are listed in John Doe (disambiguation). Someone creates John Doe (politician) as a redirect to John Doe (disambiguation). The articles John C. Doe and John D. Doe get deleted through PROD and their entries are removed from John Doe (disambiguation). Later, one or both are un-deleted at WP:REFUND, but nobody updates the disambiguation page. In this case, the administrator should notice what happened and decline the speedy deletion request of John Doe (politician).
If this cannot be done on a routine basis, then I think RfD is better than CSD, as RfD will give a few days for editors and administrators to poke around and probably just fix it if a fix is appropriate. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 02:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I would be glad to amend the proposal to limit it to situations where there is nothing in Wikipedia to which the redirect can properly point. bd2412 T 03:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I like the idea, but I think this could be covered as a tweak to G1 (saying "Pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history, or a redirect whose target has no relevance to its subject." But if you want an R3, I would describe it as "Redirects to articles or disambiguation pages which make no reference to the subject of the redirect, where there is suitable target that can be found.." ViperSnake151  Talk  03:59, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

While these redirects should normally be deleted when there is no alternative target, they are not suitable for speedy deletion. For starters, I'd be surprised if the occur frequently - I don't recall having seen many at RfD over the years I've been active there. Secondly, it requires investigation into several things:

  • The history of the redirect - was something deleted as "too soon" for example?
  • The history of the target - has a relevant entry been deleted, if so why?
  • The content (and history) of the other items on the dab page - are any of them likely targets? Is the redirect relevant to removed information - if so why was it removed?
  • Other possible targets not listed on the dab page that would be a good target directly or which should be on the dab page.

That is far too much for any single admin to do while processing speedy deletions, but it is exactly the sort of thing that deletion discussions are good at finding out. Thryduulf (talk) 08:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Occasionally, these are obvious vandalism - such as redirecting 'Joe Bloggs' to 'Douche bag' - and those should be deleted as such. But sometimes this is more hidden, and I'd be happier with strange redirects that have no obvious purpose being taken to RfD where more opinions are available - and more knowledge too, perhaps. Occasionally too the redirect may have made sense once, as Thryduulf points out, before a rewrite of the target - or possibly because a section has been removed that shouldn't have been. These are RfD concerns, not speedy. Peridon (talk) 11:03, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Both the examples had history: the film had been moved in 2006 to Badri and thence to Badri (2000 film); the Fireman was part of a one-afternoon COI self-promotion editing spree in 2006. I took them both to WP:RfD. In general, there might be some use in having a Speedy criterion for "recently-created redirect which leads to a dab page but doesn't relate to any topic on the page", but anything else is better at RfD. Attack redirects can be speedied as G10. PamD 13:27, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
With respect to the frequency with which these occur, we have a project page, Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Questionable redirects to disambiguation pages. It is not terribly difficult to scan down some of the subpages of that project and find, for example, that Dale burston redirects to Penfold, and to do quick searches of Wikipedia and of Google to find that there is n mention of a Dale Burston anywhere else in Wikipedia, and no notable Dale Burston anywhere at all. bd2412 T 16:09, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Looking at the entries there, it's clear that they need individual attention. At Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/Questionable redirects to disambiguation pages/Specific issues#Redirects to Abatement I retargetted Abatement of a nuisance to Nuisance abatement, Abatement in litigation would seem to relate to the first two items on the dab page and possibly one or more unwritten articles and so is correctly targetted at the dab page. The others may relate to unwritten articles or may be covered by existing articles named something different - a situation best covered by discussion at RfD. In the following section, all just need tagging with {{R from synonym}} as they are useful redirects. Thryduulf (talk) 16:55, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
BD2412 looking at your Dale burston redirect to Penfold example there appears to be a reason for the redirect. Martyn3000 created the redirect to Penfold, when the title was a page to the character Penfold in Danger Mouse (TV series) and said that Dale Burston was an alternate name for Penfold. This was later removed as vandalism. The article was later moved to Penfold (character) . After the move Penfold was made into a dab page and Dale burston continued to redirect there rather than being retargeted to where the page was moved to. The new page then redirected to Danger Mouse (TV series) as a result of a merge. Now if the edit that said Dale Burston is an alternate name for Penfold was vandalism, then the redirect can be deleted as vandalism, if not then the Dale Burston redirect should be retargeted and the Danger Mouse article fixed. Each of these needs individual attention to figure out why the redirect exists and what needs to be done with it. GB fan 18:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I would think that the fact that a Google search reveals no notable use of the name "Dale Burston" would be enough. I don't understand why, if this were an article it would be subject to speedy deletion under A7, but if it is a redirect it must go through a discussion process. bd2412 T 20:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Because redirects are not articles. An article, in almost all cases, needs to demonstrate the notability of its subject in its content. The same is not true of redirects - firstly redirects are kept or deleted based on their utility (in one or more of many ways) not notability or importance. Secondly evidence as to a redirects purpose comes from sources external to the redirect page, including (but not limited to) the history of the redirect and its present and any former targets, the current or former content of the target(s), the page viewing figures, presence or absence of the term in other pages (whether or not they have ever been a target) or external sources, incoming links (known and surmisable), etc. These are why R3 is strictly limited to recently created implausible redirects, because as redirects age plausibility can become progressively harder to accurately determine to the point that very quickly it is not possible for a single admin to do. Thryduulf (talk) 22:04, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Since the "Dale Burston" material was deleted from the article as vandalism, should the Dale burston redirect to that article, created by the same vandal at the same time, require a discussion to be deleted? bd2412 T 20:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
I zapped it as routine and non-controversial vandalism cleanup. Seen similar cases a lot. jni (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
I would oppose such a criterion. First of all i don't see it happening often enough to be appropriate for a CSD. Those are supposed to be for frequent situations, frequent enough that they take significant burden off the related discussion process, or else for emergencies that can't wait for discussion, such as an attack page. These are neither. And in a number of cases, as pointed out above, the history should be checked to see if significant attributions for a page that has been moved need to be saved. There is too much individual review required in such cases to make this a good choice for a CSD, and no pressing reason why one is needed. A solution in search of a problem. DES (talk) 21:00, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

A7 criteria and Non Notable buildings and or Branches.

Ok, so I am thinking that A7 criteria should also incorporate non notable buildings. It may be a relatively uncommon practice but there is an article Gurudwara Khalsa Sabha, Matunga, I took it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gurudwara Khalsa Sabha, Matunga the suggestion was take to csd, I personally think it should have been CSD anyways. I follow that advice, it is declined because it isn't an organization or company. I really do think that it is common sense that the buildings should be added to this criteria explicitly, it already consists of people, bands, clubs, societies, groups, companies, corporations, organizations, websites, individual animals, and for events. This could easily be considered a group, seperate club within a larger club or organization etc. and I would like to think it's common sense but... Hell In A Bucket (talk) 06:53, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, a Gurdwara is a building; it's a place of worship for Sikhs. I mean, the article talks about the subject as being located next to a cinema, which isn't something you would say about a club or group. It's not talking about the organization that uses the building, it's talking about the building itself, and saying it's a club is exactly the kind of twisting we're not supposed to do with CSD. Building's just aren't covered by A7 You could just re-send it to AfD; I'll comment there (most likely in favor of deletion, though I'd have more research to do before actually !voting), so it won't be a no quorum close like last time. By the way, the close doesn't suggest taking it to speedy deletion; it says that it was closed without prejudice towards speedy renomination, meaning you can renominate it at AfD right away. It doesn't say anything about CSD. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 07:05, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
You are correct about renomination I didn't read that part right however the article itself is still not adding anything to the pedia, and to avoid things like this in the future it still would be a useful addition to the criteria. Per the notability guidelines it further falls under WP:BRANCH, therefore A7 was the correct tag. In this case as well I'd point out "A gurdwara (Punjabi: ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ, gurduārā or , gurdwārā), meaning the gateway to the guru, is the place of worship for Sikhs" which means it is indeed a building or location. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 07:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Firstly, "non notable" is NOT CSD criteria. "No indication of significance" is. You are lowering the bar to deletion for buildings? I don't think that we need to expand what is supposed to be simple, indisputable criteria for deletion. Certainly a building is not suitable for CSD. Public buildings assert significance just in being public buidlings. Notability lack is addressable by PROD. Questionable notability by AfD. PROD and AfD allow for the opportunity for sourcing and saving the article. Also, not a single delete comment in this instance is certainly not a mandate to CSD something. It just means no one wanted to touch the issue. Absent any other set of notability criteria, of course the GNG applies. As we are in this instance talking about something in India(?), I would proceed very slowly with deletion because sourcing might be in a language other than English. A full discussion would be warrented prior to deletion. AS such a discussion generated not a single "delete" suggests that there is no ground on which to rest expansion of CSD to such a building. Dlohcierekim 07:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree we shouldn't have to, it should fall under organizations, as it does under WP:BRANCH, it's a non-notable branch that does not show notability that does not credibly show significance. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 07:27, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
A "branch" in the sense used by that policy isn't talking about buildings, though; it's talking about member organizations of a single, overarching organization (cf. Merriam-Webster, in which the relevant definition is: c (1) : a division of an organization (2) : a separate but dependent part of a central organization). This is still just a building, not a part of an organization. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 07:32, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Building may have been the wrong way to describe it, a branch is far better as it is a a place of worship for Sihks which is an international organization. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 07:52, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
It's a temple, right? It's not really a branch of Sikhism, any more than the church down the street is a branch of Christianity. When applying SPEEDY tags, that's exactly the sort of leaps of applicability that shouldn't ever be read into criteria. I'd like to see some information about frequency of buildings being brought to AfD before I'd suggest writing in any sort of expansion to A7. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 08:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
It is a place of worship so yes in essence a temple, however it should fall under "an organization is a group of more than one person formed together for a purpose", in this case worship under or within the Sihk religion. It is obvious by our own definition that A7 does apply to non-notable branches or temples in this case under ORG. I think, obviously, that it fails under ORG but "[appear to be an organization or company, thus isn't subject to A7]" so where the definition or WP:ORG and by extension A7 deals with this implicitly there seems to be a need to make it explicit that it applies as strongly. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 08:25, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Writ Keeper writes "I'll comment there (most likely in favor of deletion, though I'd have more research to do before actually !voting)". Stuff that require more research are never good speedy candidates. If this is the motivating example for a criterium, then I don't think it's a good new criterium. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎Martijn Hoekstra (talk • contribs) 12:06, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Here's the issue of why buildings are not organizations: United Methodist Church is a religious organization. My childhood church was the a small Methodist Church. It's original building was over a hundred years old and might be notable for being listed as a historic structure - but the church moved into a new building in the 90s which is certainly not a notable building. So, we have a single branch of a single organization that has been in two different building, one possibly notable, one definitely not. It should be obvious that buildings should not equal organizations. Ego White Tray (talk) 15:45, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

(RE to OP) Hrm... It's a shame that you went straight to AfD rather than trying for the lower level PROD, now because it's been at AfD using PROD is out of the question. What the closing instructions were suggesting is that you could start a new AfD and cite the low participation in the previous AfD discussion and include the lack of reliable sources to back up the notability of the building/congregation. Hasteur (talk) 15:51, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
I would oppose adding such a new branch to the A7 criterion ( Martijn Hoekstra, btw the singular is criterion, not criterium). First of all, it is not frequent, and CSDs are supposed to be for things frequent enough to take a significant burden off the relevant XfD. Secondly, as was mentioned above, a building article may well require significant research to determine if it is or has a significant chance of being notable. CSDs are for things that are or should be obvious, where presumably no reasonable admin would disagree. We don't actually achieve that, but this would only make things worse. CSDs are not supposed to be easy ways of deleting things that might be hard at AfD. DES (talk) 15:59, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

@DES-CSDs are not supposed to be easy ways of deleting things that might be hard at AfD. amen! Dlohcierekim 22:35, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

If it's a one line shitty article, yes it most definitely should be easy. Just because something might be notable doesn't mean we keep it. I live in Moon Wah house in Hong Kong, it has a name so it might be notable, all the sources are in Chinese so let's just keep it? That's the rationale being stated here by Dloh "I would proceed very slowly with deletion because sourcing might be in a language other than English."..No that's a ridiculous rationale, if the sources aren't provided and no significance is claimed that's the best reason to speedy delete something. WMF has in their infinite wisdom gave us Sandboxes for a reason, for people who are smart enough to write a decent article before putting in a one or two line article into an encyclopedia..If they aren't smart enough or they lack the competence to ask for help then the encyclopedia doesn't need them. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 06:01, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you. A7 should be more general and apply to other entities than those explicitly listed in the rule. I think I have speedily deleted a few nn. houses when the articles were shitty one-liners with no indication of notability (but somewhat above the patent nonsense threshold). jni (talk) 08:01, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
If you have done that then you really need to reread the CSD policy. Pages may be speedy deleted only when they meet the letter of one or more speedy deletion criteria, that are deliberately written narrowly and intended to be interpreted narrowly. Anything else is misusing the tools. A7 does not apply to any subject not explicitly listed. Any other subject must be nominated at AfD (unless it meets another criterion). Thryduulf (talk) 10:03, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
And it's that sort of blind insistence is why we are here, this is a natural extention to A7. Of course there would be no issue if we actually used the correct (wikipedia gng guideline of Orgs) but as some believe a temple inside an organization is just a building it should be expanded. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 12:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Nah, I stopped rereading the deletion policies years ago. Too many relatively inexperienced editors rule-lawyering them ad infinitum, with little real experience about how to really handle the daily inflow of garbage to CAT:CSD. Thanks for the suggestion though, I could not have managed my 20000+ deletions without your helpful guidance. jni (talk) 16:40, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Why would we even have specific categories for A7 if we were allowed to just disregard them? Answer: we aren't supposed to just disregard them. HiaB: this is not a natural extension of A7, this is a building, and A7 doesn't cover buildings. CSD tags are not for "eh, let's just delete whatever we deem unworthy". Is this blind adherence to the rules? Sure, I suppose you could call it that. But some rules are meant to be blindly adhered to, even on an IAR-friendly Wikipedia; in this case, it's because they represent the limits of an admin's authority to delete things. Admins don't have the authority to use their tools however they want, or to bend and twist the criteria until they can delete things that don't actually fit. To just ignore that would be to overstep our bounds. Essentially, admin's can't delete things without consensus. CSD criteria are specific cases where the community has basically pre-emptively declared consensus to delete; to use them in ways theye weren't intended to be used (like, by trying to delete an article about a building under a criterion that specifies the kind of subjects on which it can be used and doesn't include buildings) is to delete without consensus. That's not something you can just IAR away. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
I liked the old days when we didn't have complications like categories in A7, or the G*/A*/R*/F*/C*/U*/T*/P* rule numbering either. I recall opposing the detailed numbering of the criteria back then, on concerns that it would grow to a monstrous Rule Book. I was clearly right. A7 itself was invented when the influx of crap was too much for AfD to handle. It *will* be extended in future when other deletion venues get tired of deleting non-notable books, albums, houses, whatever. Reality in today's WP is that if someone writes a short article claiming their car or random house down the street is notable, and if it is unlikely that claim is credible, then it gets speedily deleted even if it does not exactly match any of the criteria. Better to think it as a very early snowball closure, not application of IAR. Other CSD rules are already subjective. As an example, take A1: Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. I just restored sentential form (redirect currently) as the deleted content really had readily identifiable context. To me the context was obvious to detect, for others who may not know a bit about formal language theory, I can imagine they read the article as gibberish. Are only admins with perfect knowledge about everything allowed to apply A1? Are only admins who can, with perfect foresight, differentiate article's topic between organization and the building or other structure associated with it, allowed to apply A7? This has nothing to do with IAR actually. It would be best to evolve the CSD policy from "case law" of what actually gets deleted, instead of pontificating all sorts of arbitrary limitations and exceptions to categorization. If something gets PRODded almost every time, consider closing it as CSD. The real case law is based on consensus too. No need to write every detail down as firm rules. Deletion is a defense against the arbitrary. It prevents arbitrary content from infiltrating our encyclopedia. Therefore the deletion policy must be flexible enough to cope with anything that is thrown through the system. Deletion is not some overly complex code were we must follow the Proper Procedures at all costs. (Think of United States legislation for bad example not to be emulated) jni (talk) 20:08, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
True enough, but strict rules are a defense against arbitrary deletion. The problem with CSD as case law is that CSD, by definition, is never discussed. (Warning: OR ahead) Case law works because we don't want to have to re-discuss and re-litigate the same issues over and over again; we don't want to have to keep re-defining the definition of "murder" in every murder case we try. But the difference here is that, in CSD, there's nothing to discuss; it's just a decision. The important thing in case law isn't just the decision, it's also the discussion that matters, and CSD lacks that. If we allow admins to delete whatever we want, and then build the CSD from that, then whatever the vagaries of admins are get codified as the law, and the bars for deletion can and will drift lower and lower, until admins eventually start deleting things that shouldn't be deleted.

Think of it like adverse selection. There are always admins who are more deletionist than the norm (just as there are admins who are more inclusionist). Normally, the two extremes would balance each other out. But that doesn't work here, because of the asymmetry of the deletion decision. The decision not to delete an article is much easier to challenge than the decision to delete it; after all, if you don't delete the article, it's still sitting there for anyone to see and express concerns about how inappropriate it is. But if you delete an article, then nobody (but admins) can see it, and not even admins will regularly stumble across it. In many cases, the only people to have ever seen the article will have been the author, whose protests are routinely disregarded out of hand (not without cause) or might be too discouraged to even protest, the deleting admin, and the tagger, if any. There's not nearly as much possible oversight of the decision to delete as there is of the decision not to delete. So, the cases will inevitably be skewed towards the deletion end, and as the standards shift, so to will the extremists, which will promote further shift, and so on. Not to mention that this means that the deletion standards would essentially only include the input of admins, since there's no discussion about CSDs for non-admins to influence (other than the tagging itself, which can be bypassed and isn't representative anyway.) The lack of discussion and oversight over CSD deletions makes case law a bad standard to set for it.

And at the end of the day, the thing is: A7 isn't overly complex. It's pretty simple: if it's not a person, animal, company, group, website, or event, A7 doesn't apply. If you have to jump through all kinds of mental hoops to decide whether something falls into one of those categories, it's probably because you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and it doesn't actually fall into that category. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:36, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Your comment deserves a more thoughtful reply than this, only couple points for now: 1. But there are ample discussion in PROD/AfD/DRV/Talk page about what should be deleted and what not. I don't think the current CSD rules are in perfect alignment with actual consensus. Deletions that overstep the CSD boundaries are typically not challenged, as there would be snowball's chance in hell for the appeal in more heavyweight process to succeed. Consensus thinking seems to go that way. And re-creating speedily deleted content is not a big deal, if it indeed is eligible. 2. deletion oversight problem could be alleviated with a new "deletion reviewer" permission for non-admins. Some non-admins like to collect hats, and I have seen worse hats (mini-mops?) proposed than this. For the record I belong to the "adminship should not be a big deal" school; I think that position is consistent with my unorthodox deletion views. jni (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
Per WP:PERENNIAL#Deleted pages should be visible, I think that's one hat that's not going to be given out (which is unfortunate, IMO). Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:49, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ Past discussions leading to schools being exempt from A7.
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