Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 13

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Common sense

Can we please allow common sense deletions? I'd like a number of orphaned images to be deleted as they are renamed/moved to commons for instance. Orphaned and unused images with better/similar/identical versions should be deleted under this. --Cat out 17:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

We do. We don't allow common sense speedy deletions. Have you heard of rouge admins? We need failsafes to allow other editors and admins alike to review deletions that do not fit into narrowly-defined CSD categories. Otherwise, any one of our near-200 active admins can delete whole projects in a whim, especially the not-so-mainstream material. There is nothing wrong with letting an orphaned image sit for a week while its IfD discussion has two votes—both for deletion. We don't need to recover the space the image takes (as far as I know, deleted items take as much or more space in the DB as if they were never deleted). BigNate37(T) 18:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes and we also say that we are not a burocracy. The fail safe is undelete. Images moved to commons should be speediable. --Cat out 00:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe they should, but "Images moved to commons" and "Common sense" are two seperate things. You've still not pointed out what exactly is wrong with having an unused, duplicate image remain available for an extra week with a deletion template on it. There are four guiding qualities for a speedy deletion criterion: objective, uncontestable, arise frequently, and nonredundant. Common sense is not objective, and it would spill over into some already-existent speedy deletion criteria. "Images that are duplicates of images on commons", on the other hand, is objective (though it is probably redundant with I9). BigNate37(T) 03:03, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
We do have a common sense policy. WP:IAR. I do think we need to have "reviewable" deletions (so that the deleted material can still be viewed in the history for X period of time), but that requires a software change. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 14:02, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposed change to wording of A7

Current wording of A7 is:

  • Unremarkable people or groups/vanity pages. An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead.

I would like to change it to:

  • Unremarkable people or groups/vanity pages. An article about a real person, group of people, band, or club that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead. Note many articles assert the importance of their subjects, while not asserting that their subjects meet Wikipedia notability guidelines such as WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC. Such articles should not be speedily deleted under this criterion.

Simple idea; basically, many of us are familiar with the idea that "asserts importance" and "asserts Wikipedia notability(TM)" are distinct and should not be conflated. It's probably a good idea if the criterion's wording includes a note about that. There is precedent; see G1 and G4. Thoughts? Any other wordings? Mangojuicetalk 04:26, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

This is already explained in the "non-criteria" section, and a reminder in the rule itself might help, but frankly I think this problem won't go away until A7 is repealed. Deco 09:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

What constitutes 'context' for A1?

There seems to be some disagreement as to the intent of the 'A1' condition.

Specifically, do this and this constitute articles which should be speedy deleted under A1?

My understanding and past observation, were that A1 applied to situations where there was not sufficient information in the article to determine what the subject was unless you were already familiar with it. I had never heard of either of these, but could clearly see that one was a language spoken in a specific area and the other a written script used by a particular people. Is something more required for 'context'?

On a similar note, if someone puts nothing but an 'inuse' template on a page it clearly 'lacks context', but does it make sense to delete the page within minutes (causing them to get an edit conflict and lose their work if they don't know how to temporarily store it off wiki)? Couldn't we just wait a while and delete if nothing were forthcoming? Again, I think of the intent... A1 exists to get rid of articles that make no sense. Not to play 'gotcha' with people who are actually working on developing valid articles. --CBD 20:21, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

These don't look like speedies to me. It'd be nice if they had references so we could tell they weren't just made up, but other than that they look like legit stubs to me. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:25, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
These are misapplication of A1. Legitimate stubs. People tend to mistakenly apply A1 to very short articles, which is why we specifically warn not to do this. Deco 09:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Agree that these do not look like legitimate candidates for speedy deletion. older ≠ wiser 12:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Revert of CBD

I reverted CBD's wording change here becasue I don't see an consensus anywhere on this page to change those words. Also, a dicdef allows someone unfamiliar to understand, but is still not enough content, and certainly not enough context. pschemp | talk 21:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I refer you to the previous section. --CBD 21:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Indeed there is a discussion there, but no mention of changing the wording of the policy, or consensus to do so, just people agreeing that that isn't a speedy.pschemp | talk 21:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
The dictdef rationale isn't valid justification for speedy. See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Non-criteria. older ≠ wiser 21:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok pschemp... since one of those speedy's was yours, what does "context" mean to you? To me it means you can tell what the article is about. If I can understand what it is without ever having heard of it before then it isn't an A1. If it is an attack, copyrighted, or about something which doesn't assert notability it might still be speedyable, but not by A1. The stub you speedied was about a language of the Bantoid family spoken in Congo. I'd never heard of Nyanga-li before, but that stub clearly provides enough context for me to understand what it is. It even met verifiability by linking to the ISO page for the language. Without knowing anything about it I could then follow that to the Ethnologue entry to find that the estimate of 48,000 speakers is from 2002, it is also called Linyanga-le, is specifically used southwest of someplace called Watsa, et cetera... enough context was provided to know what the article is about and be able to expand it. Indeed, enough was provided that even people with no knowledge of the subject can easily find sources meeting verifiability standards with which to expand it.
What more was needed in your opinion for this stub to have 'context'? --CBD 12:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Thought on this a bit more and it seemed to me that we have a term for a short article which is nevertheless valid for inclusion... stubs. I added wording that we shouldn't A1 something if it is a valid stub as defined at WP:STUB. Seems 'too easy', but... if something doesn't provide enough context to qualify as a stub then it is an A1 candidate, and if it does provide enough info to be a stub then it isn't an A1. --CBD 21:10, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

A8

I propose removing the "commercial content provider" clause from CSD A8. We should be deleting all copyvios as quickly as possible, not just ones from for-profit websites. This hopefully would also help alleviate the massive backlog at WP:CP, as more things would be speediable. Really, it kind of reflects current practice anyway, since most taggers and deleting admins don't even bother to check if it's a commercial content provider, they just tag/delete it anyway. --Rory096 18:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Hear, hear. The "commercial content provider" clause was a suicide-clause to the criterion, is routinely ignore and should be euthanased. -Splash - tk 18:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Before we do that, why was the clause put in initially? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Dragons flight's original suggestion of the phrase at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material#New user errors:

I don't spend much time around WP:CP so I don't know how common it is that copied content is actually intended to be legitimate, but I am wondering if we can phrase this to catch the really illegitimate stuff? What is the proposal was ammended to include only content taken from commercial content providers (e.g. encyclopedias, newspapers, porn sites)? This would exclude "People to Save the Spotted Mink", "Uncle Joe's House of Yarn", and other non-profits that might actually be trying to share content, while covering sites I would consider truly unlikely to do so. Dragons flight 19:50, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

It seems to be because they thought that a lot of people would actually be trying to license their content that they also put on their website under the GFDL, and weren't really violating anyone's copyright. In my experience, this doesn't happen much, and when it does happen, it usually comes out in the talk page discussions afterwards, so we can just undelete it. --Rory096 18:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
How often do you think this is an issue? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
1 in several hundred cases, if not more, I'd say. Even when they are acting in good faith, often the content wouldn't have made a good article anyway. --Rory096 19:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd concur with Rory096 on that (I spent much time cleaning WP:CP a way back), only I'm not sure that anything close to 1 in 100 websites is PD or GFDL! Generally, if someone decides to license the material, it's because then they can have their advert/blog/screed on Wikipedia. (Not always, but generally). If it were applied strictly "commercial content providers" basically renders A8 null and void to the extent that it makes negligible impact on the process (CP) that it was designed to slim down. -Splash - tk 22:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
So if it's a clause that ends up affaecting, by your words, less than 1% of possible copyright issue articles, is it worth removing for the sake of speedying them that quickly? --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I'm not sure what you mean, but the 1% is the level of copyvios that are actually not infringements and shouldn't be deleted. The 99% are the blatant copyvios that we would want to remove the commercial clause for. —Centrx→talk • 04:37, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
no, I misunderstood what was being expressed, and perhaps phrased my question badly. Of the copyright problems, how many are delayed by the wording in A8 that is possibly being removed? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Over half, maybe as much as 80-90% depending on how much the time limit restricts it. —Centrx→talk • 15:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
So, just so I'm understanding this, a supermajority of copyvio issues are from non-commercial content providers? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, "commercial content providers" means companies whose business and profit is based on the content they provide, such as news sites and other encyclopedias; they are not going to grant permission to use that content under the GFDL or public domain. The parameter was added to prevent speedy deletion of content from personal websites, blogs, company "About us" pages, etc. which has a higher likelihood of permission being granted. However, the likelihood is still very small and most of the times when it is granted the page remains basically an advertisement for the company or a vanity page that has to be totally rewritten or ends up deleted through other processes anyway. Even supposing that every page were to belong on Wikipedia, it is still a very small percentages of pages where permission is granted, and with the {{Nothanks-sd}} template (which warrants alteration, see {{Nothanks-web}}), the uploader, if they return at all, knows how and is able to grant permission so that the page is undeleted. —Centrx→talk • 15:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Strictly, 95-99% of copyvios are not from commercial content providers, but less than that would qualify for deletion under the proposed CSD change because of 48 hours, page history, claims, etc., which are important. —Centrx→talk • 15:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

This was discussed above, at #Amending A8? and #A8 changes. Two common problems with speedy deleting copyvios:

  1. The copyvio was a recent over-write of a page with a long, non-infringing history. That needs to be carefully identified and fixed, not subject to accidental speedy deletion.
  2. The text is actually in the public domain or, less likely, under GFDL.

To ensure these aren't deleted too:

  1. Change to "The page was created less than 48 hours ago and is almost or totally un-wikified." (including emphasis) Move this to the top. This is actually a minor change based on what the page history parameter would imply, but it makes it clearer.
  2. Change to "Material is copied from a website with an obvious copyright notice that is unquestionably not compatible with Wikipedia."

This could still have the small problem of deleting articles that were actually copied from Wikipedia. There is also the matter of some permission being given, but for the latter I think the CSD is currently much too concerned with it; it does not scale, and they can still give permission if they want. The problem is they don't have Template:Copyvio telling them how, so the note about {{Nothanks-sd}} could be more prominent, but adding and checking that template is too complicated anyway. —Centrx→talk • 23:14, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Another issue is that for small websites, the user who added the content is sometimes also the user who wrote the content on the source website in the first place. If this is the case, the act of submitting it places it under the GFDL. The CP people would know better than me how common this scenario is, though. Deco 23:46, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • This revision makes sense, and will save a lot of bureaucracy. The burden, once someone reasonably can think that the content came from the other site *to* wikipedia, should lean more on the submitter than the problem-reporter to make sure things are kosher. --Improv 16:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think this would be a great improvement. The point Deco raises above is something we have to consider, however my answer would be that, if it is reasonably common, we simply have to make it more obvious that if someone is "giving" us their material, they have to make it explicitly clear that they have the right/permission to do so, then we can consider whether we want to investigate their claim. Martin 16:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Why require an "obvious copyright notice" before an article can be deleted? The law grants copyright by default, regardless of copyright notice. I think it would be good to encourage admins to do a google search for "site:foobar.com gfdl OR public-domain", and maybe it should be possible to speedy-undelete articles that later have an assertion of GFDL compatibility, but GFDL content is so few and far between in the copyvios we get (especially advertisements) that I don't think it's really a prominent concern. (a list of common GFDL sources of text wouldn't hurt either... eg. content generated by other communities is often GFDL... US government text is PD...) --Interiot 17:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • It doesn't matter that GFDL is few and far between, if someone uploads their own material from their own (non-free copyrighted) website, then they are releasing it as GFDL. The distinction that is hard to make is whether it was actually the author of the website that submitted the work to us or not. Martin 19:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • No, I disagree. It could be problematic if they're just ignorant of the fact that they're releasing under GFDL (or somebody else released it for them), especially since they can then claim that they had the intent of implicit copyright. That would be a nightmare and it would just be better to remove the material until the copyright hassle is resolved. I think it's better to err on the side of safety for this kind of thing. I prefer Where's solution. ColourBurst 06:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
  • One major reason: without a copyright notice certainly displayed on the site then it is much more likely that the text is in public domain or under GFDL. If you can't find a copyright notice, you don't know: the author may have intended to release it public domain; there may be a copyright notice somewhere that says "released under GFDL", you just can't find it; there may be a notice somewhere that says "copied from Wikipedia". A lesser reason, a benefit of it, is that websites without a copyright notice are more likely to be written by the person who is uploading it on Wikipedia; the company website has a copyright notice, User:Bill's blog does not. CSDs must be easily checkable by the deleting admin and they must ideally not allow deletion of legitimate articles; these restrictions are to those ends. —Centrx→talk • 20:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Add.: With a notice, the website is at least claiming they own the copyright, and this still captures the majority of copyvios. Perhaps "obvious" is unnecessary verbiage, but CSD candidates are not supposed to take 5 minutes to verify, and the tagger or deleter can link to or find a clear, unequivocal message that says the given text is copyrighted. The CSD should not admit "I think I saw a notice two days ago but now I can't find it" or "There is a trademark symbol on the page that must mean it is copyrighted". —Centrx→talk • 20:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

We could solve the problem of the few cases in which an article from another website is being posted by the author by requiring the deleting admin to notify the poster. Then, the user has a chance to assert his/her copyright. -- Where 23:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

A fairly high proportion of the ones I tag are probably the site owner posting his own content and perhaps technically it's not a commercial content provider. But we have no way of knowing for sure if the user name which seems to be the owner is in fact the owner of the copyright. Also, in most case it's a copy and paste with no reformatting and they often look like ads, so even if the copyright problem was ignored they need a complete rewrite and/or should be deleted under some other criteria. Less than 1% would be acceptable if rewritten. --ArmadilloFromHell 00:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

And regardless of whether it is posted by the site owner, the vast majority never send permission; they post and then they leave, and we can't keep it without permission confirmed. —Centrx→talk • 02:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Becuase of the consensus here, I removed the "commercial content provider" condition from A8. Of course, feel free to revert me if you think I am wrong about my assessment of whether we have consensus. -- Where 12:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not totally confident that there's consensus or that the original concerns leading to the clause's introduction have been adequately addressed - but I don't particularly expect it to lead to undeletions. Deco 12:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the change. It will make working on Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations much easier. Could you perhaps also change {{Db-copyvio}}? Garion96 (talk) 20:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Which I just realised I could have done myself since it wasn't a protected template. Either way, Splash just fixed it. Garion96 (talk) 23:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

48 hours

This is reposted from the {{Db-copyvio}} talk page, I've moved it here where there is some similar discussion, and someone might be able to comment. Basically, I need some help with the 48 hour aspect of this. I just noticed that this Country Radio Broadcasters, Inc. article is identical to this [1] site. It is older than 48 hours though, it dates from 17:46, 24 August 2006. It should still be deleted under A8 even though it is past 48 hours, right? DVD+ R/W 02:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC) Note, the copyvio has now been surgically removed and the article is beginning to be rewritten. I would like to hear other opinions on why there is a 48 hour requirement though, when it isn't a mirrored site. DVD+ R/W 03:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I feel strongly that the 48 hour rule should be rewritten so that instead of exempting, it says to be aware that if the article was posted more than 48 hours ago, suspected copyright violations may actually be mirrors of Wikipedia. There's no reason why true copyvios shouldn't be deleted on sight, and true copyvios aren't contestable anyway. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 13:57, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirect

Criterion R2 allows for speedying redirects to user space, but I just ran into a redirect from article space to a category, namely List of Townlands of Ireland -> Category:Townlands of Ireland. Is there a reason that CSD R2 doesn't include redirects to category space. Does this need to go to RfD? My instinct is that this is speediable but I can't find policy to back this up. Thanks! --- Deville (Talk) 08:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, article->category redirects are for RFD, and (any)->userspace are speedies. There are few cases I can think of where an article->category redirect is useful, but some people might say they benefit readers and they should be given a chance to voice their opinion. In addition, always check the history before proposing a redirect for deletion because sometimes people convert articles to categories. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. Actually, while looking over the RfD page another question comes to mind, because a new RfD is in the form Template->User. You mention above that (any)->User is a speedy, but R2 specifically says only Main->User, so I was wondering if that would be CSD R2 as well? -- Deville (Talk) 05:46, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, that was me commenting on something without reading the policy well enough. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Proper note to user?

I would like to find out what the is the appropriate message used in user talk pages for {{db-badfairuse}} and the rest of the messages which do not have any guide to notify the user who uploaded the image in question. For example, for CSD A8, this message is used - Please notify uploader on their talk page with: {{subst:nothanks-sd}} Any comments would be welcomed. Another eample is for CSD A7. The rest of the deletion templates do not show any guidance on what kind of messages which are to be used in the usertalk pages. -- Siva1979Talk to me 04:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Conflict of wording with {{Isd}}

I would like to know if anyone else sees the conflict between the criteria listed on the project page, for {{isd}} and what it actually says. The main page here says the criteria is:

same or better image exists on Wikipedia (not for now on Commons)

while the template itself says something very different:

This image is a redundant (all pixels the same or scaled down) copy of [[:Image:{{{1}}}]], in the same file format, which is on Wikipedia (not Commons), and all inward links have been updated

It mainly came to my attention just now when I added the tag to Image:HiltonHotelsCorporation.gif because I removed the white background to replace it with transparency, and also cropped the ridiculously large margin. Other than that, I did nothing (except convert it from GIF to PNG since it uses partial transparency) The criteria here, it meets - the new version is better than the obsolete one. However, the criteria on the template, it doesn't - the new version is not a bit-for-bit copy in the same format or a scaled-down, but that's not the criteria here. Which of them is the official policy? Because one has to be changed. - Рэдхот 23:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the template, but the CSD page should take precedent over all CSD-intended templates. {{db-web}} is a good example, it detailed the speedy deletion of websites with no claim to notability created recently. There is no speedy deletion criterion to accompany it, and it was deleted. BigNate37(T) 00:26, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Well I'm not sure if I should alter the template. I assumed this page would probably take precedence, but I want to see what others say before I alter it. - Рэдхот 11:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I have now, just to get a quicker reaction. It's not a huge edit, just makes some bits a bit more vague and therefore applicable to more images. But I also noticed that earlier on this project page, it says it should be in the same format. Would anyone have a problem with changing it to a lossless conversion or something like that. For instance, if you add partial transparency to a GIF image and save as PNG (since GIF doesn't do partial) then you haven't lost any info as they're both lossless formats, but it isn't the same format. - Рэдхот 12:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment and question about A7

I have noticed both in AFD and in the course of new page patrolling that there are a lot of NN web forums that do not assert notability or importance. Does this fit CSD A7? I don't see that rationale being used much. It seems like a good one, though, given that they are simply groups that occur online. Db-band gets used a lot since nearly every band in existence thinks that if myspace will let them promote their crappy music wikipedia should too. I hardly ever see db-group though. Is there any way that it could be specified in A7 that this also applies to forums? This is by far the most common NN "group" that is posted. Irongargoyle 00:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

A website is not a group (though a group can have a website). As mentioned in the above section, it is not a CSD criterion either. BigNate37(T) 01:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
  • DB-web sounds like a good idea. There are way too many websites that attempt to use Wikipedia for astroturfing. >Radiant< 01:48, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not so much proposing a db-web (although I would definitely support one if proposed), I'm supporting more of an interpretation/clarification of db-group/db-bio to make sure that it includes websites which are for all intents and purposes group/individuals with no assertion of importance or significance (forums, online game guilds, homepages, blogs, etc...) Irongargoyle 23:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
      • A website is not a group or person. You're proposing a new criterion. Better to phrase it this way. Deco 23:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Agreed. >Radiant< 15:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree as per above. Prod is too ineffective when dealing with this stuff because the spammer/astroturfer can remove it (about 50% get deprodded, only to be deleted unanimously on AFD). Therefore the "article" lasts for at least five days clogging up AFD when it could easily be deleted by a RC/Newpage patroller admin. MER-C 11:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, one review shows that a vast majority of prods were deleted uncontroversially, though that may have changed since then, of course. -- nae'blis 17:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I also agree to a db-web as per above. Things like Crash n' Bass! (a webcomic with no claim of any achievements, impact or historical significance) ought to be speediable. -- Dragonfiend 07:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree - this is a much needed improvement of A7 JoJan 14:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. There's no reason prod can't handle this, and having them at AfD hurts nothing. Considering how controversial A7 is, I see no reason to expand it further at this point. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • A7 isn't controversial, it's common practice with a few vocal detractors. >Radiant< 15:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
      • I disagree with this statement. It's fairly controversial given its haphazard use. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
        • It is perhaps controversial because it is used outside of its scope (which is seen as insufficient e.g. by new page patrollers). Kusma (討論) 16:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree, as I have deleted several websites as "groups" already, codifying this practice seems like a good idea. Kusma (討論) 15:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not a vote. You need to actually propose a revision and discuss it, with the reasons why for and against. Otherwise, this is just a waste of time and space. It would also be good to look at the archives—where there has been discussion about this—to see possible variations and reasons. —Centrx→talk • 15:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I apologize for removing the boldened voting words from people's comments here, but I agree with Centrx that this should be NOT a vote. Discuss, don't polarize. >Radiant< 15:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Good point. Thanks for removing the "vote" part of my comment. Kusma (討論) 16:31, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

My suggested wording, which I believe logically follows from current A7 as well as WP:NOT an internet guide, follows:

Unremarkable web content. An article about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that does not assert the importance or historical significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead.

-- Dragonfiend 16:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I recommend once more that people read the prior discussions on this very page (particularly #Expanding A7), which links to most of the earlier ones? A7 as originally constituted was ONLY about people, and was later expanded to bands as "groups of people". None of this is to say that an expanded A7 that more accurately/helpfully defines "groups" wouldn't be a good idea, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot. -- nae'blis 17:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I've read through that as well as other archived discussions -- are then any portions of those that you think are particularly applicable and worth reiterating? -- Dragonfiend 06:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I like Dragonfield's wording (with Kusma's link suggestion), which is a natural extension of A7. PROD is starting to get backlogged like AFD was before, and unimportant websites make up pretty significant part of CAT:PROD. Andrew Levine 18:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Although this doesn't seem like a terrible idea, I'm forced to oppose it on the general principle that a "claim of notability" is too subjective to evaluate and not necessary for a good article. If I write an article about a 17th century mathematician, noting some of his works and people he worked with, should that be speediable just because I didn't claim he was notable? Alternatively, you might interpret this as an implicit claim of notability, but only if you have sufficient specialised knowledge, which is not appropriate for a speedy deletion criterion. A7 needs to be made more narrow, not more broad. Deco 23:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Your hypothetical example (17th century mathematician with multiple works that have stood the test of history and who worked with other presumably prominent mathematicians) does not seem to meet A7 as that is a pretty clear at least debatable "assert[ion of] the importance or significance of its subject." Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Do you have any non-hypothetical examples? A non-hypothetical example of the type of web content article I am talking about would be the webcomic Crash n' Bass! which makes no claim of any significance -- it just has an author, and some characters, and maybe a plot. -- Dragonfiend 05:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • The point is that the assertion is not explicit, and if the article is very short, it may require a specialist to establish that the particular evidence offered meets the criteria that you inferred. It's long established that speedy deletion rules should not require extensive research or specialized knowledge to validate applicability. Worse still, some people interpret A7 to mean only a very clear or explicit claim. I'm not claiming Crash n' Bass! should not be speediable, but that the language "claim of notability" is too broad — for websites, groups, or people — and should be expanded with something that excludes articles including "implicit evidence" that requires more thorough validation. Deco 13:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • It does that already. A7 only applies where there is not any reasonable cause to think there is notability. Websites definitely need to be included, especially, as Kusma observed, they're getting deleted already (I've deleted them too). Policy is there to reflect practice, after all... Tyrenius 16:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
        • I would have no objection to including websites in a suitably repaired version of A7 which explicitly incorporated this "reasonable cause" that you describe, which although a popular interpretation is not clear in the wording of the rule. Deco 03:05, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it time for a straw poll to determine consensus? Or should I just go ahead and add it to A7? MER-C 07:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

  • We don't really like using straw polls for such. Based on the above discussion (which, incidentally, was advertised on the village pump) I'd say most people would agree if it was worded properly. Also, it passes all four criteria at the top of the page. There are concerns that it may be abused - but frankly, on a Wiki, everything can be abused. That simply means we should keep an eye out and deal sternly with the abusers. >Radiant< 10:27, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure it should be added just yet. Has this change been advertised at the proper outlsets (WP:WEB, the village pump as examples?) Is it a true consensus, or simply of those who patrol this page? If it has been, then I guess I have nothing else to say on the matter, but a rather significant change like this needs a little more, IMO. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Er, I just did state it had been advertised. $.2 >Radiant< 13:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Any objections to the current version?

“ Unremarkable web content. An article about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that does not assert the importance or historical significance of its subject. If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead. ”

If there aren't any by the weekend, I'll go ahead and add it. MER-C 09:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Just wondering; In the same way we have {{db-bio}} (I know its still A7 but 'bio' is skewed towards usage on a nn vanity page) could we somehow rephrase this as to include advertisements for nn websites? My fear is the word unremarkable is a much more subjective term (as notability is already a policy here - remarkability notsomuch) and unremarkable could also be misconstrued by some as to imply an assessment of website's graphical or design quality. Could we just use the term non-notable here too? This is not a suggestion so as to slow the broadening process - so please whether this is thumbed up or booed out continue with weekend implementation Glen 14:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Non-notable and "fails to assert notability" are two different things and would make the definition ambigious. Suppose we had an article on a completely unknown band that had a "discography" section. That asserts some sort of notability, but the band is still non-notable. Anyway, the reader can understand what we mean by "unremarkable" when he/she reads the rest of the definition. MER-C 08:24, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I still strongly object. I see no pressing need for this whatsoever, and no need to expand A7 with it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:38, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Let's have a look at yesterday's AFDs, as the prod tags for websites that fail to assert notability are often removed. Here are the deletion debates for websites that fail to assert notability.
  1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Wedding Network
  2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Televised Revolution
  3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/HarryPotter-Boards
  4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hoop Scoop
  5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/On The Clock Draft
  6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DCSki
  7. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skatedomination.com
  8. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mad vortex
  9. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talk RadioX
  10. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Place In Between
  11. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nycgarages.com
  12. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Madness-evolution
  13. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wot.wikia.com
  14. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sheene search
  15. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Www.republicanordemocrat.highbb.com
  16. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Planetsanta
All these are open and shut deletion cases, with 100% delete opinions from non-SPAs. In some cases, the deletion debate has gone on for TEN DAYS. And on that particular day, these nominations make up 11% of all AFDs. What a waste of time. Thus a speedy deletion criteria for non-notable websites is needed. MER-C 01:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
So you handpicked ten. Big deal. That doesn't act as evidence that they should be speedied, and this doesn't demonjstrate a pressing need. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Have you ever been on new pages patrol? MER-C 13:39, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Implemented, spammed on WP:AN. MER-C 12:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

And this is disappointing to see. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
This is disappointing to see? You know what, you are disappointing to see. WP is not a junkyard, and we need to do whatever possible to find an easy way to remove the scores of unnotable websites that have entries here. I think this is great and I am quite happy to see a tag and it will save a lot of people's efforts in time in other duties. Good stuff, again. Giant onehead 20:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Question about "indentation hack"

What is the "indentation hack" code for? All of the sections after "Articles" are indented and it makes them all look like they are paragraphs under "Articles". laurap414 21:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't actually know; it used to serve some purpose, I believe, but I've removed it for now as it did mess up the layout. >Radiant< 21:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
It prevents that paragraph from looking like it's part of the bulleted item. I've fixed it and replaced it. —AySz88\^-^ 14:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I3 no-derivatives image licences

I think I3 is not very clear about images which can be used commercially but prevent derivatives - "No Derivatives" licences. The Jimbo email does not mention them [2], the {{cc-by-nd-2.5}} and {{cc-by-nd-2.0}} templates redirect to {{db-ccnoncom}} which is only about non-commercial licences, and the templates {{cc-by-nd-1.0}} and {{cc-by-nd}} point to a non-speedy template. There is nothing about ND in the explanations. It appears to have been put back in recently despite not apparently being there before. I am seeking clarification that licences which prevent derivatives are actually speediable (even though they are currently mentioned), and if that is the case, consensus to change the wording to explicitly mention CC-ND licences (and possibly establish on this talk page where this policy comes from). And perhaps a more appropriate speedy template for {{cc-by-nd-2.0}} and {{cc-by-nd-2.5}} as well. For example {{nd}}. Your thoughts, thanks. -- zzuuzz (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I cannot seem to find anything about ND licenses before I "replaced" it, but could have sworn that it was part of CSD at one point. Sorry for any confusion. ND licenses are clearly not free licenses, but I suspect that there hasn't been a lot of discussion about them; the issue comes up for userpage photos, which a lot of people would like to license ND, and for images that people want to watermark. If you're inspired to clarify the ND case in those places we discuss unfree image licenses and Wikipedia, that would be great; you've already tracked down some places where it probably should be mentioned. Jkelly 22:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I asked about that once on Jimbo's talk page, but didn't get a lot of response. I have since concluded that we should indeed treat them the same way as "by permission" and "non-commercial" images though. The reason those are not allowed (as I understand it) is the lack of compatability with the GFDL and since the GFDL explicitly allow modificaitons "non-derivatives" type licenses are equaly incompatable with it. --Sherool (talk) 11:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Here's a clarifying diff from User:Jimbo Wales. Jkelly 21:51, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: section for Talk criteria, & a new criterion for it

_ _ As to speedying Talk pages, there is already G8:

Talk pages of pages that do not exist, unless they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere or notes that would help in creating an article. User_talk pages are exempt from this. Subpages (including archive pages) are only deletable under this rule if the corresponding top-level page does not exist.

(It could be clearer; it is also misplaced:

_ _ "Redirects" is a section, not part of "General criteria", even tho it is more general than G8: it applies to all namespaces, unlike G8 which applies only to talk namespaces;
_ _ All the other sections but "Redirects" apply to one namespace each (or two, as "Articles" presumably covers both main-namespace and Wikipedia: pages), and not to corresponding talk namespaces;
_ _ "Talk pages" should be a separate section, including what we presently call G8, and applying to all talk namespaces.)

_ _ I'd like a new CSD for talk pgs like the one i improved by removing its pointless list of related articles deducible from the article's stubby text &/or its short what-lks-here list: it now can be seen at a glance to be blank, rather than needing to be scanned to see if it says something editors need to know. IMO, i further improved it by not simply blanking it, but leaving a double-small note, signed (and subject to the consequences of forgery &/or fraud), showing immediately that someone takes responsibility for discarding it. But making such a prematurely created talk page speediable would avoid anyone having to lk to the talk pg to get a "Nothing happening here, folks, move along" advisory. (A different form of talk page, that would also be better deleted, informs the utterly clueless what article talk pages are for, and has a redundant lk to its article. Yet another form is a blanked (or "ignore me") pg that replaces the rdr created in moving or merging it where it should be; that is the cure for an entirely off-topic talk page, due to discussion abt a person with a name confusable with the proper topic of the talk page in question, or to plain cluelessness that might be useful elsewhere.)
_ _ Here's a draft (incorporating the present G8) to take potshots at, in the process of coming up with a good new section:
=== Talk pages === (Short names: Tk1, Tk2, ...)

  1. (This criterion replaces G8, which is retained under "General criteria" for historical purposes.) Talk pages of pages that do not exist, with the following exceptions:
    1. Those containing deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere are not speediable.
    2. Those containing notes that would help in creating an article are not speediable.
    3. User_talk pages are not speediable (bcz a User talk: page is relates to its user, not to its User: page).
    4. Archive pages and other "... talk:" subpages whose corresponding top-level pages exist are not speediable.
  2. Talk pages that do not (yet) carry contents that can facilitate maintenance and improvement of the encyclopedia. (If there is a better place for its contents, the page and its history should be moved or merged there, probably with the resulting rdr being removed or replaced, and the page may then be speediable under this criterion.)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jerzy (talk • contribs) 03:20, 13 September 2006

There is no reason to delete a talk page like this. What harm does it do leaving this in the contribution history, should you decide the information is not needed on the talk page? The correct course of action was to archive once the talk page filled up—CSD is not here to help people who don't want to read a talk page from top to bottom. Specifically, regarding the second part: Talk pages that do not (yet) carry contents that can facilitate maintenance and improvement... I'd want to see a clear case for why talk pages need to be deleted (history and all) if they have an article to go along with, and I'd want to see why there are so many of them that they can't be sent to MfD. Without that information, I don't see this change helping the project.
BigNate37(T) 15:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC) Jerzy•t has struck thru User:BigNate37's erroneous and confusing lk, within the preceding signed contrib of BigNate37. Jerzy•t 04:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
_ _(For clarity, BN's whole cmt is abt point 2 in my contrib -- (or if any of if it isn't, that part of his cmt makes no sense to me.)
_ _ (Re "no reason to delete..."), that is not an argument against the criterion i propose, but a disagreement about whether my example meets that criterion. Thus it appears to be off-topic. Nevertheless, the page in question's suitability for deletion is worth defending: that example is worthy of deletion bcz the effort of recreating
Related articles:
Allen Williamson (Representative) (late Representative from Oklahoma)
Allen Williamson Bridge (Bridge named after this Representative)
James Allen Williamson (currently a Senator from Oklahoma)
from the article content, later, (in the event of deletion) when and if the article becomes long enuf to make such a list useful, is less than the effort wasted by editors who access the talk pg without any benefit to WP resulting (in the absence of deletion), before the time when there is any real discussion or support-for-editing content on the talk pg.
_ _ (Re "a talk page like this", and solely for ameliorating the confusion of diligent editors who follow lks, that lk is not to the revision i quasi-blanked, nor is it a revision involved in the diff-page i lk'd to. BN's lk points to the 1st saved draft of the IP whose talk (non-)contrib i am concerned about, which that IP superceded 6 minutes later. Try not to confuse yourself by referring to it.)
_ _ (Re "CSD is not here to..."), CSD is here solely to unburden the XfDs of all from discussing pages that can be be debated here as a class on this project-talk page, and need no page-by-page candidate-by-candidate deletion discussion. The practice of dDeletion, in all its forms, is here to make WP more efficient by clearing away pages that interfere, including simply by distraction, with WP's accomplishment of its purposes. The applicability of that principle in this matter is addressed in my next 'graph.
_ _ (Re "don't want to read a talk page from top to bottom): This is a straw man. The harm of such an entry would be reduced below worthiness for discussion, once there was useful content on the talk page (and in fact i would favor (tho it's no priority) language indicating that Tk2 deletions are reversible without need for treatment on WP:DRV, for the sake of the few cases where it would be used). The question is whether the preservation of duplicative information is worth misleading and thus distracting editors who do want to at least scan any prior discussion, before undertaking the edit they contemplate. One, perhaps two, pointless page downloads are forced on such a user when Talk: Allen Williamson Grey contains nothing but
Discussion for the article: Allen Williamson Grey.
and it is those editors (more diligent than the ones BN disparages, and accuses me of looking out for) who will be harmed if this proposal is not effected.
--Jerzy•t 20:20, 19 & 04:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC) [Passage added in two edits; replacement material is in bold, but additional material inserted in an earlier obvious gap & at ends of 'graphs is in no way distinguished.]

Informing the creators is being ignored

This was crossposted, and has probably least to do with CSD. Please discuss at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Informing the creators is being ignored. I've moved the comments that were here, over there. >Radiant< 16:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

  • it happens because it slows down processing CAT:CSD and because it can be read in the deletion log. Speedies are supposed to non-contestable so there's no real use in contacting the creator. The only thing it can do is spark a row. On the other hand, we need to do something about people speedying articles that are obvious non-speedies by any definition of the word. - Mgm|(talk) 10:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarification of {{db-nocontent}}

Would an article that consists solely of an image fall under {{db-nocontent}}? I want to make sure I'm tagging articles appropriately, and if there's a better tag I'd like to use it. Thanks! -- Merope Talk/Review 13:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I certainly think so. I can't imagine any such article being one it would be controversial to delete, and {db-nocontent} seems like the most accurate tag to describe it. Mangojuicetalk 17:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it certainly would qualify. —Centrx→talk • 01:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

CSD P2

For me, the P2 seems totally useless. almost as a joke. →AzaToth 01:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

48 hours

This is reposted from the {{Db-copyvio}} talk page, I've moved it here where there is some similar discussion, and someone might be able to comment. Basically, I need some help with the 48 hour aspect of this. I just noticed that this Country Radio Broadcasters, Inc. article is identical to this [3] site. It is older than 48 hours though, it dates from 17:46, 24 August 2006. It should still be deleted under A8 even though it is past 48 hours, right? DVD+ R/W 02:52, 16 September 2006 (UTC) Note, the copyvio has now been surgically removed and the article is beginning to be rewritten. I would like to hear other opinions on why there is a 48 hour requirement though, when it isn't a mirrored site. DVD+ R/W 03:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

See [4]. —Centrx→talk • 06:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki to Wikipedia and CSD

Articles that are transwikied over here into the pseudonamespace "Transwiki:" and then moved into the main namespace leave behind an unneeded redirect in the pseudonamespace. I propose that such redirects be speediable. The proposed wording is "redirects created from the result of a transwiki to Wikipedia and a move to the main namespace". MER-C 13:07, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Technically, "Transwiki:" is part of the main namespace. I'd say such redirects are already speediable under the "non-controversial housekeeping" clause. >Radiant< 22:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I6 needs clarification

I6, the "Missing fair-use rationale" criterion, currently says:

"Any image or media tagged only with {{fairuse}} or {{Non-free fair use in}}, with no fair use rationale, may be deleted seven days after it was uploaded."

When really it should read:

"Any image or media tagged only with a generic fair use template, with no fair use rationale, may be deleted seven days after it was uploaded."

The reason is that it is not only {{fairuse}} and {{Non-free fair use in}} which require detailed fair use rationales; all of the generic boilerplate fair use templates require detailed fair use rationales. An image ought to be deleted (after a week) if it lacks such a detailed rationale, regardless of which boilerplate template was used.

Feel free to alter my wording if you think the point can be conveyed more clearly. --bainer (talk) 03:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I've now updated the text. --bainer (talk) 03:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Informing the user who started an article

Speedily informing the user who started an article would avoid a whole lot of confusion. Guaka 20:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I fully agreee. There are a whole of people creating in good faith articles that we just will not accept. It's not really fair to speedily delete, and let them go back and recreate the whole thing again, especially if they failed to save the text. So it would be nice to say, thanks, but we had to delete it since it does not fit. On the other had, those that create total nonsense and/or attack articles should be told the ariticle was deleted with extreme prejusice and if they do it again, they will be terminated. --ArmadilloFromHell 20:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
So how can this become a part of the speedy deletion process?
Someone opposed on my talk page that informing the user would take too much time. But a simple copy/paste would be sufficient. It would actually lead to less work in some cases. Like in my case, I thought that there was a problem with the database, so I recreated the article twice. It's extremely confusing. Guaka 19:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikicommons

Is there a way to disable the talk page in wikipedia for pictures in wikicommons? --Gbleem 10:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Not that I know of. If people are using the Wikipedia talk page, you could put up a note that says to make your comments on the Commons talk page. However, people would have to sign up for a Commons account and people are probably more likely to see comments on the Wikipedia talk page, although image talk pages on Wikipedia are still virtually dead. More discussion goes on at the pages that they are used on, but even that often does not get much response, if any. Very controversial and high-profile images get the most discussion, but I have never seen more than several medium-sized paragraphs. -- Kjkolb 11:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
You could create a cross-wiki redirect from the wikipedia page to the commons page in the format #redirect [[Commons:Image talk:Pagename.jpg]]. I've seen that tactic used on some of our policy-pages when the policy is a clone of a page from Meta. It seems to be reasonably successful at consolidating the discussion. Rossami (talk) 11:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the best way to make a feature request is but an automatic redirect would be a good thing I would thing. Maybe after all the usrids are combined. --Gbleem 12:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
The redirect worked great. Can we make it part of the speedy deletion policy to use the redirect instead of deleting the talk page? --Gbleem 13:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Jeff. The redirect only appears to work great, whereas actually cross-wiki redirects are disabled. Still, the redirect syntax does display a pretty dignified marker to the commons imagespace. -- nae'blis 22:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

speedy deletion for new pages

"The word "speedy" in this context refers to the rapid decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created."

With an obvious vandalism or copyright violation I can see the need to delete something immediately after creation but it is not necessary to delete or even tag other things immediately after creation.

I don't want to say that something has to be up for a certain time period before speedy deletion. I however think that even the templates are a hassle when I'm trying to edit something.

Is there something else that can be put in the policy for clarification?

--Gbleem 05:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're suggesting as a solution. Many new pages are found via Recent Changes, and so will be quite recently created. If they are ignored due to age they may be missed and forgotten altogether. Deco 05:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting as much as I'm asking for suggestions. I'm thinking you could look at the new posts for vandalism only and then review one day old posts for other things that might need more time. I don't know how easy it would be to do that. --Gbleem 15:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
User:Deco brought up the same reason I had mentioned earlier. A giant amount of new topics are usually empty, left empty, nonsense, and some sort of non-notable bio. I would say almost 40% of all new posts created. In a single day thousands of posts are created daily. Categories for Notability, Needing References, and Speedy Deletions are often back logged. New Post Patrolers and Admins cannot afford to double their workload by checking New Posts, One Day Old New Posts, and mark each for different criteria. The current method of disputing, hangon's, and AfD's are a good system. Every once and awhile we will come across an article that was right to be marked at the time but is edited and is suitable to remain. Those incidences are far fewer than the marked and rightfully deleted topics. I strongly feel it would be impractical to change the entire system just to accomodate that.Mkdw 15:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
It's the same number of article regardless of when you delete them. When a TV or radio show has a five second delay the show is still the same length. --Gbleem 20:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Same number of articles but twice the number of views and twice the volunteer labor. Rossami (talk) 20:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
PROD can work very well for these instances, I think. If editors were less quick to slap CSD on article subjects that had merit as possibly encyclopedic, it would stop some of the biting going on when articles are nominated minutes or even seconds after their first edit by someone engaging in progressive saves, or who does not know our policies. -- nae'blis 21:00, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem is, for newly created pages the vanity user just removes the prod and continues along his merry, awesome way. —Centrx→talk • 17:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Wrong criterion or likely prod - should it be changed?

I was on AN/I recently asking about how to help and get practice with the speedy deletion process even without having admin tools, and it was suggested that I come to CSD and make sure that speedy candidates were legitimate speedies. I immediately noticed that a lot of articles tagged with some criteria don't actually meet those criteria, but do meet others. My question is: would admins find it helpful if I were to replace the incorrect criteria with the correct ones? Or would this just be obnoxious and a waste of everyone's time?
Secondly, when an article doesn't meet the narrow speedy criteria but would almost certainly not survive prod, is it worthwhile to remove the speedy tag and put it in prod, or is this a case where one should just ignore all rules and let it be?
I ask these questions because I would like to get practice with the CSD, in prepration for the unlikely event that the community decides to entrust me with administrator tools, but don't want to get in everyone's way and piss people off in the meantime. Captainktainer * Talk 01:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Because of the need to carefully and strictly enforce CSD to prevent abuse, I think this kind of careful management of CSD tags is both welcome and appreciated. As for whether to PROD it, I'd leave that to your discretion on an individual per-article basis. Deco 02:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
  • It is always useful to have someone filter out the "incorrect" speedies (which usually should go on PROD, imho). However, replacing e.g. a "A3" tag with a "G4" tag isn't really useful. It's not bad or anything, but the deleting admin will be aware of what the CSDs are and can figure out if some other criterion applies. >Radiant< 08:49, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Changing the criterion to some other criterion would be a waste of time. If you can recognize that it doesn't fall under one criterion, but does fall under the another, the deleting admin can do the same and delete it under that criterion. Also, note that there are other backlogs that might be more beneficial to work on. —Centrx→talk • 17:49, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I disagree. Someone may legitimately remove an incorrect speedy tag from the article before an admin ever looks at it. Better to replace it with a tag that is less likely to be removed. Deco 18:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Deco has changed my mind... if you can quickly put the correct CSD tag on, go for it. But don't agonize over getting the perfect one on every article... admins doing CAT:CSD generally have the CSDs memorized and will apply the correct one, even if the initial tag is wrong. But I can see where the wrong tag might be removed wholesale by a user, and the article still should be deleted, but under another criteria. So putting the correct one in has a purpose. But the main thing non-admins can do to help out is still taking the non-CSD candidates, removing the tags, and taking the correct action - prod, AFD, whatever. If there are just clear CSD qualifiers in the category when an admin starts work, they can go through much more quickly. --W.marsh 18:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks everyone. Based on the helpful comments, when prowling CSD I'll primarily look for incorrect speedies that should be prodded or put into AfD. However, from time to time I'll replace incorrectly-categorized speedies to a) give me more practice with the speedy criteria and b) address Deco's concerns. Captainktainer * Talk 14:12, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Interpretation of {{db-band}} etc.

For articles in subject areas with established notability guidelines, is failing to attempt to meet the guidelines grounds for speedy deletion? In other words, quite apart from the question of whether the article actually conforms to the guidelines, can an editor use the guidelines in a more limited sense as a guide to whether an article merits speedy deletion?: if the article does not even appear to be making the attempt to conform to guidelines, but either ignores them or seems unaware of them, is that equivalent to "not assert[ing] the importance or significance of the subject"? --Rrburke 03:53, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It depends what you mean by "either ignor[ing] them or seems unaware of them". Are you refering to the guidelines of WP:BIO? If an article fails to meet any of the criterion listed under those articles then it can be marked for speedy deletion whether or not the creator is aware. You have to look at the facts. An article cannot try or not try to meet the guidelines. It either does or does not. If it does, it stays. If it does not then it is deleted. Mkdw 05:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi... thanks for answering. The music notability guidelines actually state that "Failing to satisfy the notability guidelines is not a criterion for speedy deletion"; similarly, WP:BIO says "The fact that an article doesn't meet guidelines on this page does not necessarily mean it qualifies for speedy deletion." I realize that not satisfying the guidelines may be grounds for deletion under WP:PROD or WP:AfD, just not under WP:SD.
What I was asking was slightly different, and I realize my attempt to draw the distinction was murky. I was trying to distinguish between an article that may be eligible for WP:PROD or WP:AfD because it doesn't satisfy the guidelines, and one eligible for WP:SD because it doesn't even attempt to satisfy the guidelines. In trying to decide which category an article belongs in, should I look to criteria like WP:MUSIC#Musicians_and_ensembles as a guide to whether the author is making a claim of importance? Or is any claim of importance sufficient to avoid WP:SD, whether or not it is aiming at the guidelines? There, clear as mud. --Rrburke 11:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Let me be crystal clear: if it claims any kind of importance at all, an article is not eligible for speedy deletion. For instance, if a band's article says it is "popular" or if they've released an album, it's a claim of notability. If what they say doesn't rise to the level of WP:BAND, it will generally be deleted virtually without contest at AfD, and prod will often work too. The kind of band articles that do meet speedy deletion are typically the ones that just state the genre of the band and name its members, and perhaps when they formed. Mangojuicetalk 14:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know. Any claim of notability, then, even if it isn't an attempt to conform to the guidelines, means the article should not be put forward for speedy deletion -- got it. But is the fact that a band has a single album actually even a claim to notability? The guidelines mention having "released two or more albums on a major label or one of the more important indie labels" as a notability criterion, so would having only one really be a notability claim -- or is it just information about the band? --Rrburke 17:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Any claim of notability suffices. To use your interpretation would be to assume that the article creator is already familiar with WP:BAND. Deco 07:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


Turning A8 into a general criteria

Unless someone can come up with a reason not to I plan to expand A8 to cover everthing not just articles.20:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geni (talk • contribs)

And the need being? --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
People listing recently uploaded copyvio images at CSD which in thoery can't be speedied. Simular issues for stuff in the wikipedia and user namespaces.Geni 21:33, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

G4 corollary

There are a few templates and categories that are recreated in some form every month or so, and usually deleted per G4 since we've seen them before. The most obvious examples are voting templates and disclaimer templates. I think it would be useful to make a very brief list of those perennials here. Any thoughts on this? >Radiant< 21:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

To the contrary, I think that justifying deletion of these templates would require new criteria; G4 should only be used on content that is recreated by the same users without addressing any previous objections. Deco 21:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
  • G4 does not, and never has, required the author being the same. What matters is that the content is the same. >Radiant< 22:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I haven't seen the templates in question, and I agree with you if it is truly a "substantially identical copy", but a page that merely has the same purpose and vaguely similar content is not at all the same thing. The spirit of the rule is that it is intended to deal with re-creations that attempt to reverse prior deletions without addressing the issues raised in those deletions. It should not apply to people who evidently have no knowledge of those prior deletions, since we could not reasonably expect them to address those issues. At the very least they deserve a link to the deletion discussion for the original page. Deco 22:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, but we're not talking articles here, but templates and categories. In particular, any template that says "the following page may contain objectionable content" is something we've seen before. And speedied under G4 before. I'm not proposing anything new, just to make a list of anything that has been G4'ed twice. That shouldn't be that much. >Radiant< 22:43, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Any reason why you want to limit your list to just templates and categories? If you're willing to open the analysis up to all pages, this might be a good proxy. It's got some false positives but they're pretty easy to sort out. Rossami (talk) 00:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The idea is to be able to get rid of templates like {{Warning - this article contains pictures of naked women}} and {{Warning - do not try this at home, kids}} without going through the hassle of TfD. --Carnildo 04:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I think, if {{Nudity warning}} is deleted and then someone makes {{Nakedness warning}} with very similar wording, it can be called a repost and deleted. But that doesn't mean that {{Racist warning}} would be deletable as a repost. However, I think there's a new policy we should make here: warnings, other than spoiler warnings, are deleted VERY regularly. WP:SPOILER mentions a quote that says that spoiler warnings should be the only warnings, but I think this is an unwritten policy of Wikipedia that should be formally written. Mangojuicetalk 18:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
N/m, scratch that, I found WP:NDT. Mangojuicetalk 18:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
WP:NDT is a guideline, not a policy. To claim that G4 applies to all such templates would be to effectively elevate it to policy, and under a dubious interpretation of G4 that contradicts its spirit. Any such deletions that have already occurred are out of process, as far as I'm concerned, and should have gone to TfD. If you're interested in unilaterally deleting this type of template, I would suggest you first garner support for making WP:NDT a policy, and then adding speedy deletion criteria to support it. Deco 20:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, NDT is a guideline, and so? The spirit of G4 is to avoid discussing things that we've discussed before. We've had plenty of discussion on voting templates and disclaimer templates, and so we now speedily delete them. We might as well update this page to reflect that; not doing so will not in any way stop those deletions. >Radiant< 21:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
That's true, but it's not always possible for an individual to conclusively establish that the arguments posed against a similar template in the past apply equally to a new template, which may have a similar purpose but notable differentiating factors that could alter the outcome of the argument. And "we do it anyway" is never a good argument; you could just as easily argue that the page should be updated to clarify that it shouldn't be done. Deco 23:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Blatant advertising

I wish more and more that blatant advertising would qualify for speedy deletion. On several occasions, I have seen people who don't even try to disguise their advertisements as articles, but instead write them as straight-out advertisements, including contact information, in first person voice. This makes me feel they knowingly and shamelessly disregard Wikipedia's intention, and instead think "Hey, I can edit it! Cool, free advertisement space!". Why in the world is this not a speedy deletion criterion? Do we want to turn Wikipedia into a free Internet host? I would love to see a template {{db-we}} which would display:

This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. Reason: Uses first-person voice.

JIP | Talk 19:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not. At best, an "advertisement" that may meet notability guidelines should be stubbed/rewritten. At worst, it should go to AfD and get a hearing, and possibly be stubbed and rewritten there following a few new eyes looking at it. I'm sure this has come up before, but there's no reason to speedy these. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The argument that WP is being used by companies as a "free web host" is a bit silly - any company with more than $20 in annual gross revenue can afford its own commercial web site. What they're interested in is describing their company on a popular and highly ranked site. On WP:CSD, under "non-criteria", you can see:
Advertisements or spam: These may be subject to deletion, but not speedy deletion. There is often a chance to replace them with an NPOV version instead.
Which is brief and clear enough. Deco 20:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Not a free web host, a free advertisement where they can instantly get a page on one of the most popular sites on the Internet. In such cases, even if a company be notable enough, the article must be entirely rewritten. —Centrx→talk • 22:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • However, there is a good point to be made for deleting blatant advertising in userspace done by accounts that have no other serious contribs. >Radiant< 21:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I routinely see an account start, post a new article as a blatant ad/promo pointing to their site, then run around to other articles and link to the new article. The only point of this activity is to get links from Wiki to increase Google PR. I should be able to tag for speedy deletion, but I end up putting in a prod tag, which 90% of the time is removed with no article change, then I have to go AfD, which as it currently stands is a time consuming process just to post it. Then it has to go through the time lag and feedback. The reality is that in many cases I just don't have the patience to do all that - and I suspect the same that may apply to others. --ArmadilloFromHell 05:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
    • My feelings exactly. If a new account writes a blatant advertisement, in first-person voice, as his only contribution, where it is obvious his only intent is advertising, why do we have to wait 5 days for the article to be deleted, when it's always going to get 100% delete votes and 0% keep votes? Why do we need to have this artificial-seeming wait period when everyone agrees the article must be deleted? JIP | Talk 07:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I concur with the above. A CSD for advertising is sorely needed with the amount of SEO going on. And who knows how much spam has snuck through. Prod and AFD are too slow and ineffective when it comes to dealing with this crap. And anyway, some admins just delete these "articles" on sight. MER-C 09:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
    • What does SEO mean? JIP | Talk 10:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Search engine optimisation, basically an euphemism for spamming. MER-C 10:40, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Okay. Proposed: "any page in userspace that is advertising or linkspamming and created by a user with very few edits". Thoughts welcome. >Radiant< 11:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
We need to be a lot wider than that because a lot of spamming occurs in the main namespace. MER-C 12:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • For mainspace article, another possibility is to allow speedy deletion for articles that both are blatant advertisment and do not assert notability. My point is, if the article needs to be rewritten completely, what's the point of discussion? It can be (speedy) deleted and then recreated from scratch. (Liberatore, 2006). 11:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I somewhat agree with this - we should not make advertisements for notable topics deletable, just non-notable topics, which couldn't reasonably be improved into useful articles. On the other hand, you'd be hard pressed to find an advertisement that doesn't assert notability of the product! ("a major advancement", "newest in the successful X line", "most popular in X", whatever) Deco 12:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Some ads are (often deliberately) vague; of the three examples you provided, the second one would probably not qualify as a notability assertion ("successful" may just mean "having met the (low) expected results"). Some ads are also mostly based on weasel terms ("excellent", "vision", "customer-oriented", etc.) rather than any concrete notability assertion. (Liberatore, 2006). 13:02, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd be very happy to see this. Quite a few times you see an ad (sorry article) - you know the prod will be removed without any action. Then you look at the contributions of the author - this and nothing else. Good proposal --Nigel (Talk) 12:06, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

A quick draft: "It is an advertisement masquerading as an article which does not assert notability or it is a userpage of a single purpose advertising account." MER-C 13:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. A little grammar change: "It is an advertisement masquerading as an article that does not assert the notability of its subject, or it is a userpage of a single purpose advertising account." (Liberatore, 2006). 13:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I would be very happy to see this (or a variant of) added to the CSD. Martin 13:12, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me too. JIP | Talk 13:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Whatever the final wording works out to be, the last sentence of the A7 criteria - If the assertion is disputed or controversial, it should be taken to AfD instead - needs to be included. --Allen3 talk 14:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. Some of these do definately need to be deleted, but I have seen several cleaned up to be decent articles. In my experience this, "when it's always going to get 100% delete votes and 0% keep votes," is simply not true. There are many notable and important companies and products that Wikipedia does not have articles on. Lots of people (sometimes unaffiliated with the company) will copy the company's promotional materials to Wikipedia in order to fill the gap. This is wrong, violates copywrite, etc., but often (though not always) these products deserve an article. We have a clean-up template for advertising; and advertising should 'be cleaned up, not deleted. Copyvios should be deleted, non-notable things can be deleted, and those get rid of half the ads there. The rest, consisting of notable products or companies with articles that read like ads but are not copied directly from websites or press releases, should be cleaned up, not deleted. I really think ad articles need to go through the AFD process to determine which of the three categories of ad articles they fall into. Adding it to the SD criteria is a mistake. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 13:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

If the topic deserves an article, then the advertisement should be speedily deleted and a request placed at WP:RA. Our cleanup backlog is so long that allowing people to add to it by placing advertisements here doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Kusma (討論) 13:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • True. In general, speedy deletion is not a mark aganist the subject, only against the current content. That's why G4 is worded the way it is. Articles on good subjects are inevitably recreated with some decent content. >Radiant< 14:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
  • One more vote for tyhe proposed wording: advert masquerading asd an article or userpagfe of single purpose account is excellent, add the AfD rider from A7 and let's go for it. Guy 16:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In practice, advertising is speedy deleted all the time. When an article starts out "Our mission is to provide a value-centric people-driven paradigm..." A) there's nothing there which good editors would actually use in an encyclopedia article on that topic and B) It's a copied and pasted right from the company webpage. Yes, sometimes what starts out as an ad can end up a good article, but it has to have some salvageable content, and not be a copyright violation, before any of that can happen. I think that saying we should never speedy delete advertising is relatively naive and doesn't take into account how much spam we get in an average hour, let alone day.

There seems to be a basic problem at work here. A lot of this "about our company" stuff isn't what you or I, as Wikipedia editors would write: Factual information, statistics, history, summary of controversies, etc. All that some companies put into their "about our company" is stuff about how great their product/service is... I've read corporate pages that literally don't give a single objective fact about the company.

At times I've advocated a CSD for "Articles that exist only to promote a product or service", which covers these non-informative company fluff pieces... although perhaps that rule is a bit too given to misinterpretation. If an article has factual information (e.g. "Company was founded in 1917, purchased by X in 1950, moved its headquarters to City in 1997" and so forth) that's all stuff we could use in an article, so articles like that really shouldn't be speedied unless they're copy and paste jobs. --W.marsh 17:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Some of the information in an ad-like article may be useful if someone wants to do a rewrite, that's true. However, such information is usually only sourced by the company's web site (if it is sourced at all). So, in order to turn such an article into a real encyclopedia article would require, 1. a complete rewrite 2. addition of reliable sources for the remaining factual information, and 3. addition of information to assess the notability of their subjects. All of this can only be done if the subject is actually notable. (Liberatore, 2006). 12:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
If this is the practice, it's incredibly improper. Why aren't we stubbing adn AfDing them? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Well these articles I'm talking about are usually copyvios, when you get down to it. I didn't think speedy deletion of those was controversial. Trust me, I do suggest AfD/prod if it's not a copyvio and the real problem is just that the assertions of importance are questionable, Prod and AfD are more appropriate venues for addressing those kinds of issues. I am not sure all CSD-patrolling admins do this, so any established non-admins who want to go through CAT:CSD and remove non-qualifying candidates is more than welcome to as far as I'm concerned, especially if you'll take them through PROD/AfD if called for... I think that helps with the backlog anyway. --W.marsh 15:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I think W.Marsh has it right, and I believe we already speedy delete some kinds of advertising under the vandalism clause (since it's pretty hard to AGF a linkspammer). >Radiant< 14:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I see no reason why WP:PROD is inadequate for dealing with new spam articles. The article creators rarely object in such cases, as they've vanished off of Wikipedia, and if they do, it's because they really do think (for whatever reason) their company or product should be in an encyclopedia. Mangojuicetalk 17:12, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That is not my impression. I would think at least 70% of the prod or prod2 articles I've tagged get the prod removed. In most cases they just remove the prod and make no changes or improvements or comments. --ArmadilloFromHell 17:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Seconded. MER-C 01:28, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly support this idea; I've been wishing for this for a long time. Prodding and AfD'ing these is usually a waste of everyone's time, which is exactly what speedying is supposed to prevent. An article deleted under this criterion can be easily recreated with encyclopedic material if the subject was genuinely notable and relevant, and deletion has the advantage of a) taking the spam out of the article history, b) presenting a red link to editors who may be interested in recreating it, and c) not having the spam sit around on Wikipedia's servers for 5+ days waiting for perfectly snowy processes to finish. Opabinia regalis 03:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I support the criterion as stated, with the reservation that it may not prove as useful as hoped, given that many ads do make claims of notability (usually unsupported). Deco 03:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Brad Patrick's comments

Brad Patrick, the foundation's legal counsel, has just made comments related to this very issue, that I thought people would be interested in. From Foundation-l:

This means the administrators and new page patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.

Full comment here. I think there is a bit of a sea change going on, used to the attitude was "Just slap a tag on it and someone will clean up the spam eventually", not it's becoming more well, I don't even have to exagerate, "shoot on sight". --W.marsh 17:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice, since I don't think AfD can possibly keep up with the amount of spamvertisements. I'd also like to see a policy change (and maybe some kind of monitor bot) for users who stick their URLs on multiple topics. I've seen cases of someone putting their website on more than 50 articles, and getting away with it for a long time before being caught. --ArmadilloFromHell 17:38, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Might I mention another part of the email: "Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go. I am here to tell you it is not enough. We are losing the battle for encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia for their own memes. This scourge is a serious waste of time and energy. We must put a stop to this now." There you have it from the office. AFD and prod can't deal with this crap. MER-C 01:28, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Except since he is talking about vfd it is quite posible he hasn't really considered prod.Geni 12:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
You can't seriously be implying that prod can effectively deal with spam? -- Steel 12:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
It often does. If not, then it should go to AfD to possibly be cleaned up if it should exist, and deleted if not. There's no reason to speedy it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
While prod works well for hit and run articles involving neologisms or hoaxes, spam articles tend to be defended by their creators against quick and simple actions. This is because placing a vanispamcruftisement on the #14 website on the Internet proclaiming the virtues of "Bob's Gently Owned Autos" is a marketing value not equaled since the development of the Make money fast e-mails. As a result of this value, the creators of these articles have increasingly taken to reverting speedy deletion tags, prod labels, and even spelling corrections. With current trends it is just a matter of time before spammers become savvy enough to routinely request that AfD discussions be removed due to the their inevitably pointing out that the business is a small time operation that lacks relevance outside its local community or some similar information that does not show the spam subject in the best possible light. --Allen3 talk 14:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Then it should be sent to AfD. Not a big deal. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm under the impression AfD is needless bureaucracy for something which is clearly going to be deleted. -- Steel 16:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The argument to send everything to AfD also ignores one of the basic principles behind Wikipedia: Removing vandalism must be no harder than adding it. The process of nominating an article at AfD requires three edits and, when done correctly, a well reasoned and properly researched explanation for the deletion citing appropriate policies. Closing the AfD as a delete requires examining and editing the discussion, performing the actual deletion, dealing with any possible talk page, checking for links to the deleted page, and fixing any issues caused by the links. Thus both the nomination and the deletion may each involve as much effort as creating the spam and this does not include the time and effort invested by other discussion participants. Unless you are arguing that a project based on volunteer effort is able to consistently exert more than twice the effort exerted by for-profit based spammers just to reach equilibrium, then your thesis that everything needs to go to AfD appears to be a prescription designed to render WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a soapbox irrelevant. --Allen3 talk 17:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, discussion. Something that's a basic principle of Wikipedia beyond deleting articles because they look like ads. Opening that can of worms? Not a great idea, although it seems like we've happily done so anyway. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
How would "shoot on sight" per WP:CSD work now that {{db-spam}} has been turfed? --Rrburke 21:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Personally, I do delete the most blatant advertisements on sight, on the ground that spamming is listed as a kind of vandalism. (Interestingly, I remember that the speedy deletion criterion used to be phrased as "Pure vandalism, such as spam".) Some of the advertisements also get nominated as copyright violation (the contributor may well be the copyright holder, but when he makes no claim of that, I don't examine the issue any further). I have noticed that somebody has just added spam as a speedy deletion criterion - when and by whom was it decided? - Mike Rosoft 13:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
      • According to WP:VAND, spam as vandalism is "Adding inappropriate external links for advertisement and/or self-promotion. Note that this applies only to placing links on numerous and/or unrelated pages. Adding self-promotional links to a few related articles may be inappropriate, but is not vandalism." This is quite different from what is discussed here (creation of even a single article that is only used for advertising). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Radiant! implemented it, and it's been fiddled around a bit by me and a few others. I'd wait until tomorrow so it settles down and all the related templates are created. MER-C 13:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Thanks for the explanation. I would just like to comment that WP:VAND doesn't say that the list is exhaustive (it just gives an example of what kind of spamming may be regarded as vandalism), and that WP:SPAM lists many more types. It is my opinion that any kind of deliberate misuse of Wikipedia or damaging of its contents constitutes vandalism. - Mike Rosoft 14:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
          • I understand this point of view. G11 could be possibly merged with G3, and WP:VAND updated to reflect the inclusion of "spamming" as a form of vandalism. This has the advantage of reducing the number of criteria; on the other hand, I'm not sure equating vandalism and spamming will be accepted by the community. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 14:21, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
            • And not all apparent spamming is actual spamming, and not everything that looks like spamming is vandalism. It's why we shouldn't be rushing this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Steel is entirely correct. Note that in the section above, we're discussing a speedy deletion criterion on spam. {{db-spam}} was 'turfed' because it wasn't a CSD - but we can decide to make it one. >Radiant< 23:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
  • A point that seems to be missing in some of the latest posts is that we are not discussing whether all spam is to be deleted on sight. The proposed criteria is to delete articles that do not, in the current state, show why we should have an article about their subject. These are articles that take nothing to be created and require a big effort to be deleted and an ever greater effort to be turned into real articles in the rare cases when they can. All this cleaning up is done by volunteers, as Allen3 correctly points out. (Liberatore, 2006). 11:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Okay. And...? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
      • And... even if some content of some of these article can be saved, is it really worth the trouble of afd all of them? Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 15:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Always. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
          • This would be true if we really so desperately need to expand our coverage of companies and we had so many voluteers willing to fix bad articles. In practice, it's the other way around. I would rather prefer people willing to cleanup to work on other topics rather than fixing spam. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 12:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to have been implemented by Radiant!: [5]. MER-C 11:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't know why we're rushing these things through right now. This isn't how we normally go about doing policy pages. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    Getting policy handed down to us from above is not how we normally arrive at policy. Today is an exception. Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 13:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    Does he have the ability to speak the way Jimbo does? Has this happened before in this case? Furthermore, if he's acting as legal council, this really has nothing to do with his area of action. We should be questioning and discussing this, not just blindly following along. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:54, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    I think we can discuss the issue. However, I also think that we need consensus to remove the addition, rather than following the usual default of "keep as is" Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 14:12, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    I think we need consensus to actually add it, instead of forcing it in with the assumption that this is widely accepted. Has it been discussed anywhere else? Advertised on the pump? At the deletion policy talk? A7 is controversial enough, this doesn't help. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:03, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    This discussion has been advertised on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and WP:AN. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 15:21, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    That's a start at least. Good to hear. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Another more general idea

"It is a page created by a single purpose advertising account (csd g11)" MER-C 12:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather see "It is an advertising page created by a single purpose advertising account". There is a subtle difference; for example such an account may upload an image that is used on the ad page without the image being an ad by itself; in this case, the image may be useful so it shouldn't be speedied. (Tizio, 2006). 12:27, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the requirement for it being a "single purpose advertising account," because that's a loophole that's easily gameable. Start an account, make minor edits to a few unrelated articles, and then you can claim that you're not a "single purpose advertising account." And we're back to square one. Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 12:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Damn it, no. It violates WP:AGF for starters, it assumes that the contributions aren't a) useful, b) necessary, or c) fixable. Absolutely not. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:22, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    Some other criteria "violate" WP:AGF. For example, A6: why not assuming that attack pages are created by a good-faith contributors who think that these pages improve the encyclopedia? Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Why would spam be useful? Some of the spam that comes in is so unsalvagable that I just tag it with a {{db-g1}} and the admin on the other end is more than willing to hit delete. (P.S. have you ever been on new pages patrol before?) MER-C 13:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Spam isn't useful or necessary, and is only fixable by deleting it. Assuming good faith has nothing to do with it, this amounts to judging an "article" on its merits or lack thereof. We should of course welcome and attempt to reform the "spamming" newbie, but we were asked by Brad Patrick to be "draconian" in ridding Wikipedia of blatant advertising. >Radiant< 13:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
In an editable encyclopedia where the page histories aren't indexed by google, spam can easily be removed while the article stays intact. We can be draconian (editing out spam on sight) without being blatantly idiotic (deleting articles that could otherwise be salvagable). --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:02, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
How many of the articles we are discussing are salvageable without doing research and rewriting them from scratch? Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 15:17, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
No clue, nor should that be an indicator. If there's a chance that an article can meet our already overboard guidelines, we shouldn't be speedying it, period. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
If an article must be totally re-written—and spam articles must be totally re-written—then the article is not for inclusion in the encyclopedia. If there is someone willing to write a neutral encyclopedia article about it—and there will exist such persons if the subject is verifiable or notable—there is no problem in having an empty space waiting for them to write it, rather than an advertisement sitting in that space. —Centrx→talk • 20:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that's true at all. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
What's not true? If nobody is ever willing to write an article about a subject, that subject is most likely not important. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 12:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
That's a horrible line of logic. I mean, I can list off ten articles in a blink that we can use here that haven't been created yet. Is it unimportant in that case? Of course not. If we have a "spam" article on something that's otherwise useful for inclusion, then someone's been willing to write one and simply has not done so to our specifications. That's not a reason for deletion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say that if someone has not yet written an article then its subject is not important. That would be really bad logic. What I say is that if we delete spam and the subject is important, we are not missing much because someone else will write an article on the subject sooner or later, and that the effort of doing that is probably the same as that of rewriting a spam article. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 16:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
That assumes someone will be able to come along, that it won't be speedied G4 by an admin quick on the trigger, that it won't be assumed that it's spam every time it's created, and that the earth won't be salted after it's been recreated a few times. Too many factors go into it, when we could solve it once by not speedying it and giving it a hearing where we get some consensus on it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Unless you mean that we will let POV, unsourced articles sit around, this means someone will have to do the work of cleaning them up. Also, anyone can request that a page be unprotected and allowed for re-creation. Admins can easily recognize where the old deletion reason is "spam" that a new, legitimate article can be created on the same subject, just as they can recognize the same where an old deletion reason is "vandalism" or "copyvio", etc. —Centrx→talk • 22:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Miscellaneous questions on WP:CSD#A7

1) Wording of WP:CSD#A7: The bolded text that explains the criterion as "Unremarkable people or groups/vanity pages" seems to me at odds with the actual usage guidelines. Surely it's the assertion of notability, rather than notability per se, that's decisive. "Non-notable subjects with their importance asserted" are, as WP:CSD says, not eligible for WP:SD. Surely "unremarkable people or groups/vanity pages," while candidates for WP:AfD or WP:PROD, are not candidates for WP:SD if they assert even an implausible or unverified claim of notability. Does the wording of of WP:CSD#A7 need to be amended to reflect the distinction?

2) I've been thinking about trudging through band (and possibly album and song) stubs and articles for candidates for WP:SD. In an earlier discussion, it was suggested that any claim of notability renders an article ineligible for WP:SD, and that stating that a band has an album is a de facto claim of notabilty. I presume the adjective "popular" would be, too: as in, "X is popular band from Y." First, is that a consensus position? If it is, would it be fair to consider putting forward for WP:CSD#A7 any band article that says no more than: "X band exists. Bobby, Timmy, Twirly and Jethro are its members. They recently played at open mic night at the Stuckey's on Route 17 to coincide with the release of a single on their MySpace page and are really really sure they're going to be famous" -- or less? This would probably be enough to eliminate dozens of band articles.

3) If bands are speedy-deletable per WP:CSD#A7, shouldn't it follow a fortiori that albums and songs which likewise lack assertions of notability ought to be so too? So how to accomplish this? WP:CSD#A1 sometimes works for this, but even stubs or articles with, for example, full track listings and graphics obviously don't fit the criterion. WP:CSD#A7 only applies to people or groups of people; it seems odd to me there's no criterion to apply to the things they make.

a) Are albums/songs by obviously notable bands/performers automatically precluded from being nominated for WP:SD even if the articles on them make no claim of notability?

--Rrburke 21:36, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Ah, good questions. Let's see...
    1. Most criteria have a 'summary wording' of two or three words, and a slightly longer explanation. The wording "unremarkable people or groups" was used when the principle was 'officially' proposed. Additionally, it seems clear that an article on someone who isn't notable cannot assert that person's notability (well, except by lying, but that falls foul of other policy).
    2. Saying anything is "popular" is not really an assertion of notability since it's way too vague. For instance, a guy named Jack was popular in my high school, and so what? The idea of CSD is to save effort; using your best judgment, try to consider if the band article has a remote chance of passing AFD. For "popular" to mean anything it'd have to name some specifics, like a chart position, or a prize they won, or a famous place they play in, or somesuch.
    3. Good point. I would argue that an article on a song written by a band is in fact an article about a band, just like an article about some guy's clothing is an article about that person - mainly because common sense is more important than the letter of a rule.
  • When in doubt, you can tag an article with both {{delete}} and {{prod}}. If some patroller or closing admin disagrees with the former, we can wait a few days for the latter. >Radiant< 00:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Part of the reason for having the "unremarkable people/vanity" wording is that it is a further restriction on the criterion. That is, articles about people who are eminently notable but do not contain an assertion are not, ideally, speedy deletable. There are often articles like "John Bishop (1839-1900) is a pianist": There is no assertion of notability, and if it were an article about a guitarist born 1985 it would be suspicious, but no one is writing vanity articles about 19th century pianists and in these cases the mere "physicist" or "artist" with no assertion should not be deletable under the CSD. The article must first appear to be vanity or unremarkable, and then you check for the assertion. —Centrx→talk • 04:30, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages of images on Commons

I have noticed that image talk pages frequently appear in the speedy deletion category, and I don't believe that they should be deleted on the grouds that their respective page doesn't exist (unless the content is truly meaningless, it should be moved to the Commons at worst). For example, I have just declined to delete Image talk:Flag of Poland (state).svg. The problem is an inconsistency between the image page and the image talk page because the latter makes it seem that the image doesn't exist. - Mike Rosoft 11:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[6]
Hopefully no-one has any objections to that. -- Steel 15:39, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed A9

Given the growing concern over vanity articles, I've suggested a new A9 which will cover vanity articles, but deliberately does not mention notability - if notability is disputed then the article is for Afd. But vanity articles should be speedied REGARDLESS of notability. Cynical 15:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Why? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I would have reverted (Steel was faster than me) the change while this is discussed: g11 is in a way broader than a9 (it is about any page, not just articles; it does not require any link between the author and the subject to be established), and in a way stricter (only allows deletion of articles written as advertisement). Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 15:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
(twice edit conflict) To expand on my revert [7], there's no need to speedy articles on notable subjects just because it's been written by the subject itself in a POV fashion. In these cases, rewrite, don't delete. -- Steel 15:17, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that G11 is about tone, A9 was about the article. In other words, deletion under G11 comes down to whether an admin thinks the tone of it makes it an advert, whereas A9 was more objective - if it was written by or on behalf of the subject, it was deletable. Edit as David Gerard pointed out to me on the mailing list, A9 seems to be more resilient to rules lawyers - whether we want to base a decision on that or not is another matter of course. Cynical 15:21, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
If an article isn't an advertisement (I.e. it's a valid entry to the encyclopedia) does it really matter who it was written by? -- Steel 15:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough - although what I have done is add a qualifier to G11 which has much the same effect as what you have suggested - in other words, spamvertisements which have significant potential to be fixed to become decent articles are exempted. That way we can deal with all the blatant spam, but don't risk deleting articles on decent subjects just because they are fugly at the moment. Cynical 15:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
While your efforts are noble and understandable, you may wish to consider the following:
Spam is cost-shifted advertising. The recipients of spam bear the cost of recieving it. While the cost to the end user in terms of money is neglibile, the cost to the end user in terms of time may not be. (The cost to the end user's ISP may be significant, however, but that's a digression for another time.)
In any case, the notion that we cannot delete any spam article which may be "salvageable" allows the spammers to once again shift the burden of dealing with their spam to well-meaning individuals who play within the rules. They put up their spam, we debate on whether the article is "salvagable" for whatever length of time, the people who argue against deleting the article fail to go in and improve the article, and we're left with a spam article in our database.
Spammers have a direct monetary incentive to spam. The cost of entry is pitifully low when compared to other forms of advertising. Given this fact, I believe the best course of action is to adhere closely to Mr. Patrick's words. If a new article looks like an advertisement, I plan on shooting first and asking questions later.
All the best,
Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak
18:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Hear, hear. Shoot first, ask questions later is an extremely efficient way of dealing with this. If I delete 100 spam articles and of those, 1 is salvagable and is recreated, so be it. That's much better than having 99 pointless AfD discussions. -- Steel 18:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
you don't know if they're pointless until you run them. Best not to "shhot first" but to rather get consensus. You know, how we do just about everything else here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Speedy deletions are done unilaterally. It has always been thus. Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak 18:44, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Not denying that. I am saying, however, that things that may be otherwise salvageable generally are not speedied. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Clarification to G11 & (new) proposed A9.

I feel that the new spam criterion is okay, but I think it needs some clarification. Different people consider "spam" differently. I think it's important to make it clear in the policy that speedy deletion of spam should only be meant for cases that are not only blatant examples of advertising, but also ones for which the page in question contains nothing else in its history. This will hopefully take care of all the most egregious cases, but I thought of a specific case that will probably be uncontroversial, and applies a bit more broadly than just spam:

  • A9: Repost of official website. Any article on a company, product, living person, band, organization, or website, for which the article and all its history consists entirely of material from the official website of its subject, regardless of any assertion of permission.

In 90% of such cases, the article would be a copyright violation. In 99% of the remaining cases, the only reason a copyright violation wouldn't be an issue is that someone promoting the subject, and working for/with the official website, wants that info hosted on Wikipedia. I can't see why, in those cases, we should accept such material: Wikipedia articles are supposed to meet certain standards of content, which websites basically don't ever meet. Thoughts? Mangojuicetalk 19:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Would this simply be a copyvio criterion relaxed for these specific unsalvageable articles or is "material" taken to mean "information": if everything in an article could have been found out by the reader just going to the company website. —Centrx→talk • 20:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • It differs from A8 in two ways: First of all, A8 talks about copyvio from commercial content owners (like magazines/newspapers), whereas official websites of companies or products are not making money off of their content. Second, my proposed A9 applies whether or not permission is given: the idea is that we take that kind of content to automatically be inappropriate promotional text. Mangojuicetalk 20:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If it were actually the case that 99.9% of such articles were copyvios or vanity articles on non-notable companies, this would seem reasonable, but these numbers are totally made up. I don't know how many useful articles began with companies donating text from their official website, but I could very well see it forming a useful basis for an article, once it is wikified and made less biased. Deco 20:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • I haven't been here since the beginning but (1) I have never come across such an instance, (2) I can imagine only a very odd series of coincidences that would produce such a situation, and (3) if a copy of a website would be a useful basis for an article, then as long as the article isn't just a repost of that website (or part of it), it wouldn't meet this criterion. Mangojuicetalk 23:18, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
  • We don't have to refer to "all in its history" for all individual CSDs; it is mentioned at the top of the page, and also on the page you get when you click 'delete'. For instance, a page that looks like gibberish could be patent nonsense, or vandalism of a good page - so we do check history before deleting. I'm not too happy with this A9, because an article on, say, a famous band could be based on what it says on the website. >Radiant< 21:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
    • "Based on" would be okay though. A pure copy is what this is referring to. Can you give me an example of an official website -- any official website -- where some subset of the contents would be appropriate as the entire contents of an article on Wikipedia? Mangojuicetalk 23:18, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
      • True. A literal copy of any commercial website would be a copyvio, and could be swiftly deleted without further investigation (unless said site was GFDL or some such but that just doesn't happen). Maybe a better way is to reduce some of the sub-clauses of A8, though. >Radiant< 23:29, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
        • The issue is these companies want to be on Wikipedia. They release the text under the GFDL, and if the copyright owner releases it, there is no copyright infringement. —Centrx→talk • 00:40, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
          • In my experience (and I've been using Copyright Judo against company advertising for a long time now) companies never release their advertisements under the GFDL. The idea that other people and other companies may take their advertisements and freely copy, modify, and redistribute them is anathema to advertisers. Uncle G 10:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
            • I don't mean advertisements made by advertisement company, but promotional text that can be found on the company website. There certainly do exist companies that want it on Wikipedia; why do you think most would not? Most of the copyvios are not authorized by the company, but what makes you think they would not be? —Centrx→talk • 22:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Personally, I strongly support the expansion of A8 to slacken or even remove the restriction to "commercial content providers" that it has, and thus allow the speedy deletion of copyrighted advertising blurb under that criterion without further ado, and without need for having to repeatedly educate editors on what "spam" is. It's a lot easier for administrators to decide whether something is a straight copy of a web page, which just involves reading and mechanically comparing the two, than it is to decide whether an article's tone is "promotional", which involves a subjective evaluation of content.

    I also warn you now: A deletion criterion that talks about "spam" will result in many controversial deletions. If the experience with electronic mail, such as this and this, tells us anything, it is that definitions of "spam" vary widely, and that many people use it to mean "I don't like this." or even "I don't like you.". People will overuse and abuse "spam" in the same way that they abuse "nonsense". Be clear and name it what it is: Corporate advertising and corporate autobiography.

    In practice, the "commercial content provider" restriction is a silly restriction. If the content is copied wholesale from a web page, and the web page is copyrighted and not GFDL licenced, then we don't want it, whoever is publishing the web page, and any granting of permission should occur before any content is contributed. Such content is a copyright violation. It's as simple as that.

    If we can apply Copyright Judo speedily to corporate advertisements and corporate autobiographies, in both articles and user pages, which we can if we slacken the restriction on A8, then we don't need the above proposal, we don't need the nebulously and subjectively defined G11, and we don't need a perennial and unceasing education campaign as to what "spam" actually is "in the Wikipedia sense". Uncle G 10:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't have that the commercial-content restriction any more. It was changed 3-4 weeks ago; read it again. —Centrx→talk • 22:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

CSD G5 case at deletion review

I have started a deletion review of a page deleted under CSD G5 ("delete pages created by banned users"). Comments would be welcomed. My arguments in favour of restricting G5 in cases where useful content has been created can be seen at the deletion review and also at Wikipedia talk:Deny recognition. Carcharoth 01:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Technical error with this page?

Is it possible that there is something wrong with this page (the WP page, not this talk page)? For the last few weeks, whenever my cursor moves over a link on the page, I get an error that says A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug? Line: 3096 Error: Object doesn't support this property or method. I don't remember getting this message historically, so I sifted through old versions and I found the edit in the history where the error first starts happening for me. If seems to be something in this diff. Can someone please take a look at this to see if something is wrong (or maybe I'm just having a personal problem? although I can reproduce it at both home and office.) Thanks --After Midnight 0001 02:08, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

That edit was faulty, and was corrected in the following edit. Do you get an error on the following version? -- zzuuzz (talk) 02:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the fast response. Yes, I do still get the error on that version as well. --After Midnight 0001 02:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm unable to reproduce it, even when I try :( There is one major difference between the versions you identify. The newer version has duplicate SPAN ID's for example 'g8' and 'G8'. I think this shouldn't make any difference because ID tokens are case sensitive (this was probably the reason for the change), but it may cause problems with an outdated or poorly implemented browser. Unless anyone else is having this problem, maybe change or update your browser? -- zzuuzz (talk) 03:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks for trying. I'm using IE 6.0.2900. It happens with VP also. If it matters, I am also running popups. I'll probably just live with it, unless I start having other problems. --After Midnight 0001 03:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
This undoubtedly sounds like a problem with the popups (on IE), pertaining to the issues I mentioned. You should raise it there. -- zzuuzz (talk) 11:11, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

CSD G11

Spam. Pages that exist only to promote a company, person, product, service or group.
  • This criterion isn't clear about what exactly is considered spam. Perhaps we should write a page about it and link to it to clarify this new suggested rule.

Some tell-tale signs of spam.

  • The article is a copy of promotional material,but permission for use has been given, or when said material is a free-to-use press release.
Other promotional text can be deleted as a clear copyright infringement of commercial website.
  • When it's obvious the creator of the article is promoting themselves or their company based on their username.
When it's not allowed to have a promotional username (company name for example), it should be clear it is vanity when someone with such a name creates an article about it. Also, we should be more firm about the "discouraging" of self-promotion and actually take action when it is done.
  • When the creator shows no interest in editing other articles (with the exception of linking to his new creation).
If they only edit articles related to the subject they're promoting, it's clear they're using Wikipedia as a promotional tool.

Has anyone got any other ideas on useful things to determine what is and isn't spam? - Mgm|(talk) 10:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

  • A few more spammy indications:
    • Consistent use of marketing hyperbole/peacock terms i.e. totally POV.
    • Author's only contributions are to that article or linking to it.
    • The subject is hopelessly obscure (e.g. ghits < 1000 or top ten are unrelated).
    • It is a userpage that aims to promote a product or company.
    • Fails to assert notability of the subject.
  • Let's say that it has to meet at least two of these points to be tagged for deletion. MER-C 11:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
  • See what I wrote above. I suggest not using the word "spam" at all and instead calling it what it is: Corporate advertising and corporate autobiography. I also suggest that the better way to approach this is not in fact having a new criterion, but instead expansion of the existing A8 criterion, both by making it into a criterion that also covers user pages and by removing the "commercial content provider" restriction. Self-promotion can sometimes be neutralized and cleaned, and there have been several AFD discussions where this has occurred. Such cases should continue to go through AFD. What should be a criterion for speedy deletion is self-promotion that is obvious because it's a straight copy of the subject's advertisements or promotional blurb. Because such advertisments are always copyrighted, and because advertisers won't GFDL licence their advertisments because they don't want people to freely redistribute modified versions of them, that requires nothing but a more aggressive application of Copyright Judo, with an expansion to the speedy deletion criteria to support it, to show people that we are serious about not copying advertisements and blurbs and pasting them into Wikipedia. Uncle G 11:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
  • That works, and in fact corporate vanispamcruftisement is vandalism anyway so can be speedied with a little creativity. I still feel that articles created by single purpose accounts which serve only to promote a company or organisation should be explicitly speediable, but maybe that's just because I'm tired of arguing with trolls who dispute the deletion of their vanity. So my spam identifiers would be:
  • created by a single purpose account, or
  • no substantive edits other than by the creator and
  • unsupported by references from reliable seconmdary sources and
  • makes no credible claim to meeting notability guidelines and
  • promotional in tone.
Of course the last is difficult to quantify, but since this rule is to be applied by humans not robots that should not be an issue. Guy 11:33, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
The only explicitly justifiable one for a speedy would be the third one, because the others are either violations of WP:AGF and/or WP:BITE(i.e., SPAs aren't always bad, new users often look like SPAs to start, only one editor isn't a problem, and you can't expect new editors to understand all of our overbearing notaiblity guidelines), and all of them can be fixed with editing rather than speedying outright. A stub article in encyclopedic tone will not hurt having on the servers for a few days while we discuss the possible merits of the article. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo's solution is to leave a nice friendly message (not unlike {{nn-userfy}} in tone). Keeping spam is not part of the plan. This comes from foundation and has been debated on the mailing list as well. Guy 08:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I should think that we can distinguish between an innocent novice and a spammer without too much trouble. Erring on the side of caution is good, erring on the side of moral panic is not. The aim, as requested by Brad, is to get rid of advertising swiftly and effectively. >Radiant< 13:23, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned in one of my edit summaries and elsewhere on this talk page, the more we qualify this particular rule with provisos and definitions, the more loopholes we create. And the more loopholes we create, the more loopholes that will be exploited.

I spent 10 years working the abuse desk for a large regional ISP, and my job included both designing and enforcing an online ruleset. When I first started that job, our definition of "spam" was "20 or more substantially identical emails or newsgroup posts". So, naturally, we had several people who would only send them out in batches of 19.

The rule needs to be short, sweet, and to the point. Specifying criteria that the article creator should meet (e.g., single purpose account, no substantitive edits other than by the creator) will simply provide mechanisms for gaming the system. As somone who fought spam professionally for 10 years, my advice is to avoid providing those mechanisms.

All the best,
Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak
13:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that we shouldn't have this guideline to speedy what may appear to be spam. You have to have detailed explanation or you end up speedying otherwise useful content. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia can afford to delete legitimate content that looks like spam more than it can afford to be lenient on actual spam. Administrators should not look through a long list of criteria for what is or is not spam anyway, but use their common sense (and undelete and apologize if they make a mistake). Kusma (討論) 13:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. We shouldn't assume something "looks like spam," and common sense would dictate not to delete something just because it "looks" like spam. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
And I strongly disagree with your disagreement. So there, neener, etc.
Seriously, man. You're way way way way WAY in the minority on this one. The notification of this change has been posted several places, including WP:ANI and WP:VPP, so it's not like this change is being snuck in under the radar. Those are two of the most heavily watched policy pages on Wikipedia. Furthermore, WP:CSD itself is watched like a hawk by every admin who does any sort of deletion activity. And not a single admin has reverted the the addition of the spam clause, which is what inevitably happens whenever a change like this is made to the CSD criteria and someone strongly disagrees with it. Mike Rosoft put a "Proposed" flag on it, but even then he didn't remove it. The only thing we've done is try to finesse the wording.
That's because the admins who've been doing speedy deletions and new page patrol know that this is already a long-term, on-going problem that has been needing a solution for Quite Some Time.
I appreciate that you have very noble sentiments and lofty goals for Wikipedia. But on this particular topic, your time could probably be used more productively to find another machine to rage against.
All the best,
Ξxtreme Unction|yakkity yak
15:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
No, I like this machine, and my rage continues. I don't especially care if an admin hasn't reverted the spam claus,e the only reason I haven't is because I'm making a good faith effort to see that this has support beyond the few people who've chimed in and Brad Patrick in the very short time it's been there. My worry is more that we're not thinking this out - you want to speedy "spam?" Fine, but you have to be able to recognize it first, and not allow otherwise good or potentially good material to be caught up in it. It would make it unique from the other CSD criteria, which is way overblown anyway. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Good luck with that. ΞU
There is a growing awareness among mainstream corporations, publicists, and political campaigners of Wikipedia as a possible channel for promoting their point of view, obtaining free publicity, and increasing their Google page rank. I've thought for some time that this currently constitutes a serious "present danger" to Wikipedia, because it means that there are an increasing number of sophisticated Wikipedia editors who come to Wikipedia with no interest whatsoever in presenting a neutral point of view, and about whom one cannot assume good faith.
However things shake out, it is very important to have a means for expeditious deletion of spam.
It is trivially easy for anyone to write an article so that it does not smell like Spam. This does not impose a heavy burden on a contributor.
A spam article is not a human being. A spam article is not a prisoner of war. A spam article is not a foetus. Spam has no habeas corpus right. Presumption of innocence does not apply to spam. If a legitimate article is occasionally deleted as spam, DRV and other mechanisms are available to correct the problem.
If it's really a problem, we could always consider putting a notice on the article creation page along the lines of Wikipedia's not being an advertising service, warning new editors that promotional articles about themselves, their friends, their company or products, or articles created as part of a marketing or promotional campaign, may be deleted. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:24, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
These are all reasons why I'm a strong proponent of AfDing possible spam. More eyes = better result. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
More eyes = exactly what the spammers want. What a coincidence. 69.207.172.61 16:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Don't be ridiculous. I can see it now. IBM's marketing department put "getting listed on Wikipedia's AfD" as their major achievement this year... Carcharoth 15:59, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been watching this discussion for a while now. Despite the serious efforts of a lot of good editors, the wording of this new proposal remains unacceptably vague. Good CSD criteria are ones where any reasonable editor reading the page can immediately see that a page does or does not meet the criteria. They must be uncontroversial for the system to work.
I'm not averse to the principle of the speedy-deletion of spam but the current definition of spam boils down to "I know it when I see it." I can't convince myself that's a scalable definition. What appears to me to be a "page that exists only to promote a company," etc. may not appear to be the same thing to you. For example, is Cap Gemini spam or just in need of serious clean-up?
I am seriously concerned that the vagueness of the current wording is more likely to lead to further arguments, DRVs and bickering. It will create more problems than it will solve. I would prefer to withdraw that criterion while we work on the wording some more. Rossami (talk) 17:50, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Some case studies

Is this going to become ridiculously long and clutter the talk page? —Centrx→talk • 00:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The way you have formmatted the table, it will! :-) I don't know how to repair it, but there must be a neater way to present the case studies. Carcharoth 00:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Ah. That's better! :-) Carcharoth 01:03, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Article Description "Repost of official website"? Creator is named after company? Speedily deletable under A8 now? Speedy deletable if A8 didn't have date restrictions and ignored the possibility of permission?
Israel today (AfD discussion) a straight copy and paste from this copyrighted advertisment ("Copyright 2006 israel today Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.") Yes No (Oaarmo (talk · contribs)) No Yes
Avesthagen (AfD discussion) initial text was a straight copy of this corporate blurb No No ( Frontstcorner (talk · contribs)) No No
Apps Communications (AfD discussion) Appears to be original. No peacock terms. No Yes (Dapps007 (talk · contribs)) No No
Demonic computers (AfD discussion) Already subject to vandalism No No web site exists. No (Howie91 (talk · contribs)) No No

Those are the WP:CORP-related AFD discussions from today's per-day AFD page. Uncle G 00:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It may be interesting to add this to the grid, but I don't think I should be the one to do it. --MyWikiBiz 13:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
That's a very interesting AfD discussion. I personally think that if Wikipedia has stub articles about thousands of small US towns, then having stub articles about thousand of US (and European) businesses is OK as well. Unless all the small town articles got deleted when I wasn't looking. In any case, the business articles are sometimes more interesting to read. Carcharoth 13:50, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
MyWikiBiz: The idea is to take an arbitrary day and list the discussions about companies of the day. That discussion is from August. We may discuss it, but it's not suited for the grid.
Carcharoth: Articles about places are much easier to maintain. Towns do not die often, and new ones are rarely created. The city council is unlikely to sue even if a vandal adds "this place sucks!" to the article. The real problem with spam articles is that they are created by someone affiliated with the company itself but then has to be maintained by volunteers. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 14:58, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, it's a matter of perspective. Any random person and their grandmother can create a website, and anyone who can afford a small legal fee can create a corporation or a business. It takes a lot more political effort to create a town. That may not have been the case several centuries ago but it's true now. >Radiant< 15:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I am persuaded by those arguments and withdraw my comments above. Still, I hope this doesn't swing things too far the other way. I have read Brad's post, and he specifically focuses on obvious spam and self-promotion. This shouldn't preclude later creation of neutral articles at the same title. And criteria for business notability need to be sorted. I remember seeing something like that somewhere. Can anyone point me towards them? Carcharoth 15:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:CORP? Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 16:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes. Thanks. Carcharoth 16:34, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
And yes, what you say about recreation is right. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 16:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey! I just looked at the change to the page. When did we decide notability of the entity being advertised doesn't matter? I did not agree to this ridiculously over-inclusive wording, and I am violently opposed to this change. Deco 19:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this just won't do in the sort of half-baked way it was phrased that amounted to "anything that looks dodgy, guv". Particularly seeing as there is active and fruitful discussion here that may lead to something better crafted. I do rather object to the approach of "god it's so obvious let's just add something", and so I've removed it. I would also observe that as cast it was in some percentage redundant to A7: which is perhaps an indicator that A7 is all we need since speedies are not intended to deal with vague, hand-wavy cases anyway. -Splash - tk 20:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Spam tends to have strong assertions of notability. —Centrx→talk • 22:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, but the attempt at reductionism :) slips over my deliberate phrasing of "some percentage". The fact that you have to couple "strong assertions of note" with a shoot-on-sight policy probably means you need to go about this someotherhow. -Splash - tk 22:41, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Since I placed the speedy tag on both of the articles that were deleted under G11 in the table (I was field-testing the new criteria), I feel that I should comment. While it's true that the Apps Communication article (from my memory) doesn't use peacock terms, the author was linkspamming in other ways. The other article recently started, and didn't even have a website to promote. Remember that the vandalism criteria is also vagued worded due to the nature of vandalism. I don't like expanding A8, because while it was used mainly to avoid spam in the past, its purposed has changed recently to preventing copyvios in general, and expanding the criteria to do two jobs at once seems like it wouldn't be able to do either of them. There's obvious spam out there that isn't copyvio, as well. ColourBurst 23:50, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Can we just leave it in place and trust that someone who passed an RfA has just enough sense to know when it's iffy? ~Kylu (u|t) 02:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If you did not notice, after Splash removed G11 at 19:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[8], Danny put it back in at 02:05, 4 October 2006 (UTC).[9] Therefore, it is safe to assume that G11 has the full support from the Wikimedia Foundation office and thus we should work on the specifics instead of removing it again. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:38, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
    • This was not done using his official office action account, and so was not an office action. As much as a CSD for ads appears to be justified by their sheer volume, I suggest that instead of attempting to add exceptions to include notable articles, that we sacrifice letting some of them go to AfD. The point is not so much to make spamming impossible but to make their required effort roughly equal to ours overall, so we just need to exclude the ads that are really easy to write and obviously worthless. Deco 06:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Indeed, the account User:Danny is a regular editor (and admin and bureaucrat, but that's immaterial) so no, the Foundation hasn't issued an executive order. Which of course they will surely do now I have said that. I have to say I'm disappointed in Danny's approach : he uses a meaningless edit summary and declines to explain what it intended to mean on this talk page. Troublesome as use talk pages can be, they are much better than raging on the mailing list and IRC. -Splash - tk 12:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
(after edit conflicting with Splash) The vibe I get from Brad's e-mail and more directly talking to Danny on IRC is that the foundation wants stuff deleted if it's advertising. Look at Fleshlight, okay it's an embarassing example, but here's a product that's been reviewed in at least the Village Voice and is widely known (at least amongst Internet people) and Danny deleted it because he felt it was created as an advertisement. It didn't meet G11 even, the foundation simply wants all advertising to be nuked, it was really clear in talking to him that the belief is that stuff should be deleted just because it was meant as an ad initially. To anyone familiar with AfD, there's long been a culture of discouraging people from deleting because of the circumstances under which an article was created and just considering the actual content of the current article, and possibility for improvement. Even that seems to be changing.
I'm not really sure how seriously we can argue that the foundation's opinion here is ambiguous. They want advertising purged. I do know that their stance seems to run contrary to what even most self-proclaimed deletionists believe in terms of advertising, maybe they should be more aware of this. Anyway, what I'm getting at is it feels like that if you want "spam" not to be speedy deletable, you're going to be up against the foundation here. I'm not condoning it... I'm just trying to explain the broader situation here. I think it's a transitional time for Wikipedia. --W.marsh 12:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Then maybe the foundation should make an attempt to explain the situation to those of us who have to deal with it, instead of making ambiguous pronouncements on the mailing list and glib edit summaries when they decide to add it in. If they want to be shortsighted about it, that's their perogative, but at the end of the day, it's us that are adding/removing/fixing tags and dealing with the aftermath. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:08, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't disagree with that. Some presence here by Danny/Brad and even Jimbo would, in my opinion, be helpful. Not sure if it's going to be forthcoming, they often have "bigger fish to fry" and I don't claim to really know everything the Foundation is dealing with, but if they have some time to spare, a comment here would be a good thing. --W.marsh 13:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Deletion is no big deal

Since Danny and Brad have been mentioned above, I'd add that Jimbo also commented on the issue in this post to the mailing list. "Deletion is no big deal" is a novel point of view even for the most extreme deletionist; this gives the idea of how much spam is considered a problem. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand, the advocation of deletion as an alternative to editing is a big deal. -Splash - tk 13:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I wonder how little a deal it will be when an article gets created the fourth time, gets salted, and then no one can create a viable article in its place. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:07, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, they can, the deletedpages template tells them exactly how to create a page. Regardless it is not a significant loss if an article on some random company is absent for a few months. —Centrx→talk • 15:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I should point out there has been a recent effort to unSALT (pepper?) older deleted pages. >Radiant< 15:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Salting isn't forever.... honestly, WP is not the Yellow Pages... we can't list every non notable business. What else are we susposed to do? -- Tawker 15:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Salting has that "forever" effect, though. It often doesn't matter if you can prove notability - if the deleting admin isn't budging and DRV gets it wrong, you're stuck. No one's saying "list non-notable businesses," we're saying "don't spend so much time rushing to get rid of nn ones that you make it difficult to keep articles on the notable ones." That's essentially what's occurring here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I think moreso G11 is for articles similar to "buy or product, we're the best... look at how great we are" more than anything else. Most notable companies already have an balanced article, we're seeing more and more SEO attemps using WP now. G11 is kind of like a short circut operator for WikiProj No Ads -- Tawker 15:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
If it works that way, great. The problems? 1) It won't work that way. Look at how A7 is used and abused. 2) If an article can be edited as opposed to deleted, we should go that route to lessen possible abuse. Stubbing and AfDing > deleting outright. 3) If an ad-maker is vigilant, it will be recreated and eventually salted, and that could cause potential problems down the road. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Any case we create people are going to abuse it..... I wouldn't say A7 gets abused, it just saves us a lot of time. Sending everything to AfD would increase the backlog and cleanup wouldn't get done. You win some you lose some. -- Tawker 19:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
Some administrors routinely check the category Category:Protected deleted pages or the list User:DumbBOT/TimeSortedPD and delete pages that have been salted for too long. As you see from the list, there are only three articles that have been salted before May and are still salted. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 16:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
We are up to June 20 for article space. —Centrx→talk • 16:43, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

A note on bureaucracy

I understand the need to keep the deprecated A4 and A6 listed to keep the numbering intact; however, I8 and especially U3 are very new and should have few incoming links yet. I think it's a good idea to remove those lines referring to them, as they serve little purpose. The effect is renaming I9 to I8, but also to make the page look less like a book of law. >Radiant< 16:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

An alternative is stop merging criteria that don't actually need merging, and then there won't be an instantaneous production of a new piece of bureaucracy. Wasn't broke. Didn't need !fixing. -Splash - tk 17:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I suppose that's true, but then we'd end up with five criteria, one each for attack pages, attack images, attack templates, attack categories and attack userpages. >Radiant< 15:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
    Not to mention attack talk pages, attack portals (although this would usually have been covered by P1), attack help pages, attack interface messages, and attack transwikis... The point of having this in the 'General' criteria is that attack pages are unwanted no matter what namespace they're in. --ais523 15:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The reason for keeping the numbering is that, unfortunately (despite the instructions to the contrary), many people use the CSD numbering system when writing edit summaries for the CSDs they carry out. These won't show up on incoming links, and so the numbering system needs to be kept. It's not too bad, as when it gets excessive, hive off the historical numbers to a note and have the list as : I7, I56, I455, etc! :-) Or just keep a record of the dates when each change took place. ie. From 5th February to 6th June 2006, G87 referred to what became G2 on 6th September 2007. Carcharoth 11:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

G11: not going well

I decided to check and see how the new G11 was working so far. I believe, as I had expected, that it's being vastly overused. I looked through all articles that transcluded {{db-spam}} just now. Here's what I came up with, and my assesments.

  1. Fahd Mairaj Alvi - also marked as A7; it was the profile of a company founder that didn't explain his significance, nor the company's. A7 applies. I said G11 also does when I deleted it, but I'm wrong: it's only A7 that applies. The article was promoting a non-notable company, but that doesn't make it blatant spam.
  2. John Angelo - repost of official website. Still, it was a POV-laden bio, not blatant spam. Deleted under A8.
  3. Ludwig Trossaert - bio of a possibly nn businessman who opened an art studio in Belgium. Speedy changed to prod; A7 doesn't apply, and the article doesn't try to sell the guy, it's just inappropriate in its existence.
I removed the PROD template, after removing possible spam and unreferenced text. He is rather notable in Belgian art circles. JoJan 19:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  1. Web Design Group - a neutrally-written profile of a web design company with no claim of significance. Deleted under A7.
  2. David worthington - very short article. deleted under A7 (only description of his importance was "very well respected" member of Canadian record industry). In retrospect, A7 may not even apply. The "very well respected" bit was the only way this could qualify as promotion, and it's not blatant at all.
  3. Sonic 2 Reloaded Online - a brief article about an upcoming game. Not really spammish, except in its existence. Author requested deletion, so G7.
  4. The National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) - blatant spam, deleted under G11. Probably also an official website repost, it included stuff like "The premier forum for commercial real estate," "Our members...," and included some products with prices.
  5. Tri-Slim CD Jewel Case - ad for a particular brand of jewel case, deleted under G11.
  6. HostelBookers.com - AfD in progress, removed the tag. Article is fairly neutral, again on a non-notable subject.
  7. TUSC - BLATANT spam. My favorite bit: "Allow us to show you customer case studies that illustrate and quantify substantial savings." Lots of 1st-person voice.

Normally, I would discuss these issues with those who added the tags, but since the policy isn't clear yet, it wouldn't make much sense. What I can say is that there's a CLEAR tendency to describe articles as "spam" when the only thing that's really problematic is its existence on Wikipedia. In other words, in those cases "spam" serves as a way of condemning these subjects as non-notable. I think it's clear we need to add a clarification to G11 that excludes this kind of thing. And I really think we should drop people: promotions of people are rare, will likely meet other criteria, and in the odd case, we can suffer through the other types of process. The current wording of G11 is:

11. Blatant spam. Pages that exist only to promote a company, person, product, service or group, have no other purpose and cannot be reasonably edited into an encyclopedic contribution.

I think we should change it to:

11. Blatant spam. Pages with content solely aimed at promoting a company, product, service, or group, which serve no other purpose and cannot reasonably be edited into an encyclopedic contribution. This does not include encyclopedia articles on companies, products, services, or groups that were likely added only to promote their subject, unless the content itself is blatantly and unsalvageably promotional.

BTW, the one example where spam might be person-oriented with any frequency would be political candidates, but such people are clearly notable enough to merit inclusion (or at least, to pass A7), and it would be a rare case where the article could not be "reasonably edited into an encyclopedic contribution." Mangojuicetalk 17:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

While I'm still opposed to G11 on principle, the rewrite is much more palatable. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I understand your point, but your proposed version looks a little self-contradicting (it isn't; it just looks like). I suggest a rewrite, something like "this is about the content of the article, not about the motivation of the creator". Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 18:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree that something that emphasizes content over intent would be welcome, but this criterion is frankly looking increasingly subjective. Almost any article contains some verifiable, neutral information, and could be stripped down to a good stub. The issue is not whether the article could be edited to be encyclopedic, which it almost always can be, but whether the topic is notable, which is again a very subjective judgement. WP:CORP lists a number of good objective criteria, but using any of them by itself is obviously a bad idea due to false positives.
The only effective way to make a speedy deletion rule for ads would be to shift the burden of establishing notability to the editor. A mere claim of notability is too easy - maybe we need something like "a plausible, verifiable claim of notability". Again though, this seems subjective. I wonder if this can be done. Deco 21:15, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

As I warned: People in the world outside of Wikipedia grossly misunderstand what constitutes "spam", and mis-use it to describe things whose sole fault is that they don't like them. We should expect the same here, and indeed that's what's happening. Once again: Call it what it actually is. It's corporate advertising and corporate autobiography. Uncle G 01:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Change & CSD combinations

I have made a simpler change to this effect which ties the criterion to the value of the content. Also, this and all criteria work together, so that a combination of weakly satisfied criteria is similar to a single strongly satisfied criterion. For example, the more notable a company or person, the more likely we would want to salvage something from a spam submission on it despite blatantly promotional material. Conversely, if an article is only somewhat spammy but contains a tepid or ridiculous assertion of notability and would invariably be deleted at Afd, in combination this indicates a speedy deletion may be warranted. —Centrx→talk • 21:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I tightened the language somewhat, because it avoided the key point raised above. The criterion is still ill thought out, however. Your notion of inventing new CSDs out of fractions of existing ones is wrong. If an article doesn't meet any of the speedies, then you can't usefully cite any of them in support of deleting it. If you decide to delete it anyway, you do so with reference only to your own judgement not figleaves of policies. -Splash - tk 22:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
It is neither an invention nor a disguise. Such an article meets the criteria, severally and together. The judgement is whether there is a loss to the encyclopedia in deleting an article that technically satisfies the criteria. —Centrx→talk • 23:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If you want to tie the criterion to the content, then the approach to use is the one recommended in the guidelines at the top of this very talk page, and use an objective criterion that requires nothing but simple inspection of the article. "spam" is not objective, by a wide margin, and never will be. "advertising" is much better. But by far the best speedy deletion criteria put forward so far are "repost of official website" and "copy of an advertisement", since those don't involve any subjective judgements at all. Furthermore, they cover things that currently do go through AFD unnecessarily because of the 48-hour rule. Uncle G 01:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Absolutely agree with Uncle G - spam is a catchall for "I don't want to see it". Advertising is a far clearer description and less of a bite for those on the receiving end - it tells them what they did wrong. Yomanganitalk 01:30, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree, "advertising" is a better term than "spam". >Radiant< 22:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

New G11 redirectemplate

A new way to type Db-spam template has been created: Template:Csd-g11 is now a redirect to the CSD template for G11. Shin'ou's TTV (Futaba|Masago|Kotobuki) 04:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Yet more G11 talk

This is a follow on from a conversation I've had on Improv's talk.[1] A couple of thoughts on this from me:

  • This is a target-rich environment.
    • Some of these will be potential "real" articles (Famour Amos, Tim Tams)
    • Some will be redirection/merge candidates (Iced Vovo, Tiny Teddy)
    • Some will be neither on nor the other of the above
      • Some non-articles will have long legs
      • Some non-articles will be very new

There is no good reason to start with anything other than the last category. These are the entities no one has ever heard of, and for whom the "advertising" is most valuable. rather than doing things the easy way and just firing with both barrels at anything that looks like advertising, can we proceed with a bit of caution? Less "ohh, shiny new rule, let's use it!" and more "yet another thing to be responsible for, better be careful."

brenneman {L} 05:29, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Hear hear, I totally agree. Reflecting on the War on Biscuits, I think there has been some slightly overzealous application of G11 when an {{unreferenced}} tag or even an AfD may have been more appropriate. I don't doubt that editor's motives were good and his actions bold, but I think he may have not considered the cultural and regional importance of some articles.
Some thoughts from me on the matter:
  • Firstly, can I suggest that admins applying G11 not delete the articles themselves, but tag them for speedy deletion so that another admin can assess the criteria and at least some modicum of consensus (even if it's only two people) can be reached?
  • G11 is for blatant spam - some suggested identifiers above: written in the first person, copied verbatim from a company website, glowing superlatives, unambiguosly promotional. An unreferenced article or stub about a brand name or company does not necessarily meet these criteria, particularly those with a large number of edits and revisions. It's a waste of time and energy to delete and restore when there are dozens of far more deserving targets in Project Wikify.
--Canley 00:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


I just want to add new arguement. It can from what I saw from Infotech Strategies. It originally started its AfD with arguements for G11. Then poor zocky took up the job of cleaning it up. After he finished (for the time being), the article still had some rather rosy interpretations of the company like "A significant proportion of the company’s consultants have served in senior positions at the White House, U.S. Executive Cabinet Departments, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S House of Representatives." A completely unsourced statement zocky left in when he/she rewriting it. Zocky redid the article and that's very commendable. Unfortunatly, he/she probably should've also redone the first paragraph from scratch. Not trying to target Zocky specifically,(sorry about this) but we're only human here. It's like copyvio text, dangerous to try to rewrite a copyvio article. Unless you are well experienced in doing so, you're likely to end up paraphrasing or leaving a sentence in. And that's still very much plagarism. The same happens here. The content is hopelessly and unavoidably POV in rosy and weasely words toward the subject. Often its unsourced as well. Its a little easier to clean out the massively slanted text without just removing the content, but still very difficult. Aside from phrases, you're likely to end up using terms they originally used. Many of them will contain buzz words or even search engine optimization terms designed to increase exposure to the company through an article on it appearing at the top of a search engine results page for some specific terms. The whole of a spam article is a quagmire of junk, and ought to be deleted to avoid even the rewrites containing the spam, if only in a more subtle manner. Kevin_b_er 20:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I left that in because it looked likely to be true, based on the available sources. It probably could have been worded better, but it was a deliberate decision on my part, not an oversight. Zocky | picture popups 20:16, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

More G11 abuse

More G11 abuse is being done by User:Improv. Noted here, it seems bizarre to delete articles on Teddy Grahams and Pepperidge Farms. I never thought I'd see the day, but G11 is an even bigger mistake than A7. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I've listed them at DRV, but there were over FORTY articles/images deleted essentially at random by Improv, not counting redirects. This isn't abuse, this is an outright failure of the guideline. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)