Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 26

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Contents

How to speedy an image

Don't know how to deal with this. Shoudiemarzan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) has three times today posted a glowing puff piece about himself under different titles, which have all been speedied. Now he has uploaded "Image:Shoudie.jpg", with the puff piece tacked on as text. How to get rid of it? Can one speedy an image? JohnCD (talk) 16:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

There is a whole section for it: Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Images and media. Not sure what this would fall under though. J-ſtanTalkContribs 16:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yes, you just place the speedy tag on the image description page. The criteria you can use are different for images, though, so it's probably worth reading WP:CSD again before doing so if you aren't used to that. {{db-vandalism}} seems like it may be justified here. --ais523 16:44, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
WP:ANI would probably be a better place to bring something like this up in the future, but easy enough deleted under G11, blatant promotion. The "G" criteria apply in all namespaces, certainly including image namespaces. The spammer was also warned plenty of times, so received some help in finding the exit. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Images of text likely are copyvio even though that same text posted in an article might not be. -- Jreferee t/c 16:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Potential controversy as non-criterion

I seem to remember that at some time in the past there was a statement included in the introduction of this policy that indicated something like "if the deletion is potentially controversial, speedy deletion should not be invoked". Am I remembering correctly? The closest thing to this in the current policy statement is:

These criteria are worded narrowly, so that in most cases reasonable editors will agree what does and does not meet a given criterion. Where reasonable doubt exists, discussion using another method under the deletion policy should occur instead.

This statement refers to the applicability of a CSD criterion to article content and not to a judgment about the perception of the deletion by editors. I can understand not wanting to include a statement that relies heavily on the individual judgment of editors, as this would amount to making the policy more ambiguous. In practice, however, "potential controversy" as a non-criterion is used; for instance, schools are generally not subjected to speedy deletion due to consistent controversy over their deletion. This particular question here arises from a question at WP:AN (see permalink). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sure the phrase you mention did appear there at one point. I think it was largely removed because WP:BLP deletions can be controversial. Libel and copyright issues requiring deletion can be nearly non-negotiable at times so it is problematic to have a clause that says "Never delete if someone might object". Obviously I should be able to delete an image that says "{C) 2007 Corbis" even if it's a "controversial" decision because a bunch of people object for invalid reasons. But beyond copyright and libel issues, I don't think it's a good idea to make controversial speedy deletions, especially if the person objecting is an established user. Speedy deletion today addresses problems that didn't exist (or we didn't think of as existing) when CSD policy began... but beyond those libel/copyright issues, I think it's a good idea to stick to the original spirit of CSD: Uncontroversial deletions. --W.marsh 15:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for CSD I8

Could I request that the following condition be added to the list in I8 (Images available on Commons):

  • Where possible, the original uploader has been informed.

This is common courtesy, but does not always take place. – Tivedshambo (talk) 08:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

  • extending NPA, perhaps we should go a little further and actually start requiring courteous behavior. The easiest sanction would be to say that if its not notified, it does not get deleted. Those who in good faith want to delete things will soon learn to take the time to be polite--or at least devise a bot to do it for them. It is important to improve the image of the encyclopedia as judged by how people see we work here. DGG (talk) 01:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
    No no no no. Can't have mandatory notification, it'll gum up the deletion process completely. A link to or mention of the relevant CSD in the deletion summary is enough. Stifle (talk) 10:48, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
    Sorry, I'll make that clearer. I'm proposing that the uploader should be informed when the {{NowCommons}} tag is added, which will be a week before CSD, not at the time of CSD itself. Provided this has happened, it shouldn't slow down the CSD process itself. – Tivedshambo (talk) 10:58, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
    No problem with that idea. Stifle (talk) 22:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
    I'm in the process of developing a suitable template that can be used to warn users that their images have been copied to Commons, though it may take a few days as I'm busy at present. When it's done, I'll make the change. – Tivedshambo (talk) 09:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Stifle, how would it gum up the process? By increasing the number of inappropriate holdons? Admins would still judge them appropriately. By causing people to remove notices? that's almost as easy to follow up. It would however make clearer to posters of illegitimate articles and images what was happening, which is all to the good, and to posters of possibly legit ones, give an opportunity to rescue, which is even better. Just what =scenario do you envision that we could not deal with. (I note that there is no problem clearing CSD these days--there are now enough admins following it closely. At this moment it contains only 14 pages and 17 articles).DGG (talk) 13:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
That is a rare occurrence. I've seen times when it's run into the hundreds, and having to notify everyone that their article has been speedied, why, and what to do about it just takes too long in those situations to be justifiable. A lot of those accounts make a few throwaway edits to write an autobiographical article and then never login again. Stifle (talk) 22:28, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Javascript fix for G10 deletion summaries

Just thought I'd let people know that I've added a small script to MediaWiki:Sysop.js which will replace any autogenerated deletion summaries for articles tagged with {{db-attack}} or related templates with a boilerplate summary that doesn't include any part of the article's content. This should reduce the chance of offensive or libelous content ending up in the deletion log by accident. Please let me know if you observe any problems. (I've also fixed the code already in Sysop.js so that it should now work on IE again.) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is pretty brilliant... what would people think about doing this for all CSDs? It would make CSD a lot easier to do. --W.marsh 14:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
No! This would make it very difficult to include an excerpt of the article source in the deletion summary at all. Ok, for db-attack as I've manually removed the auto-gen summary many times, but for the others, sometimes the article excerpt containing the template is all that is needed. Splash - tk 15:02, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't know... someone created the page with that excerpt, so they probably didn't know it was speedy deletable. Then someone adds {{db-nn}} and I'm sure that's incomprehensible to most people. So I don't think the current default edit summary is very informative except to experienced editors. I prefer the summary's generated by demon's script, which I use. --W.marsh 16:06, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
There have been complaints in the past that only offering the CSD reason itself does not allow non-admins any chance to guesstimate whether it was correctly deleted or not. An excerpt of the article often does allow them that. Obviously the CSD citation should be included as well. Personally, I do not much like the current bot-like generic reasons as they do remove that possibility from non-admins and hinder or prevent effective patrolling of deletion logs. I would prefer it if they would add their reasons to the start of an excerpt of the content, with the exception of G10 and similar. Splash - tk 16:18, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I've never seen a case where a non-admin found a bad deletion purely because of the auto-quoted excerpt in the deletion log. I know that's the theory, but I've never seen it work in practice. Everyone complaining about a bad speedy deletion on WP:DRV seems to have evidence other than the excerpt from the deletion log. In a perfect world, each admin would write a well-referenced essay for every deletion... but most admins who use the auto-summary generate much less informative deletions than those who use demon's script, in my opinion. They just tack on csd-A7 or something to the end... I'd prefer the bot-like summary, at least it's written in english and links to the relevant policies. --W.marsh 16:49, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
For easy-to-use boilerplate deletion summaries in general, I'd recommend ^demon's excellent CSD AutoReason script. Its only disadvantage is that you still need to pick the right criterion from a drop-down menu; conversely, its major advantage is that you get to pick the right criterion from a drop-down menu, or leave the default summary alone if you prefer. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:17, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
See also bugzilla:9633; the functionality of that script has been added to the software, it's not live just yet, but when the shell-access devs update the live code with that part of the code, it'll be possible to AutoReason without using a script. --ais523 15:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Speedy delete "content" question (copied from here)

Does anyone else think that 2005 Rose Bowl and several similar articles fits WP:CSD#A3 or another WP:SPEEDY reason? -- Jreferee t/c 06:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. There is a small amount of content but the context is clear. There may be an argument for a merge/redirect to Rose Bowl. Catchpole (talk) 13:05, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
another comment For future reference: questions of this type can be taken to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. In my opinion, the article really doesn't fit the WP:CSD process in general because it is a potentially controversial deletion; I believe there used to be a statement to this effect in WP:CSD ... I'll drop a note on the talk page there to ask about that, because I think it should be there. To address the question of specific speedy deletion criteria: It does not fit WP:CSD#A3; I've had at least one conversation in the past (sorry for not putting a link here) about whether articles that consist entirely of transcluded or subst'd templates are covered under A3 and I believe there is a leaning toward the feeling that if the templates are substantially filled in that A3 does not apply; however, I don't think there is is a strong consensus position on this point. In the specific case of 2005 Rose Bowl, the WP:CSD#A1 criterion might apply as there is no contextual statement that would provide information for someone unfamiliar with American Football information on what the content means. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
It technically meets the criteria, but this is an obviously notable topic so I don't think it's very productive to delete the article. Hopefully someone will add prose before too long... --W.marsh 15:19, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Each individual Rose Bowl is notable, and requires a separate article? I don't think so. There's an article on the Rose Bowl, and, if everything in the article can just fit into one short and sweet table in the main article, that's where it should be. This is just as ridiculous as having a separate article for every Pokemon monster, because the information on each Rose Bowl is essentially identical. That said, it doesn't quite seem to meet any speedy criteria. I think that's a better argument for coming up with another speedy criteria than it is for keeping the article or having 30 different AFDs.Kww (talk) 15:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
WP:N dictates only that a topic have substantial coverage by multiple published sources... I'm pretty sure a lot of papers and magazines write about the Rose Bowl every year :-) --W.marsh 16:03, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

At any rate, I have added a prose intro. It's an academic point now, but perhaps we should decide whether A3 does or does not include articles with only an infobox, and no prose to speak of. These are surprisingly common when doing newpage patrol... I usually add {{intromissing}} and move on, but I've seen them get deleted to little controversy sometimes. --W.marsh 16:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

  • A3 does apply, but then there is a question of whether an admin should speedy delete such an article. Probably not, but they don't have to be happy with such a result. I personally have a problem with these no content/one sentence "articles" that meet WP:N. In a sense, the posters merely are reserving article space for a future article that they have no plans of writing and that no one else has expressed an interest in writing. I also think it is wrong to intentionally post stubs without a genuine intent to further improve the article within a reasonable time. There might be good reasons to post stubs/no content/one sentence "articles" that meet WP:N, but I don't think it is appropriate to create them just for the sake of creating them. Too many people engage in such non productive behavior (in my opinion) to start speedy deleting the results. And I'm not going to sent a topic that meets WP:N to AfD. I try to justify the situation by thinking that such posters are only eight years old and this is the best that they have to offer WIkipedia. I'm not going to come down hard on some eight year old and prefer to encourage their participation. -- Jreferee t/c 16:25, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Hi W.marsh. Adding {{intromissing}} sounds like a good solution. I revised CSD A3 to read "For very short articles such as valid stub with context that likely meet WP:N, consider adding {{intromissing}}." -- Jreferee t/c 16:42, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I have restored the original wording of CSD A3, with one modification, for two reasons. First, I think it's important to emphasise that being a stub does not automatically qualify an article for deletion per CSD A3. Second, we should avoid phrasing CSD criteria in such a way that requires interpretation and application of Wikipedia:Notability. Such evaluations are rarely uncontroversial enough for a speedy deletion, in large part because access to sources and willingness to conduct research plays a big role in proving notability.

As for the discussion above ... CSD A3 applies to articles that consist "only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments, and/or images". An article that includes even a semi-complete infobox generally contains enough context (A1) to identify the subject and enough content (A3) to write a one-sentence lead. – Black Falcon (Talk) 19:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, A3 does not apply to articles consisting of only an infobox. It applies to articles with no content. Information in an infobox is certainly content, and in the case of a fully filled out infobox there is a lot more content than a one or two sentence stub. However, such an article is woefully deficient in other ways. We improve such articles; we don't delete them. Regarding the notability of sporting events, nearly any sports match can meet the general notability criteria. Whether we really want to fill Wikipedia out with coverage of every significant event or not, and if not, which events should be included and which should not, is an interesting policy matter. But certainly not the stuff of speedy deletions. Notability gets handled at AfD, not speedy. Wikidemo (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
As long as W.marsh's solution to add {{intromissing}} is in A3 somewhere, I'm happy with the changes. I really like this {{intromissing}} solution. It provides a good compromise between A3 speedy delete and no action in the situations we are discussing. It's better than prod, because it is a way of telling the authors to include some prose with out threat of deletion and it instructions them to include the most important prose (the intro). -- Jreferee t/c 23:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I've often seen cases where a single editor creates numerous infobox-only articles (usually about sportspeople) in quick succession. The tag is a good way of prompting them to add some text in addition to the infobox, both to articles they've already created and to ones they intend to create. – Black Falcon (Talk) 23:20, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the tag. Threatening people with deleting articles they have worked on is an excessively high-handed manner of of persuading them to improve them--especially when the articles deal with subjects that are obviously notable. WP has refined the use of infoboxes to a level where many of them do contain sufficient material, that when repeated in prose would make a fully acceptable stub. An alternative would therefore simply to expand the meaning of WP:STUB to include an adequate infobox. DGG (talk) 23:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that it's a matter of context more than content: the version Jrenfree cites [1] didn't have enough context for me to be able to understand what the article was supposed to be about, beyond guessing that it was probably an American football game of some sort. (In my defence, I'm a Brit for whom terms like "Rose Bowl" mean nothing). So if anything I'd see the question as being whether it fitted A1. However, it's easy enough to follow the links or do a quick Google, work out what a Rose Bowl is and add a sentence of introduction to give it some context, so whether it technically fits A1 or not, deletion isn't the best way to deal with it. There's also {{context}} for cases where there's insufficient context, but still some potentially useful content. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 23:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

All of a sudden, this new policy-creep had become mandatory when considering A3 deletions. Unfortunately, policy cannot effectively mandate particular edits. So I took that out, and returned A3 to its form of long-standing usefulness (even if someone has edited it into near-unparseability at some point). Splash - tk 14:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't care how it is worded, but I think "{{intromissing}}" should be included A3 somewhere to remind the deleting admin of a great middle ground option between A3, prod, no action, etc. -- Jreferee t/c 21:35, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

G8

"Talk pages whose corresponding article does not exist, except for deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere[...]"

I created a page at talk:list of triangle topics informing people of the prototype page at user:DavidCBryant/List of triangle topics. There is an obvious reason why I did that. I propose that this sort of thing be made an exception, for the same reason there's an exception for "deletion discussions not logged elsewhere". Michael Hardy (talk) 03:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Given how rare it is for someone to encounter the talkpage of a non-existent article (except someone specifically seeking out such pages for deletion), I think such messages are more likely to be seen at the talk page of a related article or WikiProjects. – Black Falcon (Talk) 04:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand, page titles like List of triangle topics that A) can reasonably be expected to have an article in the future, and B) already have multiple incoming redlinks (so that there's a nonzero chance someone not connected with a wikiproject or single related article might make it) can benefit from such notes too. On yet a third hand, we should be able to assume administrators have enough common sense not to delete these without codifying every little exception; that a page is a candidate for speedy deletion does not mean it must be speedy deleted, and never has. Administrators who do so should step back and ask themselves how exactly their actions are benefitting the encyclopedia. —Cryptic 06:46, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I've added "or any other talk pages that otherwise serve a valid and useful purpose for the encyclopedia (use common sense)" to the criterion. Technically that's redundant, since one is supposed to use common sense when applying all the criteria, but perhaps an extra reminder could be useful here. In any case, the existing list of specific exceptions to that criterion is already long enough that a "catch-all" clause for the remaining cases may be useful. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:29, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
(use common sense) is, perversely, not a useful exhortation because as anyone will tell you, it's not at all common and reasonable people disagree about what, exactly, was the 'common sense' approach. As you say, it applies to every action anyway and we cannot have people adding 'useful reminders' of that sort at the end of all the other CSDs that people periodically get wrong. Mistakes happen - telling people they have no 'common sense' in such situations is generally only used as an insult. I took it out, and compressed the phrasing more generally too. Splash - tk 14:21, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
In addition to CSD G8, the deleted page may have met CSD R2. -- Jreferee t/c 21:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
It wasn't a redirect and it wasn't in the main namespace. How is R2 relevant? —Cryptic 23:32, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

human name pages

Surnames and given names pages aren't disambig-pages. there are very short articles with little statements. However, in English Wikipedia they look like not targets of speedy deletion. Could you tell me thats reason?--Ræv (talk) 22:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Because the relevant criterion is this one which hinges on no context. Little content is not particularly important from a speedy deletion point of view. If you can understand what it is talking about reasonably well, then it is not a candidate for deletion on the grounds that it is very short. The fact that you know it is a human (sur)name and it presumably contains some links to famous people with it, means that you know what it is and it probably contains minimally enough stuff that it is not merely "[This] is a surname". (It may be deletable for some other reason, however). Many human name pages where the {{hndis}} tag, marking them as disambig pages, however. Splash - tk 23:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Where to start with episodes?

I foresee a massive, uphill, bloody battle, but they always begin with one proposal. If I were to try to get WP to adopt an objective standard for television episode articles, where would I start? Ideally, I'd like to end up with a new speedy criterion: "Article serves to summarize a television episode, and does not assert that the episode was a premiere, a finale, or nominated for a widely-recognized award such as an Emmy or a Hugo."Kww (talk) 12:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

just to clarify ... I fully recognize that they cannot be speedily deleted todayKww (talk) 14:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
CSD is the wrong place to try to get in controversial changes to policy... CSD is just for uncontroversial deletions, or deletions deemed necessary due to legal reasons (copyright, libel). --W.marsh 14:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Which is why I asked where to start, because I know it's not here.Kww (talk) 15:10, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Aside from a major rewrite of WP:V to allow, among other things, deletion of some current featured articles (see below), there really is no way your proposal could work. This is the place to start but it's not a realistic proposal. --W.marsh 15:12, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I think it would be best to first explain how a summary of a typical episode is not encyclopedic. I lean towards the following reasoning; people who summarize episodes are motivated by their love of the show to want to share their detailed, intimate knowledge, gleaned by watching the show over and over again, with the world. What they don't get is that they are parasitizing off of the creativity of the writers, actors and directors, and the rest of us have an objection to that. Step two would be to bring a few really crummy articles to AfD after prodding fails and get the community to agree they should be deleted. Step three would be to bring nicely written articles on obscure episodes to AfD and get them deleted. Step four would be to nominate well written but non-notable articles on well known and popular shows to AfD and have them be deleted. Step five would be to use the new consensus that individual episode articles are generally non-notable to advance an argument that they be speedy-deletable. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, this would be a terrible idea... even the deletionist-owned WP:FICT calls for merger/redirection in most cases and deletion in rare cases. Just because it's hard to merge/redirect the stuff (due to it being wildly unpopular except with a small cadre of people) doesn't mean you can just delete it as a nuclear option. --W.marsh 14:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Episode articles should be redirected, not deleted (rarely merged, as most of the times there is nothing to merge), unless it gets really ridiculous (if we had the article Neighbours Ep. 3153, I would support deletion). For those cases where deletion is necessary, AfD will do. Speedy deletion is not a good idea, because "X is an episode of Y" is an assertion of notability, albeit one that in many cases can not be expanded upon due to lack of sources. While I think that 9% 99% of these articles shouldn't have been created in the first place, speedy deleting them will do more harm than good. Fram (talk) 14:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I have to ask - why 9% or is that just a typo? Davewild (talk) 14:34, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Oops... Corrected to 99%, thanks. Fram (talk) 15:14, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
My 2 cents on the question of where you would start: you would start with Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Alternatively, you would create a proposal page in your user space, slap an RFC on it and note at VP that it exists. Since you propose to make this a CSD category, you might also leave a pointer to the discussion here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Oppose - proposal trying to undermine WP:EPISODE and WP:FICT. Look at You Only Move Twice: not a premiere, not a finale, not award-winning. Your proposal would make a featured article eligible for speedy deletion. Will (talk) 14:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The reason this would be an uphill battle is that it's a very bad idea - although I don't like articles about minor episodes that consist mostly of plot summary and credits, and think many of them belong on wikis specific to the show, the criteria suggested here are much too wide, and merging together with severe condensing is usually the most appropriate route. I appreciate the attempt to construct objective criteria, but you'd do better to start off on the narrow end - articles that should definitely be deleted/merged - and you'd do better to suggest this in the context of WP:EPISODE and WP:FICT. Dcoetzee 19:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

New additon

Does this page really need this new paragraph?. It just seems to me a cumbersome IAR-based disclaimer. If it's felt that this is really needed, I think it should just be replaced with something more straightforward like: Speedy deletions may be declined by administrators if doing so could undermine the goal of improving Wikipedia. Please consider this possibility, and ignore this rule if necessary. Someguy1221 21:12, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Honestly I think what that paragraph describes is clearly implied by the very first sentence of the policy: "The speedy deletion policy specifies the limited cases where administrators may delete Wikipedia pages or media without discussion." may is the operative word there. I would not mind removing this whole paragraph in question. --W.marsh 03:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I think it bears saying / repeating because many people get so involved in the process that they forget the goal. But it definitely was wordy. I edited to make it shorter and more direct. Hope this helps.Wikidemo 15:48, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
There is really no need for standalone ... well ... what was it?... trumpeting? on a deletion policy page. So I took the useful half of the addition and put it somewhere useful, simultaneously dispensing with the rest. In general, we should encourage the removal of policy-cruft that people tend to add as an attempt at 'solving' the 'problem' of one editor/admin getting a speedy wrong. (Remember after all that people never read more of the instructions for anything than they absolutely must). Splash - tk 23:27, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

No indication of importance/significance

In my opinion, this should never be a criteria for speedy deletion. It's used much too liberally, especially considering that what is considered important is highly subjective. I don't think you can provide encyclopedic content if you go around deleting information that is considered unimportant without a second thought. If articles like this were nominated for deletion in the non speedy way (lol) there would be a realistic opportunity for somebody to defend the article or, where possible, merge the information into another article. --Karlww (contribs|talk) 15:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

There are some bad A7 deletions made, but that's because people misapply the criteria. It would be a waste of time to AFD articles like "Godmonster is a new band formed 11/22/07 which hopes to play its first show sometime in December". I mean, as someone who does CSD every day, that's closer to the average A7 deletion than an article that actually asserts some kind of importance. A7 really isn't that bad when applied carefully... the problem is some admins seem to think it means any article that doesn't meet WP:N can be speedy deleted. But the fact that they get it wrong doesn't mean the rule is bad. --W.marsh 16:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I would agree that with W.marsh that A7, if applied correctly would not be a problem. The problem comes when taggers and admins start judging claims to notability. That is a job that should be done by many eyes, PROD and AFD work fairly well for that. However there are way too many "Bob is a guy" type articles made for them all to go to PROD or AfD. A7 is needed, if used correctly. I say this as an admin who interprets A7 literally. Dsmdgold (talk) 16:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the above comments. A7 is often misapplied and should not be used to delete articles on, say, TV actors, published authors or bands who have released real albums, even if it's not immediately obvious that they meet WP:BIO or WP:BAND, as it's quite likely that many of these articles could be improved. However, it is necessary to have the clause to deal with the many articles we get from people who confuse Wikipedia with MySpace, and write articles like "John Smith is a student at Smalltown High School. He likes football, supports Manchester United and is really cool." There's no way that an article like that could ever be turned into a good one, and we get literally dozens, if not hundreds, of them every day. If you doubt me, spend some time looking at new pages, especially at a time of day when American children are at school. If all these articles had to go through AFD they would take up a phenomenal amount of editor time, and more or less swamp the process, so a mechanism for dealing with them quickly is necessary. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 17:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I do agree that this is the problem, but I think the rule needs some kind of change. Perhaps a rewrite, something along the lines of "No significance. Any article that adds no value to Wikipedia due to the triviality of the information provided." Maybe that doesn't work, but I'm just trying to reword it so that it isn't misused. <Karlww (contribs|talk) 18:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
The present wording is pretty clear and even states prohibitions to avoid misinterpretation. The problem of misapplication is present, but I think is often overstated. Squeaky wheel objections figure prominently. Hidden is the vast numbers of articles that are properly deleted. We also see a fair amount of objections for A7 deletions that were properly done. Those objection add to the impression of a larger problem than I think is present. Ultimately, any process that requires some thought to properly follow is going to be misapplied by some. I think if anything must be fixed, someone must take the time to study a sufficiently large statistical sample of deleted articles over a time periods to find which admins commonly misapply the criteria and approach them directly about the issue.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:05, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
No... "Any article that adds no value to Wikipedia due to the triviality of the information provided" is way too subjective. At least "assertion of importance" sets a relatively low and reasonable standard for articles to meet... there are several admins who would consider anything Britannica doesn't have an article to be a subject of "no value" due to it's triviality. In practice, the current wording of A7 works, so we should keep it. The vast majority of articles deleted under it do need to be deleted, most of us could agree. The bad deletions can be taken to WP:DRV and it seems like the bad ones usually are overturned. People have long been very paranoid about A7 being in imminent danger of ruining Wikipedia... but day-in, day-out it seems to work pretty well.
The one thing I think we need to get better at is being willing to overturn our A7 deletions and take it to AFD if a third-party, especially an established one or an admin, objects for a coherent reason. We sometimes see admins who make the bad A7 deletions stubbornly refuse to reverse themselves, even with multiple admins saying they were in the wrong, and that A7 does indeed call for AFD in controversial cases. But the underlying problem here too is that we'll never write a rule some people won't choose to ignore or simply not understand. --W.marsh 20:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
A7 works well in practice. (Especially when the deleting admin isn't the tagging editor— but that's another subject). The rare cases when A7 has been misapplied are trivially brought to DRV (for much faster resolution than an AfD). There is a problem if a deleting admin refuses to reconsider and reverse when new information comes to light (or a different interpretation) but that's a problem with the admin, not the rule! — Coren (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
A7 works well in practice if the admins are careful; the less careful admins are not usually present at the discussion on this page, and perhaps what is needed is a greater willingness to bring their mistakes to attention. As for ones that are declined but deletable anyway, most people just take them to afd and they go fast enough.DGG (talk) 03:03, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Strengthening the wording on this page might be helpful, but people who already regularly new page-patrol probably don't check this page very often. I've had some good experiences talking to people who over-apply A7. Granted, I haven't double checked those people's tagging to see if they're applying what we talked about, but they certainly seem to understand it after a pretty brief explanation. Natalie 16:35, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that A1 and A7 should be removed as speedy deletion criteria, because their non-objectivity means there's just too much potential for misuse – and we are seeing a lot of misuse. But I think it would be okay to use them as justification for a WP:PROD template. Sarsaparilla (talk) 21:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Take abuse to WP:DRV and other usual channels. Any rule can be widely abused if no one calls out abusers on it. I notice that most people who make bad deletions stop if they get challenged frequently. Unfortunately we just have to keep vigilant. A few bad deletions shouldn't make things harder on people who want to apply a good rule correctly. --W.marsh 22:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A7 interpretation

Hi, I'm not sure where the best place to put it...but I'm a new admin, and I could use some guidance. I denied speedy requests on How to Break Up a Band and The Fisher/McDonald Hydrogen theory on the basis that they did not meet A7 criteria – they were not a person, band, group, corporation, or web content. Were these rightfully deleted and I was incorrect? hbdragon88 08:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Hot question there. :/ I'm not going to address the appropriateness of those two specific deletions, since the place to discuss that is deletion review. But I will say that I personally apply deletion criteria strictly to the best of my ability and do not use A7 to delete articles that are excluded per this policy or Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations. The CSD policy says, plainly enough, "There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." Nevertheless, some administrators obviously do. I once approached an admin who seemed to me to be a bit liberal in his interpretation of this criterion, and I got a very polite "oops" from him. At that point, I was a very new admin myself, and I was not yet aware that admins might intentionally stretch these criteria. :) I don't know if they are doing so under IAR or what. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
You were correct in both cases. I would have done the same thing, decline and PROD. The first was a crystal ball violation, but the band involved seems the mmet WP:MUSIC and we have an article on one of their released albums. The second seemed to OR, but that is most decidedly not a speedy criterion. I would bring it up with the deleting admins, but as it unlikely that the first article will be kept before the album is released and that the second will not be kept at all in the long run, it might not be worth taking them to deletion review, unless you want to make the point that A7 should be limited. Dsmdgold 16:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I think you acted correctly, as I don't feel that CSD A7 applied to either case. Although it's virtually certain that the articles wouldn't have survived {{prod}} or AFD, albums and theories are not covered by A7; specifically, repeated discussions have shown that there is no consensus to add albums and original theories to the list of articles covered by the criterion. I personally wouldn't have speedied the articles per A7, nor would I have speedied articles whose speedy deletion had previously been contested in good faith by someone other than the original author (while it's not mandatory, I think it should be practicsed, except in cases of G10 and G12), but still I can't bring myself to say that the deletions were "wrong". They were outside the letter of the CSD policy, and possibly even outside (some of) its spirit (note the part about previously contested speedy deletion), but they weren't wrong. (One could say that they cited an inapplicable deletion rationale, but that's a slightly different issue... .)
I would recommend against listing the articles at WP:DRV, as that should be used primarily when there is reason to think that the articles might or ought to be kept. I've notified the two deleting admins of this discussion; they may or may not wish to comment, but they might find it of interest. . – Black Falcon (Talk) 19:02, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I have undeleted How to Break Up a Band since A7 obviously does not apply to albums in the first place. --W.marsh 20:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
hbdragon, you were right in both cases. Speedy criteria are regularly stretched, but it is a bad impulse to stretch them farther than the wording reasonably accommodates. People, I think, often think they are saving the community some trouble when they do this, but it has the potential to backfire into a useless discussion, usually still ending in the same result. Mangojuicetalk 20:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A7 explanation (duplicated word)

When an article is deleted under A7, the explanation currently displays as "CSD A7: Article does does not indicate why its subject is important or significant..." The word "does" is repeated. Could someone who knows how please fix this? Thanks. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it. The text can be found at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown. Mangojuicetalk 04:26, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Overuse of A1

Seems to me that A1 is frequently quoted as a reason for speedy deletion, even when it doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps it should be specified to cover a narrower category of articles, because this is reaching the point of abuse. Frequently authors stub a new page after creating it, and it is Speedied for this reason. Maybe this guideline needs some editing or we need a new one to cover these articles. Just throwing that out there. Wikilost 02:10, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to agree that sometimes articles get atagged as A1 (or A3) that sholdn't be. My standard is that if after reading the article, especially on a topic I', not familiar with, I don't say "What the hell was that?", then its not an A1, although it may fit one of the other criteria. Dsmdgold 03:12, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I think we might need a clearer reminder that stubs are valid on WP. But the language on the tag is clear enough, and I cant think of what to say that would be stronger. that eds. don't use it right is not surprising, but I suppose it will be a matter of educating the hopefully few admins. who mistakenly delete on that basis. DGG (talk) 03:40, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I have a similar standard to Dsmdgold, the way I think of it is that after reading a short article, if I could say "This article is about a book" or a movie or a senator or whatever, then there's enough context. If a reasonable editor could read the article and not know if it was talking about a beach or a space alien or what, there is probably a serious context problem. This brings us to the spirit of the traditional CSDs, which is to describe articles with no content that would be useful in a hypothetical good article on the subject. Thus, in articles with so little context a reasonable reader can't figure out what the article is about just by reading it,f a total rewrite would be needed, so there's nothing to save, and deletion is called for.
At any rate, if the current A1 wording could be improved, great. If other admins use variations on the "test" mentioned, maybe that could be put into easily understood language. A1 does seem to generate a lot of bad deletions, I think it usually comes down to taggers being more worried about the article being short than it containing enough context. Although not optimal, it's still okay for articles to start out as 1-sentence stubs, if they have sufficient context and assert importance. --W.marsh 03:50, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Suggest rewording to: "Very short articles with not enough context to make sense of their statements." Tyrenius 03:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
If you can't make sense of the statements, then it's pretty close to G1. I often see articles that are on the borderline between stub and A1, like "Johnson School is a school in Rockville Maryland". Something like that doesn't add much value to Wikipedia, though the author should probably be given more than a few moments to expand it.--Kubigula (talk) 04:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
"Very short articles with insufficient context to identify the subject the article"? Someguy1221 11:00, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I think that's getting closer. The problem is when there's so little context that you're unsure what the article is about. "Richard made a lot of enemies", for example, could be an attempt to start an article on Richard Nixon but it's not a very useful substub due to lack of context. --W.marsh 15:11, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I like that definition. Enough context to know what it is. Although if an article is really, really short (say, the example "Johnson School is a school in Rockville Maryland") there's no real harm in deleting it because it's not adding anything to the encyclopedia as is, and if someone really wants to expand it and doesn't get a "hangon" tag in time, we've only cost them a couple minutes of work and they can always just recreate it. Maybe leave a friendly note on the page to that effect in case they're newbies so they don't get discouraged. Wikidemo 15:54, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I would probably treat the "Johnson School" example as A1, though ideally, IMO, we'd leave it up for at least an hour to see if the author is still working on it.--Kubigula (talk) 16:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the wording of the criterion to a version similar to the one offered by Someguy1221. I think Someguy's version effectively clarifies the meaning of CSD A1, and it also seems to have support ... let's see if it sticks. – Black Falcon (Talk) 06:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Over on this island of mine, we have pub-quizzes. You go along, pay £1 each, form a team with friends and then (fail to) answer the rather obscure questions the publican asks. The team with either (a) the best obscure knowledge or (b) the least scruples in using Wikipedia to cheat wins. So for me 'A1' is asking "could you, if given the text of the article phrased as a question in a pub quiz, reply with the title as the answer". The pub-quiz test. Disclaimer: I have never been on the winning team in a pub quiz.Splash - tk 23:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've only been an admin for about 31 hours, and already I've denied at least three articles tagged for A1. I tried that devious trick a few months ago to get a Days of Our Lives actor biography deleted, though. hbdragon88 04:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Very nice Splash, but that test isn't frequently applied. For instance, I created a stub with 3 sentences about a valid topic and citing a reliable source. Someone ProD'd me under A1. Thankfully, Another admin saved my article, but this is rarely the case. Is there any way to enforce that this policy is used correctly? I've also seen articles where a new contributor clearly stated their intent to expand the article, but this was ignored, and the article deleted. There needs to be some sort of enforcement. Maybe someone more experienced than me could create a bot? Wikilost 04:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
What could a bot realistically do about this? Someguy1221 04:40, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking maybe a bot to detect an authors intent to expand the article. It could look for either a stub tag or some keywords such as: "STILL IN PROGRESS" Things like that.Wikilost 18:06, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Only if the bot just tells them how to work on draft pages in their userspace/sandbox. We should not have articles that say "More to come soon!" since A) most of the time nothing more ever comes and B) promises of content do not count as content. The most common objection to deletion is "But I was going to work on the article", that's not really useful unless you explain how that work would help the article meet inclusion criteria. Ultimately, people who don't have time to create an article that stands on it's own need to learn to create drafts outside of the article space. --W.marsh 19:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Another "test" might be the basic journalism questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If you're asking any of these questions after reading an article, the article needs a lot of work. If the reader is asking most or all of those questions, it's probably an A1 deletion. --W.marsh 15:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Why couldn't the bot redirect them to some of the articles on how to write an article, and/or inform the that in about 24 hours the article will, if not expanded, be deleted? And if you're saying we can't have stubs, well, we'll be missing quite a few pages. As long as a page has valid content, even short content, it has the potential to be useful. Wikilost 02:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Useful is not a retention criterion. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikilost, "stub" is not a speedy deletion criterion. CSD A1 is generally reserved for cases where the content of a page is not useful, because it's not possible to determine the article's subject so that the article may be reviewed, improved, or expanded. – Black Falcon (Talk) 07:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, although useful is not a retention criterion, we are not discussing retention criteria, we are discussing speedy deletion criteria. Not all articles that fail to meet all of the retention criteria are eligible speedy deletion. Dsmdgold (talk) 15:38, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

That's the point I was attempting to make, a stub is not a SD. However, many admins seem to treat this as if it were so. At the very least, we ought to add a line somewhere to the policy. I don't know why, but while some pages are garbage or irrelevant, some are stubs, and should be given the chance to expand. Nearly every new page that is not requested must be run through the gauntlet of a deletion challenge. New editors often don't know the rules or style on Wikipedia, and subsequently lose the argument, even if the article could be expanded or edited to be comply with guidelines. Just flat deleting an article with can really turn people off of Wikipedia. Wikilost (talk) 05:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

A7 expansion of encompassed topics

This post is, perhaps, a kind of branch-off of a post a few threads back, but anyway, I'll get on with it. Currently, the topic matters which are formally encompassed by this criterion are very specific and relatively limited, when one considers the fact that "A7" is pretty much the most-used and predominant CSD criterion relating to notability, and lack thereof. I propose that we need to add "...or subject matter" to the A7 description, and formally broaden the scope of this criterion in order to, and in an attempt to, embrace and recognise both the large number of possibly non-notable subject matters that

  1. Should, by reasonable logic based on a combination of, and the general trends, of Wikipedia policy.
  2. Do not fit the current description of band, company, group, person, organisation, or website,

and the fact that A7 is pretty much the only notability criterion, for the article namespace, that allows speedy removal of non-notable articles, and how this affects, and frequently impairs, an admin's ability to speedily delete articles while conforming to the corresponding criteria or sub-criteria. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


It's been discussed many times before and always rejected; see, for example, here. The problem is that there are a large number of areas, such as scientific concepts, for which a claim of notability may not be obvious to the non specialist, and a number of other areas, such as countries, for which a specifit assertion of importance is unnecessary, as all subjects of that class are notable. However, there's no clear consensus on exactly where these boundaries lie, and allowing individual admins to make too many individual judgements is a recipie for a great deal of aggravation at DRV. For example, which of the following contain a claim of importance?

  • The Indian Ocean is an expanse of water between Africa, Asia and Australia
  • Sodium is a metallic chemical element with the atomic number of 11 and atomic mass of 23.
  • Xanthophyllum sulphureum is a species of plant in the Polygalaceae family.
  • Oxidation is a chemical process by which an atom, ion or molecules loses electrons.

None of the above contain an explicit assertion of notability, yet I would venture that all are notable to a greater or lesser extent, all are encyclopaedic, and certainly none of them would be good speedy candidates.

By contrast, the currently speediable subject areas have a few things in common: (a) there are a large number of obviously non-notable examples of these subjects, so an article on one of these subjects needs to indicate why it is more important than a generic person, band, company or website, (b) many users create articles on obviously non-notable people, companies, bands and websites anyway, either because they confuse Wikipedia with MySpace, or just out of shameless self-promotion and (c) it should be reasonably obvious to the average person what is the difference between a completely unimportant example of one of these subjects (Joe Bloggs is a pupil at Somewhere High School) and one which is at least potentially encyclopaedic (Joe Bloggs is a professor of economics at Harvard). I think that any new classes of articles to be added to A7 should also meet these criteria. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 10:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

No, there are a good many things that notability does not apply to. There is no meaningful, unified scale of the concept on which everything can be judged, viz. Iain99's examples. The word 'notable' is overmisabused rather in that respect. We don't have an article on sodium because it's 'notable' per se. We have an article because the topic is of encyclopedic relevance. Otoh, we have an article on Facebook because it has emerged from the mass of websites to become notable among them. Since there is no universal scale against which to judge whether a particular statement is an indication of notability or not, not all articles can be subject to this speedy deletion criterion. Furthermore, this really would make deletion-through-ignorance significantly more likely as in the plant example above. Splash - tk 19:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, I would disagree that there is anything wrong in admins not being able to legitimately delete anything they personally think doesn't make the grade. We have AfD and consensus for a good reason, and A7 serves partly to mandate that this two things be respected. Admins are not lone rangers, after all. Splash - tk 19:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
How about a minor expansion? I have never understood why bands are subject to A7, but not albums or songs, and why companies are subject, but not products or brands. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:39, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
It's partly historical (a proposal to include bands when A7 was created failed; later work therefore focussed on bands) and partly necessity: less so now, but a while back AfD was facing large numbers of band-vanity articles ('bandity' as it was known). It was not facing large numbers of pointless albums or songs, and by way of being restrictive with a shoot-on-sight licence, they are not included. Same for companies: AfD deals with many of those, but far fewer individual products and probably fewer still brands. Basically, there's no need to speedy that of which we receive relatively small amounts because a sanity check via PROD or AfD is worthwhile as a rule. Splash - tk 21:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
companies actually pose a good deal of a problem there--the criteria are not very clear, and I often change such tags to G11 spam. But the sort of a company meant by A7 is a corner store. Products and bands have given problems at Afd--what one person thinks it obviously not notable is often strongly contested by others, and many such articles are kept. They too are good examples of where more than one or two people to look at it helps. How can an American and a Canadian even together recognize what brands might be notable in Australia? -- that's the typical problem. DGG (talk) 20:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and to be more precise on your first point: the underlying assumption is that those [items] that can assert notability will if anyone is making even the most token effort. In reverse, those [items] that do not assert notability do not because they can't. That is the basis for A7. The proposed expansion is disconnected from that for the reasons I set out above, in conjuction with Iain99. Splash - tk 21:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
It has to do mainly with the criteria at the top of this page: the subject areas must be subject areas which average people with no specialized knowledge can recognize a possibly implicit assertion of notability in, and it must be something that can't be handled through other processes due to sheer volume. Everything that feasibly can be driven through AfD should be - there's no prepondance of people creating articles on their favourite flavour of jello. Dcoetzee 03:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
To add my two cents, I don't think that the A7 list should be expanded. As it stands there are areas in which I am not comfortable deleting already. I, as a rule, won't delete companies or most web content because the criteria are too subjective. Dsmdgold (talk) 13:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 should, quite simply, read "An article which does not assert the importance or significance of the subject in terms understandable by the average non-expert." Even if the subject is notable, one of the very, very basic questions any piece of writing must answer is "Why should I care?". "Anyone can edit" doesn't and shouldn't mean "we have no minimum standards", and those standards need to get higher. If those one-sentence examples above got put up, they're worthless anyway. A "stub" should contain, at minimum, a brief description of the topic, including its significance in layman's terms ("Why should I care?"), and one independent source. (In some cases, the simple fact of being a basic chemical element, an ocean, or a recognized species might be sufficient assertion of significance, but the vast majority of our articles are not on a chemical element, an ocean, or an officially-classified species.) People who write sourceless one-liners should be told (and shown, by use of the delete button), kindly but firmly, that this is not acceptable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:14, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
The problem with that wording is that it would, in my view, include nearly every TV episode article. That would be a good thing, but not something to accidentally include in a rewording of A7.Kww (talk) 13:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
The problem I have with this idea is that many times a non-expert is unable to to identify an assertion of notability. Example, any work by a winner of the Noble prize for literature (along with several other prizes) has an assertion of notability. But unless you follow want to claim "East of Eden is novel by John Steinbeck." does not have an assertion of notability and can therefore be speedy deleted, but "East of Eden is a novel by Noble laureate, John Steinbeck." does and is therefor safe from speedy deletion, this will not work. Dsmdgold (talk) 14:02, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Applicability of multiple speedy deletion criteria

Many articles fit multiple speedy deletion criteria. Pages tagged with G10 would also fit A7 in most cases, and possibly A3.

But I was thinking, what could be the greatest number of speedy criteria that could be validly applied to a single page at once?

I came up with

'My (worst enemy) is a (generic insult) yeah he is the worst guy in the world see this here <nowiki></nowiki>Bold text yeah look at me my website is here'

as an example of a page, in the article namespace, that could fit the following criteria:

  • G1 - nonsense
  • G2 - test page (because of the Bold text and <nowiki></nowiki>)
  • G3 - vandalism
  • G4 - recreation of deleted material (someone in good faith nominated this for articles for deletion without knowing about the speedily deletion criteria, and was deleted then recreated)
  • G5 - banned user (possible but unlikely)
  • G7 - author requests deletion (again possible but unlikely that they would add db-author to the top)
  • G10 - attack
  • G11 - advertising (where the part after the Bold text is advertising for the author's website)
  • G12 - copyright violation (where the generic insult against the worst enemy of the author has been copied from that website linked)
  • A1 - little or no context
  • A7 - unremarkable people, groups, companies, web content

This extreme example just goes to show how often these overlap. G1 often overlaps with G3 and/or A1, and G10 often overlaps with G3 and A7. G11 often overlaps with G12. It just goes to show that we probably don't need any more speedy deletion criteria right now given the wide applicability of these. The only one that I think could be added is an extension of A7 towards WP:NFT things that don't precisely fit it - what are your thoughts on that last idea?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 16:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

What about a criterion for an article that asserts non-notability? Hut 8.5 17:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
it might be wrong--I've actually seen that on such things in school articles. People say all sorts of weird things on such articles, which is why schools (and churches and similar institutions) are not one of the types for A7. DGG (talk) 04:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Uh, yes they are, they're an organization. I've certainly A7'd such before, and never been challenged. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea of a criterion for something that asserts non-notability, as an extension of A7, for the WP:NFT stuff.-h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:02, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Why worry about overlap? Just pick the category you're most certain is uncontroversial and get the thing shot down. --Alvestrand (talk) 19:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Use of A5 for non-dictionary transwikis

I came across The Pasture, which should be deleted as it is a copy of the poem available on wikisource. I was going to speedy delete it per A5 (transiki'd articles), but that says that it is only appropriate for transwikis to wiktionary, not wikisource (except for AFD discussions). Am I right that there is no CSD criterion that would apply for this? Rigadoun (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. This happened to me once before, and it was deleted due to an expired PROD. Maybe PROD it for now, until we see more consensus to change it. I agree that it shouldn't only be Wiktionary or AfD based arguments. J-ſtanTalkContribs 20:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
It is already prodded (I discovered it reviewing prods), I was just surprised it wasn't a speedy deletion candidate. Rigadoun (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, it really should be changed. J-ſtanTalkContribs 21:14, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

G3

I think it's worth reminding people that G3 (vandalism) covers insertion of clear and obvious misinformation as well. Comments on the following wordings?

  1. (Note that the definition of vandalism also covers pure, blatant and obvious hoaxes and misinformation articles)
  2. (Note that the definition of vandalism also covers pure, blatant and obvious misinformation articles)
  3. (Note that the definition of vandalism also covers pure, blatant and obvious misinformation articles, including certain hoaxes)

I'm hoping to see a good balance, since we want to neither give WP:BEANS, nor encourage deletion of possibly valid articles and notable hoaxes by accident. But clarifying that articles which are basically just obvious misinformation do count as vandalism, and can be speedied, would probably be useful.

Thoughts? FT2 (Talk | email) 14:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Support 1 or 2, but not 3. Hoax deletion is fine if, and only, if they are "blatant and obvious" - not if you've had to do some reseach and you've judged it to be a hoax. You could be wrong. I want to see the words "blatant and obvious" as a direct qualifier for any hoax deletions - and no implication that "certain hoaxes" could be deleted in the absence of that.--Docg 14:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Sensible; we use "blatent" or "obvious" in other places too. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm on board with Doc about number 3. My favorite wording would be #1 as it hits all the bases while being very clear. Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 14:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Temporarily edited to "blatent and obvious hoaxes and misinformation" for the time being, whilst leaving this discussion open. Reason being, the G3 criterion is that the article is "pure vandalism". The definition of vandalism doesn't need to repeat the word "pure" a second time, which just complicates it. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I like #1 also. I think that the deletion of the repeated word "pure" is a good choice. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I have also updated the language under "Non-criteria" for "Hoaxes" as well. That section has always caused confusion for truly obvious hoaxes. — Satori Son 15:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Support :) FT2 (Talk | email) 15:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

"Articles which are vandalistic in nature" was just added to G3. I kind of don't like this, because "vandalistic" is not a real word, and we should really restrain ourselves from using quasi-words in policy, lest policy gradually becomes incomprehensible to outsiders who don't understand our dialect. Moreover, I think I have better wording:

"Articles which consist purely of content which, if added to an existing article, a reasonable editor could revert as vandalism without further explanation"

That's always been my understanding of the rule... if I'd rollback the content if it were added to an existing article, then a G3 deletion will be equally uncontroversial. Does this help explain the rule, or just add unneeded verbiage? --W.marsh 15:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought, re-reading it, that the term "pure vandalism" might be a bit forbidding for some people or easily gamed, but couldn't think of a better wording. That one's pretty good. So maybe combining them, something like this?
"Pure vandalism - Articles which consist purely of content that a reasonable editor could revert as vandalism without further explanation if added to an article. (Note that the definition of vandalism also covers blatant and obvious hoaxes and misinformation articles)"
Better done that way? FT2 (Talk | email) 15:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I actually opose the explicit addition of hoaxes to G3 unless it is made clear that blatent and obvious we mean things that physically or logically impossible. I have no problem with deleting as vandalism articles that claim overlordship of earth, conquerors of Venus, winning the Indy 500 in 1864 and the like. However I would not like to see an article that reads Tom Sutterbach was an American singer who had a top twenty hit Oh, My Baby in 1957 speedy deleted. (I just made Tom up.) An editor who thinks that they know fifties pop music well may think that is obvious vandalism, but a well respected editor though this was an obvious hoax. In cases like this we can't trust the judgement of a single admin. Dsmdgold (talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It's in there and (I think) always has been; this isn't explicitly adding it, it's moreso clarifying what "vandalism" formally includes. We just had an article where someone claimed to have written 300,000 published works, created some form of superdatabase, and so on, things which a quick check showed were blatently non-factual (or for such extraordinary claims, completely unevidenced in any reliable sources online). We trust people to remove blatent obvious hoaxes as vandalism generally, and to speedy delete on many grounds where judgement plays a role. It seems inconsistent to cease trusting them when it's the same content added to a new vs. existing article. There is nothing to stop a warning being placed on a user talk page, which encourages then to discuss if they believe any speedy deletion was in error.
It's true that not every decision will be perfect, but I suspect the vast majority will be. The few that fail will be those that 1/ looked like blatent obvious hoaxes to an admin, and 2/ were created with no evidence or cites whatsoever, and 3/ also failed a quick web check, and even so, these may well be recreated with evidence if the deletion was in error. FT2 (Talk | email) 20:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I like FT2's comment above. This is how I've long thought of G3, and what I've always presumed to be its intention. It would be nice to explicate its purpose other than just saying "vandalism." Someguy1221 (talk) 19:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
One of the biggest problems with speedying hoaxes is that frequently a hoax is just a fictional subject without sufficient context, and would profit more from establishing context, merging, or AfDing subject to fiction notability guidelines. What defines vandalism for me is bad faith - it must be clear that the article was not created to improve the encyclopedia. Dcoetzee 20:17, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You're right, but also slightly in error. "Speedying hoaxes" has not been added. What has been added is a note that speedying obvious vandalism includes obvious vandalistic misinformation. That's always been there. No section has been added to say that good-faith content can be speedied. No change has been made to hoax handling. What has been added is a reminder of something that always was the case. The expression "blatant and obvious" is not a light one. Roughly translated, this means it is "in your face" -- it isn't subtle, its not a maybe, its glaringly obvious, and probably would be on a brief moments read, to almost anybody. That's always been there but because the wording just says (rather unhelpfully) "Pure vandalism", it has been obvious to some, but not necessarily to all. FT2 (Talk | email) 20:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't object to the change - just a warning to avoid taking this too far. Dcoetzee 20:31, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Agree. It was purely to clarify what's there, no change intended. FT2 (Talk | email) 20:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Minor typo

I guess someone else has to fix even the little things on such an important page... Under 1.2 Articles #1 the last sentence says: "Care should be take to ensure..." and should of course be: "Care should be taken to ensure..."

This edit has taken me well over an hour. UnRheal (talk) 00:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Done. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:39, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Wording on A7

General

Until and unless A7 is expanded, I'd like to propose adding enough to make it absolutely clear that A7 does not cover such things as books, albums, singles or products, maybe with a simple parenthetical note:

“ No indication of importance/significance. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, organisation, or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. Unless the article is obviously for an non-notable organization, consider doing at least a web search for the organization. If controversial, list the article at Articles for deletion instead. (Note that the products of people and groups, such as books or albums, are not deletable by this criterion.) ”

Any takers? Any hearty objections? I presume I can't be the only admin addressing speedies who has noticed how often such articles are tagged for this...or, indeed, deleted. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I like it, though not an admin who has to deal with it. I do think "web content" should be broadened to "media". I've found articles about radio and tv shows that do not assert notability and should be tagged. J-ſtanTalkContribs 21:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, there are always product or variant articles. It seems peculiar for instance to PROD the article on an album of a band that's been deleted by A7. :) With regards to the above wording, I guess I'll wait and see if anybody else has input before initiating the BRD cycle. Input, anybody? Please? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Not sure I agree. I have concerns as it's drafted. Can you explain what this proposal is intended to do, and why, in a bit more detail? I also have two other specific questions:
  1. Why would a book or album not need to give some evidence of importance/significance?
  2. This is a very wide-ranging wording. The "products of people and groups" includes almost everything that isn't part of natural science - skyscrapers, shopping malls, the flat that my neighbor lives in, every minor newspaper, the calculator and pen on my desk, ... unless I'm misunderstanding you, this would seem a very disturbingly wide range to exclude from speedying on the usual grounds applied.
So overall, more information needed and some thought as to what exactly it is that's sought to be excluded, why, and whether the above wording is the best way to approach it. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, specifically it's "to make it absolutely clear that A7 does not cover such things as books, albums, singles or products". Books & albums do need to give evidence of importance/significance, but there is no consensus to include them under A7 (linking to a recent conversation about this here) and explicit instructions not to under non-criteria at the bottom of the page, which says, "Failure to assert importance but not an A7 category. There is no consensus to speedily delete articles of types not specifically listed in A7 under that criterion." Quite often, other types of articles are so tagged. I spend probably several hours a day addressing CSDs, and I run into quite a few articles mistagged, particularly songs & albums. I'm not seeking to change policy, but to clarify existing policy, much the same as you propose to do (or already have done?) with G3. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) Yep, and no complaints about clarification stuff. I'm just seeking to make sure I understand the concern that's arisen. As I understand it, what you're seeing is that A7 should apply just to the people and organizations, but is being mis-used to tag other things too, that it strictly shouldn't. Is that about it? Or is there more to it than that? (And I'm also guessing the aim of A7 as a whole is that for articles likely to be created for promotional purposes, we require some claim of "why this person/group is significant/important", to make it easier to speed up removal of non-notable promotion.) FT2 (Talk | email) 15:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not feeling attacked, and I'm sorry if I came across defensively. :) It wasn't my intention. What I'm saying is that A7 does apply just to the people & organizations. In previous discussions (like the two on the page I linked), I've noted that I'm somewhat sympathetic to some of the proposed expansions, if consensus can be gained and wording can be worked out to avoid abuse. So far, all such proposals seem to fade away for lack of strong support. I feel that, until consensus is gained, the criterion should be properly applied, and since it seems to be frequently misunderstood, strengthening the language may help clarify it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

How about this:

Article about real people, groups, organizations or web content without indication of importance/significance. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, organisation, or web content may be speedy deleted under this criterion, if it does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. Note: (1) A7 applies to the articles on the people, organizations and web content themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software, and and so on. (2) This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. (3) Unless the subject is obviously non-notable, consider doing at least a web search to check beforehand. (4) If controversial or uncertain, list the article at Articles for deletion instead.

Any use? It puts the "things this can apply to" right up front, so it's clear that it is a criteria only about those things. (And should A7 say "indication of significance/importance", or "evidence of significance/importance", anyhow? "Evidence" might be stronger...?) FT2 (Talk | email) 15:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It would work for me. :) It is a much larger change, if that matters. The only text I was proposing to add was "(Note that the products of people and groups, such as books or albums, are not deletable by this criterion.)" The rest is simply what's already in the policy. If an overhaul will help the problem, I'm all for it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
It looks like a larger change by wording, but it actually is a smaller one. It puts the focus ("criteria applies to these kinds of articles") up front, but that was in there already and isn't a change. Then your point about the albums and books etc becomes an obvious (almost redundant) note to that and can't be misunderstood or taken too widely, which is the only addition. The only other thing is numbering the notes and simplifying the "web check" comment, and that's cosmetic, for ease of reading. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
All right. As I said, it works for me. :) I might wait a bit in case there's other input before implementing. I'm not as bold as you are. :D I do appreciate the feedback, since this has been a source of growing concern for me. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


(unindent) Try these:

  1. Title change:
    • From: No indication of importance/significance. ...
    • To: Article about real people, groups, organizations or web content with no indication of importance/significance. ...
  2. Extra note: "A7 applies to the articles on the people, organizations and web content themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software, and and so on."

The only changes are the title now explains what it applies to up front (important), and a note to clarify what it doesn't apply to. Feedback as you say will be needed either way, but I think a big part of the problem is the title of the criterion simply stated "No indication of importance" but left till later the crucial information this only applies to certain kinds of article. FT2 (Talk | email) 16:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that you may well have hit the nail on the head; perhaps the problem is that the bolded title was not specific enough. I believe those are great suggestions, very clearly states. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Seems to better explain what is already in the criterion (clarification not change). Nicely spotted. Anyone see a reason to not clarify? FT2 (Talk | email) 17:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
"Organisation" I think having this is overbroad and the recent addition was never sufficiently discussed. first, the notability criteria for many types of organisations are so unclear, that it is not clear what would constitute a good faith assertion of notability. Second, the ability of one or two people to guess whether there is a reasonable chance that the organisation is notable is not really very reliable--there are too many different types. third, it brings far too many things into speedy A7: I think the consensus does not support speedy A7 for schools and churches, for example. DGG (talk) 01:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the guidelines at WP:CORP are fairly vague. At this point, the main criterion for notability of companies is whether or not people are talking about you. But I would like to nail down some wording that will clarify the present point in the hopes of cutting down misuse of A7, and at the moment the guideline does cover organizations. Would you object to that language being incorporated until such a time as A7 is revised to exclude organizations or to limit the types of organizations which may be covered? Otherwise, do you have something else that might do? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

<reset>Well, I've given it a go. We'll see. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

We really need less contorted wording than that; I put it back pretty much as it was earlier this month, but retained clarifications added recently. When the entire line is boldfaced we are making a mistake. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and I tried to resolve the "organization" issue by simply listing the various examples of organizations (bands, clubs, companies) as, well, examples of organizations. The problem with that word was simply that it was being used at the wrong level, in a way that seemed to imply that it was something different from a band, club or company, rather than a container category for them. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: "Article about real people..." isn't even grammatical. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Dispute on "importance/significance" wording

Resolved. Kind of moot, as the discussion has effectively merged with #Dispute of qualifiers in A7 below.

A7 presently claims that its "importance/signficance" idea is somehow distinguishable from notability. I dispute this claim, and suggest that the word "notability" should actually be used here, as I'm almost dead certain it was a while back. One of the most common ways to refer to A7 is to note that an article "does not assert notability", so this change to A7 is pretty nonsensical. We have a mountain of past history, at Wikipedia:Notability/Historical, demonstrating that subjective ideas like "fame", "importance" and "significance" were directly abandoned by the WP community in favor of a "notability" concept rooted in the objective primary notability criterion (signficant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources), so we can't suddenly reverse ourselves on this, willy-nilly. A7's wording needs to return to a criterion that articles that do not make a notability claim for their subjects are speedily deletable. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Black Falcon (talk · contribs) states in edit summary: "A7 is about assertions of importance in the text; notability is about coverage in reliable sources)". I do not believe this distinction to be valid. Notability isn't really "about" coverage in reliable sources; it is demonstrated by coverage in reliable sources. That fact does not do anything to militate against requiring that articles assert their notability in order to not be speediable. The argument I'm making is that we already have long-standing precedent against both "importance" and "significance" as any kind of deletion criteria, but a strong consensus for notability, as defined at WP:N, being a valid one, so we should use it here, not reintroduce problematic, subjective variants that have already been shot down. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:45, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: See actual usage of G7 in WP:DRV debate, e.g. at WP:DRV#White House Museum; it clearly is precisely what is meant by "notability" at WP:N; the difference is what is done about it. An article at WP:AFD on notability grounds is up for deletion on the basis that it cannot demonstrate notability by citing multiple, independent, reliable sources. An article nuked on WP:CSD#A7 grounds is deleted on the basis that the article does not assert notability, of the sort that will be (now or later) demonstrated by citing multiple, independent, reliable sources. There is no conflict between these usages, so the vague terms "importance" and "significance" that have clearly been deprecated for a couple of years now should be abandoned (again). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Going once: Barring any substantive objection about using what I suggest is "Wikipedia-standard" wording, I want to remove the references to deletion criteria that have already been rejected and replace them with notability. I think the case explained here is solid that it is reasonable to use the term, and it not a confusion issue when it is used correctly in two different ways so long as the wording is clear. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think that importance and significance are equivalent, and notability implies both of them. I think that requiring "importance and significance" in articles about people, groups of people and web content will help reduce the number of unnotable people, groups of people and web content; and that requiring claim to notability from the start will be more of a "blocade" to prevent creation of articles about notable people, groups of people and web content. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:00, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
New proposal language below (esp. the second of the two options completely obviates this potential problem, I believe. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Redundant in part with G11?

Historic note - I wasn't around when A7 was added, but I think I can see it's reasoning. It's specifically intended to lower the barrier for speedying items of a kind likely to be self-promotional, without going through AFD on each occasion. The requirement for an article is indeed notability. A7 adds that if an article is on a very tight range of subjects of the kind where promotion is very common (eg, people, groups of people, bands, businesses, websites), and the article doesnt give any reason why that person, band, website is important, then it can be deleted. It's to make it easier to delete new pages of the form:

  • "John Smith is a student at X school. His hobbies are WoW and reading", or
  • "Y group are an australian band. They are inspired by Def Leppard and like pizza", or
  • "Michael Andrews is a programmer and owner of a consulting business covering engineering design. He has written two commercial programs listed below....."

That's I'm fairly sure why A7 exists. Previous wordings:

  • Unremarkable people, groups, companies and websites. 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 controversial, or if there has been a previous AfD that resulted in the article being kept, the article should be nominated for AfD instead. Don't delete if you simply don't understand the assertion of importance or significance; delete only if you know that there is none." May 2007

The criterion "unremarkable" was used historically all the way back, but A7 has been around in the above form or similar, for a long time (2006).

What might work is unless there is some other reason I'm not seeing, merge this into G11, "Blatent advertising, including promotion of a person, group, band or website with no indication of grounds for notability"? But we really do need to check why A7 exists in case there's more to it. Shouldn't be hard to do.

Thoughts? FT2 (Talk | email) 05:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That all sounds entirely plausible, but doesn't change my proposal, which is based on very solid proof that the community specifically rejected both "importance" and "significance" as deletion criteria, in favor of "notability". I.e., it's just a simple wording change that will have no effect upon how A7 is used, but which may forestall any resurrection of two bad ideas that have historically tried to compete with WP's notion of notability. I don't see any reason to use "[un]remarkable" instead, since we don't have a WP definition of that term, but do have one for "[non-]notable". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC) Note: I have forked these into two separate subtopics. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I also agree that A7 and G11 seem to be partially redundant, and that this could be clarified. If we agree that G11 is to prevent spam articles (like your third example above), then we can probably agree that A7 shouldn't try to repeat this but should instead address junk articles (like your first two examples, though I suppose the band one could be more G11 than A7, depending on precisely what it said and how spammy it was). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
This is why A7 only works for specific categories of things. If you start having A7 apply to all articles, then, yeah, why should articles on abstract concepts, words, last names, et cetera, have to make a claim of significance or importance? But for the categories of articles A7 does apply to, there are myriad potential subjects, most of which are not encyclopedic, and all the encyclopedic ones should be able to at least have some claimed significance. I might not quite agree that's true for companies (what are they supposed to say to claim importance, without making the article look like spam?) but that one was sort of mandated from above. Mangojuicetalk 05:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
(EC) I don't think merging into G11 would really work. "John is a student at Somewhere Middle School. He likes sandwiches." is not really an ad for anyone or anything, but would fit A7. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Right. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Restatement: Can A7 be slightly reworded to make it clear it is not a rehash of G11, without messing with its applicability? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

A7 is fundamentally different. G11 often contains claims of importance... but for whatever reason they're just hollow advertising. "We're your leading IT solutions provider, customers agree we're the finest in our field!" is a claim of importance, yet it's purely promotional language. Articles that don't assert importance are different than articles that contain only promotional material.

There is something to saying "non-notable" articles are probably advertising in some way or another... but I think most people who do speedy deletions a lot will tell you, it's easy to explain an A7 deletion and what people need to do to fix the article. Explaining how someone can fix an article deleted for G11 can be very rough... usually the only real suggestion is "stop writing about your startup company! Wait till someone without a COI cares!" I find that a lot of A7 deletions, at least where the person sincerely wants to fix the problem, actually aren't vanity at all, more often it's just an enthusiastic new editor. --W.marsh 07:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Dispute of qualifiers in A7

Though I left them in there, I don't see any actual consensus for the recent(?) additions, e.g. that A7 only applies to individuals, organizations and web sites, and that A7 cannot be applied to books, software, albums, etc. (which are also redundant verbiage to begin with). I'm not going to go edit them out just yet, having already made a couple of changes and not being a regular on this page, but I think that those qualifications do need to be removed. While I cannot speak as to the motive for adding them, it appears to me that the effect of them is simply to weaken A7 in a way that will lead to the survival of a whole lot of junk wannabe-articles on the technicality that they are about an album or whatever instead of the person(s) responsible for the album. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm now fairly comfortable with the distinction being drawn (someone went into it in more detail above), but still feel that it needs rewording, since it is self-redundant (you don't need to say "it does not apply to X, Y and Z" if you've already said "it only applies to A, B and C"). I remain concerned, however, that this language is simply a loophole to create crap articles on non-notable albums, books, software packages, etc., that will end up clogging AfD by surviving that long solely on the basis of not quite being spammy enough to trigger G11, and A7 not being applicable. That said, I'm actually far more concerned (see above subtopic) about the reintroduction of "importance" and "significance" after they were soundly rejected in the years of debate that eventually led up to our now-solid WP:N guideline. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Going once: Barring any objection, I want to remove the redundancy. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Here's my objection. :) I proposed the clarification to begin with because we so frequently see A7 mistagged. Within the last two days alone, I've declined at least a half dozen inappropriate tags on articles covering plays, software and songs, among other things. The language is not a loophole; it doesn't alter the policy, but clarifies it. As it is, what we're seeing clogged is CSDs. Such articles are often excellent candidates for PRODs...at least until such a time as the often proposed expansions of A7 takes hold. (There are discussions about that in at least the last three archives of this talk page, but so far they have not gained evident consensus. :)) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Adding some context. These are some of the A7s I've declined in the past five days because they were applied to articles in spite of the long-term language indicating that it applies to certain subjects only. I say "some" because I'm not carefully searching my contribs; I'm just looking for "A7" and "notability" in my past 500. :) This could be it for the past five days; I don't know. I do know that I see this kind of thing frequently. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] & [12]. Some articles that are mistagged clearly don't meet guidelines, but, again, it's not a question of cluttering AfDs. It's a matter of reducing the clutter in CSDs. I could also supply links to articles that have been PRODded following the removal of the A7s (some PRODded by me). Until the guideline is expanded to incorporate these articles, they should not be nominated or speedied under it, imo. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Right, okay, I think I am following you well know. It could still be improved for flow and undestandability, something like the following (without integrating the notability issue discussed above yet):
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of importance/significance.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7 is distinct from questions of [[Wikipedia:Notability|notability]], [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliability of sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] instead. of speedily deleting.
The point being to front-load it with what it does and does not apply to. To integrate the notabilty change argued for above, it would be something more like this:
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of notability.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is [[Wikipedia:Notability|notable]]. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7's requirement for an ''assertion'' of notability is distinct from [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] questions of ''establishing'' notability and [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] with [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliabile sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|AfD]] instead of speedily deleting.
— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy with either of those, since my big concern at the moment is misuse of A7. :) I haven't been involved in addressing the fine points of "notability" versus "importance/significance", so I can't really say how that will be received by those editors who were. I can say that I really like this language: "A7's requirement for an assertion of notability is distinct from Articles for deletion questions of establishing notability and verifiability." It seems much clearer to me than "A7 is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources". Your notion of front-loading is similar to that suggested by User:FT2 above (the primary difference being that he incorporated it within the bold), and I agree with both of you that getting it up front is valuable. I am, by the way, heading off on vacation tomorrow, and I will be (horrors) reduced to scrounging for dial-up access for nearly a week. I may be slow to respond. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder whether we would not do better keeping "notability" out of it, considering that we have ever successfully defined it, as the incessant debates at WP:N and subpages makes evident. DGG (talk) 06:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Elementary and middle schools

I've seen many Elementary and middle schools at AfD (some I've put up myself) that assert zero notability whatsoever. I'm not against having certain school pages here, but maybe we could extend A7 to include these school pages that don't assert notability. I've heard some rationalize that schools fall under organizations, but if CSD applies to certain schools, it should be explicitly stated. J-ſtanContribsUser page 03:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess the question is whether or not schools qualify as the same kind of general article type that is likely to be subject to hype, which seems to be the point of G7. I understand and have personally witnessed some SD and AfD activity with regard to secondary schools in which "the G7 aspect", however we want to define it, seemed to be at play, but it doesn't seem to be habitual or a predictive quality. Lots of kids are proud of their schools, but that doesn't presently seem to translate into a preponderance of trivial school articles being created by POV-pushing boosters. If (see my struck objection to G7's exclusivity in another sub-topic here) I understand the rationale correctly, the G7 set of exceptions have been written specifically to address vanity articles. If school articles are mostly good-faith attempts at article-writing (it seems to me that they are), then they probably should not be enumerated in the G7 section. That said, I have no problem at all with schools being added to the list of types of organizations in G7 if consensus holds that schools are too often the subject of such POV exercises. I'm just saying I am skeptical that they are. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 specifies it is for non-controversial, and at this point at least the deletion of such articles generally is not. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough, I see the point about generally not being POV attempts, but even if good-faith, they do seem to be vanity articles, in that they are generally trivial. A lot of band articles who qualify for A7 aren't promotional, and are generally neutral, just giving info about the band. Many of these school articles follow that same pattern. And about being non-controversial, these schools almost always end up being unanimously in favor of deletion at AfD. J-ſtanContribsUser page 02:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure there are many schools the deletion of which is not individually controversial, but the deletion of schools as a class seems to be. I find reference to that as far back as archive 17. (Another topic worthy of reading in archive 18: A7 & schools) I suppose the idea may be that, like products, wider review may be necessary to determine if a school is notable. Someday maybe Wikipedia:Notability (schools) (or some guideline on the subject) will pass, and then they may be easier to assess in terms of speedy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 03:04, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, A7 could possibly be expanded to include individual schools that do not assert notability. As with the rest of A7, if the topic is controversial, it could be brought to AfD. J-ſtanContribsUser page 03:08, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

What criteria would this fall under?

There are thousands of geography stubs for many small towns in various countries that consist of little more than one line of text. I feel these are suitable for being weed wacked with extreme prejudice considering that almost none of them have any sources or references, but am unsure how to categorize them-- A7 would seem to be the obvious one, but it does not say anything about locations. Jtrainor (talk) 13:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Why must they be speedily deleted rather than dealt with through other means of the deletion process? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Why must these be deleted at all? We want articles on geographical places, a stub is better than nothing. --W.marsh 14:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
What's more, they won't be deleted - see WP:OUTCOMES. Hut 8.5 14:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) They're not speedy candidates. You could try AfD if you like, but the consensus there has always been that even small towns are inherently notable (WP:OUTCOMES), and indeed virtually all of them pass the general notability guideline as well, as even small towns and villages have had lots written about them over the years. Just as an example, British History Online has detailed articles on the local history of every village in Britain. By all means remove inappropriate material (like spammy lists of local shops and pubs) from them, but all these articles can be turned into good ones, and there's nothing wrong with having short stubs in the meantime. Iain99Balderdash and piffle 14:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Everyone responding above is correct: consensus is that any town or village, no matter how small, is inherently notable. The problem is that a great many of these articles are not properly cited, so often it's very difficult to tell if the village actually exists or not. I'm sure we have quite a few hoax articles hidden amongst the tens of thousands of "Towns and villages in ..." categories. Those hoaxes should be deleted, of course, but one needs to make a decent effort to attempt to verify the info first. If you search but cannot locate any sources, my suggestion would be to PROD the article based on WP:V, not notability. — Satori Son 15:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Of course hoaxes should be deleted, but WP:V doesn't yet require 50 inline citations or an article is speedy deleted without review. People need to actually see if the place is real (99.9% of them) or a hoax (0.1%) before deleting. --W.marsh 15:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
But WP:V does require at least one source. Please don't misunderstand me: I am not advocating a rushed deletion spree for these many unsourced stubs. In fact, I specifically said one must make a decent effort to verify the info before taking any action. But there is a process for dealing with articles that cannot be sourced after a good faith effort has been made, and it's proposed deletion, not CSD.
And remember, even if only 0.1% of these town and village articles are hoaxes, that's a lot of hoaxes! (I actually think it's much closer to 0.01%.) — Satori Son 15:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps unsourced articles on small towns should be deleted, and if the existence of a town cannot be verified perhaps it should be deleted as a hoax, but none of them should be speedy deleted. If you are going to make a decent effort to verify the existence and 99.9% are real, you will only occasionly find a hoax, which you then can take to AfD and present what efforts you have made to verify the existence. Perhaps some of the commentors there will know better sources, or perhaps the article will be deleted. In either case, more eyes are better for this sort of thing. Dsmdgold (talk) 17:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is why I said not CSD. — Satori Son 18:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, WP:V does not require that even one source be in the article, it only requires that sources exist. This is why the policy is Wikipedia:Verifiability - sources must make it possible to verify, it is not required that the sources be linked or cited until challenged. GRBerry 20:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I respectfully disagree with that interpretation of WP:V, but that was not really my point, anyway. Sorry for getting us a little off track. In short, I agree with every single other editor here that such articles are not, nor should they be, appropriate for CSD. Period. — Satori Son 20:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
What in WP:V says an article must be deleted if there are not inline citations in that article? There's nothing saying that... the sources just need to exist. "challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation" is the closest it gets, but you're asking for unchallenged statements to be cited or the article is deleted? That's not helpful. --W.marsh 20:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
(Sigh) That's not what I said. Once again, speedy deletion is NOT applicable here. At all. Seriously. Ever. — Satori Son 21:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
You still seem to be arguing for deletion of them though, and saying WP:V calls for it. --W.marsh 21:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

<Reset indent>I understood you to say, Satori Son, that the majority of unsourced geo stubs are legitimate and that effort should be put into researching them, only following failure of which efforts should the articles be considered for deletion. I agree. I have seen geographical articles deleted after AfD when sourcing could not be produced. I wonder if you are thinking of the provision in WP:N, specifically in the section on "notability requires objective evidence" and subsequent, which suggest that deletion may be appropriate for an article that "fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject" and for which "appropriate sources cannot be found". W.Marsh, I almost left you a note this morning about the point you made about geographical articles at VP about geographical articles: "people tend to write about geography, as it's important". Simply but persuasively written. They do. (And I didn't—leave a note that is—because I couldn't find a way to phrase it without sounding stupid. I had nothing more to add to the conversation than a "well said".) Hence, if nothing has been written about geography, the information may be questionable. Personally, unless I was completely sure that a geo article was a hoax, I'd go for the broader purview of AfD. (Given my abysmal geography scores when I was a kid, this is only right and just. :D I would feel reasonably confident, for instance, to PROD articles on continents which I've never heard of...after googling them, anyway. ;)) These kinds of articles benefit from additional searchers, I think. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes. I was trying to say that if you find an article with no sources, and then you conduct research and make a decent effort to find sources but cannot find any, then you can place a PROD tag on that article for others to review it before it is deleted. You may do so under the verifiability criteria of WP:V. You should not tag it as a CSD candidate, since unverifiability is not a speedy criteria.
I'm not sure where I was unclear, but since two very experienced editors misunderstood what I "seemed" to say, I accept full blame for the complete and total miscommunication. Sorry and hope this helps. — Satori Son 21:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a difference between deleting an article about a geographical object which is claimed not to exist and one which is claimed not to be important. The notability of an inhabited place is that it will be shown on maps and censuses. It's a common-sense exception to indiscriminate designed to protect our sanity and to keep us from fighting over every village. If it wont be clear till we write it in WP:NOT as policy, then let's go ahead and do so. DGG (talk) 06:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Written policy changed to reflect actual policy per WP:LIVING

Per an ArbCom decision, "Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy." I have added this as a new criteria because it is already a valid reason to speedily delete an article. - Jehochman Talk 19:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi. :) What makes this different from G10, which mentions BLP? Is it meant to protect privacy violations, for instance? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
WP:CSD#G10 already covers legitimate speedy deletions under WP:BLP. I have removed this, because it was redundant. That the ArbComm may have used different wording covering other things is irrelevant to the speedy deletion criteria. Additionally, ArbComm does not make policy, so you should have assumed that whatever they said was already written into policy. GRBerry 20:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I'm pretty sure we have discussed this before and decided that the G10 language was sufficient for these cases. At the very least, shouldn't we just tweak the G10 language, if necessary, instead of creating a new, mostly duplicative criteria? — Satori Son 20:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree as well. The current wording of CSD G10 was reached after much discussion and this is not the first time an alternately-worded or separate criterion has been proposed. Black Falcon (Talk) 20:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Found the previous discussions: see "CSD-G10 rewrite" and "G10 "or fails to comply fully with the relevant policy in any other way". — Satori Son 20:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Why then do we get arguments at deletion review (Examples: [13] [14]) stating that BLP is not a valid reason to speedily delete an article? Can G10 be clarified to remove all doubt? I think G10 is not sufficiently clear that BLP is a valid reason for speedy deletion. - Jehochman Talk 20:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
In the cases that I've seen, the dispute is over whether deletion could not have been avoided in favour of another action, such as reducing the article to a stub. BLP is not a valid reason to speedily delete an article when the BLP-violating content can be easily removed. It is only valid if there is no valid version to which to revert. Black Falcon (Talk) 20:32, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Black Falcon is correct. BLP is only a valid reason to speedily delete an article in very restricted circumstances. There are administrators who ignore those restrictions and speedy delete articles that don't qualift, but that we may yet be better off without. That doesn't make their stated reason for action correct. To validly delete under BLP, the deleting admin has to review every version and determine that no version exists that is neutral in tone. This restriction is currently in the "Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" section of WP:BLP. Fred, after speedy deleting a prior article, rewrote a new one that was acceptable at this title. He created a neutral version; so any later speedy deletion is not a valid speedy deletion - the admin should have reverted to that, or a later, neutral version. We may, however be better off without the article, which is a legitimate question to be settled at DRV. GRBerry 20:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the criteria needs to be changed. If an article is habitually in a BLP violating state, then it needs to be deleted. The idea that it theoretically can be made correctly is meaningless if the editing climate 99% of the time results in a violation. We need to be practical. Yeah, somebody once created a proper article. So what? How long did it actually last, and how long could it be expected to last now if we reverted? - Jehochman Talk 21:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
That's just bizarre... a few people POV pushing on an article would mean that article would be permanently deleted, under that definition. We could have no articles on senators, heads of state, etc. Is this really what BLP says? --W.marsh 21:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
No. If that is the case, we just block them. With somebody like Barbara Schwarz we have a huge number of people who want to turn her article into an attack piece. See Scientology and the Internet to understand why. As a borderline notable person, the costs and risks of keeping the article vastly exceed the benefits. - Jehochman Talk 21:27, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
A situation like that, in which a non BLP-violating version exists to revert to and protect, should be brought to AFD anyway, for that is in no way a trivial matter that should be handled unilaterally. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm attempting to agree with everyone as much as possible. Yes, we should keep G10 and not fork it into two different things. But yes, G10 should be clarified to forestall any more nonsensical WP:DRV assertions that WP:BLP is an invalid deletion criterion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, technically, "article contains content that violates WP:BLP" is not a valid speedy deletion reason. The criterion is: "article consists solely of content that violates WP:BLP, and there is no good version to which to revert". – Black Falcon (Talk) 05:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess that is pretty clear. I suppose the thing to do would be to cite the DRV cases where it is felt that a bad BLP argument is being made, examine them, and see if antyhing about G10 can be clarified in response to the identified issue? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion the ArbCom decision should be added as a clarification to G10. It gives clear instructions on the burden of proof for those who wish to retain the article. This is not obvious from the present wording of G10. JoJan (talk) 15:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Can we merge the well-thought-out wording of the ArbCom decision into G10? That would be helpful. - Jehochman Talk 16:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
To give everyone something to look at, I have made this edit. - Jehochman Talk 16:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

<reset indent>Your most recent change stripped some of the scope of G10 (I keep calling it A, attack gets stuck in my head :)). An article on a company could be an attack page. An article on an album could be an attack page. I've attempted to restore that without removing your concerns. We'll see how I did. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The wording of most guidelines of CSD, including G10, are formulated in such a delicate way, that only experts, following all discussions, understand the real implications. One cannot expect every well-meaning user, proposing a speedy deletion , to be fully informed of all past discussions. Therefore, I propose again that the ArbCom decision should be added as a clarification under the present wording of G10. Surely, there is nothing wrong being clear and explicit ? JoJan (talk) 16:35, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I like Moonriddengirl's changes. These were then reverted back to the original due to concerns about instruction creep. I am sensitive to that objection, yet this issue is so important, a bit of creep here may be excusable since there is actual, widespread confusion. Can we at least place the words "Biography of Living Persons Policy" in bold? - Jehochman Talk 16:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The current wording of G10 is more recent than the ArbComm decision in that atrocity of a case. (The ArbComm violated their usual rules for handling disputed cases there, and the outcome reflects the fact that they didn't arbitrate, they especially some members who thankfully will not be members in a couple weeks, advocated instead.) ArbComm does not make policy, the community does, and a well run ArbComm case only attempts to reflect the policy the community has formed, and the policies reflected in their principles even when accurate are subject to revision. As has been explicitly referenced above in this discussion, the current wording of G10 is a result of what the community was willing to agree upon after having seen that decision. There are differences, and the wording of G10 prior to this recent attempt at revision is a better reflection of policy on speedy deletion than that old, obsolete ArbComm decision is. So we should not revise G10 to reflect that decision, we should revise that text to reflect actual policy written into G10.

Additionally, these are the speedy deletion criteria. Instructions about recreating pages do not belong here in any form. So I have removed that inappropriate content again. Jehochman's suggestion of bolding the link to BLP is not unreasonable, so I went ahead and did it. GRBerry 17:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I've restored some wording by User:FT2 that reflects the fact that we don't want people going around restoring articles that breach the Biographies of living persons policy.[15] This has been a severe problem in the not-so-distant past, and we need a bright-line policy here.

The wording reads:

and if the page is an article about a living person it should not be restored or recreated by any editor until it meets biographical article standards.

--Tony Sidaway 23:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Redundant and off-topic wording

I have to oppose the addition of ", and if the page is an article about a living person it should not be restored or recreated by any editor until it meets biographical article standards". I'm sad to see so much editwarring over it that the page has become protected. Let's discuss the matter out, instead.

My take is that this passage is a) redundant, and b) off-topic. This is not an article creation guideline, as someone noted in an edit summary recently, and if we've already said on what basis an article can be speedily deleted, we do not need to reiterate that it shouldn't be re-created again in that form, since obviously if it was speedily deletable in that form once it will remain so. Let's not be silly. Wikipedia editors are generally not brain-damaged, so we needn't treat them like halfwits.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

PS: This is also redundant per G4: "re-creation of previously deleted material". No new policy wording is needed, especially not to address a weird case, namely of POV-pushing in the creation of attack articles; this is already completely adequately covered by WP:NPA, WP:NPOV, and WP:VANDAL. To be as clear as possible, my point is basically that WP:CSD is not a one-stop-shop for "don't do these bad things on Wikipedia" advice; it is, and only is, our criteria for speedy deletion, so verbiage about what kinds of articles to not (re-)create doesn't belong here. That's what WP:NOT is for. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Are we on the same wiki? - Jehochman Talk 00:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not following your meaning here. I usually agree with you on policy/guideline stuff, so I find it slightly toward alarming that I'm not following your meaning on this one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
PPS: No disrespect to Tony S. intended; I think he and I usually agree on policy/guideline matters, but there's always that pesky exception... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I note that Viridae has protected the page. This is inappropriate and I invite any uninvolved admin to unprotect. We are having a friendly discussion here, definitely not an edit war. - Jehochman Talk 00:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I guess it should be noted that G4 does not apply to article deleted through speedy deletion or PROD. (Although an article that meets one of the CSD would still meet it when recreated in the same form.) Dsmdgold (talk) 01:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think Viridae was correct to protect the page, this was reaching an edit war. Someone added, Black Falcon removed, FT2 added, I removed, Tony added ... yep that is getting into edit war territory. Obviously, I think the language about BLP page creation does not belong here in any shape or form, so that is clearly my position. Dsmdgold is also correct, G4 only applies to pages deleted via XfD, so it is irrelevant. These are minor procedural thoughts. GRBerry 04:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The material Tony added for the third time in under 24 hours is completely unsuitable for the speedy deletion policy, and should just be deleted from this page. As Satori Son linked above, the inclusion of anything the BDJ farce has already been discussed and rejected here twice previously, and the discussions are archived at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 20#CSD-A9: BLP CSD-G10 rewrite and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 21#G10 "or fails to comply fully with the relevant policy in any other way" where the community has already twice rejected the notion of writing that finding into the speedy deletion policy. In addition, we've since had Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 25#Proposed new criterion. The wording that was in G10 has been accepted by the community. GRBerry 04:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Please check the editing history of this policy. Far from being "the third time in under 24 hours", that last edit of mine was my only edit on the page since August.
This shouldn't really have anything to do with the Badlydrawnjeff arbitration, whatever your opinion of that. I hope we can all agree, whatever our feeling on the outcome of that arbitration, that articles that do no conform to the Biographies of living persons policies must not exist in any form on Wikipedia. This is true, whatever wording we use in this policy. I've no objection to the previous wording, and do not propose to remove any of the meaning of that wording, so the pre-existing consensus is not material to the proposal to clarify that editors must never knowingly recreate or restore material that has been removed because of the biographies of living persons policy. --Tony Sidaway 15:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I do appreciate Stanton's statement that CSD isn't a "one-stop shop". However history has shown us that deleted BLPs do sometimes get recreated without proper discussion (the Badlydrawnjeff arbitration was the occasion of many such inappropriate recreations by two experiened administrators) so we do probably need a bright line, somewhere, if only to save administrators from future sanctions accruing from lack of clarity in our policies. --Tony Sidaway 15:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Protection of revert-warring policy pages is a good thing. Stability is a lot more inmportant here than on mere article pages. There's nothing wrong with recreating deleted BLP articles. If the subject is notable it's worth having a page on. Lowering the bar on CSD for BLP pages just adds fuel to wikigaming by deleting administrators. It's always wrong to write new articles or add to existing articles in a way that violates BLP. If someone does so that's a behavior problem not a CSD issue. To the extent the CSD comment merely reiterates existing policy it's unnecessary. To the extent it expands on existing policy it's unwarranted.Wikidemo (talk) 17:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I've already stated my opinion in the edit summary: this policy page outlines criteria for speedy deletion; instructions for undeletion or recreation belong at Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Moreover, since (as Wikidemo notes) it's always wrong to write an article in violation to BLP, stating that a BLP-violating article should not be recreated is redundant. – Black Falcon (Talk) 21:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

As the person who added that: - We often see in policies, various advice/information etc, which goes a bit beyond the strict policy. That's part of how policy pages are used, to informa and educate a bit, not just to list "rules". (See WP:NPOV, WP:COPYRIGHT etc for examples.) BLP is a very serious policy. A page that's deleted via CSD, the first place a user is likely to visit is the linked WP:CSD criterion to see what it says, why the page they wrote was deleted. So a note on that CSD item, to emphasize that no editor - admin or otherwise - may recreate a BLP violating text, unless the BLP issues are fixed, seems eminently sensible as part of the information we should show very visibly, when someone clicks the link to G10. That, and no other reason, no other case, was the reason for that text. Recreation of a genuine BLP problem that was serious enough to get an article deleted, can be a serious problem in some cases. (Even if the deletion was borderline, it should probably still be discussed first like all admin decisions, seems to be the communal consensus.) So a warning on the CSD criterion itself to reflect the salient point from WP:BLP, "do not recreate unless BLP issues are fixed", seems entirely appropriate, for those who don't know and just click G10 to find out why it was deleted. FT2 (Talk | email) 05:15, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
No editor should recreate or introduce BLP-violating text at any time, not just after it has been speedy deleted. More generally, the call to not recreate a speedy-deleted article unless issues are fixed applies to all CSDs, not just G10. Deletion of an article per G10 implies that a recreation should not be negative in tone and unsourced, just as deletion of an article per A7 implies that a recreated version should assert importance/significance. The act of deleting an article by itself conveys the message that something was wrong with it; therefore, it should be apparent that a simple recreation would be subject to the same problems and to another speedy deletion. While there are specific rules for administrators regarding undeletion of controversial BLP-motivated summary deletions (requiring, at minimum, discussion with the deleting admin, and perhaps even broader community discussion), these are distinct from the speedy deletion criteria and do not apply to most editors. – Black Falcon (Talk) 06:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Agree but fore the sake of a few words its no bad thing to make the implicit, explicit. A surprising number of people will only notice such implications in an explicit form. Whilst most edits we can tolerate a degree of that (WP:3RR), on this one we can't. hence explicit mention. Is best to. FT2 (Talk | email) 14:36, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

G6 and G8

Criterion G8, for orphaned talk pages of no particular use, strikes me as the sort of thing that could be reasonably merged with G6, for general housekeeping. Not a matter of importance, of course, but if there is ever a drive to cut down on the large, occasionally redundant, number of criteria we have, an expanded G6 could probably supersede G8. Any reasons why this wouldn't work? Picaroon (t) 01:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess to avoid G6 just becoming a long laundry list of miscellaneous reasons for deletion. G8 deletions do have a few privosos to remember, 3 lines worth at present... merging would seem to make G6 too bloated. That's the practical reason for keeping them separate now... if you want the actual reason they're separate, traditionally CSDs were kept very narrow such that each rule dealt with very specific situations, creating a list of literally all the specific reasons it would be okay to speedy delete a page. That has gradually changed, but it explains a lot of the relics. It still makes sense, to me at least, to keep G6 and G8 separate. --W.marsh 01:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I've always viewed G6 as kind-of purposefully ambiguous. I use it occasionally when there isn't a need a for a page, but there isn't a specific appropriate CSD reason. Some people would disagree with that interpretation of G6... I agree with W.marsh about them not being joined and the reason for them being separate for such a long time. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Regardless of bloating issues, I don't believe G8 is non-controversial enough to be merged with G6. Talk pages of deleted articles often contain discourse or dispute over the CSD tagging of the article itself, and on occasion IPs or even registered users create articles in talk space. It's good to have a seperate and specific criterion for this very limitted circumstance. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
In support of that, I recall several talk page deletions have been challenged at DRV, suggesting controversy. I can't recall a pagemove redirect or history merge deletion ever being challenged... --W.marsh 15:41, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I think keeping these criteria separate is best. I'd also note that due to keeping the numbering the same for historical reasons, all a merger would achieve is leaving a blank space (or note) where G8 is at the moment. You can't do renumberings because lots of old deletion logs refer to the CSD by numbers alone (though they shouldn't for precisely this reason). Carcharoth (talk) 18:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we should keep G6 down to the bare minimum - there are a few examples listed there and I think that adding more is a bad idea. In addition, in all the examples there, there is 0 content removed - any talk page is likely to have some content in the history. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Deleting uncropped originals of cropped images

Could someone advise me on the following? We have Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg on Wikipedia. I recently fixed the license tag, but as it needed cropping, I went back to the original, cropped it and uploaded it Commons, ending up with Image:04293v cropped.JPG. My question is whether Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg now falls under any of the image CSDs? It feels like I1 or I8, but doesn't quite fit the criteria. Can it be deleted under G6 (housekeeping)? Should this kind of thing be specifically covered in the image CSDs? I know a common process on Commons is to upload the original and the cropped version. Maybe I should just tag the uncropped version for transfer to Commons? Carcharoth (talk) 18:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

We can probably just add something to I1 or I8. Although this really only works because the image is PD. If it were GFDL, I assume we'd want to keep past versions? I could very easily be wrong, since I'm a bit confused on how the GFDL is applied for images. -- Ned Scott 05:46, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
That's an idea. A history merge would solve a lot of problems. Can that be done with images? Of course, one being on Wikipedia and one being on Commons makes this difficult. I think some people would prefer to have the uncropped version separate, but it is possible that a lot of uncropped versions are sitting in image histories. Carcharoth (talk) 11:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Protected edit proposal

I'd like to remove this line from A1: "Care should be taken to ensure that valid articles in progress are not deleted."

Rational: Long tradition of keeping advice like this out as it constitutes instruction creep and is not very useful anyway. Snippets like this are usually added after a specific bad deletion, and if we did that every time there was a bad deletion, CSD would be 500 pages long with reactionary advice. Ultimately, if A1 is applied correctly, nothing useful towards a "valid article" will be deleted. An article "lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article", which is what A1 calls for, will require a total rewrite anyway to be useful. Bad deletions should be dealt with by explaining the issue to the deleting admin and then taking it to DRV if necessary... we shouldn't be tacking stuff on to policy every time someone makes a bad deletion. It doesn't work anyway.

I'll make the change eventually if there are no objections, but just want to propose it here first since the page is full-protected right now. --W.marsh 16:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Still, it is useful advice and should be on a subsidiary page. No need to avoid learning from the wisdom gathered from numerous examples of the policy in action. Keep the main page short, but add useful longer explanations and examples somewhere else, like Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations. Carcharoth (talk) 17:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems to already be covered there, just with different wording. --W.marsh 17:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Precisely. The synchronisation between policy and explanation should be kept up-to-date. Maybe something like the situation at WP:NFC could work, where the policy bit (WP:NFCC) is transcluded above the guideline/explanation bits. That keeps the policy and guideline separate (in terms of watchlists and editing), but also keeps them better synchronised (in theory). Carcharoth (talk) 18:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC) Sorry to be a pain, but could someone take a moment to look at this? Thanks.
I disagree with proposal - there are plenty of editors (myself included) who create articles incrementally. Having some incomplete article fragment whacked while the creator is working on expanding it does not strike me as an optimal situation. This clause just reminds taggers to tread carefully when tagging such articles. Actually, if I had my way, A1 and A3 would not be valid rationales for the first 24 hours of an article's existance at all. Lankiveil (talk) 05:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC).
Use your userspace. A 1-sentence article can provide enough context to identify the subject... there's really no excuse for creating articles that fail to do even that, they need a full rewrite, which often never occurs. If it is a "valid article", the article shouldn't be deleted under A1 anyway... the language right now is really tacky and ineffective. You might agree with the sentiment, but the wording I want to remove isn't a criteria, it's just extraneous advice that is unenforceable and doesn't belong there. --W.marsh 05:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I would agree with the proposal. If this is really a problem, we are probably overstretching A1. It is supposed to be about an article with almost no context whatsoever. "John Doe is an important person" is speedy deletable, "John Doe is a well-known microbiologist" should not be, it provides enough context to get the most basic idea of who he is. Mr.Z-man 06:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
A good point, but one that I don't think many newbies would know. It seems bite-y to just slap a tag onto such an article because it might technically meet A1. By all means, if the user has an extensive contribution history, or it's been lying about for a week or so with no improvement, but articles that are ten minutes old and might still be being worked upon probably should not be speedied. Lankiveil (talk) 07:30, 26 December 2007 (UTC).
I don't think the wording particularly helps newbies understand the policy... as it's advice directed at people actually making the deletions, who aren't newbies. I'm not making this proposal with the intent of making it easier to delete stuff under A1... it's about making sure the criteria are criteria, not advice on the criteria. A well-written rule shouldn't need to be bogged down in documentation to ensure people apply it correctly. --W.marsh 00:56, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Housekeeping

Am I crazy, or doesn't this qualify for G6, housekeeping? When I added a speedy delete notice to the page, an admin removed it, citing the MFD that gave the indication that it was speedyable. -- Ned Scott 06:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

That would almost be db-author, where the author is the WikiProject. I had a similar case when setting up the assessment pages for another project. Different names. I ended up creating redirects to avoid confusing people. This case is slightly different, as the bot has started working on the page, but as it doesn't seem to have actually recorded anything, you could probably just delete instead of doign a redirect (and the bot will probably overwrite the redirect). Letting the MfD run its course is probably simplest. I wouldn't have objected to a speedy in that case. Talking of which, does anyone want to comment on the section above, and answer my question there? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 11:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I routinely use the housekeeping criterion to delete maintenance pages created by the math project that are no longer needed. It's hard to claim with a straight face that it isn't housekeeping - the mop metaphor is particularly appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

BLP with no sources

I'd like to suggest an new category, articles that appear to be about living persons but provide no sources. WP:BLP says such material "must adhere strictly" to our policies, including WP:V. A7 candidate articles frequently make notability claims that require subjective evaluation (is "best high school soccer player in Nebraska" notable enough?). The criterion I am proposing is clear-cut and automatic: about a person, no source, no death date or other indication the subject is no longer alive --> gone. It would add teeth to BLP and sharply reduce the number of situations where we are, in effect, telling people they aren't important enough to be in Wikipedia.--agr (talk) 11:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Agree in part: I would agree to this for recently created articles. There are likely quite old articles that remain unreferenced; those I would suggest being tagged with {{unreferenced}} prior to deletion, with a speedy exit after a month. By "recently created", I am thinking 5 to 7 days or less (PROD / AFD latency period); i.e. no article about a living person shall be created without a reliable source from Day 0 forward, with partial retroactive application. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I, too, agree with this. Give the editor 5-7 days to provide sources, but yes, no BLP should exist without at least one reference.↔NMajdan•talk 15:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Despite but people think, WP:V really just mandates the sources exist, not that every word of the article has an inline citation after it (which has become desirable for some misguided reason). At any rate, if you think sources do not exist for a BLP, you can request them, or nominate the article for deletion, or delete it if there's libelous. It seems harmful to delete an article you think is accurate and based on reliable sources just because no one has added inline citations yet... why not just do it yourself? Only challenged material needs be removed. --W.marsh 15:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
    • The burden should primarily be on the article creator. If another editor wishes to go out and search the internet for a reputable source, then great. But we shouldn't keep unsourced BLPs if there is no citation. And I'm not necessarily calling for mandated in-line citations as that would alienate some newer, unfamiliar editors. As long as there is some source somewhere on the page, an experienced editor can come along and properly format it. But there should be some external link validating the article's content.↔NMajdan•talk 15:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
      • We still shouldn't be deleting articles we think are accurate and sourcable, just because the creator didn't jump through the right hoop. The burden of improving Wikipedia falls on all of us... article creators don't own their articles. If you think sources exist, just finding one only takes marginally more time than deleting it. I really don't like the idea of deleting valid articles out of laziness... that shouldn't be our goal here. --W.marsh 15:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
        • No, I don't like it either. Rule creep. If there's an actual deletable problem with an article, fine. But if the article is otherwise fine and is lacking sources we shouldn't be dreaming up yet more reasons to delete it.Wikidemo (talk) 16:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • This thread began with the suggestion that we should treat articles about living people somewhat differently from articles on other topics, different in the sense of being more stringent in the requirement for sourcing than for other topics. I do not think this is unreasonable because the potential for harm is quite significantly more for a poorly composed and poorly verified article on the CEO of a company than that for a similarly composed article o the line of cell phones that the company makes. Perhaps rather than talking about specific steps, we can come to an agreement about whether or not biographical articles should be dealt with differently in the Speedy Deletion arena than other articles. If the consensus is no, then we move on as we have. If the consensus is yes, then we can dive into the discussion about what to do about it. OK? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Living biographies already are treated differently by this policy. A biography of a living person that is negative in tone can be speedy deleted under G10, whereas if the article was negative in tone and about something else it couldn't be speedied. Hut 8.5 17:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • There's also a parallel track within BLP to handle bad sourcing, but it's not subject to CSD. Unsourced or poorly sourced information that is derogatory or controversial can be deleted on sight, and articles consisting entirely of that may be deleted. Poorly sourced neutral articles get handled the usual way. If we start making rules for BLP here we're creating a policy fork. Further, I don't see any special issues arising over the intersection between BLP and the other reasons for notability. For example, copyvio, failure to assert importance, advertising, foreign language translations, and housekeeping, are already pretty clear and (other than the fact that there are special notability guidelines for different kinds of people) no reason to treat the BLP cases differently. Wikidemo (talk) 17:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with W.marsh and Wikidemo that this criterion is unnecessary and unhelpful, constitutes rule-creep, and is even a bit WP:BITE-y. WP:CSD is not a replacement for Wikipedia:Deletion policy; it is intended for uncontroversial cases, and when content is not worth preserving. A deletion is not uncontroversial when it can be avoided by adding a single unreliable source to an article. (What we should do is modify the article creation interface to place more emphasis on soruces, but that's not an issue for this talk page.) Black Falcon (Talk) 18:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I believe it's an overbroad misinterpretation of BLP to expect any information whatsoever regarding living persons to be sourced. Some information is not even conceivably offensive, even if it's completely wrong, e.g. "Joe Schmoe is a baker who lives in Atlanta". Any article, including BLP articles, can be stripped down to a core of basic facts that, whether they're right or wrong, cannot inflict damage, and I believe this course is more appropriate than deletion. Dcoetzee 18:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I did not propose that articles be deleted unless "any information whatsoever regarding living persons" is sourced. Rather I suggested that BLP articles with no reliable source at all should go (and I accept User:Ceyockey's suggestion that this apply only to new articles). WP:BLP does not agree that "completely wrong" information is acceptable in a BLP. It says: "We must get the article right." The statement "Joe Schmoe is a baker who lives in Atlanta" may indeed be offensive to Dr. Joseph Schmoe who is the principal of an Atlanta high school. We get prank articles all the time. This is one area where we can set a bright line criterion instead of a judgment call and I think we should.--agr (talk) 20:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • A criterion that requires individual judgments about the reliability of sources is not exactly "objective" and certainly not "uncontestable" (see WT:CSD#Read this before proposing new criteria) or uncontroversial, which all speedy deletion criteria should be. Black Falcon (Talk) 20:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
  • My point is that an article should never be speedy deleted if it can be edited into an acceptable state - where in this case "acceptable" just means that any questionable or potentially offensive assertions have been removed and it's left with some basic information that can be used to identify the person and expand it in the future. If it's deleted, future editors who may have better access to sources will not ever see the article or be motivated to expand it. Keep in mind the difference between the criteria that should be satisfied by an ideal BLP article (correct, well-referenced) and a work-in-progress BLP article (does not contain damaging unsourced claims). Dcoetzee 21:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Just to note, "We must get the article right" is a typical piece of Jimbo Walesian argumentation. It's not seriously meant as policy that we have a zero tolerance level for errors - that would be illogical and run against WP:V, among other things (the goal being verifiability, not truth). It's a statement of aspiration and effort.Wikidemo (talk) 21:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
BLP does not reverse the general policy that we improve if possible. We do not immediately need a source for noncontentious material that has some appearance of being significant. BLP is about contentious material. In the rare case of a name conflict, it's easy enough to deal with it. if it's a matter of impersonation, there's the BLP noticeboard. When someone adds a negative bio to an article on a teacher, we can deal with it well enough with the present criterion. That deals with the problematic cases. This is an attempt to extend BLP without there being any real problems to deal with. A stub on a person is still a valid stub. A change in policy of this magnitude shoudl go to the Village Pump, not here. DGG (talk) 07:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

New template criterion

Please forgive me if this has been suggested before:

T3-TEXT

CSD-T3: Templates which are not used in any articles and which provide no information that could not be easily provided by another template; that is, they are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template.

This covers the two most common snowball issues I've recently seen at TfD: clones or similar copies of an existing template (often POV forks), and instances where someone has copied an existing template (usually an infobox) and replaced the parameters with hardcoded values (as opposed to creating a subsidiary infobox, which of course is completely different). Both of these cases are entirely uncontroversial. Comments? Happy‑melon 15:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

G6 (housekeeping) has traditionally covered duplicate articles... it was even written in to the rule at some points. If applied just to true duplicates, I think you could already speedy delete unused duplicate templates without much controversy. I'm not sure we really need a new rule here... these seem uncontroversial and uncommon. --W.marsh 16:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I also take a broad view towards "housekeeping" outside of article space. If a template is not transcluded at all and a different template should be used anyway, and there is no controversy, then deleting the template as housekeeping is reasonable. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Does this mean {{Policy}} gets speedied? It's not used in any article. O:-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC) just checking

It's functionality is not deprecated by another template that is :P. I assume you know what I mean though - perhaps replace "used in any articles" for "used in any useful context". Happy‑melon 12:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it's a question of semantics, but I feel uncomfortable about classing these as G6. It's stretching G6 quite a bit to cover these, and that worries me that people will try and stretch it in other ways. I don't think it's at all controversial to delete something like {{Vocal classification}} as a duplication of {{vocal range}}, or {{Infobox LBS}} as a hard-coded instance of {{infobox university}}. In this case adding a new criterion is not instruction creep, but just an easy clarification which removes ambiguity. Essentially I'm saying "there's a hell of a lot of different 'housekeeping' tasks, some of which are controversial, some of which aren't. Why don't we split this uncontroversial (but common) task off to reduce ambiguity and potential confusion?" Happy‑melon 18:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I think that is a useful way of thinking about this matter. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:37, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed criterion T-3

T3-TEXT

I have added this as a proposal to the CSD list. I reworded it some to reflect Kim Bruning's valid point and my personal concerns. Thoughts? — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
I most definitely support this. Most of the templates I listed at TfD yesterday were hardly controversial and would have come under this new criterion. This is an excellent idea and will reduce the amount of little-used templates being put through needless process! ><RichardΩ612 20:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I saw this issue quite some time ago and created WP:DOT. Its been a little inactive lately, but essentially has a procedure that marks the template for two weeks to ensure that it is truly not used (newly-created, subst'd, etc.) and then the templates are deleted under WP:CSD#G6. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I'll be able to do some more work with that page. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

As is done with image CSDs, we could simply require that a deprecated template needs to be tagged for a certain period of time before it can be deleted. I think 2 weeks is a very generous delay. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
I assume you mean as a CSD vs. using G6? Because that's currently what WP:DOT does; it marks the template with {{deprecated}} and then waits two weeks. Once logistical question is whether to use separate categories for each day or do what the current set-up does, which is use ParserFunctions to calculate 14 days past the day marked. However, ParserFunctions are cached quite heavily.... --MZMcBride (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Do we really need a CSD for this? I would either use the existing procedure or be bold and simply delete it without rule or fanfare under the general housekeeping criterion. Nobody will ever object and in the rare chance they do, you can just undelete it. No harm to adding a criterion but the page is already quite long. Wikidemo (talk) 01:45, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not completely sure that we need it; it would be possible to decide that it falls under G6 anyway. On the other hand, if a new criterion saves people a significant amount of effort at TFD (as a couple editors above claim), then that might be enough reason to add it.
Re MZMcBride, yeah, I meant as T3 vs. G6. Categories are more convenient than parser functions, and we could probably merge the DOT system into a new criterion if it is approved. Personally, I think 7 days is enough delay to ive time for review. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
(responding to Wikidemo): I support Wikidemo in the notion that an additional CSD type is not needed for this. The WP:DOT mechanism, which is sort of like a WP:PROD for templates (I am more familiar with PROD, myself). If there are problems with DOT that make it undesirable, let's fix those. If the existence of DOT is considered to be problematic as "just another place to go", maybe one could consider merging PROD and DOT in some fashion, either as a single process or as two processes under a single umbrella. My point - I do not think WP:CSD#T3 is necessary ... and keeping additions to CSD to a minimum is a desirable thing in my opinion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
(responding to Carl): I feel a bit queasy about using WP:CSD#G6 as CSD is intended (i.e. on-sight deletion) for this. I can't quite put my finger on what feels wrong about it, but it might have something to do with the difficulty in determining true deprecation when substituting is an option. If there were some way to poll content for substituted instances, that would make me feel a lot more comfortable with the G6 option, I think. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
(responding to MZMcBride): I don't think I would call deletion of the templates at the end of the DOT observation period as an application of WP:CSD#G6 because, as I mentioned in my thoughts to Carl, CSD is meant as an on-sight process and DOT is most definitely not a delete-on-sight process. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
There are three issues. (1) I (and others I presume) already delete templates under G6 if the meet the proposed criterion. (2) There are already other CSD criteria that have waiting periods (look through the image ones). So it isn't accurate to say that the current CSD criteria are all delete-on-sight in nature. (3) The DOT page isn't part of Wikipedia:Deletion policy at all; if we're going to agree on it as a new part of deletion process, it ought to be documented somewhere, or else how will anyone know to use it? But I think that CSD (possibly with a waiting period) is better than DOT, because it would follow a broader pattern. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
My bad on 'delete-on-sight' .. thanks for clarifying ( I work almost exclusively in the article and redirect spaces ). What about the notion of taking the DOT process under the PROD umbrella - that would satisfy a broader pattern as well. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:35, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
←I don't really consider the WP:DOT process to be a particularly useful one, for three reasons. Firstly, it is very poorly publicised and not particularly active, such that templates listed there will receive less attention there than they would if listed for CSD directly, let alone if they went for TfD. That's significant because secondly, it strikes me as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy in an essentially uncontroversial process. WP:DOT (as best I can determine) compiles lists of templates which meet the criteria in WP:CSD#T3, sits on them for a fortnight, then lists them for deletion under WP:CSD#G6. Given the poor publicity, what is the benefit over listing them straight up for #G6? The DOT process is unlikely to conduct any more rigorous checks than the closing admin would - checking history, checking incoming links, reading the documentation (if any) and conducting a search for similar templates. Thirdly, the DOT process, being unconnected to WP:Deletion policy, doesn't actually have any muscles of its own. It's not like it has a handful of admins standing by with the mop to muck out the list once each {{deprecated}} tag expires - it actually has to send its rejects to CSD to get them deleted! While folding WP:DOT into WP:PROD might aleviate this issue, it does not remove the unnecessary bureaucracy which only very rarely adds anything constructive to the debate (since in most cases there is no debate - the status is clear and unequivocal). DOT actually appears to function more like a WikiProject or task force which patrols the template namespace for templates which would qualify for CSD#T3!! Surely their mission would be made much easier by #T3 as they could tag these templates directly and use CSD's own infrastructure to patrol and mediate the list of tagged templates.
A new CSD criterion, by contrast, solves all these problems. Firstly, remember, speedy deletion is not the be-all and end-all. Of course mistakes will be made, as they are with all CSDs, PRODs and indeed AfDs and TfDs. That's why we have WP:Deletion review. It's of course important to ensure that whatever solution we find is carefully restricted to this narrow (if common) class of deletions which genuinely are uncontroversial. But I feel that a CSD criterion is the most precise and carefully-defined method of doing that. Because there is less bureaucracy and (if you want to think of it this way) fewer "safeguards", admins are traditionally more careful in applying CSDs than they might apply PRODs. A careful admin is as likely to spot any reasons not to delete during a thorough CSD examination as a handful of half-interested reviewers are during a cursory look for a PROD or TfD. And if a mistake is made, it will probably be an uncontroversial one: a brief note on WP:DRV, admin realises the mistake, template is restored, problem is solved. But these are going to be sufficiently rare that it makes more sense to move the bureaucratic checks-and-balances to after the deletion, and to use an already-existing, widely-known and -watched, and comprehensive structure to handle this.
T3-TEXT One suggestion I would like to make. Since both branches of the proposed wording require comparison to another template, this should be specified by a parameter in the same manner as {{db-i1}}. It's not very helpful to tell the admin that "this template is redundant to another one", but saying "this template is a hard-coded instance of {{infobox university}}" makes it very simple: either the template is a duplication or instance, in which case it is deleted, or it is not, in which case it stays. With this parameter in place, deletion couldn't really get much less controversial.
In a nutshell then: I don't think DOT or PROD would be useful for this type of deletion because it's an unnecessarily bureaucratic approach to an uncontroversial class of deletions; CSD is more streamlined but also more transparent. Just my $0.02 :D Happy‑melon 13:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
I think you have made many compelling points that I agree with. In returning to one of my primary suggestions, I do think that TfD has sufficiently less traffic than AfD that a PROD-like release valve is not needed. As for the specifics of the T3 criterion - would we want to include a timing statement as is included in WP:CSD#I5 and WP:CSD#I6, for instance, or would T3 be applied as a delete-on-sight action? My gut tells me that a timing statement should be included, but I am not adamantly attached to that. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
While your comparison of WP:DOT to a task force is an accurate one in my opinion, I'd like to offer two clarifications about it. First, in the past it has been quite active, containing in excess of 150 templates at any given time. Since notifications are often given and a two week delay is mandated, the templates do receive some attention (e.g. see the "Objections" section on the talk page). Second, once the 14 days expire, these templates are not listed for deletion under WP:CSD#G6; instead, an admin reviews the pages and just deletes them, citing G6 and WP:DOT, or removes the {{deprecated}} tag (i.e. rejects speedy deletion). So, technically, it doesn't send anything to CSD.
That said, I don't really oppose your suggested template criterion, as the only real downside is a lengthened CSD page and a criterion that is somewhat redundant to existing processes, which may well be offset by the extra clarification provided. I'd like to raise one last point: is comparison to another template really necessary? It's often the case that a template is not a duplicate of any other, or has not been replaced by any other, but is simply unused and - in general - has no conceivable use. While these are covered by G6, perhaps any new template criterion should consider them as well. Black Falcon (Talk) 18:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your support, but extension to unused and unusable templates is what I specifically want to avoid, as there is no crystal-clear objective determination of "unusable". While it is quite likely that few deletions of unusable templates would be controversial, it is not guarranteed to be so, and as has been pointed out above, the load on TfD is not so great that these deletions can't be processed there. This criterion is really about clearing the bureaucracy from a narrow class of completely uncontroversial deletions which we get far too many of at TfD. With regards DOT, thankyou for the clarification; the point I was trying to make was that the admins do not delete templates "because DOT has told us to", whereas admins do say "deleting this because of this AfD/PROD/CSD". A CSD criterion is still used as the justification for deletion, even though you take a different road to the deletion. It's a semantic point again, but it just represents unnecessary bureaucracy in my opinion. The new criterion is only redundant to CSD#G6 because up till now we've interpreted G6 as covering it!! The actual wording of G6 says nothing about this (or many of the other things we delete under it), it's just our loose interpretation of it that causes redundancy. You're quite right in that the extra clarification provided in this instance would be a benefit, and hey, it's only an extra hundred words at most :D. Happy‑melon 18:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Ugh. The reason WP:DOT was created was so that we wouldn't have to list these unused, largely forgotten templates on TfD and there wouldn't be a need for long, drawn out debates about a new deletion process or a new CSD criterion. Well here we are, facing walls of text. Ugh. While it hasn't been shouted on every talk page and village pump, WP:DOT linked from the WP:TFD main page, not that anyone bothers to read that. It was also discussed on WT:TFD before being created with a handful of editors weighing in.

While WP:CSD#G6 probably could be applied to a lot of these templates without further discussion, I've edited and looked at a lot of these templates, and while I try to avoid ones that are always substituted or are intentionally without transclusions, I've screwed up. That's exactly why a two-week waiting period was given: so that people could see the template was marked for deletion on their watchlist and notice any screwed up substitutions over the course of the two weeks. When this was previously discussed, everyone was in agreement that a waiting period was better than an abrupt deletion.

WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal, esp. the addition of new criteria. Frankly, it might be nice to have a new criterion, but it simply isn't necessary. To have instant deletion of templates, much like how CSD#G1 or CSD#G3 currently operate would be a terrible idea. As for your assertion that WP:DOT-rejected templates get sent to WP:CSD, that is simply incorrect, and I have no idea where you got that impression. As I said, WP:DOT has been pretty inactive lately; hopefully some admins will be able to rectify that shortly enough. If I can quote the preface to WP:DOT: "Listing all unused templates at Templates for deletion would unnecessarily burden that process. Instead, this page has been established to coordinate efforts to maintain the template namespace by removing unneeded templates in an orderly and systematic manner." That seems pretty clear to me. As for the suggestion that users be forced to go to WP:DRV when an admin screws up, that is entirely the wrong approach regarding deletions altogether. Unequivocally. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

T3-TEXT I haven't seen any objections to a delay before deletion; I will add that to the proposed text. I think that "necessary" is too high a standard for a new CSD criterion. I think the t3 criterion meets the four bullets at the top of this talk page. The main objection I have to DOT is that since it explicitly only applies to templates that meet some CSD criterion (like G6) already, they could just be deleted without going through DOT (which is what normally I do myself; I didn't even know DOT existed). Essentially, T3 would formalize the DOT process slightly; the DOT page itself would be augmented by a category of t3 candidates, and the {{deprecated}} template would merge with {{db-t3}}. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Precisely, CBM - I couldn't have summed it up better myself. Happy‑melon 13:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Path to adoption

MZMcBride brought up a good point when saying "WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal". That implies that our agreement here might not be sufficient to adopt the change officially. What is the path forward to make the policy change? Is there a change control board that needs to consider it, for instance? Thanks for spelling it out ... though I've been here quite a while, I have not engaged in policy revision discussions up to now. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no formal procedure. I have added a "proposed" message to the CSD page, which will draw the first wave of comments. If that seems positive, the next step is to announce it at the village pump. If it still seems to have consensus after that, it's part of the policy. I think it's worth announcing at the admin noticeboard as well. The main thing is just to give people who are likely to care a fair chance to comment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I think the criterion might have merit if it could be made to work without being overly bureaucratic (i.e. containing a detailed description of numerous prerequisites and exclusions). In its current form, I oppose adoption: although the criterion is supposed to cover cases of uncontroversial housekeeping and clarify a subset of G6 deletions, it is now about as long as and more complicated than criteria G12, C2, and I9. (Moreover, it accomplishes less than is accomplished through the combination of WP:DOT and CSD G6.) – Black Falcon (Talk) 05:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The nature of the new criterion is that it will accomplish less than what is currently done under G6. That's unavoidable, since about any speedy deletion of a template for any reason could be called housekeeping. I agree that the present wording is too long. It needs to be rewritten to make it more succinct. But I do think it will cover any template that would actually get deleted under DOT (the requirements for listing at DOT are less, but that doesn't mean that anything that gets listed will get deleted). — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
With some rewording I have made the criterion at least sound less complicated and bureaucratic. What do you think now? Happy‑melon 13:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that "giving notice" is a very good idea. Consensus needs involvement.  :) Putting the notice on the CSD page was a good idea (that's how I got here). Going to WP:VPP next is also a good idea. Some other ways to "advertise" it include: WikiEN-l mailing list; WP:RFC/POLICY via {{RFCpolicy}}; Template:Announcements/Community bulletin board; The Signpost. I'd suggest using one or more of those, eventually. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 04:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Now that we have a reasonably stable wording, and a new template ({{db-t3}}) to go with it, I think it's time to open this up to a wider audience. Does anyone have any suggestion as to the order of events? I am inclined to go: RFC, then VPP, Signpost and/or community bulletin board. Objections? Happy‑melon 19:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

T-3 - a potential problem for WP:WSS

There's a potential problem with the new T-3 criterion as far as standard stub-sorting practice is concerned. Often it is useful to create a batch of stub templates to completely split an overgrown type consistently, and occasionally this will result in a template which is necessary for potential use but is not actually used.

For example, if Cat:Football (soccer) biography stubs were very large, the best way to manage it would be to split the biographies byusing different templates for different decade of birth. Any templates which got sufficient usage would get their own categories, others would have their articles remain in the main stub category. Thus, {{1920s-footy-bio-stub}}, {{1930s-footy-bio-stub}} etc would all be created at the same time, back to the dawn of the professional era. Sometimes, such a split results in an unused template (there may be no current football biography stubs for players born in the 1890s, for instance). It could be argued that this stub template would be speediable, as it is unused and - given that the template would be upmerged into a larger category - does nothing that the plain {{footy-bio-stub}} does not.

I know of several current cases where this situation exists - for example, every country in the world has its own geo-stub template for geographical articles, but the one for the Vatican City is currently not used on any articles. I'd hate to see this new criterion being used as a means of removing valid stub templates that complete a set.

Might I suggest the wording be amended slightly to Templates that are deprecated and orphaned and which are not part of an established series - that is... ? I doubt it would interfere with many of the templates which are mentioned as being the sort that T-3 is aimed at, and it would reduce the chances of potentially useful stub templates suddenly disappearing. Grutness...wha? 04:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I added this reasonable limitation to the proposal. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, but... the way you added it is misleading, since it implies that no stub templates could be deleted under T-3 (it makes it sound like the "larger series" is stub templates overall). There are definitely problem stub templates that it would be good to have speedied under T-3 (indeed, many WP:SFD candidates are snowball deleted when T3 could be implemented more efficiently). Perhaps simply deleting the subordinate clause from your addition (to leave Templates that are part of a larger series should not be deleted under this criterion.) would reduce this ambiguity. Grutness...wha? 05:52, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think a better way of addressing this than adding a condition to T3 is to prevent the useful-potential-stub templates from being orphaned in a similar manner that dab pages are prevented from being orphaned - have a page that is meant to transclude otherwise orphaned templates, something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Template Hitching Post. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 05:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Transcluding on that page could make it look like there are more stubs than there actually are. What about simply linking to the stub templates on an appropriately titled project page, so anyone looking to speedy, when checking backlinks, would notice the list.
If people decide to tag such stub templates with T3, they'd have a hard time showing that the templates are actually deprecated as required, since they would have to look for past discussion on its intended use. –Pomte 07:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
This is similar to the situation with categories; I edited Category:History_merge_for_speedy_deletion to make it more clear that it shouldn't be deleted under CSD C1. Explaining the purpose of a template in its documentation is always a good idea. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Time clarification

The suggested text says, in part, "Templates that ... are no longer used ... may be deleted after seven days". I presume what we're after here is, "If the template seems like a dead idea, and nobody has used it for seven days, just delete it". I don't have a problem with that in concept; sounds good to me. But how would one check that? To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to see a usage history for a template. That is, there's nothing that will show you when a page used to transclude it, or the last time it was substituted. (If there's some MediaWiki feature I've missed, just hit me over the head with a cluebat about it.) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 03:45, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

No it was just worded poorly. I've reworded it to "after being tagged for seven days." Happy‑melon 15:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, that makes more sense. And I think the idea is a good one! • But now I have a different concern: Every other criteria on WP:CSD is for situations where an immediate decision on deletion is justified. The deleting admin can just click delete and be done. Indeed, that's what makes it speedy. While Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, I am worried that having one CSD situation that works differently than all the others is just an opportunity for confusion and strife. Would it not be better to fold this into WP:PROT, or work on promoting WP:DOT to guideline status? I like to avoid inconsistency when there are better alternatives.  :) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 23:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Read WP:CSD#I4, WP:CSD#I5 and WP:CSD#I6 - it's by no means a unique situation. Note that I actually agree with you that there isn't really any compelling reason for a wait period, but someone said they'd be more comfortable with it in and I'd rather have a CSD with a delay than DOT, PROD or TfD. Note that it's still clearing the bureaucracy away from the process, which is what this new criterion is really all about. Happy‑melon 11:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
You're right, of course. I even knew about at least one of those. I'm not quite sure why they slipped my mind. Carry on! —Preceding unsigned comment added by DragonHawk (talk • contribs) 23:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)