Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 15

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U3 (galleries in userspace)

I'm slightly confused by this. Technically, this can be circumvented by someone having a list of images that they want to view as a gallery (even maintaining it off-wiki), and then, when they want to view the gallery (usually for maintenance purposes, eg. how good is the coverage in this particular area, can we use these images in a better way, etc), the user can temporarily stick the list up in the correct format, with the gallery tags around them. And then remove it again after a few hours, when the work is completed. Is this acceptable? I assume that U3 is aimed at permanent galleries, but even in the case where gallerisation is undone, the gallery version will still be available in the page history, so a user could save a page with a link to that version, and they could then look at the gallery whenever they wanted. An example of this, not in userspace, but in a WikiProject, is at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle-earth/Images. I would guess other WikiProjects have similar pages. The one that usually springs to mind is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Harry_Potter/Images. Carcharoth 22:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

  • The issue is about fair use. Simply put, copyright law does not allow us to use fair use images other than for illustrating the subject in question. That precludes gallery usage. >Radiant< 11:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I realise that. What I am talking about (and I wasn't very clear, admittedly), is the temporary use of Wikipedia to produce a gallery of fair use images for selection purposes (think of it like spreading out a set of photos on a table to pick the one you want to use). ie. To compare a range of potentially fair use images and select the one to use for a particular article. Actually, the selection criteria should probably be based more on which one is the "fairest" use, I guess, if that makes any sense (with the obligatory disclaimer of no free images being available). I was also making the point that galleries can be 'hidden' in a page history, and thus anyone who has the link to that version of the page, effectively has this gallery available to look at whenever they want. But with so many other skeletons rattling around in page histories, I guess this is not a major problem. Carcharoth 21:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • True, but that selection process does not appear to be the main usage of userspace galleries. If individual history items become really problematic, we can oversight them. >Radiant< 09:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Dave Abrahams

Why is there a template by that name in Category:Speedy deletion templates ? --ArmadilloFromHell 06:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not there now. Seems to have been some kind of error. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Very strange, it was for sure there yesterday and I refreshed the page at the time. --ArmadilloFromHell 02:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

A7: Websites or web content?

This edit "simplified" blogs, podcasts, webcomic, etc. to "website", which could be seen as more restrictive (I'm thinking of, for example, non-notable videos that exist on sites like YouTube and that occasionally are promoted improperly here). A quick glance of this page and recent archives doesn't turn up discussion of this change, and {{db-web}} still reflects the more expansive version. So I'm guessing that the restriction from "web content" to "website" wasn't fully intended. Am I missing something? — TKD::Talk 06:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

  • That seems to not have been the intent. I've changed it back. >Radiant< 10:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks. For the record, I just similarly clarified {{nn-warn}}. — TKD::Talk 01:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh A6, where art thou?

From Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: Remove unsourced or poorly sourced controversial material

"Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and controversial in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to, should delete the article without discussion (see WP:CSD criterion A6)."

A small fix seems to be in order. Brimba 18:28, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I fixed it over there, it now points to G10. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Please excuse me for a moment while I engage in utterly useless pedantry, to no real purpose other than my own self-amusement.

The word "wherefore" actually means "why", not "where". "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is actually asking "Why are you a Montague, and not some schmoe my family isn't feuding with?" Wiktionary tells the tale.

Having said that, I use the word "wherefore" as a synonym for "where" with alarming frequency myself.

Anyhow, now you know. And knowing is some fraction of the battle. Go Joe.

We return you now to your regularly scheduled policy talk page.

All the best,
Ξxtreme Unction
22:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. It is gratifying to see that I am not the only pedantic dork editing this subsection.  ;-)


I see that even when you leave the Barrens, you never REALLY leave the Barrens. Kind of a touch the devil type of thing. Brimba 22:25, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Oops. I stand corrected. Must resist the pedantry... Carcharoth 23:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify - CSD U1

User talk pages aren't speediable per CSD U1, right? I'm seeing this a lot lately (and I always decline the deletion), but maybe I'm wrong? Perhaps the language needs to be clarified. -- Merope 13:45, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It depends. The foundation does recognize a limited right to vanish. On the other hand, if the user's talk page includes extensive documentation of vandalism warnings, we almost always perserve those as evidence. Even blanking those pages can be considered abusive. Can you give some specific examples that you found problematic? Rossami (talk) 13:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I'm all about right to vanish, but I don't think these are associated with that. Here are a few ones I've noticed: User talk:Mihai cartoaje, User talk:138.130.165.178... uh, I'm sure there are more but it's hard for me to dig through my contributions. I'm discounting db tags left by users other than the owner of the talk page, which comes up more frequently. -- Merope 14:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I would never delete (or even wipe) an anon page. If the user is upset by the comments left there, tell him/her to create an ID and sign in. They'll never need to see the comments on the anon page again. In fact, it says just that in the default text at the top of every anon talk page.
User:Mihai cartoaje is a more difficult case. I can find no evidence that the user intends to leave the project. The user also added an apparent death threat at the top of his/her own page, making me suspicious of the user's commitment to the project. If the user wants to turn over a new leaf, I'd recommend allowing him/her to archive the page into page history (that is, blank the page but do so with an explicit "archiving" comment so that others can find the old comments if necessary). There is, however, no easy answer. Just use your best judgment and continue to ask for help from other experienced editors when appropriate. Thanks for your help patroling these requests. Rossami (talk) 16:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Kent class cruiser/Temp

Hello. A quick question. Kent class cruiser/Temp has already been suggested for speedy deletion, but was changed to a merge and later a redirect. However, I really doubt anyone would ever type that in a search box, and the history content is made of mostly clean up stuff. Could the article be deleted under G6? I kind of don't like having that article in my watchlist, appearing from time to time. Thanks. -- ReyBrujo 00:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. —Centrx→talk • 00:22, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
And now undone. No, that did not qualify under the "housekeeping" criterion. We have an obligation to track all the attribution of all contributions under the conditions of GFDL. You may consider all those changes to be "mostly clean up stuff" and I may even agree with that judgment call but that does not relieve Wikipedia from the obligations of GFDL. Making the judgment call about whether those obligations have been met is beyond the scope of CSD.
Redirects are cheap. This particular redirect does no apparent harm. If there is a pattern of abuse, the redirect can be protected but I see no such pattern since the page was turned into a redirect. Rossami (talk) 12:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the temp page was never merged, its information is redundant, and it shows up as the first result for a search for "Kent cruiser". —Centrx→talk • 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering, with that kind of thought, WP:AFD is completely illegal. -- ReyBrujo 21:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Inappropriate content can be deleted. It is content that is retained that must be fully attributable under the GFDL. But that is also problematic, as people often do cut-and-paste copying without thinking about the consequences. An interesting exercise is to sit down with an article like Human and try and work out who contributed which bit. Sometimes a piece of text that appears to have been contributed by User Y, was in fact written by User X in another article, and copied and pasted into the article by User Y. Technically GFDL has been satisfied for User Y, but GFDL has not been satisfied for User X. User X's writing has been mercilesly edited and redistributed, but the attribution to User X has been lost. Happens a lot, unfortunately. Carcharoth 00:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
According to a comment on the temp page's edit history (edit summary on 14 Oct), the contents were merged. I have no reason to distrust that comment but if you have evidence to the contrary, that could change things. As to whether this line of logic makes the AFD process illegal, I mostly disagree. The presumption of AFD is that the content is irredeemable and that presumably it would not have been moved to or used in any other article before deletion. As Carcharoth says, some may fall through the cracks but we try not to let that happen. If we discover a situation where that did happen, there is a process to allow a history-only undeletion to satisfy the requirements of GFDL. Rossami (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Quick reference (I8 & I9)

The quick reference at CAT:CSD lists "I8: Attack Images" and "I9: Identical on Commons" while there is no longer an I9 at here. We should probably change one or the other so they coincide. Why didn't we leave I8 as (This criterion has been superseded by G10 and is kept for historical reasons.) and keep I9 at I9, as we did with A6? Hope this makes sense, DVD+ R/W 00:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Disclaimer templates

WP:NDT says, "When spotted, such templates tend to be speedily deleted because they're similar to templates we've debated and deleted in the past." However, the only thing CSD says about templates is, "divisive and inflammatory". Are disclaimer templates considered divisive and inflammatory? If so, perhaps that could be clarified. Otherwise, maybe "disclaimer template" should be added to CSD. I realize that NDT is merely a guideline, but it seems silly to go through a prod or TfD discussion when the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, I don't feel comfortable adding db to Template:Warning Upsetting without a clear CSD. Am I being overly cautious? The only argument I can think of against adding "disclaimer template" as a CSD is that it may not be obvious whether a given template is a disclaimer template, and that strikes me as unlikely. Xtifr tälk 04:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a broad application of CSD:G4. Non-ideal, but we'll live with it I suspect. Stifle (talk) 13:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Of course! I didn't even think of searching through the general criteria for one that might apply. I feel very silly now. Thanks! :) Xtifr tälk 06:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I7

Can a better example be provided for I7 please? It's not clear enough to me what is covered by it. Thanks. jd || talk || 21:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

G12: 48 hour requirement eliminated?

Confirm this for me, folks. Has it been eliminated? - CrazyRussian talk/email 23:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I tracked the change to this edit by Jimbo Wales. Not sure why the 48-hour requirement was eliminated here, as the reasoning is pretty clear that this 48 hour requirement is needed to avoid the following: (1) Wikipedia article is created; (2) Some time later (usually more than 48 hours) a random website copies Wikipedia article without permission and claims copyright on it; (3) Someone notices that the Wikipedia article and the website have the same text and assumes that someone copied the website into Wikipedia and slaps a "copyvio" notice on the Wikipedia page; (4) A genuine Wikipedia article gets speedy deleted by an admin who doesn't bother to investigate.
I think this is why the 48-hour requirement was added. In cases where more than 48 hours have elapsed, a more thorough investigation is needed by the admin who tries to sort out what is going on. I know some people will be reluctant to change things here, but I think this change should have been explained before being implemented. Does anyone know the best way to get a response from Jimbo Wales about this? Carcharoth 00:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
That's a serious diff! Thanks. I asked Jimbo to clarify. - CrazyRussian talk/email 01:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Basically, we must tag articles with {{db-copyvio}} instead of sending them to Wikipedia:Copyright problems. That kind of makes sense, at least for me. CP usually has an important backlog. -- ReyBrujo 01:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
So can we be sure that all the admins cleaning up the CSD categories, or any future admin who joins in, is aware of the possibility that you need to assess a copyvio and not just hit "delete" without thinking after someone else tags it as "blatant copyvio"? And are all those admins aware that copying can occur both ways? I realise that some articles really are blatant copyvios, but people have to realise that "blatant" does not mean "identical text". It means that the style is different to that of Wikipedia, and the Wikipedia article usually hasn't been wikified. The key is to look at the website and think: "does that look like a copy of a Wikipedia article?" I'd be happy if that proviso was added to G12. Carcharoth 10:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't get this argument entirely. If someone copies and pastes an article from Encyclopedia Brittanica, adds a few wikilinks (wikifying it), then it's no longer a blatent copyvio? An admin closing a huge backlog from the copyright problems list is more able to assess whether something's a copyvio than an admin doing CSD? I don't doubt that admins make some mistakes, but that's inherent in any system and we should just deal with the mistakes as they happen, since the only way to truly avoid mistakes is to not delete copyvios at all. Which obviously is not a good idea. --W.marsh 12:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, I did say "usually hasn't been wikified" (emphasis added). And I am talking about the need to assess the website the Wikipedia article has supposedly been copied from. If it is something like EB, then obviously it is extremely unlikely that they copied us. But the "blatent" bit needs a logical step of "did we copy them, or did they copy us". That is the key point which needs to be put in. Ignore what I said about wikilinks. You are right, that distracts from the key point. Carcharoth 20:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree, in as much as admins shouldn't just delete blindly because the text in the Wikipedia article exists on some other random server. Admins should always check to make sure it's not actually the other server that's copying from Wikipedia. --W.marsh 22:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
It's worth adding something to the criteria to tell admins to pay particular attemption to the possibility that the Wikipedia article and the other one may be identical but the original is the Wikipedia one. I'd also add enforcing pasting the url of the other article in the delete summary, so that known mirrors can be easily spotted. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 13:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added something about copyvio working both ways. I agree that pasting the URL in the delete summary is a good idea, but I'll leave you to put that in, as that might be more controversial (trying to enforce correct use of edit summaries is a bit of a nightmare). Carcharoth 20:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I actually did ask Jimbo about the 48-hour issue; my understanding was that the 48-hour part of the rule was to prevent mirrors from being mistaken for a copyvio source. His response was interesting: basically, that we should stop worrying so much about deleting stuff that could remain, because it should be no big deal. Better to err on the side of deletion when dealing with copyvios; mistakes can always be undone. Here's the diff: [1]. Mangojuicetalk 04:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't realise the 48-hour thing and the "maybe they copied it from us" thing were different. The 'undeletion is always possible' is fine, as long as people remember that this requires someone to actually review the deletions. I suspect that many deletions never get looked at again, as only a small pool of Wikipedia readers (admins) can actually see deleted content. And the point about putting an URL in the deletion summary to allow checking of the website, is a very important one. Makes it easier for those people who do double-check such deletions. And I might as well ask here a question I asked somewhere else: is there a list of all deletions performed? I know there is the deletion log, but can anyone put an overall figure to the total number of pages ever deleted, and how many stay deleted, and how many are deleted for a specific reason? (ie. how many as patent nonsense, how many as copyvios, etc.) I understand that pages can be recreated, but unless people remember to check the deletion log before creating a page, I don't think it is obvious when you are recreating something. Carcharoth 10:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
This diff expanded G12 in a number of very serious ways that makes it no longer objective and prone to error. Why would the author have provided a statement of permission or fair use if no one has asked them to? Our existing processes give authors a chance to defend the source of the article content, and have often caught cases that were not actually copyvios - Deletion Review is not sufficient to deal with articles created by inexperienced users who don't know where their article disappeared to. As long as we have OCILLA there is no pressing need to delete these as quickly as possible. I strongly oppose this change. Deco 17:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
As long as the creator is notified, they are able to establish that they have permission to use the text, which will be restored. Only, in the mean time, the article will not be a likely copyright infringement sitting on the public site. —Centrx→talk • 18:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the larger question is whether we want to err on the side of including copyvios/plagiarism, or on deleting stuff people actually had the right to copy and paste. Both are correctable, but I think the former does a lot more damage to our quality and reputation. --W.marsh 18:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Deletion templates

Shouldn't this be transcluded onto the page so that users and admins can easily place it on their user pages for quick reference? Like, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates or Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Deletion templates? Cbrown1023 20:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold and change it. Cbrown1023 20:05, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

my recent G12 change

I just changed:

The page does not have substantial edits by multiple users and there are no non-infringing revisions in the page history worth saving.

to

The page does not have substantial non-copyvio content in the page history worth saving.

The earlier verstion seemed a bit vague, and could be taken to mean that if a copyvio has been rewritten a bit, maybe moved around, wikified, a typo fixed, that it's not a copyvio anymore. Copyvio content should be purged from the page history if possible. However, with pre-existing or older articles, usually what was copy and pasted has had new introductions added, and otherwise substantial new content written around it. So rather than delete the whole thing, I think we need to clarify that practice is to delete the copyvio but leave the rest, if it can stand on its own as an article (even if it's just a short stub).

If nothing else, I think the new wording is more clear but still has the same meaning. --W.marsh 22:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, this should be that no previous version meets any of the csd (including g12 but not limited to). But changing in that sense would probably be too pedantic. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 10:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of it was to prevent the deletion of articles that were created organically on the wiki. Also, substantial is too vague a word in relation to "content" and many articles are going to get deleted when a revert would be more appropriate. —Centrx→talk • 17:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

So, if the parameter is to be "exactly what is meant" then it would be something like "the article was clearly not created organically on the wiki" and if the parameter is to be "what they should be checking" then the multiple users is good, and perhaps even more specific instructions. Many admins really have no idea how to check a page. —Centrx→talk • 17:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what you're talking about. Your recent edit to what I was working on looks good, removing redundancy and all, but the added rule "The infringement was introduced at once by a single person; it was not developed organically on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikipedia mirrors." seems like instruction creep. If it's a copyvio, obviously the original uploader to WP copied it without permission, not the other way around. Admins make mistakes but I doubt any of us actually think it's a copyvio on Wikipedia if another site copies us without permission. --W.marsh 17:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
It is to help identify whether the website copied it from Wikipedia. Copyvios on Wikipedia are invariably from a single person adding it (except for some rare hypothetical possibilities), so the first part ("introduced at once...") is how that is checked for while the second part ("developed organically...") is the actual specific reason why that is checked for. This was the purpose of the 48 hour requirement and the purpose of the "not have substantial edits by multiple users" wording. —Centrx→talk • 20:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
But this can give the false impression that we should keep a copyvio if it's been rewritten slightly (by multiple editors, developed organically, etc). That's not good. Something either is a copyvio or it isn't... admins are sometimes going to make mistakes. I don't think we're going to eliminate human error by just adding more and more potentially confusing rules. Admins should determine if something is a copyvio, that's part of deleting a copyvio. --W.marsh 20:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The parameter applies if the infringing text was introduced en masse. Perhaps "developed" could be changed to "created", but "there was some on-wiki development" is not the same as "created on wiki". —Centrx→talk • 21:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Copyright violations for speedy deletion

{{db-attack}} automatically places pages into Category:Attack pages for speedy deletion. Since copyright violations are just as big a concern, would it be a good idea to do the same kind of thing with {{db-copyvio}}? I suspect this could be useful in a few different ways, assuming Category:Attack pages for speedy deletion is itself useful. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 04:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It might even be useful if the cat sortkey in CAT:CSD was a letter representing the deletion criterion rather than the name of the page; that way it would be possible to tell which db-tag had been used from the CAT:CSD page. --ais523 08:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't like that idea much. In practice, most of the speedy deletions are only in a couple of the categories. I like the list being alphabetical; the breaks in it help me keep my place. I do like the idea, though, of giving every CSD its own category, so those who want to browse by category could do so. I especially like that this might help us create Category:Candidates for speedy deleteion, criterion unspecified, because most such pages are bad speedy tags. Mangojuicetalk 15:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
That sounds like it could have the risk of causing admins to ignore a lot of delete requests. It's true that a lot of them are spurious, but I still use {{db}} myself and I think I know how to use the tags (in most cases; I can go dig up some examples otherwise if I'm on trial here). I'd rather make categories that underline the urgency of things – this seems like it would diminish importance.
It would be an easy thing to set up and I kind of support it, but I think it would be "abused". Do the existing prefab db-* templates really cover all the necessary bases? That's the main question for me. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 17:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and give this category a test run. I also notice the controversial G11 has spawned its own subcategory, and there's one for userboxes I hadn't noticed before, so this seems like a pretty logical addition and an uncontroversial one as long as it doesn't spur the assembly of a group of Internet lawyers who sit on the category page clicking refresh all day. Or... something. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 16:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This may be a good idea not because they be urgent, but because they require a different sort of examination than the others and would be helpful to analyze what pages are being tagged. —Centrx→talk • 17:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not care if subcategories are created, so long as the articles all still appear in the main category. When you create subcategories, it is much easier for stuff to be overlooked. Something to let us know when an article has been in tagged for a long time might also be good, but it would be nice to do it without having to split the articles up by the day they were tagged, though. -- Kjkolb 08:16, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Last time I checked, the db-attack template placed the page both in CAT:CSD and the attack page subcategory; presumably it's so that people could clear out the evil/mean attack pages first, if the category is busting at the seams. I agree that any other examples of this should double-categorize. -- nae'blis 15:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What's the deal with the educational and non-commercial license speedy candidates?

There are a bunch of images tagged for speedy deletion because they use an "educational and non-commercial only" license. The strange thing is that these images were recently uploaded and they have no other edits to them besides the upload. I went to the upload page and, incredibly, there is an option for educational and non-commercial only, although is under the invalid heading. I'm guessing that choosing that option and then uploading the image automatically puts the picture in the speedy deletion category. This is bizarre, to me. Why do we let people upload pictures under that license? The only thing that I can guess is that it is so they do not choose a different license, and this way allows the images to be automatically tagged for deletion (putting the license under the invalid heading interferes with this plan, though, since people may chose a different one because of it). However, it gives people the impression license is okay, if they do not notice or do not understand the "invalid" in the menu and do not scroll down on the image page to see the speedy deletion notice (even if they do scroll down, there is a good chance it will confuse the hell out of them since the license is a choice on the upload page). Also, even if they do notice and understand the "invalid", they might think that it is a mistake since the upload still works.

Another crazy thing is the extra work that is created for admins who do speedy deletions. Even if you want to use this confusing system, you could just have the images deleted automatically by a bot, with or without a delay. The images should be in a separate category, too, so they do not clog up the main one.

There is also a much simpler system. You could have the license still be an option, but when the person tries to upload the image, it does not work and an error message explains that such images are not allowed and has a link for more information. The error message could show up on the upload page or the browser could be redirected to an error page. Finally, you could put an explicit notice on the upload page about not being able to use images with that license with a link for more information. -- Kjkolb 09:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, if you do that, people will just choose a different and inaccurate licence, like public domain or GFDL. Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Which suggestion(s) are you referring to? -- Kjkolb 05:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
The suggestion of blocking the upload if an invalid licence is chosen. Many people just want the picture in there and they will go back and choose another licence until they find one which will let them upload it. Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I brought this up on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions a month ago; I understand what people are saying about people using illegitimate licenses if they're stymied, but it doesn't make ANY sense to put the invalid licenses first on the drop-down list. We're often tired of long EULA pages and instruction sheets, and the earlier something is on a list, the more likely we are to pick it IMO. Put these at the bottom and you'll cut at least some of the problem, since a true fix would require software changes. Some people actually think our upload server is not working right because their image keeps disappearing. -- nae'blis 15:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
  • No, this is exactly what we need. Having those tags at the top as "trap" tags makes it likely that users who don't understand our copyright policies will pick one of them, and the image can properly be deleted. If choosing an invalid licence brought up an error, then the user would just change at random until something comes up; if we put them at the bottom, it reduces drastically the chance of unlicensed or unfree images being caught; and if we remove them entirely people just pick a completely unrealistic free licence and it never gets found at all. See MediaWiki talk:Licenses for more on this subject. Stifle (talk) 10:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
    • But what about automated deletion? Sorry for the late reply. I frequently forget to revisit discussions. -- Kjkolb 09:29, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Is this copyvio?

Hi, I'm want to put {{db-copyvio}} to this page: Source four, because the subject is copyrighted product name and all of its sources are taken from here: [2]. Is this a blatant copyvio? I want to ask first, because this is my first time to put an article into speedy deletion and usually I'm not a deletionist. Thanks in advance. — Indon (reply) — 15:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

No, nowhere close. Names of products are not copyrighted: they may have trademarks, but trademarks can be freely used as long as it's not in a disparaging way, or in a way that attempts to pass one product off as another. And it doesn't matter where the sources come from as much as whether or not the article is a direct copy of information found elsewhere. I actually don't see anything wrong with that page, I think it shouldn't be deleted for this reason, nor for any other reason. Mangojuicetalk 16:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Okay then, you're the expert. ;-) — Indon (reply) — 17:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

One of the key parts of a copyvio is that the text is copied. —Centrx→talk • 19:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Template:attack-warn

Hey, would it be a good idea to add to the bottom of the {{db-attack}} template, "Please consider adding {{subst:attack-warn}}? This would go on the user talk page and would be a strong deterrent to these attack pages. Take a look at the template.Diez2 15:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I added {{TestTemplatesNotice}} to the template, which I believe covers what you're asking for. EVula 15:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Er, what does the template say?Diez2 17:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be added in. But I generally indefblock people for creating attack pages anyway. It's a pretty bad sort of harassment.--Konst.ableTalk 05:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the parser function should be removed from that template. If used, the warning provides an evident record of defamation having occurred against a named person.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

G12 and WP:CP are inconsistent with each other

I just noticed that while the criteria in CSD:G12 require only

Blatant copyright infringement which meets these parameters:

  • Material was copied from another website which does not have a license compatible with Wikipedia;
  • There is no non-infringing content in the page history worth saving.
  • The infringement was introduced at once by a single person rather than created organically on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikipedia mirrors.
  • Uploader does not assert permission (for images: no assertion aside from tags) or fair use, or the assertion is questionable;

the corresponding section in Wikipedia:Copyright problems says:

Blatant copyright infringements of commercial sources may now be "speedied"

If an article and all its revisions are unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial content provider (directly engaged in making money from the content) and there is no assertion of permission, ownership or fair use and none seems likely, and the article is less than 48 hours old, it may be speedily deleted.

After notifying the uploading editor, add

{{db-copyvio|url=url of source}}

An administrator will examine the article and decide whether to delete it or not. You should not blank the page in this instance.

Clearly these are out of sync, in that the WP:CP version requires also the the material be "copied from the website of a commercial content provider (directly engaged in making money from the content)", but that is not in G12. My memory of how copyvio-speedys evolved is hazy, and I can't seem to find the right diffs, but wasn't it the case that the commercial content provider was originally part of G12, and then dropped? If so, the language over at WP:CP should probably be updated. Or do I have this wrong? --MCB 05:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The commercial content provision was changed a long time ago. I have updated WP:CP. —Centrx→talk • 05:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
See Jimbo's diff here [3], and this seems to be in line with we've been hearing from Brad and Danny. --W.marsh 05:40, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks to you both! I wanted a reality check before just changing WP:CP myself. Best, --MCB 16:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Resume == G11 spam?

I'm just wondering if some user posts his resume a) as a main space article or b) as his userpage would it be speedily deletable under CSD G11? MER-C 07:52, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

In the past, we've userfied such pages when people posted them in the mainspace. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't really think we should be a resume service. Delete it through A7 if it's really just a generic resume of some guy trying to get a job. But if it's more of an official resume type thing of someone with notable accomplishments, it really just needs style editting, unless they don't meet WP:BIO. --W.marsh 19:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
If a résumé is posted in the main article space, it should be speedily deleted as G11. If its in user space, it should be removed (with a warning for the editor). Wikipedia:User page#What can I not have on my user page? notes that "Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages) unrelated to Wikipedia" shouldn't be in a user's space. There's also a quote there from Jimbo that says "... using userpages to attack people or campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea..."[4] I suppose a résumé could be considered campaigning for someone, I suppose, although the quote from Jimbo is taken a bit of context in this case. EVula 19:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
As a practical matter, I think userfying stuff like that is a good example of harm reduction, in that it is less likely to be re-created in article space, esp. by a confused user (who does not understand the distinction). That cuts down on the time wasted in further deletions, warnings, etc. If the user goes on to become a real editor, they'll probably fix their page at some point. And if not, and they don't do any more editing, the page can be deleted later as an abandoned uer page. --MCB 20:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
If you want to be practical, nip such things in the bud by deleting them so users don't get the wrong idea and start posting resumes en masse, explaining enough to the user so they don't do it again. To do otherwise invites (by precedent) further and further deviation from what's acceptable behaviour and dilutes the project's focus. --Improv 13:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

{{db-repost}} parameter

Any objections to adding an optional XFD discussion link parameter to {{db-repost}} (an example is here)? Apologies if this has been discussed before – I didn't find such a conversation in a quick search. -- Omicronpersei8 (talk) 03:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Deleted content recreated in userspace

The policy on recreation of deleted material currently reads as follows (emphasis mine):

Recreation of deleted material. A substantially identical copy, by any title, of a page that was deleted as a result of a discussion in Articles for deletion or another XfD process, unless it was undeleted per the undeletion policy or was recreated in the user space.

What is the rationale for allowing users to keep copies of deleted articles in userspace? I can see a few possibilities for abuse here. For example, say someone creates a vanity article for a company with the hope of promoting it on their website ("Look how famous I am! I'm on Wikipedia!") or using it to boost their search engine ranking for a particular search term. (As we know, Google tends to rank Wikipedia articles quite highly, and Wikipedia is mirrored extensively, increasing the chances that the vanity article will come up in a web search.) The article gets deleted, but a Wikipedia user (possibly with an interest in the company) makes an identical copy as a user subpage. Therefore the page will continue to fulfulling its original vanity purpose: it will continue to be mirrored and indexed by search engines, and it will continue to be linked from the company's website (fooling a significant portion of Internet users who don't know the difference between mainspace and userspace). —Psychonaut 06:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Userspace undeletion may be allowed for proper transwikiing, examining the contents of deleted articles that possibly should not have or a space where the author can address the concerns raised in the deletion debate. See WP:DRV. MER-C 08:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, I can actually see this being useful. If a topic is non-notable, it could be moved into userspace (or, if the author worked on it offline, they can recreate it from their copy) and continuously worked on (adding sources and citations and such) until the time that the topic is notable. EVula 15:46, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Comprehension check (G12)

Just a quick note to check whether this bullet point in G12 is easily understandable:

  • "The infringement was introduced at once by a single person rather than created organically on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikipedia mirrors."

I'm not sure that this bit is as clear as it could be. What do people think this is trying to say (if people disagree, then the wording will need to be changed). Carcharoth 21:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Ugh. What about: "* The infringement was entered as a block of text by a single user (rather than created organically on Wikipedia and then copied by a mirror site, which can lead to false positives)." Probably still too wordy, but preserves all of the original intent, I think. -- nae'blis 22:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The one thing this, or the first version, fails to make clear is that copying of Wikipedia's material is not only done by mirror sites. Sometimes you have mirror sites that correctly attribute the material to Wikipedia. Sometimes you have mirror sites which fail to attribute their material to Wikipedia. And then you have sites which selectively copy only a few articles, and claim it as something they wrote. The important point is not whether the site is a mirror, but who originally wrote the material (with mirrors being one of the subsequent considerations after asking the initial question of who wrote the material), and whether the website in question is either (a) claiming Wikipedia wrote the material; (b) not saying who wrote the material; or (c) claiming that they themselves wrote the material. Also, I've just noticed that the wording prejudices the reader by saying "the infringement" rather than "the suspected infringement". Carcharoth 22:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Honestly I still don't see why we need this in the first place. Common sense dictates that if it was created originally on Wikipedia and not copied over, then it's not a copyright violation in the first place. --W.marsh 22:38, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, but it is not clear whether a particular page was copied from Wikipedia or not. This describes how that is determined. With the 48-hour requirement, copyvios that could possibly have been copied from Wikipedia were sent to Wikipedia:Copyright problems where the people checking it were familiar with how to do it. Now, copyvios are mixed in among the many vanities and nonsense and are handled by people more used to dealing with such obvious cases. Obviously, something copied from Wikipedia should not be deleted, but it is not so obvious that something was indeed copied. —Centrx→talk • 22:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Then it's more "advice for determining if something is a copyvio" than a requirement for determining which copyvios that we can delete. It's redundant, like I said, and I just don't like the idea of advice being included as a requirement, especially with vague wording, as that can lead to people getting the wrong ideas and thinking we should keep a copyvio because it's been wikified, and so on. --W.marsh 22:56, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Determining which copyvios we can delete has to be preceded by a process to help determine whether something is a copyvio or not a copyvio, thus it is not redundant. It is far too easy for people to interpret "blatant copyvio" as "identical text", when in fact identical text doesn't say who is doing the copying. Carcharoth 00:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
          • No, it is redundant... it's like adding "Make sure they say something that isn't nice" to the personal attacks CSD. Common sense is that a copyvio has to be a copyvio to delete it as a copyvio. Adding some process to help us admins with the obvious is instruction creep at best. --W.marsh 00:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
        • The 48-hour requirement was a similar situation. It was to ensure that articles copied from Wikipedia would not be speedily deleted, but any certainly copyrighted text still warranted immediate deletion. The whole criterion was like that, such as with commercial content providers; there was nothing essential about commercial content providers that warranted speedy deletion, they were simply less likely to end up being deleted. This is not merely advice. If someone is actually confident that a whole page is a "blatant copyright infringement" then it can and should be deleted, but this is the only way to be confident about it. —Centrx→talk • 00:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
          • And thankfully both of those were axed as instruction creep. You say that this is the way to be confident that's a copyvio, so it is just advice, in my opinion, and redundant to the basic idea of delete copyvios. Of course we should be sure for deleting, but at some point it just because instruction creep to add all of this stuff that basically ammounts to common sense efforts to be sure. --W.marsh 00:29, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
            • It is not simply common sense, knowing how to check is specific knowledge that comes with experience, and some humans could conceivably never discover it independently. As with the old instructions, the CSD is only valid if it satisfies these parameters. To the extent that it is deleted beyond those parameters, it is (in that extent) on your personal authority or knowledge or is an expedited Wikipedia:Copyright problems. —Centrx→talk • 00:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
            • Futhermore, so-called "instruction creep" should not be confused with an attempt to clearly explain why things are done the way they are done. Excessively detailed instructions are bad, I agree. But explaining why something is done the way it is, is not instruction creep. It seems to be a common mistake on the part of those with experience to want to reduce everything to a few handy sentences to remind themselves of what a policy means. This does not help those trying to gain experience, a vital part of which is having something clearly written to explain why things are done the way they are done. If this is all swept away as instruction creep, then you form a clique/priesthood of experienced admins who 'know' how things are done, and who interpret the cryptic policy statements on behalf of those don't have that experience. Or, worse, you get those with less experience being misled by policies that are not clearly explained. Carcharoth 01:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
              • Again, I'm not opposed to giving guidance and so on to help people make good calls with copyvios. I'm opposed to adding a redundant and unneeded rule that's really just advice, if something really was copied from a site with an incompatable liscense, this supposed "rule" will always be true, so it's redundant, and that's why I call it instruction creep. I would be fine if the first line after the parameters for deleting a copyvio was a clearly worded advice on how to accurately detect copyuvios. --W.marsh 01:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
                • It's not just advice, it is a rule for speedy deletion. If someone deletes an article that does not qualify under this rule, it is not strictly a "CSD", and has some elements of WP:CP, other deletion criteria, WP:IAR, etc. —Centrx→talk • 18:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I think a better way to put this would be to say that something is only an obvious copyvio if it is clear who originally wrote the material. That leads logically to an examination of the page history to see if the majority of the text was added in a single chunk by a single user (in which case it is probably a copyvio). ie. if the page history shows evidence of an "organic" wiki creation of the text, then it is probably not a copyvio (or rather, it is probably the other website that is copying us). Saying that clearly is the problem here.

And just to show that this is never really as simple as it seems, there is the not inconceivable scenario where a random user creates an article based largely on text from a Wikipedia mirror, without realising that he is using text that already exists on Wikipedia under a different title. That is effectively a cut-and-paste without attribution, but via a Wikipedia mirror rather than the usual cutting and pasting between Wikipedia articles. ie. Article A is created and a Wikipedia mirror legitimately copies it as A*. Sometime later, article B is created when someone copies text from A* straight back into Wikipedia. One person sees that A and A* are identical, and tags it as copyvio. An admin comes along and correctly sees that A* is a mirror article, and so this is not a case of copyvio, and removes the tag. Meanwhile, someone else tags B as copyvio of A*, and a confused admin looks at the page history of B and sees that it was added as a single chunk of text, but that A* is a Wikipedia mirror, so B looks like a copyvio, but isn't. Carcharoth 00:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

More G12 stuff

Having another look at G12, which seems a bit bloated, I think I'd be right to say that the aim is to allow speedy deletion of any blatant copyright violation, but we need to define what we mean by "blatant". How about the wording I've put in the header at WP:CP?

  • "A copyright violation can be considered 'blatant' if the material was copied from an established website in contravention of a genuine copyright notice. If you are not sure who originally wrote the material, please list it at Wikipedia:Copyright problems instead for investigation.""

Is that clear enough? I think three of the current bullet points are rare exceptions that are all covered by the above, and could be dealt with at WP:CP: (1) the website has a GFDL-compatible licence allowing redistribution with attribution; (2) the copyright holder gives permission for redistribution and editing via Wikipedia; (3) the page history shows that the content was created at Wikipedia. The final bullet point reminds people that the correct action after establishing that this is indeed a blatant copyvio, can be either to speedy delete, or to revert to a version before the copyvio was introduced. Carcharoth 20:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, to me, this is still trying to legislate common sense, why would you delete something as a copyvio if you weren't reasonably sure it was a copyvio? Also, what is an "established" website? Totally subjective. Jimbo's goal was to make it easier to get rid of copyvios... making the wording more complicated and potentially confusing runs contrary to that. --W.marsh 21:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
That's the whole point! The wording has to say blatant copyvio, because there are cases where it is not clear whether something is a copyvio. You are assuming that everyone knows what a blatant copyvio is, and that is not a reasonable assumption to be making. Carcharoth 22:32, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you're understanding me. I'm not opposed to explaining what a blatant copyvio is, but codifying some arbitrary process that admins are required to follow to make sure something's a copyvio ("make sure the page is organic", "make sure it's not copied from an established website", etc.) is just going to make it confusing and lead to situations where an admin knows something is a copyvio, but feel like the rules say he can't delete it. If the goal is to get rid of copyvios, the rule should just say "If you are reasonably sure something is a copyright violation, delete it" and then offer whatever other guidance is relevent. --W.marsh 22:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
That sounds good. With a link to somewhere explaining the common pitfalls and useful tips for someone trying to decide if something is a copyvio? Carcharoth 11:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Sure... but I'm not sure if such a page exists already for us to link to or not, there are a lot of copyright pages on Wikipedia. --W.marsh 14:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandal user pages

I would like to propose the following be official added to the speedy deletion criteria for userpages:

  1. Indefinitely blocked users. User pages with no significant history of indefinitely blocked users (not including sock puppets or banned users) that have been listed in Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages for one month.

This is already in effect, but it would be better if it was added "officially". —Mets501 (talk) 21:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I considered this as already covered by another process, in the same way we don't have speedy deletion criteria for "closing a prod" or for pages that have been through Wikipedia:Copyright problems. —Centrx→talk • 23:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, policy is a little unclear about that. There are speedy criteria for images that have been missing a source for seven days, etc. though. —Mets501 (talk) 00:34, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
If this criterion is added, exceptions should be explicitly made for banned users and sockpuppets of known, persistent vandals. I know the WP:DENY argument against maintaining categories of vandal socks, but sometimes it is very useful. For example, the checkusers could not initially confirm that the account Takidis (talk · contribs) was in fact a sockpuppet of the banned Cretanpride (talk · contribs) until Mackensen, who had dealt with previous socks, recognized that the IPs being used had been used by other Cretanpride sockpuppets. If those sockpuppet pages had been deleted, it would not have been possible to confirm the latest sockpuppet account.
Even WP:DENY says, ""Userpages for indefinitely blocked users (except sockpuppets and banned users) that have no practical purpose should be deleted after a short while." The Cretanpride scenario I mentioned is only one example of how a userpage for an indefinitely blocked user can "have a practical purpose". People deleting userpages with {{indefblockeduser}} should check the block log, page history and contribs of the blocked user to make sure that the account is merely a one-off vandal, rather than a reincarnation of a problem user — in the latter case, the user page can provide valuable information to those fighting the problem user. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I've modified the wording of the proposal. —Mets501 (talk) 01:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Anyone who's doing this should check the user page's history before deleting the page; I know that some users, inspired by WP:DENY, have gone on campaigns of replacing detailed blocked user pages ("this user was blocked as a sockpuppet of so-and-so") with the template {{indefblockeduser}}. That fact, combined with this new criterion, could result in the loss of useful data about sockpuppeteers. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Even for those we could have a time limit after which they are deleted (like 6 months or a year). —Centrx→talk • 04:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I would oppose the addition of this criterion. While I understand the principles of WP:DENY, I think this is an over-reaction. When I am checking on the history of certain pages and trying to determine whether an addition was vandalism or not, it has often been very helpful to check the user's page to see the history. It's much easier to look on the Talk page for a "blocked" notice than to try to navigate to the Block Log just to look up that one little fact. And, frankly, if someone has taken the time to prove that A is a sockpuppet of B, I want that small finding preserved. It helps me to figure out what to look for when the next sockpuppet is created. Rossami (talk) 12:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and also oppose this. I think deleting user pages is taking WP:DENY too far. The harm in keeping the pages (a slight possibility of glorification) outweighs the possible harm in being unable to unravel a complex sockpuppetry case. If you've ever tries to track down the history of something several years later (be it vandalism or simple page history tracking through redirects and so forth), it is amazing how disruptive these "housekeeping" deletes are at obscuring what happened. Carcharoth 12:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

That's why sockpuppet and banned users' userpages would not be deleted. —Mets501 (talk) 14:34, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I've been deleting the userpages of vandal accounts as soon as I indef them for ages. {{Indefblocked}} is useful for community/ArbCom/whoever banned users, but it's not worth it for vandal only accounts. -- Steel 14:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Absolutely not. This is a backdoor attempt at codifying WP:DENY into policy, which people largely don't want. Strong, strong opposition. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:41, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not related to WP:DENY, this is for cleaning up detritus that, for example, is a top result on Google searches. —Centrx→talk • 19:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you give the skeptics among us some specific examples of that? Are you claiming that the selection of the username itself is part of the vandalism? Rossami (talk) 02:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Of course use name selection is part of the vandalism. If someone picks a username like "F*** Jews!!! Jws did WTC!!!", that's obviously part of their vandalism. —Mets501 (talk) 03:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
That example can already be deleted under case G3. No new case is needed. The fact that the vandal was indef-blocked is irrelevant. But honestly, that doesn't seem like something that would come up at the top of any reasonable google search such as Centrx describes. I'm still confused. Rossami (talk) 03:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Before the user pages were deleted, a search for — wikipedia firefox — would come up with numerous pages involving User:FireFox. There are thousands of this kind, and many of them are quite friendly and do not involve others; they do not qualify as attack pages, only as vandalism pages (though I think if it is indeed useful to keep track of vandal's behavior, the attack pages would warrant keeping as well). Whether they come up as search results for "fucking" or for "milkman" or "willy", there is no reason for them. Even in cases without problematic search results (though this may be impossible, there are millions upon millions people searching every day, they will use combined search queries that result in these pages sometime in the how many years do you propose to keep these pages around), I fail to see why a user page of "Oven on Wheels" in which someone followed the same obvious M.O. of putting the Willy's Knight image on a few pages, 16 months ago, is at all useful. —Centrx→talk • 06:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
  • If we're talking about the userpages about people with few (if any) useful contribs and under a permablock, I really don't see why deletion would be such a big deal. I don't mean that we should massively automatically delete all of them, but it is clear that such pages aren't helpful for encyclopedia building so if they're e.g. insulting there is little reason not to delete them. >Radiant< 15:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer that situations such as Centrx describes be handled on a case-by-case basis. Use judgment and discretion when cleaning these up but don't create a new rule (the existing vandalism criterion seems sufficient). And for most situations, I'd still prefer a blank-and-protect approach. The search engine doesn't reach into page history but humans can when we need to. Rossami (talk) 16:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Or you can just ask an admin to look through the deleted page history. —Mets501 (talk) 02:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
      • You could but good admins are always in short supply. We really can't afford to restrict the vandalism patrol to admins-only. Some pages may be serious enough to deserve this extra step but I'm still not seeing enough of a reason to make it a general rule. Rossami (talk) 03:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A proposal regarding a part of I7

Regarding recent deletions of "replaceable" images under I7, have a look here: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Deletion of promotional photos for a proposal.--Konst.ableTalk 09:03, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

A7 Weirdness: Things and Concepts

If an editor makes a brief article about their obviously unremarkable and unremarked pet rabbit, it can only be deleted by grinding it through AfD or ProD. But if they made a brief article about their obviously unremarkable and unremarked brother, it can be speedily deleted. (Of course if they include even two magic words that their brother is "remarkably popular", then Oops, it has to go through laborious AfD or ProD).

Case in point: A DVD was made by a bunch of kids of stunts and skits. The article did not assert the subject's importance. I put it up for speedy-delete as "non-notable", but it was denied, saying non-notability is not criteria. I looked at A7 and decided that the lawyerly editor would likely reject that criterion since the DVD is a "thing". I did put it up again, asserting G11 (commercial promotion), since the article said it had been sold around town.

A7 is quite specific about limiting the criteria to "people, groups, companies and web content" since it mentions that set twice: "Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject."

A7 should be modified to add the words "concept, and thing". Hu 05:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is there might be certain classes of things (like towns, or chemical elements) that could be notable regardless of whether there is any sort of assertion of notability. On the other hand, we don't want to add "pets, robots, and favorite colors" to the criterion. There needs to be some better wording to describe articles about things that are only in relation the vanity author, for the pet and the DVD only being created by the non-notable person. —Centrx→talk • 06:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
The same problem exists for "people, groups, companies, and web content". There are certain classes of people, like historical figures or scientific leaders that could be notable regardless of whether there is any sort of assertion of notability. I fail to see why articles about non-notable people can be deleted in preference to deleting articles about non-notable things. Articles about things and people that are clearly non-notable should be speedily deleted whether or not there is a relation to the article creator. Hu 21:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
No, it shouldn't. I see no need to expand A7 further like this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
So? What is your objection? A simple "No" doesn't advance the debate. Hu 21:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
My objection is that there's no necessity for such a change. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, we understand that you feel there is no necessity. In fact, we understood that the first time you wrote it. However, you haven't addressed the points made, and you still haven't advanced the debate. Why do you feel there's no necessity for such a change? Hu 00:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Because I don't think there are really any points. This expansion is unnecessary. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I think there is no necessity for a change because CSD was not accommodate for the deletion of certain classes of article content. Your points highlight the vagueness of any possible change. If your questions were based on the four criteria at the top of the page then they may have been rebutted using more objective terms.
In any case, your suggested modifications do not take into account the proviso at the end for only whether or not there is an assertion there. You seem to want to delete things in these extra categories, which you personally see fit for deletion whether or not there is an assertion there. Ansell 03:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
When I used the phrase "unremarkable and unremarked" in the first sentence of this section, that is explicitly addressing the issue of assertion, the key word being "unremarked". Hu 04:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed that distinction. Ansell 04:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Not a problem. My wording was not the same as that in the project page, so it would have been easy to overlook. Hu 05:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

An explicit example for discussion: Jopling street has the text (in its entirety): Jopling Street is a residential street located in North Ryde, NSW. I think this should be speedy deleted since it is about a thing and does not explain any notability and is very unlikely to have any notability, but as currently constructed, there is no criterion applicable without possibly provoking a denial from a lawyerly admin (just doin their job). Hu 01:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

If you think it needs deleting so badly, why haven't you taken it to afd? —Cryptic 02:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I haven't, as yet, taken it to AfD because I want to have it here as an example for discussion. I did take its sister article Rosamond Street by the same creator to ProD. Hu 03:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Why delete it? It's a perfectly valid stub. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It is a completely non-notable thing, and the article does not assert notability. Hu 03:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It's a street, something that's generally considered noteworthy. This is why we shouldn't be deleting "things" speedily. A7's flawed enough in that regard, it doesn't need to be made worse. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you've thought this through. There are about 19,465 incorporated places in the U.S. (2006 Statistical Abstract from the U.S. Census Bureau). The global equivalent might be 20 time this number or about 400,000. If, on average, there are 25 streets in each (probably a low estimate), then there are 10,000,000 streets in the world. I don't think you can make a case that all of these are notable. If you think the decision to allow schools to be automatically included in Wikipedia was contentious, imagine how contentious 10,000,000 streets would be. Hu 03:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Sure I can. It might be contentious, but it doesn't mean it's not right. That's 10 million useful articles right there. That will likely NEVER happen unless we get a RamBot-style bot to do it, but there would be nothing wrong with that. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia has enough cruft and clutter as it is. Adding 10,000,000 articles about streets, 99 percent or more non-notable is not a good idea. What makes a street notable? Your brother lives on it? How about buildings? Does a building become notable just because it is a building?
Getting back to the topic at hand, if an article about a person doesn't explicitly make a vaguely plausible case for notability and if there is no other evidence in the article for notability, then it can be speedily deleted. There is no reason the same principle should not apply to an article about a street or a building or a pet rabbit. Surely one wouldn't argue that streets and pet rabbits have elevated status over and above people. Yet that is the consequence of the stated criteria and of the admins actions in enforcing those criteria. Hu 03:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
We should really consider escaping the term "cruft." It's all information. The problem is really in the principle, and your expansion is further down that slippery slope. As long as there's an assertion (and being a road is an assertion the way being a pet generally is not), there isn't a problem. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Cruft is useless information. In the context of an encyclopedia, there is much information that is useless and inappropriate, even if it may be useful in a different context. The phone book is chock full of useful information, but it is not appropriate to transcribe it into Wikipedia. You may make the bald assertion that "streetness" is automatic notability, but I don't think that you'll get much support for that assertion. Nor have you made any kind of case about what makes mere streetness notable. Hu 04:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
For things like pets and home-made DVDs, the original examples which are clear vanity, these are already usually deleted speedily as extending from A7 (If the person would be deletable under A7, the pet in an article that even asserts it is less notable than the person makes sense to be deleted). The question is whether it can be codified sufficiently well to be added here. —Centrx→talk • 02:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Two admins disagree with you and removed the speedy notices. [5] [6] Hu 03:23, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

No, A7 should not be modified this way. We don't throw up speedy deletion criteria for just any situation into which a few uncontroversial deletable articles fall: it needs to happen very frequently, and frankly, I've never seen another example of this at AfD. We just don't need it. Remember, we also have WP:PROD. Mangojuicetalk 04:44, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Let me amend that; I was saying that obviously non-notable "concepts" and "pets" and so on aren't a problem. Roads is a bit of another story, but generally speaking it is community consensus that we can have articles on highways but not on local roads unless there's some particular importance. But that doesn't mean a speedy deletion criterion is in order; in fact, it's clearly a bad idea. AfD'ing the occasional article like Jopling street is not a big deal; debates like that take almost no community effort as a whole. And WP:PROD would work most of the time. I've prodded that particular article. Hu - you seem to have forgotten about (or have not heard of) WP:PROD, which is there to handle general examples of deletion that would be uncontroversial that aren't covered by speedy deletion, such as all your examples. Mangojuicetalk 04:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for the excellent suggestion. My edit list shows that I've been using ProD, most recently earlier today. In fact I mention it above that I put up the sister street for ProD. The fundamental question remains why the principle should be that people can be speedily deleted, but not things. The implication is that things are more respected than people. And yes, things come up frequently enough. Hu 05:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I think the main reason A7 never included "animals" in its wording is that there really aren't that many articles created about people's pets. If we get an influx of articles on insignificant animals we would probably expand A7 to cover that. "Things", however, is too broad and too open to misinterpretation. >Radiant< 12:42, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
It shouldn't matter what the article subject is. If the article does not make a vaguely plausible case for notability and does not automatically meet previously established criteria for automatic notability, then it should go up for speedy deletion. Things should not receive protection that people don't have. Hu 16:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • But according to precedent, e.g. such things as villages do, regardless of size and amount of inhabitants. >Radiant< 16:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Clarification:what to do when an article doesn't fit into a nice, neat box.

While browsing new pages I came accross one where the contributor was clearly confused as to the purpose of Wikipedia. For discussions sake, the page was Sudanese doctors and the content was:

List of Sudanese Doctors The main aim of this page is to give all Sudanese doctors, around the world, the opportunity of getting in touch with one another. Hopefully this page will help in encouraging everyone to contribute and share one's experiences, ideas, and projects. As a result, we hope that our beloved people will get the benefit that we, as Sudanese doctors, all strive to give. Thank you, Nadir Galal Eldin

Obviously not suitable for Wikipedia, but I didn't think it met any of the speedy criteria so I prodded it, giving "Wikipedia is not a social networking site" as my reason. Now, keep in mind that the first item under non-criteria is "Reasons derived from Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not". I left a nice little note on the contributor's talk page explaining what Wikipedia is and isn't, and while I was doing that someone came along and put a speedy tag on the article above the prod citing G11 as the speedy criteria.

Now, obviously the thing needs to go. But, it's not really blatent advertising. It's far more what Wikipedia is not. But I guess it's sort of advertising, sort of, maybe, kind of, a little. You could maybe say it exists to provide a service... but I think that's stretching it a little.

Anyway, what about instances like that where a page just doesn't quite fit any of the speedy criteria but patently doesn't belong in Wikipedia? Why aren't violations of WP:NOT speediable? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 17:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

  • In case of doubt, use WP:AFD for discussion. >Radiant< 17:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, that's exactly what WP:PROD is for -- articles that are not speediable under the existing CSDs, but are otherwise manifestly unencylopedic. --MCB 19:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Right, but it'd already been prod'ed... ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 19:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
If its already been prod'd, WP:AFD is the only other stop. Shell babelfish 19:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandals Text

Is it only me who sees:

== Criteria ==u r such a freaking tard!!!!!! People sometimes use abbreviations to refer to these criteria (e.g. "A3" meaning articles, criterion 3), but for the sake of clarity this is not recommende

on the page! It is weird since it does not appear on the edit text and it was supposely removed by an AntiVandal bot in the last edit! I'm Confused...

No, I saw it too. I don't know why or how it happened, but I think I fixed it. -- Merope 19:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yepes! it seems fixed now! Thanks! Theups 20:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

CSD I7

There was an image recently mentioned on AN/I. The image in question was originally uploaded with source information just saying it was an advert for a sporting brand. And tagged as {{Sportsposter}}. Since then the image has been retagged as {{promophoto}}. The image is used in an article on the person appearing in the poster, no mention is made of the sporting brand let alone the specific advert let alone critical discussion of the advert.

There was some debate concerning if this qualified for replaceable fairuse, the conclusion of which was that it was indeed replaceable, during which time the person who had tagged it as {{promophoto}} stated they hadn't previously been aware of what that actually meant in this context (i.e. part of a press pack).

Since I had been part of that discussion I tagged the image as criteria I7, as it (a) is wrongly tagged and (b) fails the fairuse criteria regardless.

Another admin subsequently came along and removed that tag saying that the image would not be speedy deleted. Upon querying this the admin told me that we don't speedy delete images for failing our fair use criteria (We're busy enough on csd as it stands apparently). I pointed out CSD I7 and the plain wording of this and the admin then stated that it was only for certain specific situations and only if the image was tagged within 24 hours of upload. I pointed out again that the image clearly met the criteria as laid out in CSD I7 and the 24 hours seemed to not be mentioned anywhere. This then became that it could only be tagged I7 48 hours after the original uploader was notified of the issue and that I had to prove the image had never been included in the press pack. The former is not a big issue, the latter is of course impossible, it involves proving a negative. I challenged this but the admin is adamant that for I7 to apply I have to do the impossible and prove a negative.

Since I believe this image is well within the plain language of CSD I7 and indeed wikipedia is not a bureacracy, I cannot see how this doing the impossible can be part of the criteria. Since the I believe the other admin to be quite experienced and apparently reasonably confident of their position, rather than just ignoring that, informing the user in question and deleting the image in question in 48 hours time (assuming no further information is revealed in that time), I though yI'd ask for some broader input here. Am I missing the point here, do we indeed demand the impossible in such situations, are there other images which fail out fairuse criteria/are incorrectly tagged which are having CSD tags removed for this? --pgk 19:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Without knowing what image was involved, neither I, nor I suspect anyone else, can make a call on the matter. There is no 24-hour requirement for CSD:I7, but if there is a dispute, then it is better to use {{fairusedisputed}} or similar. Stifle (talk) 17:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't asking for anyone to make a call on the specific matter. The question was and is generic, hence the reasonably long description of the situation (with hindsight some being redundant, more setting the scene as to why I would question the other admins resolve). Is I7 redundant in certain cases as it requires doing the impossible? --pgk 22:22, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I7 says Any image or media with a clearly invalid fair-use tag (such as a {{logo}} tag on a photograph of a mascot) may be deleted at any time. Media that fail any part of the fair use criteria ... may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader.[7] Now, I think the 24 hours comment was the admin getting two different CSD criteria confused—I seem to remember a criterion that could only be applied to very new articles, but I can't find it now. As far as the jumping through hoops goes, if it fails any of the fair-use criteria than that's all that matters. CSD criteria should be read literally word-for-word from the CSD page, and carry no hidden requirements. What complicates this is that I7 makes reference to the fair use guideline which in turn refers to the publicity photos essay—essays and guidelines (and some if not most policy) are not meant to be taken so word-for-word as CSD is. Because of that, I wouldn't say you need to prove it is not part of a press pack. However, to show by the essay on publicity photos that the image fails at least one fair use criterion, you might have to make a pretty good arguement to the effect that the image is not likely part of a press pack. With all that in mind, justifying the CSD might be more work than nominating it for deletion by normal process, especially considering CSDs are much easier to dispute which means going through all the discussion and deliberation again via a deletion nom. I hope that helped. BigNate37(T) 22:53, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Speedy deletions

Why is Wikipedia:Speedy deletions a separate page? --- RockMFR 19:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Speedy deletions is about the process, and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion is how to justify that process. If the former page didn't exist, people would know that an article meets the criteria for speedy deleted without knowing how to go about it. If the latter page didn't exist, people might suggest speedy deletes but would have no absolute guidelines to prove that an article should be speedy deleted. Wikipedia:Speedy deletions and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion in this way, serve different functions, and are thus are two pages and not one. Gracenotes T § 21:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I believe Wikipedia:Speedy deletions should be renamed Wikipedia:Speedy deletion process, analogous to Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Wikipedia:Deletion process. If there are no objections, I propose to do that. --MCB 22:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
The difference is there is not much of a speedy deletion process, "Deletion process" is about deletion in general—including speedy deletion, and "speedy deletion" is already its own special meaning on Wikipedia, whereas "Deletion" needs something extra to describe it. —Centrx→talk • 22:29, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
If we're going to nit-pick about pagenames, Wikipedia:Deletion process is really only about the process for closing a deletion nomination/discussion and for archiving that discussion. It is not the overview of the entire process. For that, you need to read Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Rossami (talk) 04:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I just don't understand why it is separated from this one - for most users browsing through the deletion-related pages, they will rarely come across Wikipedia:Speedy deletions - they will usually end up here. It seems counter-intuitive to have these pages split up. --- RockMFR 07:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

There was a recent proposal to merge them and merged page at Wikipedia:Speedy deletion, but it never happened for some reason. —Centrx→talk • 09:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd say a merging is certainly appropriate. (Radiant) 11:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Deleting the "hangon" tag

At what point can we delete the hangon tag so an article can be speedy-deleted, because it is obviously a personal biography page of someone who is not notible? Check this page for an example of what I'm talking about. Thanks. JE.at.UWOU|T 06:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

"Hangon" is supposed to be used to buy you a few minutes while you pull your evidence together and create your arguments on the article's Talk page. Acknowledging the vagaries of internet connections and the need to occasionally stop to sleep, I'll generally give someone a few hours to make their comment - and maybe more depending on the situation.
In this particular case, I note that the user already added his comment to the article's Talk page. Whether you as the deleting admin find that argument compelling is a different question. Looking into this specific case, I'm inclined to agree with the suggestion to move the page in as the new user's Userpage with a polite welcoming note about our policies and standards (including WP:AUTO). Rossami (talk) 06:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

A long-overdue revamp of the db-templates

I felt it was time to give the DB-templates a much-needed update. I have a version at User:TrackerTV/KXRM3. The new template can be hid and unhid, to help preserve space. The reason and first sentence of the old one are in the top, which is colored safety orange to attract attention. It takes up less room than the db-meta (at top, substed). Please tell me what you think! TTV (MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley) 18:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I don't like the possibility of hiding the text through a NavBar. The warning should always be shown, after all it is a critical notice that the article will be deleted in a matter of minutes. As for the color, at WikiProject Albums we changed the studio album color from orange to lightsteelblue because a user expressed it may trigger unhealthy reactions with a determined health condition. Personally, I like the template as it is now. I would heavily suggest, thought, to modify the different copyvio warnings, as they encourage creating talk pages without articles. -- ReyBrujo 19:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Color changed to pear-green, which still attracts attention, but also provides a better color for the text there. It won't be the periwinkle blue. This needs to stand out. I also suggest doing it for the AfD template. The hangon template would become a subset, where one could type in a second parameter. If it were activated, it would display the hangon template inside the navbox. I like these, as they do not intrude. Frankly, the current one pushes the article too far down, and we need to be an encyclopædia as well: if an article that is clearly notable, such as Pikachu for example, received a CSD tag, it could push the text of the article down. TTV (MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley) 23:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
If a notable article received a deletion tag, the tag would most likely be removed rather quickly. Just a note. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't like the centered text much, and I agree the 'hide' button is unnecessary. Note that many of the possible reasons given on the template will be several lines. (Radiant) 11:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggested BLP Criterion

Articles about living persons that cite no sources, cite non-existent sources, or that cite only self-published and/or notoriously unreliable sources, may be speedily deleted. It is not necessary under this criterion for the article to be defamatory.Robert A.West (Talk) 02:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it will be a great day for Wikipedia when enough of our articles are sourced for us to actually be able to do this, but right now it would result in the deletion of too many articles on important subjects which contain verifiable information (albeit temporarily unsourced). If this criterion isn't focused on negative information, which is the main thrust of WP:BLP (and covered by the current CSD on attack pages), then why biographies in particular? --Sam Blanning(talk) 02:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Because, in the absence of a reliable source we cannot tell whether the person is a private or a public person or what sort of thing that person might consider embarrassing or defamatory. As a real-life example, it is not uncommon for professional singers to perform in religious services of faiths they do not share. While there is no deception involved in the hiring, singers have been replaced because of congregation reaction when the fact was revealed. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
This criterion does not focus on the 4 points at the top of this page. Either way though, it is not necessary to link this with the morality based BLP criterion if you are removing the defamatory part. Ansell 02:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll address the four points explicitly, then.
  1. Objective -- this is based on a lack of sources or sources of the worst sort. If there is any colorable claim of reliable sourcing, this criterion does not apply.
  2. Policy clearly requires only sourced material in the biographies of living persons. While the care arose from concerns over defamation, that can be a debatable issue, and it is possible to harm someone by saying untrue things that are probably not defamatory at law.
  3. Unsourced articles of all types are common as dirt.
  4. Except in the cases of obvious attack articles, I do not see any overlap with pre-existing criteria.
I hope that answers. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Points 1 and 2 are not that secure. They assume that every admin knows how to interpret the disputed WP:RS criteria equally. Assuming that untrue things can be damaging without being defamatory does not have a clear definition. The case you gave was clearly an unfair employment dismissal, something which Wikipedia should not have as a specific purpose. You are also attempting to expand BLP using a speedy criteria, which is not the way these criteria are supposed to work. They are supposed to focus on cases for deletion which have already happened multiple times. Articles being deleted because of their references being of the "worst sort" may happen, but it is still not actually objective as you say. Ansell 04:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
The information can - and should - be edited out of the page. Deletion is an unnecessary and divisive action. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
So, you argue that the article can be blanked, but not deleted? Robert A.West (Talk) 03:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Blanked, no. Stubbed, sure. Offending material removed? Absolutely. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I like the criteria, but make it only for defamatory in the beginning. After people have learned this, add a notice that any kind of article that does not cite source can be deleted. Doing this for every article without having a HUGE discussion would be a mistake. -- ReyBrujo 03:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Wait... we already have a speedy criteria for defamatory articles. In any case, stubbing sounds pretty well too. -- ReyBrujo 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Stubbing is a better idea. For a somewhat amusing example of what could happen if this rule were implimented as suggested, see here. --W.marsh 03:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) If the article consists completely of unsourced material, what material is not offending? Unless the person is famous, what stub could one possibly write? Robert A.West (Talk) 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, it would mean searching for reliable sources to create a stub. If the person is not famous, it is deleted under A7. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
A7 does not concern fame, only an assertion of notability, which is a low criterion. Asserting that someone founded a G/L/TG group is an assertion of notability. By public policy, it is not defamatory. But, so claiming falsely could be harmful. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I expressed myself incorrectly, sorry. If the person is not notable, nor he is related to some notable being (including persons or groups or locations) or event, he can be speedied. While the new criteria would make it possible to speedy delete an article that simply says "Guy is one of the most notable singers in Country" without citing a source, I believe we should give a notification to users that their article are going to be deleted unless sourced. In other words, a speedy deletion that gives 7 days to update the article is much better than a plain speedy deletion. -- ReyBrujo 03:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
You describe a broader application of A7 than I have always understood: notability is often hotly debated. I suppose that one could dodge by deleting the unsourced statements that assert notability and then tagging for speedy, but that seems doubtful conduct. Robert A.West (Talk) 04:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, by no means I would suggest doing that. Any article that does not claim notability can be speedied, no matter how well written. I understood your new criteria as a way of broadening A7. Right now, if an article states...
  1. "Singer is a singer from Country, who studied at School." can be speedied under A7, as there is no notability claim;
  2. "Singer is a singer from Country, who studied at School, considered the precursor of Style." can be send to AFD, but not speedied, as there is a notability claim.
However, with this new proposed criteria, if in the second case there is no source, the article can be speedied just as A7, because we are purposely dismissing the notability claim as unverifiable. If I am mistaken, feel free to correct me. -- ReyBrujo 04:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
This is not a good policy. Many articles when they are created by newbies lack sources even when they are about genuinely notable poeple. I see nothing that this criterion would accomplish other than biting more newbies and adding more work for admins. JoshuaZ 04:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Note: Policy does not state the unsourced material in BLPs is unacceptable, only controversial material. —Centrx→talk • 04:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, thank you for your comments. I can identify a lead balloon when one falls on my head. Robert A.West (Talk) 04:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: See also User:Dmcdevit/CSD addition. (Radiant) 11:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

All we need is a rule saying 'if Wikipedia policy allows enough of a page's content to be deleted on sight that the rest of the page is a CSD, that can be deleted too, unless there is a version in the history that can be reverted to'. This is just common sense (and IMO IAR-able if it isn't implied by some policy somewhere), and would lead to 'if an entire article is a BLP violation, it can be deleted if there is no clean version in the history'. I don't see an immediate need to delete unsourced BLPs if they don't say anything potentially libelous or negative. Although I think it would be an improvement if any page without sources could be speedied (pages can't be WP:AFC'd without sources, and what makes username contributors more reliable than anons?), I suspect consensus would be strongly against this. --ais523 14:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggested BLP Criterion section break 1

Hmm, unfortunate timing, and it's funny when presented here people missed the value and focused on possible negatives, whereas when presented at User:Dmcdevit/CSD addition the advantages were obvious. Thanks for the heads up Radiant. The only difference being the topic doesn't matter. It's hard to overestimate how valuable this will be in turning the tide towards properly sourcing articles. I just don't buy the arguments that it is newbie biting, we need to explain our policies to newbies all the time. This simply involves no longer looking the other way when articles fail to meet our key content policies. We are well past the time where we need just any content, we need reliable, sourced material. The issue of what meets a RS is also completely avoided by saying there isn't any discretion on that point. If there is a source, it doesn't meet the new CSD. - Taxman Talk 14:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • And you honestly think this will be handled responsibly? Have we forgotten how horribly A7 is handled? Did we forget the 40 pastry CSDs from a month ago? This will be completely unworkable, and it's completely unnecessary. We need a culture change here, pronto. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Jeff, please provide some evidence of your allegation? (Radiant) 15:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • You mean that A7 isn't being handled wlel? Did you think the 12 day process for the deletion of things like Famous Amos was a good thing? We only had about 40 articles for that deletion spree, what happens to DRV when it hits 4000?
        • That was a G11, not an A7. (Radiant) 10:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, that's why we select trusted people to handle it. It does not make any sense to not use a process that overall adds a ton of value to the project just because there are some mistakes. Your reasoning would be reason to scrap CSD altogether because those mistakes were made. And unlike C7 this an unambiguous criteria: either there is a reference or there isn't. There's no judgement call about whether the text asserts notability. If there are mistakes, educate, don't throw out useful processes. - Taxman Talk 16:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Whether we should scrap CSD (which we should for anything that isn't nonsense, an attack article, or empty) is a whole different discussion. Meanwhile, what happens when a reference isn't easily recognizeable? What happens when a reference isn't approved by the reviewing admin, much like admins regularly delete articles with assertions of notability under A7? Wholesale deletion of entire articles that may lack obvious references would cause major, major strife to our processes, cause massive conflict, and overwhelm everything while creating a net loss to an encyclopedia that's getting better by the day. A better choice would be to expect editors to find sources for articles as opposed to delete them, but god forbid we ask people to build an encyclopedia. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Again, if there is no discretion on what counts as a reference, then there will be no issue of "approval" by an admin. We delete articles everyday, deleting some more won't cause major strife, massive conflict etc. Even if it would, it's worth it to more fully make the shift to everyone reallizing that all articles need references. You're focusing on potential problems (that are on the margins only anyway) while ignoring the gain. You're forgetting about the result of this new speedy criteria being thousands of new referenced articles and drastic improvement in the average quality of new articles, and thus the whole project. I can't think of anything more important for the project. - Taxman Talk 17:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • You say that, but either you know it's not true or you're unaware of the problems A7 and G11 has caused. Deletion is not the answer, and this does not improve the project. It's unnecessary, it's an editing issue, and this simply should not be pursued. If it's important for the project to have references (and it is), stop making it dependent on the person adding the information alone and instead compel everyone to add references. The fact that you're coming at this from a deletion standpoint rather than an improvement standpoint is the problem, and I can't think of anything more important for the project to oppose at this point. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • Nah, I don't buy it that that is the problem. It's infinitely more important that the material we have be referenced than it is that we don't delete unreferenced materical. There just aren't that many new topics that we desperately need that it's such a grave problem if we wait until a referenced version is added. WP:V already allows removal of unreferenced material. What this new CSD does is come at it from both sides. Currently it's entirely up to later editors to add references. Now it will be up to both the person creating the article, and later editors to improve the referencing. Shifting that burden so that it is shared is critical. We simply shouldn't keep looking the other way when one of our most important content policies is violated. The person adding the material in the first place is in the best position to add the reference anyway. And if you're so afraid of deleting, userifying solves that, but I don't think it's really needed. - Taxman Talk 20:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • If it's important for the project to have references (and it is), stop making it dependent on the person adding the information alone — It is worth noting at this point what the original wording of our verifiability policy said on the matter of placing the burden for finding sources on other editors:

              It is unfair to make later editors dig for sources, particularly when the initial content is questionable. Those who write articles likely to be deemed in need of fact checking, for whatever reason, should expect to assist by providing references, ideally when the article is first written.

              What this new CSD does is come at it from both sides. — It is worth noting at this point that it has always been possible to delete unverifiable articles via AFD, we have had tags such as {{unreferenced}} for a long time, and it has always been possible to "come at this from both sides". Uncle G 11:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, well, the 14 day waiting period in User:Dmcdevit/CSD addition, and its restriction to articles created after the guideline was adopted makes a world of difference. Speedy deleting any article, without any waiting time for the authors to find sources, is far too draconian. Without the 14 day period even the existence of this crtierion would violate WP:BITE (and badly). I'm not sure I support THAT proposal, but I certainly don't support this. Mangojuicetalk 15:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm wary of any CSD that's slower than prod. As it happens, prodding such pages, then AfDing them if deprodded, would lead to faster results than the proposed CSD and the same effect; perhaps you need a new process (something like prod but for sources and not removable by anyone unless the article is sourced). --ais523 15:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • That is a good point; arguably the time limit should be similar to PROD's. The processes are related, anyway. (Radiant) 15:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Nah, I'm fine with the 14 days. Waiting 14 days isn't a huge problem, and it is infinitely less wasted resources than gathering a bunch of users arguing over an AfD. - Taxman Talk 16:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • If you have to wait 14 (or 5, or even 1) days then it's no longer a "speedy" deletion; is it? The question then changes from being "Should we add this to csd?" to "Do we need a new deletion process to deal with this?"
        • You'd think this is something we could look at in terms of editing rather than deletion. If there's this much attention being focused on the "issue" right now, perhaps we're better off looking at it from an entirely different context. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • The evolved definition of "speedy" deletion is that it may be deleted without debate, not that it is necessarily fast. Dmcdevit·t 18:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • If that means it's not a speedy criterion, what about I5 and I6? If someone sees an issue with "speedy" deletions taking days, the best course of action might be to propose a more rigid definition of these not-so-slow deletions (i.e. prod, I5/6, this proposed BLP criterion). I suspect simply gathering these processes under the name delayed deletion or something similar would change the way the (proposed) processes are viewed. Or, we could rename CSD to "Criteria for Simplified Deletion", because if not for the process' speed, CSD is best known for its simplicity of process as contrasted with XfDs. That, I think, is the idea behind making the BLP proposal a CSD criterion anyways. BigNate37(T) 17:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC) P.S. Just to clarify my personal stance, I don't have a problem with some of the CSD criteria taking days. I don't intend these comments as a formal proposal of anything I suggested here.
          • Images can't be prodded, so speedy is still faster than prod in I5/6. As for 'delayed deletions', I came up with something similar (although I've never proposed it due to instruction creep problems); maybe A1, A3, and A7 deletions should have a 10-minute delay (with the tag on), so the user has a chance to fix the problems (especially when multiple saves are used). As with BigNate37, not a proposal, just a mention. --ais523 17:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • In practice I don't think admins delete per A1 A3 or A7 for less than a few minutes. I avoid doing so and I know some other admins do so as well. JoshuaZ 17:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • If this is going to be a 14 day criterion or something similar we should discuss it elsewhere. Why doesn't someone draft another version of that put it in Wikipedia space and point us to it. JoshuaZ 17:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • I don't mind if anyone wants to take it and move it wherever is appropriate. Are you suggesting that it's not a CSD because of the 14 day lag? It's constructed much the same way as the image criteria 4-7 are. Dmcdevit·t 18:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
              • I guess there is some paralellism there. I'm not completely happy considering those as speedy conditions but I suppose given that we call them that it wouldn't be unreasonable to classify this as a speedy condition as well. Consider my objection in that regard withdrawn. JoshuaZ 20:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I oppose the original suggested criterion on the basis that first of all, it is wider than BLP itself, in that it includes sympathetic (vanity) as well as defamatory articles, and vanity articles do not have parallel issues of reputation and liability. Moreover, there are very few biographical articles that cannot be merely edited (however drastically) to remove unsources defamatory material, which is what BLP already tells us to do. If this leaves an article that satisfies an existing speedy deletion criterion, let it be deleted, but more likely we'd (at worst) end up with a stub describing a person's name, nationality, date of birth, occupation, and claim of notability. Deco 21:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

A stronger version of the above

A9. Any article that was created after 03:57, Tuesday June 10, 2008 (UTC) insert date criterion gains consensus, has and has never had any references, and has been tagged with {{some tag}} for over 14 days, may be deleted without a discussion.

I've phrased it as a CSD here, but am open to other suggestions. This is a new section because it's no longer restricted to BLPs but applies to anything. Presumably this would use a big angry template that is places on the top of the article, with a corresponding User talk: warning template, saying something like "This article will be deleted unless sources are provided." (with more information below). As I said in the previous section, anons have to provide sources; why not users with usernames? --ais523 18:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Would you be using {{unsourced}}, modifying that tag, or want a new tag? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs) 18:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I'd want a new tag; {{unref}} isn't worded nearly strongly enough for a template that causes deletion (and you could keep the old tag tweaking it to say 'insufficiently sourced' for cases where there are sources but not enough). Probably it would look something like {{afd}} but without the maintenance stuff and with fewer words. --ais523 18:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Which makes me think why not userify the pages that meet this criteria instead of deleting them? They could immediately be moved to a subpage of the user that created the page with a simple explanation that references are needed. That not only doesn't impeded the needed improvement like deletion does, but it gets the point accross that references are needed. Or just userify newly created pages and older articles could be moved to something like Wikipedia:Unreferences/foo. That way for new pages we could do it over a much shorter timeframe than deletion and without the harm. The technical problem of leaving a mainspace redirect to user/wikipedia space could be solved without too much trouble and they could simply be deleted in the meantime. - Taxman Talk 19:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • And why couldn't the AfD process handle this? Why does it need to be speedy deleted? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Right now there is no clear-cut procedure for deciding that a poorly-sourced or unsourced article has no sources. An editor searches diligently for sources, can't find any, tags the article, waits, searches again, and finally puts it up for deletion. All too often, we get a batch of, "Keep. All this article needs are sources, and I'm sure those can be found." No actual help finding sources, of course. The closing admin counts noses, and the result is no consensus.

      This process moves the burden of proof back where it belongs. We can't prove a negative, but we can demand a positive. If Verifiability is a non-negotiable requirement, then writing an article that completely lacks sources is an assertion that sources are obvious and easy to find. If we can't find an arguably reliable source in two weeks, it isn't easy. If sources are neither provided nor obvious, there is nothing to discuss, so an AFD is a waste of time and effort.

      Now, maybe this process should be DFV (delete for verifiability) or some other name. The only keep vote that matters is a halfway-decent source for enough of the article that we would have at least a decent stub left if the article were reduced to the verifiable content. Once that threshold is reached, the case is closed.

      If time runs out, we can always undelete if someone finds an actual source later. If no Wikipedian cares enough about the topic to research and fix it, the topic can't be that important. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

      • Yes changing the way you count to only counting a keep that adds a enough decent sources is a successful way to shift the burden, but still adds a lot of overhead that an XfD brings. But I agree shifting the burden is important. - Taxman Talk 20:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • The burden is already shifted in the direction you want. If anything, we should be shifting the burden backward - expecting those who are capable to provide sources. Whichever way we want to do this, if our goal is better sourcing, AfD is a better route because more eyes will see it, as opposed to the eventual unilateral deletion by admins that no one notices until it's too late. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)--badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • No it hasn't shifted the right way yet and that's why this is needed. Currently new unreferenced articles are allowed to stay, and practically they won't successfully be AfD'd because nothing says people have to follow policy in AfD votes and the fact is they don't. Shifting the burden the right way will mean that everyone knows that for an article to be accepted it needs references. Everyone knowing that upfront is very valuable to encouraging the type of content we want and need. - Taxman Talk 21:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • I don't know if I agree with your perspective on this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • I think we've already established that. :) There's room in this project to disagree on approaches. It still means I'm right on this, but you can disagree. :). Ok, kidding – seriously. - Taxman Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • All too often, we get a batch of, "Keep. All this article needs are sources, and I'm sure those can be found." No actual help finding sources, of course. The closing admin counts noses, and the result is no consensus. — The correct way to address that, as a few editors do, is to contribute to the AFD discussions, pointing out that the only rebuttal to an assertion that an article is unverifiable is to demonstrate that it is verifiable, by citing sources against which the article may be verified, and that mere assertions of verifiability without putting in the effort to cite some sources do not cut the mustard as a counterargument.

        And you should note that equally all too often at AFD we get editors who say "Delete. This article doesn't cite any sources.". That's an equally bad argument in the opposite direction. An article is only deletable for being unverifiable if both it cites no sources and no sources can be found when editors make reasonable efforts to find some themselves. Merely arguing that an article is unverifiable without putting in the effort to do the research and check that no sources can be found does not cut the mustard, also.

        Expanding CSD criteria is not the way to educate editors into not making either of those bad arguments at AFD. Uncle G 11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I strongly oppose a speedy deletion criterion for articles without references. Often, locating appropriate sources may require specialist knowledge or access to an academic library that the average user lacks. In the areas in which Wikipedia is lacking good coverage, we have very few regular contributors, so expecting somebody else to somehow notice the article and add sources in 14 days is unreasonable. This would also include most stubs, and Wikipedia has always held that stubs deserve time to grow. Besides that, people just often neglect to add references because it's hard and they're lazy - if you ask them to do it, or ask other interested people, they probably will, whereas if you yank the article out from under them they may not notice or care. It also won't encourage addition of references up front because many users who create articles like this are specialists who are not very familiar with our policy. I also think, from comments above, that it's necessary to remind people that CSD is never a method for circumventing "keep" decisions at AfD. Much too overinclusive. Deco 21:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • How about another possible outcome to AFD? If everyone thinks "the article just needs sourcing", the closing admin can still delete the article if it has no sources. An Unsourced Delete result? —Wknight94 (talk) 21:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • "many users who create articles like this are specialists who are not very familiar with our policy" is exactly why we need this change in policy. So that everyone will know it. It is very easy for those same specialists to add a reference, they just need to know they should. We have a huge problem with reliability in many articles. We need to remove every impediment to making sure as much content as possible is referenced. - Taxman Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Tale of an article

An article, A is created without references by editor X, a specialist who understands the field and knows the sources. It is noticed after a few months by editor Y, who has an interest in the area, looks for references, but can't find any. He puts it up for AFD. Editor Z comes along and thinks the article is a great piece of prose, if only it had references, but has no clue where to look for them, or perhaps no time.

Who should have the burden of finding the references? X could have added them trivially, but may not be watching the article -- may have left Wikipedia. Y tried his best and has given up. Z wants the article kept.

In my mind, X was in the best position to help Wikipedia and failed. He overlooked, or did not understand, "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Y has tried to help Wikipedia, yet it seems that many editors want him to work harder and find references that he cannot know for certain exist. Z has done very little to help Wikipedia, but many editors feel that he has no responsibility.

Who should have the burden, and how should it be enforced? Robert A.West (Talk) 21:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Any encyclopedic subject will at least have non-highly-reliable sources that can verify it is not a hoax. If it is not a hoax, there is nothing wrong with keeping it on Wikipedia, especially for more than 14 days. There is also the problem with people putting stupid sources in to get around this, such as a website for playing Nerf games being used as a source for an article on military tactics. It has "references", but such an article written by some facile fool warrants deletion a lot more than an article that was clearly written by an expert on the subject. You might note, for instance, that commercial advertisements and non-notable bands will always have an external link to the homepage, whereas people frequently edit academic subjects with no references at all; then we would be in the uncomfortable position of actually evaluating whether a source is reliable or not in speedy deletion criteria. This proposal is a non-starter.

    In fact, in terms of time, the opposite would be a more appropriate speedy deletion criteria: If no one has added any sources on an article for two years, that indicates a lot more about the encyclopedic quality of the subject than no sources added for two weeks. New articles warrant time to be improved; old articles with no sources and no one interested in editing them warrant a more relaxed view of A7, but nothing so strict as "any article after 14 days". I say again, however, verifiable does not mean cited; people are free to add information to Wikipedia without being required to re-read all the many books they have read on a subject, or tweak citations. A policy requiring citation would turn off the experts who actually know about a subject, and would attract only the people who are in the process of learning a subject, out of a single book which they have in front of them. —Centrx→talk • 21:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

    • Why do you think that? It's very easy for an expert to source their material. They're the ones that best know the sources. And the idea of a CSD isn't to be perfect and miss nothing, but to make a large majority of cases very easy to handle. Those that game the system as you describe would be handled by other processes just like they are now, there's no loss in that. - Taxman Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Add me to the list opposing this proposal. I empathize with the sentiment but the proposal ignores human nature. While it would filter out a proportion of the bad content that we're trying to deal with, it would also result in the loss of significant volumes of good information that experience tells us will eventually be sourced.
    To answer the question immediately above, remember that to our theoretical expert much of the material covered in an encyclopedia article is "common knowledge" - that is, so well and widely understood within the field that it is no longer specifically cited in references. How do you cite a fact that shows up in a dozen different texts? This is an all-volunteer project. Not everyone is interested in doing that kind of work. Yet they have been and still are very valuable contributors to the project. Rossami (talk) 23:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • How do you cite a fact that shows up in a dozen different texts? — The question is the answer. Cite one of those dozen different texts. And the fact that one only need one citation, and one has a dozen texts to choose from, actually makes it easier for volunteers. The irony of the fallacy of thinking that there are exceptions to "everything must be sourced" is that every single counterargument actually demonstrates how easy it is to source the material that people think requires some sort of exception. There are no exceptions to everything. Uncle G 11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • It would simply be easier for an expert to pull a book name out of a hat, but that's not necessarily an accurate citation and is only an impediment to someone adding what is regardless accurate information. It's not that people would be gaming the system with the external links, but that external links are naturally associated with the sort of articles that most warrant deletion for lack of sourcing. I don't see what articles this proposal would delete; even original research often includes self-published book or website references.

    Now, we do need to clean house of junk, but it's probably best to start with the oldest junk articles that have never been improved than the newest articles that may actually become good articles. Most of the articles on Wikipedia today would have been deleted under this proposal. Although, looking at New pages, it may be best to just forget about new CSDs and prohibit new page creation altogether, except perhaps by accounts 3 months old or something. I just clicked on about 20 articles in new pages and only 2 should probably be on Wikipedia, both happen to have been added by users since 2005. If the problem is new junk being created—and there is a lot of junk—the solution is not to delete 90% of it (and it will be that high with the CSD proposed here), but to limit article creation; most legitimate articles are already created, and any new ones can be added through WP:AFC or by less recently registered users. —Centrx→talk • 03:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Going back to the original point, surely it's best if user X sees (in MediaWiki:Newarticletext (which comes up whenever you start an article) or somewhere like that) a warning saying "The article will be deleted if no sources are provided." It might even be worth adding it to MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning (the text below the edit box, which currently reads 'Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*.'; perhaps say 'Encyclopedic content must be verifiable and provide sources'). To do that, however, we need a deletion criterion in place (speedy, manadatory AfD closure, DfV, or whatever). To Centrx: The point of a CSD is not to get rid of every bad article, just to filter some obviously bad ones to save time and effort (although I'm sure you already new that), and the reason about 90% of new pages violate the new rule is that the rule doesn't exist (so there isn't any point in complying with it). To Rossami: most experts will be able to cite the facts they add trivially, because if they're well-known information in the field they'll be in the standard reference books. Academic experts will already be used to doing this when writing papers. --ais523 09:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I suggest reading the edit history of MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning and MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning. Uncle G 11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Academic experts may be used to formal citations but not all experts in all fields are academic experts. The power of a wiki is that we draw on the expertise of anyone who wants to volunteer, not just the academics. It doesn't matter how easy you would find compliance with this proposed rule. The relevant question is how many otherwise-excellent contributors would leave the project if you forced them to work in a manner that does not interest them. I believe that it would cost the project more than it would gain.
      Given that we don't have an consensus on this kind of standard even in regular AFD discussions, I don't see any possiblity of gaining consensus that this is an appropriate CSD criterion. Rossami (talk) 04:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, experts are not just professors who have published in academic journals. The computer programmer, the experimental physicist, and even the common graduate student have knowledge in their heads, not all cross-referenced to books. Also, citing sources is tedious; that's not why people do research, and that's not why people add to Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 05:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles

This concept has been mentioned quite a bit in recent discussions on this page. Here's a a specific policy proposal with explanatory text. This is the result of considerable thought toward all the views expressed, and it has already generated quite a bit of positive feedback on the talk page (when it was in my userspace). Please take a look at it and see what you think. We hope it can become an official CSD sometime in the future. Dmcdevit·t 08:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Question about article length

Does the length of an article have any effect on whether it is speedy-able or not?-K37 08:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Only for CSDs A1 and A3. --ais523 08:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for helping me!-K37 08:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Someone can create pagefuls of gibberish or obscene pictures. —Centrx→talk • 09:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Not really, a banned user can re-create a deleted copyright infringement of nonsense that is quite lengthy. It could affect A7, but one can still write a lengthy essay on one's own family or pet; it could affect copyright infringement, but it doesn't matter how long it is if there was one copyright infringing contributor. —Centrx→talk • 09:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for explaining that. Cheers-K37 09:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Talk page deletion

Criterion G8 has been causing confusion, because it states talk pages should not be deleted "if they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere". This exception clause is several years old and stems from the time when deletion was debated on an article talk page, instead of on AFD as we do now. Hence, it is no longer relevant to make this exception, and I think it should be removed since people are using it as a bureaucratic argument to argue for keeping post-deletion arguments ("why is tihs paeg deleted????2??"). (Radiant) 10:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

LOL, I was doing that for a little while until I realized very few other people were paying attention to it. If it causes confusion for a few and is ignored by everyone else, I agree - kill it. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I dunno. When it was made, we weren't salting pages, either, and often, the talk apge of those deleted areas are the only place people can go to possibly discuss trying to get the page back. DRV isn't really doing its job in this regard, and if you go back too soon, you'll get shot down, so I think we should really be encouraging the use of the talk page on these types of articles. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I remember a recent case in which this exception clause was important, but I'm afraid I can't provide a citation. AfDs are contested on the nomination page, but speedy deletion tags may still be reasonably contested on the talk page. Unlike PROD, speedy deletion tags can't simply be removed if contested, so it seems like we need it for this case. Deco 11:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Per the wording of Template:Deletedpage, we should also not delete talk pages of protected deleted pages unless we have to. Kusma (討論) 11:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Not to get technical but Deletepage says that discussion of "restoration" can be left on the talk page. Discussion about the original deletion - which does often resemble Radiant's example - doesn't count as restoration discussion IMHO. It seems like WP:DRV is a better place for restoration discussion anyway. Move restoration discussion from the deletedpage talk page to DRV and then re-delete the talk page - that's what I'd vote for. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • DRV would be a better forum, if only because asking for an article's undeletion on its talk page is unlikely to get any useful response. (Radiant) 12:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I thought the point was to encourage people to colaboratively collect information that they will present at DRV, especially since it is very hard to get a salted page undeleted at DRV, and we don't want people to ask for undeletion there very frequently. If DRV is the only forum we present, we should be nicer to people asking for undeletion of salted articles. Kusma (討論) 12:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • While it might be a good idea to collaboratively collect info there, I am unaware of that actually happening. Generally pages are salted because we really don't want them and have determined that from three or four debates already. We should definitely be nice to people who ask for that on DRV, but such requests tend to be spurious. At any rate, I don't particularly mind people putting such stuff on that talk page, but I think we shouldn't encourage it since it doesn't actually accomplish anything. (Radiant) 12:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
      • If you're unaware of that actually happening, I'm wondering as to what talk pages you've been monitoring for it. And even if it's not happening now, we should be actively encouraging it as opposed to encouraging such users to spam administrative talk pages instead. As long as the talk pages are being used for things that may end up resulting in an improved encyclopedia, this shouldn't even be an issue. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Obviously I do not monitor the talk page of every {{deletedpage}}'s talk page. And, I might add, neither does anybody else, which is why putting undeletion requests there is ultimately pointless. Since you seem to be sure that it is actually happening, I'm sure you could give us some links of that? (Radiant) 13:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Undeletion requests on protected deleted pages do happen and I have seen them get the attention of administrators via the {{editprotected}} template. Of course, usually all that is to do for the admin is to tell the people on the talk page to go to DRV and whether they have an actual chance there. Kusma (討論) 15:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Users who bureaucratically abuse the intent of the clause should be politely corrected. And perhaps the clause could be clarified to more clearly describe those older pages where the deletion discussion itself was archived on the Talk page. But removing the clause completely would risk doing more harm than good. We still need some of those old discussions from time to time. Rossami (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I strongly support this clause; it came up recently on Talk:Monobook.css (a cross-namespace redirect); earlier I had an accidentally-deleted VfD archive (on a talk page) undeleted and moved to a VfD subpage (even though AfD has all the subpages now). I'd get round the abuse above by defining a 'discussion' as being between at least two people and by using libral helpings of IAR. --ais523 17:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Well here is one example that clinched it for me: Talk:GraalOnline. That talk page had two archives and 450 edits, the last 400 or so of which were a ridiculous edit war which involved User:BradPatrick and at least one near WikiSuicide (a guy getting so angry, he did a few things which later cost him an easy adminship) ---- all leading up to the article's deletion. How was it determined that all of that activity was deletable under G8 if this deletion clause were adhered to? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it is of any relevance or not to this discussion, but I thought I'd stop by and mention the category and template I created for using talk pages to request articles: Category:Wikipedia articles requested through talk page creation and {{User:BigNate37/TM/Future article talk page}}. It is, at least somewhat, relevant to CSD G8. BigNate37(T) 18:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

History of G5

Anyone want to save me a trip in the archives and explain the rationale behind G5? Is there a reason we should be deleting otherwise good contributions from banned users? Is it a GFDL issue or something else? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Generally, if a banned user makes constructive contributions without pushing whichever buttons got them banned in the first place, we never know it, right? I've seen G5 used to stop banned users from gaming their ban by interspersing constructive edits with a sort of "you can't make me go away" flaunting of the fact that they're still editing, and still displaying the stalking behavior for which they were banned. When even their constructive edits are removed, and redone by whoever removes it if necessary, it seems to send the right message; at least it seemed pretty effective where I saw it used. Feel free to email me for details, per I'd rather not discuss that person publicly.
I guess G5 is a trump card for whatever kind of ban-gaming someone tries to do. It only really comes up in cases of people gaming a ban - otherwise, how would you know to apply it? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Same as above. WP:BAN ---- I've seen it work quite well. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Though in cases where someone is gaming the system, G5 can disrupt things quite badly when this is not realised until later. An example is when a discussion is started that looks OK, and then a few hours, days, weeks, later, the initiator of the discussion (say, a proposed policy) is exposed as a sockpuppet. G5 deletion can then disrupt good-faith discussion of the proposal, and a dispute can break out over whether to calmly finish the discussion with the new information (that the person who started it was a banned user), or to hysterically scream "we've been trolled" and delete everything. The latter behaviour seems, to me, to play into the hands of the trolls, who probably get a kick out of seeing other people's commeents deleted along with theirs. Which brings me to another point - I've never been clear at what point you can assess whether a troll is a "major" author of a page, or whether it is even productive to try this. Deletion of only the troll's edits I can understand, but not other people's edits as well. And policy pages and article pages edits yes, but don't disrupt talk page discussion by deleting the trolling edits. Just add a template, or something. Carcharoth 23:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It really varies from case to case, as you indicate. Dealing with trolls effectively, just like lots of activities at Wikipedia, requires a diplomatic touch, and it's hard to get it right in every case. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary

Can there be a policy that we can speedy delete dictionary articles? A db template is desperately needed on these "dictionary" articles. Diez2 19:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Discussion is necessary to judge the possibility of expansion, and a db template would result in a lot of stubs being deleted erroneously. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I think you are looking for Template:Copy to Wiktionary. Jkelly 19:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Too subjective, failing the first criterion for speedy deletion proposals. --Sam Blanning(talk) 23:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • We can already speedily delete dictionary articles after it was decided on AFD that they should be transwikied and the transwikefaction is done. That seems sufficient; many dicdefs can be expanded, those that cannot tend to be "lacking in context" or PRODdable. (Radiant) 10:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  • It's worth noting that Wiktionary, as a project, sometimes won't take transwikis if they don't think they're ... dictionaric? It would probably be a good idea, once such entries have been offered to Wiktionary and they refuse, to allow for speedying of content that consists of a concise definition of a term. --Improv 18:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
    • This seems a sensible restriction on such a criterion. Of course, a fair number of the junk dicdefs that turn up usually qualify under some other criterion, such as {{nonsense}}, {{empty}} or hints of A7, so I don't see a need for a more general criterion. That said, expanding the proposed criterion to anything that rightly should be transwikied and is refused by the target would seem reasonable. I've seen this come up in AfDs rather more frequently than you might expect. Ultimately, a decision to transwiki is taken on the basis that we don't want the article (otherwise we wouldn't be shifting it somewhere else) - if we don't want it, and they don't want it, there's no reason to keep it. Chris talk back 18:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Dictdefs should either be expanded or transwikied. Whether or not Wiktionary deletes or rejects it, I would consider A5 to still apply. If they wish to contest the deletion, they should go contest it at Wiktionary, not here. Deco 18:25, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Child pornography

This came up at the administrator's noticeboard, and while one person said we don't need any criterion because it's common sense, another noted the differences between what would be considered child pornography in other nations. Since the servers are located in Florida, we must base our regulations on that, and, while I'm fairly certain we all agree that child pornography is vile, we can't expect anyone who ever comes here to know exactly what constitutes it in terms of age. Thus, what I hope would be uncontroversial, to be added as I9:

Images that constitute child pornography in accordance with Florida and/or United States law.

Hopefully this is a no-brainer, and hopefully we can be mature enough as a community to understand the difference between child pornography and, say, questionable images from a studio film (see Child Bride for an example of something that shouldn't fall under this criteria, but would obviously be a bit controversial). --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. Could it perhaps be even expanded to include any illegal pornography? --Robdurbar 15:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
While I understand the issue here, and sympathise completely, I don't want to rehash the whole Protecting children's privacy thing here but how does this impact on Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors? Chris talk back 17:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I think US Law trumps stuff written on Wikipedia: pages :-) --W.marsh 17:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't answer the question. Will we need to essentially rethink and rewrite that entire section? Chris talk back 17:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
No... the section already says "provided they do not violate any of our existing policies (especially Neutral point of view), nor the law of the U.S. state of Florida, where Wikipedia's servers are hosted." --W.marsh 17:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
So it does. Excuse my stupidity :) Chris talk back 17:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm actually sort of against this. The definition of child pronography has a lot of international variation. For example, drawings of children involved in sex acts or photos of nude children engaged in ordinary, non-sexualized behavior are both usually legal in the US but can be illegal in other major industrialized countries. There is also a lot of subjectivity at the borderline when it comes to deciding what is or is not lascivious or artistic. I don't think any of us are bothered about nuking personal porn collections, but the more borderline cases where an image is being used to illustrate a legitimate encyclopedic topic do benefit from discussion at places like ANI. I'm worried that having a short CSD like this, that doesn't elaborate on what the child pornography laws actually are, will encourage certain people in the community to aggresively apply their own interpretation. Child pornography comes up so infrequently, that I'm somewhat inclined to say that relying on the current combination of NOT, IFD, ANI, and common sense are probably adequate without the need of an explicit CSD. Dragons flight 18:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I oppose the suggestion on the following grounds:
  1. Patently obvious cases are already speedy-deletable as a clear form of vandalism - contributions made with no intent to advance the purposes of the encyclopedia.
  2. Less obvious cases are too subjective to make good speedy-deletion criteria. In the original description of the case, even Jeff is describing scenarios that are on the border and where reasonable admins could disagree. A good speedy-deletion criterion is one where every responsible admin viewing the page will reach the same conclusion.
  3. Admins are not lawyers. Most especially, we are not lawyers trained in the community standards as expressed in Florida. We can not and should not be expected to divine the intent of the law in a specific jurisdiction. That is a function of WP:OFFICE and the Foundation's official counsel.
  4. Finally, as Dragons flight says, this just doesn't come up frequently enough to justify the instruction creep of another criterion on this page. The existing processes (including where necessary WP:IAR) are sufficient.
Rossami (talk) 21:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur entirely, and think that Rossami's #2 above, plus the rarity of occurrence, are the most signficant points against the proposal. --MCB 22:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Because illegal material is not permitted (AFAIK) nor is it needed in writing an encyclopedia, and because we don't get much if any child pornography, this would be unnecessary instruction creep. It does two things: belittles other rarely occuring but seriously illegal content (i.e. see Official Secrets) and it suggests to people that we have a child porn problem. Copyright violations are illegal and would be instruction creep, but those do come up and we do often have copyright problems. BigNate37(T) 22:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the proposal on the grounds that this is simply not a problem. People aren't uploading child pornography. CSD is for diminishing load on other deletion channels, not eliminating legal problems. Let the legal people deal with such things - we're not qualified to interpret the pertinent laws. Deco 00:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd agree with Rossami, especially the first point. (Radiant) 14:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • As a general comment, if we don't need it, I'm glad to not have to expand CSD any further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Responding to one of Rossami's points -- Admins aren't lawyers... but if I saw an image and wasn't sure if it was child porn or not, I would delete is RIGHT AWAY and indefinitely block the uploader right away. Then, I would write to Wikimedia's legal department and let them decide how to proceed -- I know I'm not a lawyer, but I think we can all understand how to play it safe. Though, I suppose, I would do this whether or not there was a criterion on CSD for it. WP:IAR and all that. Mangojuicetalk 15:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur that this is unnecessary. Any cases that do occur can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. We already forbid illegal activity as a blanket statement, right? -- nae'blis 23:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd rather that kiddie porn get lumped into the catch-all "illegal stuff" category than have each and every one be singled out, especially since doing so allows us a certain amount of latitude that an overly-explicit policy would not. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I think we should have a speedy deletion clause that states that anything that is illegal in the country at which the Wikipedia survers currently reside (isn't that the U.S.?) is speedily deleted. This would include child pornography and any other time of information. However, this clause would also need a notification board and a list of black-listed users who use it (cause isn't it like against the law to not report a crime and WP or the admins who delete could get fined if not...). Maybe Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Illegal activity? Cbrown1023 00:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Just a further statement, for deletion debates are totally out of the question for these type of things because it makes it so that more people see the illegal material. Cbrown1023 00:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

A special category of speedy delete will act as a stimulus to a certain kind of vandal. I agree that too much instruction creep can be counter-productive. Just use a general {{delete|Brief reason}} tag. If the image is clearly a violation, it will speedily get deleted. Hu 01:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

However, how often are speedys backlogged. If there was a speedy tag for something such as child pronography, as stated, a legal matter could take priority attention for deletions.Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 01:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that allegedly illegal material should not be resolved via a deletion debate but it also shouldn't be dealt with via this process. Illegal material should be dealt with via WP:OFFICE and the Foundation's counsel. We are not lawyers and should not be trying to make that determination of fact. We can delete because it's inappropriate, editorially unnecessary, etc. but we shouldn't be trying to decide that something is illegal in any one jurisdiction - US or otherwise. Rossami (talk) 01:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

But we decide whether things are illegal everyday: Copyright violations. Cbrown1023 01:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Different animal. Copyright violations can be identified in a binary fashion. It's either a copy or it's not. The source version either has a GFDL compatible license or it does not. There's essentially no judgment or interpretation necessary in the identification of a copyright violation. (Okay, actually there is some judgment when we have to decide if our use qualifies as "fair use" but that's well established precedent that is remarkably consistent around the world. Untrained non-lawyers have a shot at getting that right.) As Jeff described even in his first suggestion, that's not true for this law. This law depends on community standards, etc. and is often considerably more subjective. We have Foundation Counsel for a reason. Let them do their jobs. Rossami (talk) 03:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

No no no, this is a terrible idea. We don't need rules creep, especially ridiculous rules creep like this. We all know that child porn can be deleted on sight; we don't need it encoded into a rule. Doing so just makes us look extremely bad. Others will point to us and say, "They have such a child pornography problem that they need a rule to be able to delete it." --Cyde Weys 04:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I think having the rule could make Wikipedia better as in we have strict policy against child pornography. Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 12:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Besides, we don't want to lump all "illegal stuff" together. This has in the past been used to argue for the deletion of e.g. articles or media on arson, since we all know arson is illegal. (Radiant) 10:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't child porn already fall under CSD G3 (vandalism)? Jesse Viviano 17:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A well-respected user could upload a picture from the internet to illustrate something like the Child pornography article. That is not vandalism, it is just uploading of something illegal. Cbrown1023 18:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, this issue was argued to death for 2 years straight on the lolicon article. It's one of Wikipedia's more legendary debates actually. The outcome of that debate was no consensus. It's too much of a gray area. Consider for example, Image:BlindFaithBlindFaith.jpg or Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg, or the previously mentioned Image:Childbride.jpeg. This has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, blatant child porn is going to be deleted on sight. Having a policy about it, however, is only going to reignite old flame wars and won't accomplish anything productive, IMO. Kaldari 02:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Image confusion (difference between G12 and I6)

I feel like I being daft here but aren't G12 and I6 contradictory? G12 says you can immediately delete any image which has no fair use claim. I6 says you can delete any image which has no fair use claim "seven days after it was uploaded" and are in CAT:NR... It seems like G12 has rendered I6 useless, hasn't it? Maybe I7 and I4 as well - they both require a waiting period while G12 doesn't. CAT:CSD is getting flooded with images recently with everyone rushing to G12. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Too dumb of a question to bother with or did I stump everyone?  ;) —Wknight94 (talk) 03:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
  • For G12, it must meet all the parameters instead of only one of them. We should probably reword and simplify it, though. (Radiant) 09:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
    • The biggest difference in the parameters appears to be G12's "The infringement was introduced at once by a single person rather than created organically on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikipedia mirrors". So then all these new images appearing on CAT:CSD are good to delete - that's the way I'm reading it anyway. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Add "software" to CSD A7

Section title says it all. There's no reason to make an article about a 7th grader's VB project undergo an AFD discussion just because the prod was contested. Simões (talk/contribs) 03:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how many seventh grade students program entire projects in VB in addition to editing at Wikipedia, but I'm guessing those of them that are that vain to post the stuff here are rare enough that a change to CSD would be more overhead than is worth it. Instruction creep is inherently bad, and should only be propogated for good reason. That's why we have the criteria at the top of this page: objective, uncontestable, arises frequently, and non-redundant. I don't think AfD is unduely burdened by software vanity pages. BigNate37(T) 04:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Sure, that was an exaggerated example. There are countless non-notable open and closed source projects out there, though, and articles about them periodically pop up on AfD. Simões (talk/contribs) 04:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, it seems objective and non-redundant, depending of course on how it is worded. What it probably comes down to is how many of them usually hit AfD each month/week/whatever and what amount of those are kept? BigNate37(T) 13:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are the software AfD results for the month of October:

  • October 31: BBCalls [delete]
  • October 30: Olitext [delete], The World of Torr [delete], Vaestro [delete]
  • October 29: Anti-Lamenessing Engine [no consensus]
  • October 28: Elfdust [delete]
  • October 27: Ark 22 [delete], Mario War [delete], Super Mario War [delete], Might and Magic Tribute: Book of Ceth [delete], Super Mario: Blue Twilight DX [no consensus], Metroid Prime 2D [delete], Street Fighter Special Operations [delete], Heroes of Might and Magic 3½: In the Wake of Gods [delete], Swords of Xeen [no consensus], Mario Forever [delete], Jumper (video game) [delete], Hover Tank 3D (redirect), Squarez [delete], Within a Deep Forest [delete], Mmbot [delete], Password Magic [delete]
  • October 26: NitroTracker [delete]
  • October 25: Crash Bandicoot Energon [delete], DEKAF [delete]
  • October 24: Sonic Robo Blast 2 delete), Sonic: Time Attacked [delete], Chibot Ultra Battle [delete]
  • October 23: Mirage Source [delete], Mirage Online [delete], Secrets of Mirage [delete], RPG Toolkit [delete], RPG World Online [delete], RhyDin [delete]
  • October 22: Everyone's A Wally [keep]
  • October 21: Alien Swarm [no consensus], Corpsemania [delete], Oz Deathmatch [delete]
  • October 20: Playerworlds [delete], VbGORE [delete], Tibia (computer game) [nomination withdrawn]
  • October 19:
  • October 18: Creature World [delete], Bookbuddi [delete], AdventureQuest [keep]
  • October 17: BaboViolent 2 [delete], AegeanLinux [delete], ObjectStore [keep]
  • October 16: The Specialists [keep], StarKingdoms [delete]
  • October 15: Twister MP3 [delete], LyricsEMOTION [delete], Pirate King Online [delete]
  • October 14: Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations [no consensus]
  • October 13: Movie Battles [keep], Gloom (game mod) [delete]
  • October 12: CorVision [keep], Voodoo_Chat [delete], Aetolia the Midnight Age [delete], Uskaarj [delete], Tamriel Rebuilt [delete]
  • October 11: Combatant (game) [delete], Percleus [delete]
  • October 10: AEGIS (Ragnarok Online) [keep], Extreme phpBB [delete], Multi Theft Auto [keep], PHPAjaxTags [delete], DisplayConfigX [delete], Hobix [delete]
  • October 9: FCE Ultra [nomination withdrawn], Pivotal eRelationship [delete]
  • October 8: Winchart [delete]
  • October 7: InfiltrationMod [keep], Toba (computing) [delete], AquaZone [delete], Sven Co-op [delete]
  • October 6: Smokeping [delete], Jurabib [delete]
  • October 5: Illarion [delete], Earthsim [delete], Magestorm [keep]
  • October 4: ScWiki [delete], Dwarf Fortress [no consensus]
  • October 3: Zarafa Outlook Sharing [delete], Battalion online [delete]
  • October 2: Basic4gl [delete], ZX2C4 Instant Messenger [delete], Missing Information (Half-Life 2 mod) [delete], Conflict of Arda [delete], Linderdaum Engine [delete]
  • October 1: Rocket Arena [nomination withdrawn], Senuti [keep], Business Desktop Deployment [delete]

All these nominations were for allegedly failing notability criteria. I count 71 deletes, 11 keeps, 6 no consensuses, and 3 nominations withdrawn for a total of 91 nominations. Simões (talk/contribs) 21:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well that's certainly enough (in my books) to justify an addition to the criteria; how do you think it can be worded to avoid deleting those 11 in 71 that merit keeping? BigNate37(T) 02:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Here is the current A7:

Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is controversial or there has been a previous AfD, the article should be nominated for AfD instead. Note: Avoid the word "vanity" in deletion summaries since it may be considered insulting.

Simply adding the word "software" to the list seems sufficient. The likelihood of getting false positives would seem minimal and certainly no more than the other listed article types. With all the articles on the above list that were kept, notability was asserted or, at the very least, suggested. The nominator in each case simply regarded the notability asserted as insufficient for inclusion in Wikipedia, and those involved in the discussion overwhelmingly disagreed. Simões (talk/contribs) 03:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
What about some sort of catch-all term to replace web content with? One that includes include web content and software? BigNate37(T) 04:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I can't think of one at the moment, but I'm still pondering. I see the benefit of avoiding enlarging the list beyond necessity. Simões (talk/contribs) 05:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
"digital content" could be applied to both websites and software. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Personally, the more I stare at A7, the less I like it. Web "content" isn't really clearly defined and doesn't fit in with this otherwise people-oriented criterion. Thinking about it more, digital content would apply to software and in my opinion, be no worse than A7 as it is now, however I'm kinda hung up on the word "content" now... maybe it should just be changed to read "an article on an obscure topic which makes no assertion of the topic's notability". But that's getting off-topic. I see no reason why it shouldn't read "digital content". BigNate37(T) 06:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Web content and software are really two different things. Btw it used to say "webpage" but was expanded a bit to also include things on the web that aren't pages per se. (Radiant) 11:56, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't really have a sense of what most people would think, but "digital content" seems more ambiguous than "web content." If we go with "digital content," should have have a superscripted note for clarification (the note would say something amounting to "defined as any web content or software")? If that is the case, then would it be simpler to just have web content and software listed seperately? Simões (talk/contribs) 19:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Strongly oppose. No need to expand it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
That depends on your definition of "need". We don't need any of the individual CSD criteria, however they all help reduce the load on AfD incrementally and if they were not there AfD would be packed with nominations. Jeff, do you think that this would not help reduce AfD loads, or that the benefits are not great enough to outweigh the potential for mistaken deletion of articles worthy of keeping, or something else? BigNate37(T) 16:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it should matter if it reduces AfD load or not. I'd rather have 50 extra AfDs to save 5 articles, honestly. The benefits of A7 as is is hardly beneficial enough, this addition shows no need to extend that further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, Badlydrawnjeff's intransigent inclusionism aside, are there any reasons why the item shouldn't be added? If not, I think we should go ahead and take it to a vote to see there is sufficient consensus to add "software" (or some variant wording thereof) to CSD A7. Simões (talk/contribs) 19:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I think this needs a lot more discussion, your language about my rationale for opposition notwithstanding. You nominated this on a major American holiday, and I don't know if this made the Pumps. Give it some time, there's obviously no rush. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh, that's right. Happy Thanksgiving then, I think. BigNate37(T) 20:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
You nailed it. I was only gone for 2 days, there are people who won't be checking WP all weekend. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Wait, you mean there are actually people out there that would rather spend time with their family than work on a website with a bunch of total strangers? Pffft, weirdos... EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Scanning the sample above, it looks like 1-2 per day. That's not a tremendous burden on the current discussion-based system. If the rates in the sample above stay true, I'd say that a new speedy-deletion criterion (or expansion of the existing criterion) is not yet necessary. Instruction creep is to be avoided whenever possible. Rossami (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Looking over the list above, it seems to me people should spend some more time examining the option to "merge/redirect". (Radiant) 22:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, and we can ask Cyde to rename it to Articles for Discussion :) BigNate37(T) 22:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • This proposal seems reasonable, provided people use good judgement. --Improv 07:22, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I am also forced to oppose this, not on the grounds that software does not deserve a CSD, but on the grounds that A7 is still far too vague and subjective. Expanding it expands the problem. I've been through the issues before:
    • How explicit does a claim of notability have to be?
    • Should the deleter make a nominal effort to verify lack of notability?
    • Why would an article author with no familiarity with our policies include a claim of notability? Shouldn't they be given an opportunity to do so before their article is deleted?
  • And so on. Deco 12:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to some of the concerns given above, especially avoiding instruction creep. My main motivation for wanting to see this added to the A7 criteria is an appeal to the virtue of consistency: If John Q. Programmer writes an article on himself and his gem of a software project (call it John's Amazing Browser Plugin), it is absurd that John's autobiography will get uncontroversially speedied, but the article on his plugin requires discussion prior to deletion. Instruction creep is somewhat avoidable by merging criteria (in this case, finding a term that captures both "web content" and "software"). As for those who are opposed to A7 (or speedy deletion) in general, I find it problematic that these voices only pop up in discussions having nothing to do with the merits or lack of merits of A7 (or speedy deletion) as such. It seems akin to thread hijacking. Simões (talk/contribs) 19:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Re thread hijacking: my hope is that the people who wish to expand A7 will, as a compromise, be willing to discuss repairing it first, in order to garner additional support. Deco 18:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Some people might not be notable for anything other than their little piece of software. In this case it makes sense to keep the piece of software but not the biography. --WikiSlasher 07:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

G8

Talk pages of articles that do not exist can sometimes be useful. For example, I attempted to start a discussion about redirecting at Talk:Science fact before I redirected it, and have stated at Talk:James Provan that it should be reserved for the Parliament member. --Gray Porpoise 21:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The criterion is mainly to allow for cleaning up when an article is deleted, hence the exception for talk pages containing unlogged deletion discussion. If there is other important discussion on such a talk page then an admin will probably exercise common sense and refrain from deleting it, but I think in the general case it's in the interests of the ease of navigation for many such talk pages to be deleted.
With respect to your examples, in the former case you could use the talk page of the target to propose the redirect (ie. Talk:Science) and in the latter case a stub, or ideally a disambiguation page, would serve as a much better placeholder than a note on the talk page, which will not necessarily be noticed by everyone. --bainer (talk) 02:18, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
If it is a concern that the talk page may be speedy-deleted, you may find {{futureart}} of use. BigNate37(T) 02:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply. --Gray Porpoise 11:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad the actual template is at {{future article talk page}}, because my first reaction was "What, is that the opposite of prior art? -- nae'blis 20:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Redirects in other languages and CSD R3

Does anyone object if I add explicitly the text "This criteria does not apply to redirects in other languages (such as Japanese and Chinese, or any redirect in the category Redirects from alternative languages)." to criteria R3? I've seen at least one user whose edits mostly consisted of tagging Korean-language redirects as {{db-r3}}; some were actually deleted. The advantage of foreign-language redirects is that they increase our articles' Google-ability and benefit those who know the subject only by the foreign language name. Kimchi.sg 14:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely no objection here. We already do this in a lot of place-name articles, and it makes sense not to delete existing redirects (as opposed to a wholesale interlingua effort to create all possible redirects from all possible languages, which would be pure madness). -- nae'blis 15:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
In response to the "all possible redirects in all possible languages" idea - no I ain't in favour of that of course. I suppose a redirect in an alternative language should only exist if the subject is primarily well-known in countries/regions where English is not the only major language. For example Junichiro Koizumi would have a Japanese name redirect, and Tan Kah Kee would get a Chinese name redirect, because people are likely to type in their Japanese and Chinese names respectively in the search box. But whether any other foreign language redirect is inappropriate would be a question for RfD, not CSD to decide since we don't expect all admins to know whether a particular language redirect for a particular subject is a likely search term. :-) Kimchi.sg 15:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Hate to stuff beans, but how do we know the difference between a foreign word for an article's subject and a foreign word for small penis? This could mean a lot of bad redirects will not get deleted because nobody knows what it means. BigNate37(T) 16:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
The name or phrase would have to be mentioned in the target article. I recreated a couple of these Korean redirects tagged by the above user and deleted, after I saw that they referred to names actually mentioned in the target articles. Kimchi.sg 16:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I was hoping for a multilingual list of inciteful slang and expletives, but I guess your solution is just as effective. BigNate37(T) 17:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

G8 of Image talk pages

Why are talk pages of images on commons exceptions to G8? If the image is on commons, the discussion should be on commons, no? I asked about this on the administrator's noticeboard a while back (before I noticed that was listed as an exception here) and the one person who replied agreed they should be deleted unless it questions the licencing of the image. I think all useful content should be merged to the commons talk page and then they should be deleted from the Wikipedia space. VegaDark 05:03, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree because the average Joe with no understanding of Commons-Wikipedia magic will think that this is a Wikipedia image: "If this image is visible from Wikipedia, it's 'on' Wikipedia and hence okay to comment on it from Wikipedia." They won't care the image technically is on another site. I'll oppose this unless perhaps the same "this is a Commons image" notice is added to the image talk as to the image page. Kimchi.sg 05:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Another facet is that editors are far less likely to comment if it involves a seperate logon and username. One time, I created an account to comment on some definitions at Wiktionary... that was an unpleasant experience and as a result I am no longer willing to use other wikis as an extension of my Wikipedia work—the (small) chance of that much hassle all over again puts me off. Requiring discussion to be at commons would exclude users like myself who just can't be bothered to sign up to another wiki. Now, on a more academic note, I disagree on principle that users who are too lazy to sign up should dictate what happens, and I support the exclusion of anon IPs voting in XfDs and participating in the RfA process, so I won't lose sleep over being excluded from discussing commons images. BigNate37(T) 07:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Your concern will be moot when single user login comes into effect. Kimchi.sg 07:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Single signon? Isn't that a sign of the Apocalypse?  ;-P Robert A.West (Talk) 12:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"non-criteria"

Under non criteria, one listed is "Non-notable subjects with their importance asserted". What happens if someone makes an assertion of notability, but it's totally fraudulent (Not even "...was the President of the United States", but something that's easily proven totally false by a legit source. If that is the only thing holding it back from being CSD, does proving it false provide a legit reason to CSD it? 68.39.174.238 03:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Such a patently false claim is vandalism and can be deleted from the page by any person. If, after removing such obvious vandalism, there is no claim to notability, the speedy-deletion case can apply. However, this should only be used for blatantly obvious cases. If there is even the slightest possibility that the claim is true, the page should go to AFD. There is a reason that hoaxes are deliberately excluded from the speedy-deletion list. Rossami (talk) 04:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

CSD it? 68.39.174.238 03:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, as someone wiser than me once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Obviously false claims can generally be seen as vandalism, and thus speedilly deleted if they're the only content of the article. Basically, if the claim was added to an existing article and you'd roll it back without further explanation as vandalism, you can pretty safely delete a new article if all it contains are similar obviously false claims. But if there's any doubt at all, it's no longer obviously false, so PROD or AfD is more appropriate, because truth is often stranger than fiction, if nothing else. --W.marsh 04:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I've often wondered about an almost identical question myself, and I fear that the ostensible conflict betwixt G1 and G3 leaves too much discretion in an area about which we are to be most cautious and in which those acting to tag or delete articles are to act exclusively ministerially. I do not think it all plain that obviously false claims can generally be seen as vandalism; while the pure vandalism to which G3 refers appears to include creating joke or silly articles, G1 provides that patent nonsense does not extend to hoaxes, vandalism, or fictional material, and I think, should G3 be understood to control in such situations, G1 is probably unnecessarily verbose (it serves little purpose, I imagine, for us to say that patent nonsense does not extend to vandalism and then to provide infra that such vandalism is nevertheless speediable). Rossami, notably, correctly observes that hoaxes are deliberately excluded from the criteria for speedy deletion, and I think the reasons underlying exclusion to be correct; I'd note, though, that WP:VAND, which is incorporated by reference in G3, provides that creating joke or hoax articles...is vandalism, ostensibly within the purview of G3's pure vandalism. As this CSD talk thread seems to have borne out, there is a consensus amongst the community for the view that, if process is important anywhere, it is important at CSD, and that we ought to be as clear as possible regarding that which is speediable; what is less clear, though, is whether the community would prefer we expand G1 to cover such verifiably false articles as Joe was elected to serve as the 39th President of the United States and began his term in 1977 upon the expiration of the term of Gerald Ford or that we continue to interpret G1 narrowly and PROD such nonsensical articles as the former. Joe 06:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Cross-namespace Redirects?

A common deletion criteria on RfD is redirects from the mainspace to the Wikipedia: namespace. Would anyone object to the adding of adding the criteria R4 - Redirects from the Main Space to another namespace that do not serve an inherently encyclopedic purpose. ^demon[omg plz] 01:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I would object. I also object to the fact that RFD decides to remove redirects like enwiki-l -> Wikipedia:Mailing lists when the existence of the redirects aids in navigation through the search box (if a redirect exists, hitting "go" takes you right to the target page) and doesn't block any conceivable article that might actually be written under that name. We shouldn't be enforcing arbitrary rules about cross-namespace redirects at the expense of usability of the encyclopedia for users and editors. We already have a CSD for redirects into user space, and I am fine with that, but I am not okay with a CSD about generally removing all (or most) redirects to Wikipedia space. Dragons flight 01:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Dragons flight. The current R2 entry is only for redirects to user or user talk and is mostly used after userfying a newbie's vanity page. Otherwise, I don't see any reason to unilaterally forbid cross-namespace redirects. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I also object. There is not and never has been consensus that all cross-namespace redirects are inherently evil. Rossami (talk) 04:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I have a strenuous objection. Cross-namespace redirects are important for newbies who do not necessarilly know the correct pages for certain functions. I think it would be a great idea to make them all soft directs so that nobody will rely on them, but you have to remember that not everyone knows where to go for some of the basic Wikipedia pages. Also, keep in mind that any of the WP pages are technically in article space, not Wikipedia space. So eliminating all cross-namespace redirects would eliminate those as well. There doesn't need to be a cross-namespace redirect (other than WP shortcuts) for every little essay, but the big pages that a newbie might search for should have them. BigDT 05:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Cross-namespace redirects are bad, and they should be deleted on sight. They break the division between the encyclopedia itself and its "internal" pages. Their existence shows that this is more of a blog than an encyclopedia, so that it's not a problem if these pages intended to be seen only by editors show up as if they were articles. As for the WP: - this is a pseudo-namespace, but could in theory be converted into a real namespace; they are only technically not in a separate namespace. Tizio 08:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Why would it be bad if someone happened into a Wikipedia policy page of some kind? Wouldn't it be useful for a casual reader to know the foundations of the encyclopedia they are reading? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, which is a guideline and part of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, has your answer. BigNate37(T) 17:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
WP:ASR is irrelevant to this discussion. That guideline reads "Avoid self-references within Wikipedia articles ..." (emphasis added). Redirects are not articles. Rossami (talk) 04:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
But they show up on searches in the article namespace. Cross-namespace means they break the barrier between encyclopedia and wiki. Only by blurring the lines between the project and article namespaces can this be changed, and I hope it is not. At any rate, my response is still a valid one to Wknight94's comment. BigNate37(T) 03:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Cross-namespace redirects are nearly always deleted on RfD anyway (the same arguments come up in just about every debate, and they seem to be 'delete' on balance). The major exception (not counting the WP: pseudonamespace), which should be an explicit exception in the CSD, is Transwiki; there's some sort of policy on Meta that this should be a redirect to the transwiki log on every Wikimedia Foundation wiki as far as I remember. --ais523 09:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The opinions of RFDers does not necessarily correspond to that of casual editors and others, though, and it's something that's inherently impossible to gauge. I think a CSD I could get behind would be "removal of a cross-namespace redirect in order to make room for an encyclopedia article or redirect within the article space", but that could be handled as an editorial decision rather than a deletion/recreation. So yes, I object to the wholesale and unmitigated deletion of non-encyclopedic redirects. -- nae'blis 16:34, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
That might be okay if we could ensure that no article could ever accidentally link to another namespace, and that search engines / mirrors / tools don't pick them up. On the other hand, namespaces were created to solve just such problems. --Interiot 04:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I think it's a good idea to have this as a CSD, but it's been longstanding practice to just remove such redirects anyhow. --Improv 16:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • A CSD rule that says any redirect that goes from mainspace to any space other than Wikipedia (preserving any WP links) I could get behind, though there are a few exceptions (like WP:WARN). Perhaps we should just say that "mainspace -> user space" (including "talk -> user talk") redirects can be speedily deleted. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • This has been proposed a number of times. It tends to not gather support because some people believe redirects of unambiguous Wikipedia-related terms to project pages are okay. I don't hold that position, but I don't think there's wide enough support to enact a CSD. Deco 18:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In response to EVula: That already exists in the form of CSD R2. How about a rephrase: Redirects from the Main Space to another namespace that do not serve an inherently encyclopedic purpose, with the exception of shortcuts, such as WP, WT, P, C, etc. ^demon[omg plz] 21:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for the removal of non-shortcut XNRs, but that rephrase of CSD R2 is just as flawed as having a CSD for "divisive" templates—it is too vague. Who decides what is encyclopedic? It is free license to delete shortcuts which would (and have) survived RfDs, and there have been and regretably will again be admins who abuse CSD criteria which are not specific enough to be black and white. Deciding what is inherently encyclopedic would be far more work than simply RfD'ing all the XNRs one can find, which for some is current practice. BigNate37(T) 21:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree that my wording is less than perfect, and I invite someone to improve it. While it is a vague term, I was just trying to get across an idea. I suppose a slightly better way to state it would be "...do not directly contribute to encyclopedic content." While that's still vague, I think it better communicates the idea that I'm trying to get across. ^demon[omg plz] 22:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Hey, sure enough, look at that. I've never speedied redirects, so I hadn't bothered looking at the actual options. I'm pretty satisfied, then. :-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Namespaces exist for a reason, all the namespaces have, or can have abbreviations, like WP or CAT. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 22:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


There's a related discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirect#Cross-namespace redirects. Apparently the page was changed to say that cross-namespace redirects should only be deleted if they could conflict with an encyclopedia article name. Per Improv and others, that seems like a pretty large change in how they're handled. --Interiot 02:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)