Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 27

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

Contents 1 CSD-T3 - Discussion 2 Extending R3b 3 CSD G10 - proposed alternative author notice 4 Weirdness in A7? 5 Dictionary definitions 6 Deleted pages and CSD G8 7 Obselete Images 8 DRVs and speedy A7 9 G8 and images on commons 10 Speed of speedies 11 Remove redirects from G3 12 New criteria proposal 13 expand CSD R2 to include redirects from the Template namespace 14 Is List_of_real_estate_topics a GSD 6 candidate? 15 Do we really need CSD G11? 16 Proposed G8 exception 17 Why are articles deleted so quickly? 17.1 Hypothetical technical question 18 Mod to Db-redirmisnomer 19 Does CSD:G6 cover deprecated userboxes and templates? 20 New criterion proposal: Wrong namespace 21 The subtleties of CSD#I9 22 T3 23 A7 again 24 Speedy? 25 T3 opposition 25.1 GFDL

CSD-T3 - Discussion

The wording of the proposed new WP:CSD#T3 is now in place on the main page under a {{proposed}} template. Please read the discussion in the section above for details of the development of this criterion. At this stage we would still like comments, criticisms, improvements and suggestions, particularly about whether editors feel that the seven day wait period is necessary (I'm not convinced it is). If consensus does not appear to be clearly in favour or opposition, we might open a straw poll at a later date. Happy‑melon 11:16, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

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Perhaps I'm missing something, but templates no longer in use on current versions of pages may be important parts of older versions of pages. Deleting such templates could seriously damage the readability of older pages; at minimum, this seems to directly contradict the concept of a wiki - preserving a trail of who did what. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

That is an excellent point, which I don't think anyone had really considered. However, I don't think that a mass cleanup of the template namespace to clear out all old and deprecated templates is the aim of this CSD, however the wording might appear. Instead, the new CSD is supposed to deal with two narrow categories: templates which are essentially duplications of other existing templates (such as this from today's TfD), and hardcoded instances of existing, versatile templates (such as this, this, and this (we've had literally dozens of these in the last week or so at TfD), or ones like this or this). For comparison, it is not the intended purpose of the CSD to cover deletions like this, which I think is what you're getting at. Do you think that a rewording is needed to solidify this interpretation? If so, what do you propose? Happy‑melon 20:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

We currently have 23,571 templates that are unused (that number includes template redirects). That's absurdly large. We TfD templates daily, some are even speedied on a regular basis. While it's unfortunate that this can damage past page views, so can image deletions and CSS changes, to say nothing of deleting articles, which cause red links and inaccessible content. It's simply unreasonable to expect us to keep all of this old data. It isn't in contradiction of a wiki, it's what must be done in order to keep this place tidy. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

"...templates whose use has completely been replaced by another template" could be misapplied, as there have been instances of people forking out a template, replacing the old one with the new one, and then trying to delete the old one. Now, I have no idea why they do this when they could just edit the existing template, but since it's relatively harmless (unless it's a POV fork, which can hopefully be judged by the admin checking edit histories) and a pain to merge edit histories of the old and the new, I don't have much of a problem with it.

I support the 7-day wait. Templates are maintained at a much slower pace than articles, they don't need to be deleted, and it allows time for people to notice to explain why their template isn't redundant etc. at TfD in case they have objections. –Pomte 00:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

The wording above, 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. - is not the same as on the project page. If the intent of this CSD is fairly narrow, then this wording, or something similar, would make more sense than the broader version.

The larger issue, of course, is why even bother deleting templates that aren't used? I agree that duplicates and hard-coded, narrow-use templates should be deleted - that makes it easier for ongoing editor work. But for older templates, why not just mark them deprecated and leave them as is? (I'm thinking particularly of templates used for footnotes, before cite.php was developed).

In any case, the following seems uncontroversial (I'm just tweaking the wording): Templates which are not used in any articles and either (a) are substantial duplications of another template or (b) are hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict with IronGargoyle below) I think this wording is more closely restricted to the categories of deletion I had in mind when suggesting this criterion. I have replaced the version on the mainpage with essentially this wording. I have changed "used in any articles" to "employed in any useful context" as there are many templates designed to be used outside articlespace; I've also added the seven day criterion as it seems to be popular. What do we think? Happy‑melon 16:31, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I completely and stridently oppose any new speedy deletion criteria for templates. As a regular closer of TfDs, it does not seem like the workload on TfD is too extreme at the moment. I also think that there are many templates whose template coding is far too esoteric to sanction speedy deletion without the customary 7 day period for community comment. Yes, in certain cases CSD G6 should apply, but these cases should be absolutely clear cut to the level where any Wikipedia editor with a moderate level of experience (but no template experience) should see that the case for speedy deletion for housekeeping is obvious. I think a prod-type template would be a much better solution. IronGargoyle (talk) 16:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that the workload at TfD is not unbearable, it is rather tedious to work through dozens (and I mean literally dozens) of TfDs that you know are going to be utterly uncontroversial, are clearly either a duplication or a hard-coded instance, and where the rationale for deletion is so obvious you wonder why you have to bother. This CSD is about clearing the bureaucracy from this narrow class of uncontroversial articles. I'm not sure how the level of complexitiy of a template has any bearing on whether duplications or hard-coded instances should be allowed - a hard-coded single-use instance is still a hard-coded single-use instance, no matter how ugly the code is - in fact the more esoteric, the less we want the code duplicated all over the template namespace. The seven-day wait period of TfD is built into the CSD, but in a manner that is much more likely to provoke "comunity comment" if editors have strong feelings about the template (the template {{db-t3}} being a bit more eye-catchinig than {{tfd}}!). Considering the way T3 divides these uncontroversial deletions into a category such that they are more clearly explained than using CSD#G6 (and no moderately experienced wikipedia editor would deny that these two situations are appropriate deletion criteria), I do not entirely understand why you oppose this addition. Happy‑melon 16:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this as a new criterion at all - I would already delete all the templates this covers under G6. The proposal does have a 7 day delay, just like prod; if the deletion is contested then TfD would be needed anyway. How does the complexity of the template code affect things? — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If it has a 7-day delay then I'm fine with it. The idea was that there would be some individuals who could review the need for the deletion. The 7-day delay wasn't there when I first opposed. IronGargoyle (talk) 15:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

That's true, as I changed the wording to reflect John Broughton's suggestions almost as you were writing your comment. Thanks for your support anyway. Happy‑melon 15:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I've posted notice of this debate on WP:AN and WP:VPR. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Since the comments on this page appear to all be addressed, I removed the proposed tag. If there are additional concerns, let's discuss them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - In reading over the text of the proposed speedy criteria, it seems to me to just be a way to speedy merge duplicate templates (and thus deleting whatever one isn't the template "preferred" to remain). First, there may be coding differences that might not be obvious to the uninitiated. Second, I seem to recall at least one recent TfD in which the nominator orphaned a template in order to retain their preferred version - presumably in good faith, but it's still troublesome to consider. Is there a reason that speedy is required for this, rather than to just allow for the 5 days of discussion? - jc37 02:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

  I just noticed that for some reason I was reading "seven" as "second". (Interpreting that as 2 days - My apologies.) So now I'm wondering how this is a "speedy deletion", and not just a variety of WP:PROD? - jc37 02:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

  • There are criteria, I4, I5, and I6, that already have a 7 day delay. I checked WP:PROD again earlier tonight, and it talks about "articles"; it is not at clear to me that prod applies to pages outside the main namespace. It is true that I4-I6 and proposed T3 could be replaced by prod if it did apply to all pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Well, I was suggesting that this was similar to PROD (a PROD "variation"?) - That said, now that you point the others out, it would seem to me that each of these three would seem to be more appropriate to be merged into PROD. However, if that's done, two things would need to be dealt with. 1.) Due to previous consensus (mostly for technical reasons) PROD is not intended for categories. 2.) We'd have to indicate that the idea of "tagging" a page (regardless of namespace), with the intent of "speedy" deletion after a certain length of time (such as seven days) is essentially PROD. I think the only way that would find consensus, is if talk pages, userpages, and Wikipedia-space pages weren't PROD-able. An alternate answer would be to create 2 new PROD-like pages, one for an image version of PROD and one for a template version of PROD. - jc37 03:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
      • While it may be possible to reform PROD in that way, the proposal here is more incremental. What do you think about the T3 proposal on its own, given that nobody has yet actively proposed merging the existing criteria (I4-I6) into prod? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
        • On its own, I still have the concerns I listed at the top, about how it can be abused, or how misunderstood templates might be deleted, when they may have been quite useful. I don't know, this just seems to cry out "preference by personal aesthetic taste" to me. What am I seeing different than you? - jc37 04:03, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
          • If I am looking at the right comment, I see two issues. First, that there might be coding differences. I don't see that as a major issue, since the actual code of a template is not usually that important so long as the template works properly. Second, that a template might be orphaned with prejudice. The seven day delay is meant to help with that. It only takes one veto for CSD before the template would go to TFD. But in a large number of cases, the deletion will be uncontroversial, which is why a CSD criterion is worthwhile. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
            • Again sounds an awful lot like PROD. By the way, it seems that a PROD version for templates has been discussed several times. The main "oppose" has been that TFD isn't backlogged the way AfD can be. That also applies to your porposal. That said, I personally am not sure that that's a valid reason to oppose creating a template version of PROD. There's also a discussion about images at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion, as well. See also Wikipedia:Proposed deletion/Template prod, which apparently died in infancy. - jc37 04:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

(de-dent) - You know, rather than just talk around it, let's talk about the processes involved. Speedy deletion (SPED?) is (presumably) deletion of a page without the need for a template. The criteria are strict for those reasons. Proposed deletion (PROD) is deletion which occurs after a template "tag" is placed on a page, without anyone disputing the tag by removing it. If disputed, the page must then be nominated.

I don't see any reason why this can't apply to any page in any namespace (with the 3 exceptions I noted above: Category, Wikipedia, and User; as well as all talk pages).

Would you be willing to help create Wikipedia:Criteria for proposed deletion? - jc37 04:24, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm somewhat confused; there are already three CSD criteria in place that require a week delay after tagging. CSD is not always about the ability to delete things without a delay. There is also already WP:DOT, already in place, that would be subsumed under the T3 criterion. I don't know what would go into a criteria for proposed deletion page - the point of prod is that any reason can be given, although it only applies to articles. The motivation for the new criterion was reports from TFD that there are a large number of nominations that would fit this criterion. According to the top of WT:CSD, that's when a new criterion should be proposed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Carl - the purpose of CSD is largely to remove the bureaucracy from uncontroversial or necessary deletions. This CSD criterion covers a carefully defined and narrow range of template that are nonetheless very common at TfD, the deletion of which is almost invariably uncontroversial, and for which the burden of evidence should be on the creator to demonstrate that the template is necessary and useful. Extension of the PROD process is much less clearly defined - as Carl says, any reason can be given as a deletion rationale as long as it is not opposed - and is simply not solving the same problem. I would not be averse to extending PROD for templates or other namespaces in a carefully controlled manner, but this seems rather tangential to this discussion. Happy‑melon 09:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

So the idea is to add it here because it's "easier"? I'd rather do what is "right", than what is "easy". Let's try the PROD discussion. (I'm working on writing up the proposal text.) If it fails, we can always come back to this discussion. There's no hurry, since this proposal suggests a 7 day wait, when TfD has only a 5 day wait. So nothing should be lost in having the discussion. - jc37 22:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

You realize this (or a very similar proposal) was raised on WT:PROD on four separate occasions in 2007? It would seem to me that the idea simply isn't very popular, especially as it would require a major overhaul to PROD. PROD currently specifically states that it is only for articles; as it's official policy, changing it would be an ordeal that I think can simply be avoided. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No, the idea is not to do it "because it's easier to delete templates under CSD than under TfD". Of course it's the precise opposite. This criterion covers two extremely narrow cases which nonetheless come up depressingly frequently at TfD (I have found literally dozens of these in a few weeks at TfD), and where deletion is (in my experience) invariably uncontroversial. That strikes me as an ideal candidate for a CSD. PROD, by contrast, by being so loosely defined, is by definition not necessarily uncontroversial. The PROD expansion you propose will solve a lot of the other problems that plauge the template namespace. I will support you in your efforts to extend PROD. But PROD will not solve this problem, while this CSD criterion does. There is absolutely no reason why an expanded PROD and CSD#T3 cannot exist and work together. But PROD expansion simply isn't solving the same problem as CSD#T3. Happy‑melon 09:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Extending R3b

R3b writes "Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful, as are redirects in other languages."

I propose to remove Recently created and state it as:

"Redirects from implausible typos or misnomers. However, redirects from common misspellings or misnomers are generally useful, as are redirects in other languages."

The reason is that they are many redirects left behind sometimes that coming from misnomers. Check Special:Prefixindex to see tenths of redirects that are just articles with quotes only for emphasis. As Wikipedia:Naming conventions writes: To maintain the functionality of Alphabetical Indexing and avoid needless redirect pages, page names should not begin with non alpha-numeric (A-Z,0-9) characters used solely for emphasis.

-- Magioladitis (talk) 13:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe the reason "recently created" is there is so if some other website has linked to an implausible redirect we won't break their links. If the redirect was recently created this probably won't happen. Hut 8.5 13:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The other reason that clause is needed is because many things that one person thinks to be "implausible" often turn out to be very plausible - just not obvious given the way that you personally use the computer. Remember that different people use different keyboard layouts (Qwerty vs Dvorak for example) making typos based on key proximity non-obvious. Language, pronunciation and spelling variants are also common. If a redirect has been around for more than a few days, the odds are that several people have looked at it and decided that it's an acceptable redirect - or at least that we should assume good faith on the part of the redirect's creator. Those decisions should not be unilaterally undone by a single administrator. If you think the redirect is truly implausible, use the RfD process. A bit of discussion and a short wait to confirm the implausibility of the redirect is reasonable. Rossami (talk) 16:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok let's make it more explicitly. I suggest we introduce the following rule for cases like these:

"Redirects from common misspellings or misnomers page names that used solely for emphasis"

Since yesterday I have tagged for speedy deletion more than 100 redirects and all were deleted immediately. I want to extend this in older redirects that were forgotten somehow. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Why the sudden effort to delete redirects? Old redirects aren't doing any harm. Hut 8.5 16:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Please read this WP:NOHARM. Your answer implies that even if someone brings one of these redirects for RfD you would vote against because "Old redirects aren't doing any harm". -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

That essay is aimed at deletion debates on articles, not other types of deletion discussions. About the only two reasons we would want to delete such a redirect are that "we don't need it" (which isn't a valid reason to delete anything) or "it saves server space" (see WP:PERFORMANCE). Indeed, a common argument at RfD is that "redirects are cheap", and I can see plenty of debates listed there currently where "Not needed" is being attacked as an invalid deletion rationale. Hut 8.5 20:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a redirect used "solely for emphasis"? I don't know what that is. Rossami (talk) 20:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2008 January 2. I nominated 5 redirects for deletion. Many other similar cases were recent enough to be speedy deleted. Usually some users put quotes in song titles, terms or even names. Keep in mind that thsis phenomenon has already been noticed in Wikipedia but there is no policy for speedy deleting these cases if they get really old that they have to be nominated first and then deleted in all the cases (does anyone have a counter-example?)-- Magioladitis (talk) 20:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you are attributing intent where there is really only innocent (but sometimes old) error. Quotes in a page title generally occur when a new user attempts to find a page on a specific topic. Knowing that a standard search for will look for occurences of all the words in the phrase or title, the user puts the exact phrase in quotes, hoping to narrow the search. If we have a page by that title, the search engine works perfectly and takes you straight to it. If, however, we don't have a page by that title, you get the search results page saying so and offering you the link to create the page. That's a wonderful way to expand the encyclopedia and has worked very well for us. The problem occurs when you actually follow the suggested link where, for reasons that I still do not understand, our software adds the quotes in the title by default. The new user, not knowing the difference (or the older user not noticing what happened) creates the page in good faith. Sooner or later, someone notices the mistake and moves the page to the correct title without the quotes and the software automatically creates the redirect. That's not an intentional attempt to emphasize the title, it's a glitch - a newbie trap that our own software creates.
In a perfect world, I'd rather see someone fix the software so the default link stripped off the quotes but even then we'd have all the old ones scattered through history - and yes, we do have to preserve the history of these pages including the changes to the page titles. Preserving attribution history is a requirement of GFDL. Leaving the redirects around does not hurt anything and actually consumes slightly less resources than taking the effort to deleted them. Rossami (talk) 20:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

You are discussing for a different thing. I am seeking a way to optimise an already existing Wikipedia policy i.e. No reason to lose time to have 2 different strategies for new and old errors, no reason to Rfd cases that, experience shows that, will be deleted one way or another. You are discussing for changing the deletion policy and in fact stop R3b completely. Am I right or not? You are not telling why can deleted the new errors with quotes and not the old ones. You are telling me why we must no delete any of them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm not trying to change the deletion policy but I am saying that you've been applying the current speedy-deletion criterion inappropriately. Accidentally adding the quotes to a newpage is not and never has been an "implausible typo". On the contrary, the frequency with which these titles are created demonstrates that it is a highly plausible mistake. Rossami (talk) 15:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Rossami if you worry about the history I ensure you that 99% of these redirects have history record equal to 1. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, when you move an article to a new name then the history is moves as well. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

That is a relatively recent change to the way our software works (and is part of the reason the speedy-deletion criterion is limited to only recently created redirects. Pages moved before the software was updated did not simultaneously move history or (in an intermediate version) moved the content history but did not automatically record the change in title in the pagehistory. Remember that even changes to the page title are generally considered to be useful history and are exempt from deletion (much less speedy-deletion). The ones that you've run across may have mostly short histories but there are many still out there from before the software was updated. An RfD discussion can sort out the useful from non-useful ones. A speedy-deletion has too much chance of error since it doesn't have as many eyes on the question. Rossami (talk) 15:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

When did the software change? Can I assume that all the redirects after that day imply to the "recently created" rule? -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that would not be a reliable rule. Even if the software moved the history, you still have the problem of potential internal and external links to the page (which Hut 8.5 described at the top of this thread). If the title only existed for a few hours, it's highly unlikely that anyone found and linked to it. On the other hand, if a page existed at the wrong title for any length of time, there is an ever increasing chance that someone started making links to it even though the title was wrong. As a matter of practice, we do not want to risk breaking those links unnecessarily. RfD is pretty good at sorting out the useful from the harmful links. Rossami (talk) 19:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Internal links are not a problem. In addition, 99% of the articles I checked were orphan. It's Admininstrator's responsibility when deleting a redirect to ensure that he doesn't break any links. I insist that your problem is the rule in general and not it's expansion.It is obvious from your recent votes to similar RfD and your opinion here. -- 21:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Magioladitis (talk • contribs)

Internal links are a problem because even if you have them currently orphaned, they may still exist in history and can be restored whenever a page has to be reverted (for example, to fix vandalism). And even if you do fix all the internal links, you have no way to find, much less to fix any external links to the page. It's easy to say that it's the deleting admin's responsibility to fix any links but practice has shown that to be an unreasonable burden in far too many cases (and not even possible externally). My problem is not with the rule but with this inappropriate use of it. Rossami (talk) 00:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

So, according to your point of view, since an article is created is over. :) Please check Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery/Possibly unwanted were we are really trying to remove links even if they spread in many pages. Btw, I don't want this to evolve in a personal dispute. Certainly it's not personal. Friendly, Magioladitis (talk) 00:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

<outdenting> Unless the link is actively harmful or misleading (and a few on that list are), then I think that particular effort is a generally bad idea. It's usually better for the project to create the redirect and let it be. "Fixing" links just for the sake of changing them adds little or nothing to the readers' experience and bloats up the edit histories. (No worries about this becoming a personal dispute. I consider this a purely professional disagreement arising primarily from the different experiences we've had during our respective tenures on the project.) Rossami (talk) 01:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I am thinking of making a table to compare your cases and mine. Hundreds of speedy deletions and almost all the Rfd's of the last week show that these redirects are deleted. We have to be more flexible or to patrol redirections created more strictly before they become too old. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

CSD G10 - proposed alternative author notice

I should like to suggest that an alternative author notice be provided for those instances where the db-attack template is used for WP:BLP concerns. The present notice is fine for out and out attack pages but seems way too fierce for BLP concerns about content that may have been created in ignorance of BLP policy by, for example, an inexperienced user. BlueValour (talk) 00:27, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Weirdness in A7?

Hi, Mikkalai. I was wondering if you could explain what you found weird about the language of A7. I want to be sure that the language is clear enough for editors who apply it to understand that web content is a separate consideration from other creations by people. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The old text read: "..and web content themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software". I reckon you don't see nothing weird here. Well, I have never seen any "web content" that has "their books, albums or software". I thought only people and organizations may have their books or albums. I may be mistaken, though... `'Míkka>t 21:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

True enough. I wonder if the statement can be rewritten without cutting web content. Again, I want to be sure that the language is clear enough for editors who want to apply it. Would something like "A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on" seem more appropriate to you? (Adding: I've gone on ahead and incorporated that and will await response from you or others.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions

I've seen quite a few dicdefs listed at CAT:CSD as either nonsense or insufficient context, and occasionally as pure vandalism. Often such dicdefs are from urban dictionary. These don't seem to clearly fit any one criteria for speedy deletion, yet they are routinely deleted. I'm sure they would be deleted through AfD, but if common practice is to delete them speedily, shouldn't the criterion to apply be more clear? Gimmetrow 06:00, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally, I tag such articles for transwiki. Once they've been transwikied, they fit under WP:CSD#A5. :) I wonder if it would clarify things to suggest that in that criterion? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:05, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know what, if anything, Wiktionary does with these dicdefs we ship off to them by the truckload? They mostly seem unverifiable and often promotional (people defining buzzwords related to whatever thing they're selling), I sometimes imagine Wiktionary sees this stuff as junk mail. But I'm not familiar with that project. Anyway, you can always use prod if it doesn't fall into any of the CSDs. Stuff copied from urban dictionary often might, though. --W.marsh 16:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

While reasons in WP:NOT are not speedy deletion listing, some will be lacking context. Otherwise they really should be AfD'd or transwikied. But that is just my take, there is always IAR(when used with care). 1 != 2 16:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think IAR should ever have a uniform application. If that's the case, and it's accepted, then a policy change would likely also be accepted (but I don't think that's the caes here). Someguy1221 (talk) 16:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

and I don't think IAR is ever a reason for a speedy deletion. There's a difference between one person ignoring all formal rules, and a community decision that a particular case warrants doing so. DGG (talk) 16:48, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

G6 seems to be an IAR replacement as a CSD. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleted pages and CSD G8

Talk pages that are deleted as per CSD G8 cite "page does not exist" as a reason after their main pages get deleted. However, this is often false; first of all, the page does exist in a form viewable to administrators; second of all, the page often exists as a cached form after the deletion, and third of all, versions that get sporked to other encyclopedias and services exist. Thus, it is misleading to say that the main page does not exist. Moreover, deletions per CSD G8 due to deletions of the main pages is de facto censorship, as it constitutes the hiding and/or erasing of people's opinions. 68.36.214.143 (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

1. After deletion the talk page is also visible to administrators, if the need arises
2. This is not relevant, as the page will have been deleted for a good reason - the fact that deleted content can still be accessed in some circumstances is no cause not to delete it in the first place - the purpose of deletion is not censorship (that's what oversight is for) but to make a statement "this content is not suitable for an encyclopedia"
3. See above
4. Deletion is not censorship, as above; the clearing of talk pages for nonexistent mainspace pages is considered uncontroversial housekeeping, as no opinions should have been expressed on the talk page that were not relevant to the (now nonexistent) article. If the deletion of the page is overturned at Deletion review, then the talk page will be restored at the same time. In a certain sense, deletion of the talk page is a protection measure to ensure that if this restoration occurs, the two pages are still 'synchronised', instead of the talk page possibly picking up edits and comments that are not reflected in the main page.

Happy‑melon —Preceding comment was added at 19:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Obselete Images

A user has requested comment on Wikipedia policy or guidelines for this section. This tag will automatically place the page on the {{RFCpolicy list}}. When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list.

I personally think that we should add the deletion of obsoleted images (like better quality images, images that are SVG's now, etc) as a possible criteria for speedy deletion. IF and ONLY IF the image is truly not needed anymore. Good idea? ViperSnake151 12:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Not a bad idea to delete. A bad candidate to speedy-delete. The determination that an image is truly obsoleted is not always obvious or non-controversial. From what I can tell, the Images for Deletion process seems to be working. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Rossami (talk) 14:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

DRVs and speedy A7

Several articles at CRV show a number of people justifying speedies on such reasons as not having a reasonable chance of passing AfD , and "just don't see from the cached version why he's important or significant." I think we need a clearer statement of what is not a reason for speedy, or a strong modification of CSD A7 DGG (talk) 14:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Is the problem with the CSD A7, or is the problem with how people are wording their remarks? Is it the case that the articles you are looking at indeed do not assert the significance of their subject, and people are just not phrasing their comments well? Some examples might help, if you have specifics available. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 14:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[1], [2]. DGG (talk) 16:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

DGG: Thanks for those examples. I've looked them over and I think I see the issue here: Not everyone agrees with what an "assertion of notability" is. For example, some people think a statement that being a member of a semi-pro baseball league is an implicit assertion of notability. Other people think that's not a statement of notability, just a random fact. I can't say who's right, and even if I could, it wouldn't solve the problem in general: How to determine what's an implicit assertion of notability. Maybe that makes the whole CSD A7 guideline broken, but at the same time, I think we need something to deal with the never-ending flood of WP:vanispamcruft. And I certainly wouldn't want something that encourages articles to explicitly justfiy their own inclusion ("subject is notable because..."). Thoughts? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 22:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you have in mind? (I perk up like a dog to the sound of a can opener at mention of A7.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with CSD A7, as it is presently worded, is that it has been formulated with the inscrutable subjectivity "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant", which leads some administrators to delete articles when they don't personally believe the subject matter to be important. I propose the following reformulated version:

Blatantly non-notable material. An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that is blatantly non-notable, such as vanity autobiographies, and articles concerning garage bands, personal webpages, and companies run out of people's basements. This is distinct from questions of actual notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. Other article types are not eligible for deletion by this criterion. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at Articles for deletion instead.

John254 16:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

While I do believe in the power of WP:IAR, such deletions should not be called "speedy". 1 != 2 16:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I think A7 is worded fine and precise, such that anyone reading it for the first time should realize that it isn't easy to fail. The problem here is either people don't understand it, they confound "doesn't assert significance" with "insignificant", or they're justifying it by IAR to avoid AfD creeping. "Blatantly non-notable" is allows too much room for interpretation. –Pomte 16:57, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, "blatantly non-notable" describes the issue quite precisely. For instance, although an article comprised of the text "John Doe is the coolest person in the world" would technically "indicate why its subject is important or significant", it would still be properly speedily deleted. The examples provided in my proposed rewording clarify what is meant by "blatantly non-notable". John254 17:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

To give another example, some administrators might assert that an article consisting of "ACME Company is a publicly traded corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange" would be speedily deletable on the grounds that it "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant", because, after all, there are thousands of companies listed on the same exchange. I would hope, however, that we aren't going to start speedily deleting articles concerning publicly traded corporations; the language "blatantly non-notable" clarifies that we shouldn't. John254 17:11, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it's impossible to adequately define what CSD A7 means by reference to any abstract formulation. To quote Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I see it". I therefore suggest that the policy provide a link to a project page containing specific examples of articles that would legitimately be subject to speedy deletion per CSD A7, as well as articles not deletable under the criterion. John254 19:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that your proposed wording would significantly change the behavior that you and DGG are concerned about. It would, however, significantly increase our instruction creep problems. Rossami (talk) 21:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

John254: I think your proposed wording is significantly different from the meaning of the current CSD A7 wording. The current rule, as I read it, is about material which fails to even assert the importance of their subject matter. (In other words, if I wrote that Albert Einstein was a German scientist who emigrated to the US, liked chocolate cake, had frizzy hair, etc., but never mentioned his scientific contributions, that fails to assert importance, and so would qualify under the present CSD A7.) But an article which says Joe Blow is a scientist who invented the electric spoon, water-proof towel, and submarine windshield wiper, well, that's saying why he's worth noting. Maybe those assertions don't meet the standards of WP:N, WP:V, etc., but they are there. I think such a significant change merits community discussion. Maybe mention it at WP:VPP or WP:RFC/POLICY? • That said, I'm concerned with the vagueness of your proposed change. I think I understand where you're coming from with "I know it when I see it", but CSD is supposed to be "uncontestable". Such an overtly subjective rule, with so much room for interpretation, is not a place for a "speedy decision", I would think. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 20:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

A7 is a subjective criteria, ultimately. "John played baseball with Blacksburg Middle School" is, in a very technical way of looking at it, as much of a claim of importance as "John played baseball with the Baltimore Orioles". I think all of us agree that some subjectivity needs to come in when deciding if a claim of importance is enough. But since A7 applies to vast and diverse sets of articles, and because deletion can be harmful, I think it makes sense for us to try to set the bar low. Some people like to set it high, and end up deleting articles on quite notable topics through error in judgement... I don't see that as a very positive way of administrating the project.

A7 should never be about whether an article will survive AFD or not (in fact, admins are remarkably bad in trying to predict such things, especially if someone like User:Uncle G takes an interest in improving the article). But if the bar for A7 is set quite low, we end up playing it much more safely. I think A7 should try to communicate this... admins should never be trying to guess whether an article will survive AFD or not, but just looking about whether there's a credible assertion of importance. Can the policy language convey this without becoming bulky and bureaucratic? I don't know. Can we enforce this spirit of A7 application at DRV? I think so. --W.marsh 21:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Policy by example is hard to demonstrateto someone who is being skeptical. And we should try to set it up so that not too many things have to be appealed. I have been reluctant to add to the work at Del Rev by appealing the incorrect speedies I come across but which are for articles that have no chance of surviving AfD, but perhaps we really should be doing this to make the teaching point.

I have a suggestion that might reduced the ambiguity.

remove "organizations" and "companies." "Organizations" was added, apparently without any specific discussion by [3] as recently as Oct 11, 2007, in the midst of a more general discussion about CSDA7 (now in Archive24). The major disputed instances we have been discussing come under the rubrics of "organisations" and "companies." Companies has always been a problem because it is extremely hard to tell if an article about a company is making a credible assertion. "X is an ice-cream shop." is obviously not a credible assertion, but "X is a large accounting firm in Y country" is disputable. and how about "X is a large restaurant in South Africa"

I am not certain about groups: I think it was originally intended to apply to musical groups that are not bands, and it makes sense in that meaning. Otherwise it is too general--it's been claimed from time to time that churches and schools are "groups" DGG (talk) 22:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little concerned with what that diff you posted reveals. I haven't paid attention to the evolution of CSD A7; I can only go by what's written presently. If the present wording doesn't actually reflect the consensus about how the notability guidelines should be applied, that's worrying. That said, it seems to me that (as currently worded) the spirit of CSD A7 is to allow articles which don't even bother to assert the notability of their subject to be deleted without discussion. If my take is accurate, "organizations" seems a reasonable way to express company/band/club/etc. It's basically taking "people" and "groups of people" to both be the same thing for notability purposes. But again, that's my interpretation based on current wording, so maybe I'm being led astray. I guess the question is: Is the current wording a refinement of consensus, or a change to it? —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 21:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

the intent of "organizations" may have been to sum up the other types, but that has not been its effect--its been used for nonprofit organizations, schools, churches, and the like--most of which have of course been non-notable, but which are very hard to tell if yjust one or two people look at it. A kit of the questionable speedies come from this group. I don't think that it was ever thought out properly or even defended, and i propose reversing it immediately. if people want to reinsert it, they can make the argument. DGG (talk) 09:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ehhhh... in my experience, being WP:BOLD with significant policies almost always results in sub-optimal results. Storms of editing, storms of discussion, upset people, accusations of bad faith, revert wars, page protection, etc. I like to avoid that kind of wikidrama if possible. At best, it means people are surprised when something they thought was consensus policy is suddenly unclear. Heck, that's how we got here in the first place.  :) So I ask you to consider other avenues first. For example, raise the question at WP:VPP and/or WP:RFC/POLICY. They're explicitly intended for this kind of thing. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 15:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'm just a big ol' meanie, because I am really uncomfortable with setting the A7 threshold so very low that too much WP:vanispamcruft has to go through the ponderous and laborious AfD procedure. The number of manure-cart-loads of self-advertising trivia that shows up on the New Pages in a given day is heartbreaking. And I like the term "organizations" because it includes the non-notable high school glee club, local ethnic society, neighborhood watch group, D&D group, "Albigensians for Huckabee Caucus," etc. without a loophole for wikilawyering. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:52, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

• May I suggest a wording?

No claim of importance/significance. An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not make a valid claim of the subject's importance or significance. This is distinct from the question of notability, verifiability, or reliable sources. A "valid claim" is, in short, the reason why the subject deserves an encyclopedia article. See the page documenting common deletion outcomes for examples of what might constitute a valid claim of importance or significance. Note that A7 applies only to articles about web content or articles on people and organizations themselves, not articles on their books, albums, software and so on. Other article types are not eligible for deletion by this criterion. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at Articles for deletion instead.

This allows a little bit of interpretation on what makes a "valid claim", while making it clearer exactly what qualifies under A7 (at least in my understanding). --UsaSatsui (talk) 17:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

it's not the claim. that would take us back to year ago, when people were insisting the the article say "This is notable because...". it doesnt matter if t here is an explicit claim, if there is some reason to think that the subject might be notable. How about no claim or indication of importance or significance. or even no indication of importance of significance. I want to get rid by speedy of the articles where someone tries to wikilawyer and says, "He is significant because he wrote an (unpublished) poem." thats a claim of significance, of the sort that no one could take seriously, and was not seriously intended. DGG (talk) 05:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a little confused. I don't see the difference between a "claim" and an "assertion" or "indication". How is your above example one but not the other? --UsaSatsui (talk) 07:59, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

A "claim" has been used in cases where an article talked about, say, multiple published books, or an important career, and did not in the first paragraph contain the sentence "He is a notable author, because ..." Sounds absurd, but i used to have to give advice to new authors to highlight such a sentence, to meet the objection "It didn't say he was important." The point is that the article has to give information that can be seen on some way as an express or implied claim, assertion, indication, or any other near synonym you'd like to add, that can be taken to show some possible sort of notability. The language here has to be very inclusive to prevent misinterpretation. Personally I like the phrase "anything that would indicate possible notability." DGG (talk) 01:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I like that phrase too. --UsaSatsui (talk) 23:59, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

D owe perhaps have consensus for it? ( I don't like "valid" by the way, because the obvious interpretation of valid is something good ienough to pass AfD under our rules for Notability,and I think we are agreed we mean something not as stringent as that.)
As For not being BOLD, B in bold was inserting the word "organisations". i am just suggesting that i will be belatedly removing it. That's the proper immediate response to significant undocumented insertions into major policy pages. Its the people who want the term who need to justify it. DGG (talk) 04:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not think that this discussion demonstrates consensus to remove "organizations". The addition of that word clarified the clause for readers without changing the intended meaning of the clause. As to your other proposed wording, frankly, I'm not sure what the proposal is anymore. This thread has wandered a bit. What is your exact proposal? Rossami (talk) 17:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

G8 and images on commons

I propose we remove the exception for G8 where the image is on Commons. Once the image is moved to Commons, all discussion should take place there, not here, and having a red link image but a blue link talk page on the image is confusing and unhelpful. Majorly (talk) 15:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

If the image was moved from en to commons, sometimes the talk page has relevant licensing and copyright discussion, and so should not be deleted. After an image is moved to commons, do we really expect en editors to go to commons to make comments, when a talk page button is right there? Gimmetrow 22:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I do. Commons is underrated for free images, and it makes sense to discuss the image where it is hosted. It's like discussing a non-existent article here that does exist on say, French Wikipedia, Majorly (talk) 23:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

It's more like a discussion on a redirect's talk page. Maybe if talk pages of images hosted on commons were soft redirects to the commons talk page? But that still doesn't address the issue of talk content prior to moving an image to commons - in some cases that should not be deleted. Gimmetrow 00:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Any chance of an automatic link to the commons talk page from the talk tab, where it exists and the local talk page does not? This is why a lot of these get created. —Random832 21:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Speed of speedies

I'm growing increasingly alarmed by the # of articles I see speedied by admins for lack of content or context within literally a minute or two of creation. I know this sentence is in the opening, "Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete", but I'm not at all sure it's being read. Is there a way to note something similar within the text of CSD#A3 and possibly CSD#A1? I'm all for not making the directions so long that people don't bother to read them, but speedy deletion is a fairly bitey thing to do when unwarranted, and it seems polite to wait at least a couple of minutes to see if the creator plans to add more. :/ I can provide examples, but would prefer not to as I'm not attempting to lodge a complaint against any particular admin. Since it involves more than one admin—and is behavior exhibited by others on new page patrol—a policy clarification might be warranted. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have a suggestion--why do we need A3? Why cannot articles without content simply goto Prod? their existence does not do immediate harm to the encyclopedia. And this would solve the problem--if the article is not attended to, it will be deleted. DGG (talk) 04:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if someone (or the article creator, possibly a newbie) decided to be silly and remove the prod, we'd kind of have a pointless AFD over a blank page. I also usually check if the page was created by someone other than a newbie, and ask them about it if that's the case (I don't think I've ever seen a page created by a new user that went from blank to anything else). Someguy1221 (talk) 07:16, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

<reset indent>It's good that you do, but not everybody does. :) Both of the articles I observed speedied under A3 yesterday within a minute or two now exist as full articles. What I'd propose is completely moving (as opposed to duplicating) the sentence from the opening chunk of text to A1, as so:

“

No context. Very short articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car and makes people laugh." Context is different than content, treated in A3, below. Contributors sometimes create articles over several edits, so try to avoid deleting a page too soon after its creation if it appears incomplete.

”

and then adding a brief note to A3:

“

No content. Any article (other than disambiguation pages) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments, and/or images. However, a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion. As with A1, if the article is new consider that it may be in active development.

”

With regards to doing away with A3, I'd agree that getting rid of brief articles is rarely an emergency, but Someguy1221 has a point, in my opinion. I do wish that these criteria were not so often mistagged. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:12, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

How about "Any article, at least 30 minutes old, ..." ? Or "Any article, not edited in the last 30 minutes, ..."? --Coppertwig (talk) 22:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

That would work for me. It's much more succinct. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Here's an example: Headless Nun was tagged and deleted within 5 minutes of creation. I see little reason why we couldn't wait a little longer than that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:00, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh dear. This is unfortunate. This was deleted as patent nonsense when, in my opinion, it was not. When the poor new user tried to recreate the article and ask for help it was deleted again as having no content. Dsmdgold (talk) 04:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I actually agree that it was mistagged. However, the version of the article that I deleted had very little that was usable - it asserted that this was an actual ghost and was basically a ghost story. As such, I stand by the decision under IAR, from a purely editorial perspective. However, I also agree that it was excessively bitey and I should have taken more time to help along a new editor. As self-punishment, I will recreate the article in a more usable form.--Kubigula (talk) 04:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The deleted article seems to contain much of one version of the ghost story, I'm not sure why it's not usable. Yes, needs sourcing, but should be undeleted to credit the article creator. Gimmetrow 05:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The story was presented as fact and required a substantial rewrite - just about starting from scratch - to be encyclopedic. But, as I conceded above, it was unkind to delete it so quickly.--Kubigula (talk) 05:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I should emphasize I am not trying to chastize Kubigula for deleting the article; the deletion was in line with established practice for speedy deletion. I was hoping to use it as an example of how the current practices could be improved, nothing more. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

<re-indent> Much of this discussion could be avoided if the new article would carry the template {{underconstruction}} . At least, the contributor would be given time to write and finish the new article. JoJan (talk) 09:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I have added mention of that template to Wikipedia:Your first article. –Pomte 11:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a good idea. :) When I talk to new contributors, I frequently recommend that or {{inuse}}. As far as mention in CSD, is it reasonable to request a particular period of inactivity as proposed by Coppertwig or preferable to move the existing wording in the policy into the criteria? Or is there another approach that might work better? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:11, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The easiest way to resolve the problem would be to separate some of the CSD criteria into categories, like the image criteria, so that when an admin goes through to delete the CSD candidates, he or she is not presented with every recently created, tagged page. Of course attack pages and obscenity should be deleted right away, but I don't see that a full days' delay for A1, A3, and A7 could do any harm. So there would be a rolling set of categories, and for example on the 23rd one would delete candidates from the 21st. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

As I've said many times, a forced delay is not a good idea. I think it's a reaction to people who apply A1/A3/A7 too zealously... but the solution for that isn't to make it more difficult to apply A7 correctly, but to deal with the people who apply it too zealously. Articles properly deleted under these rules would need a total rewrite to be proper encyclopedia articles. Admins should show some diligence when doing C:CSD, with the above example, I probably would have added {{intromissing}} and removed the CSD tag. A less conservative admin might have added that tag but left it the CSD category, giving editors some time to salvage the article. An uber-admin might have just written the intro themselves. The bottom line is it requires a certain finesse for recognizing what is useful content and what isn't when doing CSD. The goal isn't just to delete a lot of stuff, it's to delete the stuff we don't have any reasonable use for and salvage the stuff we do.

But a mandatory waiting time is a bad idea that would probably lead to longer backlogs and more severe problem articles slipping through the cracks. It's just creating a massive layer of bureaucracy to deal with people who are breaking rules we already have a system in place to deal with. --W.marsh 14:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Would you think it's a good idea to bring the existing wording in the policy down to the criterion for visibility, then, or do you think no change is required in language? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Generally I'm for minimizing or eliminiting advice from the criteria. They should be criteria, not advice... if they're getting misapplied a lot, perhaps the criteria needs clarification, rather than a bunch of advice tacked on to it. --W.marsh 14:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a massive layer of bureaucracy in the system we already have in place for speedy deletions of images. The real issue, I believe, is that we are concerned about articles that are created in a state unsuitable for the encyclopedia (to the point where deletion is an option) but could be improved to an acceptable standard with some extra effort. A more minor issue is the potential effect of a fast deletion on a new contributor who didn't understand our standards for an article.

While I agree that the problem would be smaller if each article in the CSD queue got 5 minutes consideration from the admin before deletion, I don't think we have that sort of admin effort available. And I don't want to excessively burden the admins who do donate their time to go through the large CSD queues for the benefit of the project. I don't think they are breaking the rules - I think they are following the standard practices currently in place. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:06, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I just don't believe that a high percentage of articles properly tagged under these 3 rules have any chance of becoming useful articles. These rules originally were carefully written, after all, to cover just articles with no meaningful content. I don't think the cost of such a delay-based system is worth a somewhat improved (but still imperfect) chance at letting the potentially okay articles be fixed before deletion. We're just not talking about very many good articles here (ones that, as created, meet a CSD criteria) and we are talking about a huge number of bad articles here. The math just doesn't make it worthwhile for me. --W.marsh 15:14, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

<reset indent>(edit conflict)I take your point, W.marsh, but will note that the advice is already in the policy; just apparently in the part that's not being read. :) As I said above, I don't want to make the criteria so long that they're not being read either. :/ I'm not sure how best to clarify them. If we add a specifier like "not newly created", it seems it will beg the question of how long = not new. Something vague along the lines of "more than a few minutes old"?

“

No context. Very short articles, more than a few minutes old, lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article. Example: "He is a funny man with a red car and makes people laugh." Context is different than content, treated in A3, below.

”

and:

“

No content. Any article more than a few minutes old (other than disambiguation pages) consisting only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, a rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments, and/or images. However, a very short article may be a valid stub if it has context, in which case it is not eligible for deletion under this criterion.

”

Is there a better way to express that? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm just more for flexible and thoughtfully pro-useful-content application of the rules to delete the bad articles and salvage the good ones than forced delays. In practice... these sorts of strict regulation of when we can and can't do something are unenforceable anyway. Are we really going to overturn otherwise valid A3 deletions because the admin waited 2 minutes instead of 4? That just won't be happening, or anyone who does overturn such deletions repeatedly will probably not be an admin for long. --W.marsh 15:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I join you in feeling that deliberation is better than process. The reason I wanted to bring the advice into the criteria is because I have seen many articles tagged for speedy as no content within seconds of creation and, as I mentioned above, witnessed two on that particular day that were actually deleted within minutes. Both of those articles were in active editing, even though the editors had not tagged them so. Both were followed up on by the article's creators, who succeeded with their requests that the admins restore the article and moved forward with their plans to create full articles out of them. I wonder how many new creators facing the disappearance of an article in those circumstances would give up—on the articles in question, on Wikipedia altogether. I didn't bring this up with the intentions of expanding bureaucracy, but rather of encouraging CSD taggers and admins to notice the advice already in the policy, which would have prevented both of these and probably many other similar cases not challenged or observed. This is why I began with proposing that we restructure the policy, rather than changing it. We're already encouraged to be mindful of this, but sometimes taggers and admins evidently aren't. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:31, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the general problem here. When I write a new article I do specific things to make it "speedy-proof", I'm sure these tactics aren't evident to new editors. The problem is there's no simple solution to Wikipedia's steep learning curve - which is most gruesome when it comes to creating new articles. Everyone's actions in the situations you describe are defensible - the new users didn't know better, the taggers and admins were just trying to patrol newpages as it is necessary for us to do. I appreciate that you're trying to fix a genuine problem here, I've just never been convinced this is a practical way to do it. Although it's frustrating to hear, I think the solution is in A) better documentation during the article creation and "I discovered my article was deleted" process, we're sorely lacking in that department even in 2008 and B) Better coaching of admins not to trample over would-be decent articles new users are trying to create. It's not an easy process, but I think it is workable... throwing documentation at people isn't the best solution, for example, but it's all we do now. Every other big site, even Urban Dictionary, offers some sort of a "wizard" to help new users generate new content without the result being a disaster for other people to clean up... why can't Wikipedia? I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud, but the solution to the problem you describe isn't as simple as just trying to legislate admins into acting more slowly. --W.marsh 16:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

"Better coaching of admins...." There's a thought. Has anybody attempted, that you know of, to create a mentorship program for admins? It could be quite useful to have an experienced admin looking over a new admin's work. I know when I was a baby admin (suppose I'm a child or preteen now), I wasn't shy about asking for help, but you don't know to ask for help when you don't know you've misunderstood something. I know this is not the place to propose or debate such a thing, but since your words sparked the thought, I figured I'd ask here. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not one for formal coaching programs... although if others want to do that it's fine with me, I think such programs exist. My idea of coaching is more along the lines of giving those who make bad deletions a thumping or two at DRV... they rarely seem to end up back there afterwards. --W.marsh 18:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

My general impression of the current system is that it encourages editors to write new articles elsewhere and then copy entire articles to WP in one edit. The alternative, writing the article "live", would require more than a few minutes to get up to our content standards, particularly for a new editor who is unaware of those standards. I don't completely object to the idea that new articles should be created in decent shape, but it does possibly contradict the "wiki process" foundation principle. A famous example of this was the Mzoli's meats article, which could not possibly remain undeleted as a one-sentence stub under current CSD practices. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

At the same time I've long felt we can't just leave unfinished articles sitting around. In years of maintenence, I've found so many of these where the creator doesn't come to fix the problems after months have passed. A lot of these unfinished works are just never going to get finished by whoever started them, and an article that meets A1/A3/A7 will be pretty useless to a new party who wants to work on the article. I think this explains why I support speedy deletion on sight if called for... maybe the creator's coming back to create a great article, but experience has taught me that is usually just wishful thinking. I think the "Wiki process" allows for deletion of articles that contain nothing useful yet... bear in mind I'm extremely conservative in my application of A7, perhaps that explains why I'm comfortable with a fast application of it. I do wish we had some "provisional" level of articles, where new editors (and Jimbos) could easilly say an article isn't quite ready to be an article yet, and thus be considered for speedy deletion, but work is being done. That way everyone wins - premature articles aren't deleted instantly, and premature articles don't make us look bad if we keep them around. But that would require some software-level changes obviously. --W.marsh 16:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Tagging articles and working the CSD backlog require making many judgment calls, and, no matter what the criteria say, there will be imperfect judgments made along the way. In these situations, I think the most sensible solution is to drop the tagger or admin a note explaining the concern. Alternately, I like the idea of putting an {{underconstruction}} template on an article if you've reviewed it and think it might have potential.--Kubigula (talk) 15:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

and there is also WP:PROD. If a notice is given, that can do the best of both possibilities--encourage construction of a article , and provide for its quick deletion if it isnt improved. Any editor pther than the original author, not just an admin, can remove a speedy tag and substitute a prod--and, I would hope, offer some help to the guy who started it. DGG (talk) 18:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Does the CSD warning template yet link to WP:FIRST? There is a lot of good advice there for creating speedy-proof articles. While I would agree that new users may not know policy, that is no reason to indifinately keep "Thsi band is teh BOMB" articles simply because the user that created it doesn't know policy. No reason not to delete AND educate at the same time... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:36, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I have an idea! Have a template that says "This article is very short and doesn't explain what it's about. Please continue editing it and adding to it, but if it stays so short that we can't figure out what exactly the topic is supposed to be, it may be deleted." Then, about 30 minutes later (or more) a bot would either (a) replace the tag with a speedy-delete db-A1 if there have been no edits to the article meanwhile (other than Smackbot etc.); or (b) remove the tag if the article has increased by at least 10 bytes (or perhaps if it's been edited at all). The person putting the tag on would still have to watch the page, but they have to do that anyway with a speedy-delete in case someone removes the tag, so it wouldn't be much more work. bold type added to aid skimmers. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea how easy or hard that would be to implement, or how much resistance it might receive from new page patrollers and/or admins. I myself have no problem with it, but I can anticipate that some might. (Change is hard. :)) I do quite like the idea of having a bot tag the article after a certain period of inactivity, but I wonder if the human factor would function properly in terms of the tagger following up to ensure that material added actually helps the situation. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there's no reason why some individuals couldn't make such a template and bot and start using it, as long as they take responsibility for the results the same way they would if they edited like that manually. A variation: perhaps in the vast majority of cases, the page would not be further edited and the speedy tag would be put on by the bot. For the pages that had been further edited, the tag could simply be changed to a slightly different tag by the bot, and then people could later re-visit all those pages via a category or "what links here". Another similar idea would be "slow speedies": speedy-delete tags that somehow don't cause the page to show up until after a time delay (e.g. 30 minutes) in the categories where admins look for and delete them. Maybe that's essentially the same thing. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I find that people over-apply the "nonsense" criterion (G1). If something appears to be fictional, a hoax, blatant original research, obviously false, or otherwise in their opinion obviously inappropriate for Wikipedia, they call it "nonsense" and apply db-G1. Wrong. None of the CSD should be used as a basket category for whatever one happens to think doesn't belong in the encyclopedia. I feel it's important to use prod rather than speedy in order to avoid WP:BITE. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Re Jayron32's suggestion: I think that's a great idea. I suggest editing Template:db-meta to say "See help writing your first article" immediately after "the time to write your explanation." --Coppertwig (talk) 00:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it OK if I go ahead and request an editprotected edit at db-meta to say "See help writing your first article" or should I try to get more comments on the edit first? --Coppertwig (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

• Could we edit the speedy criteria in question to mention WP:BITE? Hiding T 09:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

  Good idea!! --Coppertwig (talk) 13:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

• In that particular case, I suspect that the problem is with people who don't read the criterion at all. It says right in it that nonsense does not apply to those types of articles. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I admit to having made that mistake, earlier. I had read (or at least seen) but not memorized the criteria, and then I was using db templates and I got the impression that this was the criterion: "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is a very short article providing little or no context (CSD A1)." In other words, rather than re-reading the actual criterion, I was reading what was in the template.

I suggest the wording: "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as a very short article providing little or no context (Details at CSD A1)." I think it's better to remove the italics, which seem to me to give an air of legitimacy to the summary of the criterion, as if it's being presented as a quote from CSD. Also, putting "Details at" suggests that there's more information to see there, whereas just "(CSD A1)" looks like a citation legitimizing a quote. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The template and the policy just fell out of sinc a ways back; they used to be more similar to one another. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah! Then how about we edit the templates to contain the exact, complete wording of each criterion as listed in the policy? --Coppertwig (talk) 01:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Or at least closer. I'd be happy to take that on with you. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be a pleasure. :-) If it's OK, I'm thinking of making a section of this talk page for discussing it, and putting there a table listing the wording of each CSD, the wording of the criterion part of each template, and a suggested new template wording that people can edit; and putting messages on the various template talk pages directing discussion here. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:39, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Quote W.marsh, above: "Every other big site, even Urban Dictionary, offers some sort of a "wizard" to help new users generate new content without the result being a disaster for other people to clean up... why can't Wikipedia?" It was in the works: Wikipedia:Article wizard. Unfotunately, it's currently stalled. Mr.Z-man created it back in October, 2007 and it looks like no one's touched it since my last edits to the biography section in November. I think it has the potential to produce some real change, but it's got to be finished, then advertised at the pump and places, and then, if accepted, implemented in some manner that makes sense so that it becomes the default process for new users.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I remember that wizard... it's a shame we can never just get it together and implement something like that. It does take a lot of work to get it right though. My basic point is everybody has a zillion ideas for dealing with new articles somehow or other, but we still give people a blank box to create new articles with, and that's one reason why we end up with so many problem articles. --W.marsh 04:09, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Remove redirects from G3

I propose the removal of "and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism", as I think that could be speediable under G6 as well. _→AzaToth 21:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd support that. As necessary, the text "and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism" can be moved down (with minor changes) to G6. It makes sense to me to cluster all redirects together. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 21:34, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

New criteria proposal

I think a new criteria is needed. It would be criteria U4 for speedy deletion and will be used in the following way:

Any pages in the userspace of an indefinitely blocked user not required for sockpuppetry tracking purposes can be deleted 30 days after said pages have last been edited.

Couple reasons for this:

• First, to help eliminate, and avoid future backlogs in Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages.
• When a user is indefinitely blocked, {{indefblocked}} is usually added to their user page. This template automatically puts the user in the category Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages. These pages can be deleted after 30 days. The problem is, the category is so massive, it is difficult to go through to see which pages are ready to be deleted. After this criteria is implemented, there is plan to change the indefblocked template to allow for separation by date, so that the user pages that are ready for deletion will be easier to find.

Any comments are appreciated. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Why do they need to be deleted with such prejudice? Someguy1221 (talk) 02:58, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's because of DENY _→AzaToth 03:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This makes sense to me, yeah. Keilana^talk 03:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

(ec x 2) CSD is already quite lengthy and intricate. I'm hesitant to add an additional criterion unless absolutely necessary. G6 would cover these just fine. Perhaps we expand the definition of "housekeeping"? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:02, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

That definately is a possibility, however with the large volume of pages that this would apply to, I figured it would be best to have a separate criteria. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

As an alternative, could a bot be created to add Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages tagged for over 30 days to the relevant pages? If the main problem is with identifying the pages subject to deletion, it seems to me creating a new criterion would just transpose the backlog somewhere else. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

CAT:CSD is frequented my most admins. I highly doubt a large backlog (like the one that already exists in CAT:TEMP) would present itself there. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

There appear to me two possibilities: A) If you can't tag until the time limit expires, we have a backlog of pages sitting in the existing cat, waiting to be tagged for the new speedy or B) We have a backlog of pages sitting in CAT:CSD waiting for the time limit to expire. I just don't see what you would accomplish with a new CSD criterion. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:09, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

There would be no waiting once the page hits CAT:CSD. When it goes there, it already passed the 30 days and can be deleted immediately. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Who's going to move them? If the problem is the current size of the category, then you're expecting a non-admin to run through it and tag stuff. Now, I'm a huge fan of gnomish editing, but that seems boring even to me. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:14, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Move what? The pages will remain in CAT:TEMP (or something similar) until 30 days has passed. Once that happens, tag them with this speedy and then they are deleted. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Also note there are about 10,000 pages in CAT:TEMP right now. - Rjd0060 (talk) 03:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm just still not clear on how you expect this to accomplish anything. The existence of a speedy criterion will attract more admins to the necessary pages, yes, but the newly speediable pages would still need to be sifted out from the ~10,000 ones in that cat. And in any event, the pages are already deletable, with or without a new criterion. So it seems to me that not only would the criterion not solve the problem, but also it could be more easily handled by a bot that could go through and identify the pages that have been in the cat long enough. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:02, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This proposal seems to be missing a few things that were originally suggested on the WP:AN thread. This would basically be done like the image deletion categories. After this is enacted, the templates that categorize pages into CAT:TEMP would instead use something like Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages as of {{subst:CURRENTMONTH}} {{subst:CURRENTDATE}} to have categories sorted by date. Once a category is 30+ days old, pages meeting the criteria could be deleted. As for pages currently in CAT:TEMP, they would sit for 30 days and after that, if they meet the criteria they could be deleted. The existence of the criteria won't attract admins, but listing it on CAT:CSD would. Mr.Z-man 04:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. —Kurykh 04:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I already do this...whoops. John Reaves 05:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

"Indef blocked" does not mean "blocked forever and so his user pages won't be needed anymore". People are indef blocked while discussions occur about if they should be blocked and if so for how long. Indef blocked users should not have subpages deleted that will be useful for their continued contributions when they return. The current phrasing does not say "since they were indef blocked" but says "since last edited". So someone could indef block someone and then immediately delete any subpage not edited for a month. WAS 4.250 (talk) 11:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It is not posible to predict when information will be useful for picking up sockpupets thus we should not be getting into guessing games and deleting even more stuff.Genisock2 (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Ummm, it is possible. Look for a tag that says "sockpuppet" , "multiple accounts", or anything like that. And we are already deleting these pages; this proposal would just make it easier to find the correct ones to deleted. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems a new CSD just simply isn't worth the effort (and drama) when G6 or a customized edit summary can simply be used. </2cents> --MZMcBride (talk) 02:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

---

I filed a Toolserver request for a list of all pages in CAT:TEMP that hadn't been edited in 30 days and Misza kindly obliged. He also set up the list to update weekly. In my view, this eliminates the need to split the category into months. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sweet! Where's the list? -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

expand CSD R2 to include redirects from the Template namespace

I think that CSD R2 should be expanded to include redirects from the Template namespace. Such redirects usually serve no purpose. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

You mean a page in the template namespace which is a redirect to a page in another namespace? What about userboxes that have been migrated but not all incoming links have been changed? Happy‑melon 14:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

That problem would be very simple to fix. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

1) Do you have an example of a redirect that you're talking about? 2) How often do these occur? In several months of monitoring WP:RFD, I can't remember any such redirects coming up. That would tend to indicate that the volume is very low. Rossami (talk) 21:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Is List_of_real_estate_topics a GSD 6 candidate?

There is no csd for lists that simply duplicates existing categories. Not sure if it is common enough to warrant it's own criteria. Can GSD 6 apply to these types of lists? Taemyr (talk) 18:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No - use WP:PROD instead. It's not the type of deletion suitable for speedy deletion - sometimes the list has functionality that a category doesn't (I have seen AfDs of lists which "duplicate categories" kept), and deciding whether it duplicates a category or not is a subjective judgement which speedy deletion is not intended to be. --Hut 8.5 18:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I was completely unavare of WP:CLS when prodding this, so it's clearly not an issue that should go under speedy. Taemyr (talk) 19:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Do we really need CSD G11?

I'm not totally sure whether we need a special CSD criterion for "blatant advertising". In my experience, A7 tends always to be available as an alternative to G11; most ad-spam-type articles on companies also lack any assertion of notability. And where we see an article that appears to be advertising but does contain an assertion of notability, it probably shouldn't be speedied anyway; just because an article reads like advertising doesn't necessarily mean that the company is non-notable. So I don't see that there are any speediable cases which fall under G11 but aren't already adequately covered by A7.

I realise there are some admins who have more CSD experience than me, though, so I await other views. Walton^One 23:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, we do seem to need G11. I've had about the opposite experience: spammy articles tend to not meet A7 because of their promotional nature. Most PR stuff talks about how great the person/product/company/etc. is, which will usually inadvertently hit upon an assertion of importance such that the article can't legitimately be deleted under A7. G11 also helps us with the surprisingly common practice where people just copy press releases, official bios etc. Into Wikipedia. Often they will try to release the rights, then it's still a useless article because it was only written for promotional purposes. --W.marsh 23:57, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• • Just a point, A7 only applies to articles. G11 can be used to delete (for example) user pages that are also blatant advertising. --UsaSatsui (talk) 00:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't think we should speedy such pages; in userspace, unlike other spaces, the presumption should always be to keep, and unless there's an overriding emergency reason for speedying, it should be taken to MfD. I would argue that only G10 and G12 should apply within userspace (since both of those are essential for legal reasons); any other userspace content should be discussed at MfD. (I realise this isn't in line with current policy, but I think it would be a more sensible approach.) Walton^One 12:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
      • I highly disagree. I have seen too many user pages where the page is an ad and only an ad. We get a considerable number of user accounts created under some minor company name, the account is only used to edit the user page, and user page is pure advertisement for the company. Many times, the page is made to look like an actual article. While I'm willing to cut an active contributor slack, these type of accounts don't contribute. They are only attempting to get around our notability guidelines by creating their article in the user space and not the main space. There is no need for MFD in these cases. -- JLaTondre 15:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think both A7 and G11 are both useful and cannot be merged. Notice that "most ad-spam-type articles on companies also lack any assertion of notability". I have seen cases of people's biographies that were written in spam style but the person could be notable. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Exactly - if the person could be notable, then it shouldn't be speedied anyway. That's what I was saying. Walton^One 12:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think W.marsh is right - by their nature most spam articles contain some statements which could be read as an assertion of importance, but the claim is often overblown or impossible to assess. "We are a leading provider of innovative software solutions with an excellent reputation for quality..."; as written it would be a stretch to delete this under A7, but strip away the adspeak and you'd be left with a substub with no particular claim of notability. However, I agree that if a spammy article suggests that the compay may be genuinely notable (say, it mentions that it's listed on a significant stock ecxhange, or has a multimillion pound turnover) then it's usually better to replace the article with a short stub than delete it outright. Iain99^{Balderdash and piffle} 11:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Additionally G11 isn't restricted to companies; it can be used for spammy articles about products as well, whihc can't be speedied under A7 even if they don't make any claim of importance. Iain99^{Balderdash and piffle} 11:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I've generally supported an expansive interpretation of A7; I don't see why it shouldn't be applied to anything that makes no assertion of notability (excluding geographic places etc. which are deemed to have "inherent notability").

I take W.marsh's point, though, that spam articles could be seen as not meeting A7, since they often contain peacock claims. However, I usually don't view a comment such as "We are a leading provider of innovative software solutions with an excellent reputation for quality" to constitute an assertion of notability, since "leading", "innovative" and "excellent" are just opinions. An assertion of notability has to be an assertion of fact (albeit an unsourced one), such as "X is one of the largest companies in its market" or "Y is listed on NYSE" or "Z has a multi-million-pound turnover"; such articles are, as Iain99 correctly points out, not speediable. If we treat phrases like "leading provider" as not meeting A7, then logically we have to extend the same to all non-specific interpretations of superiority - so articles such as "Fred is the greatest kid on earth" would not be speediable. My argument, therefore, is that an assertion of notability has to make some claim of concrete fact; it shouldn't just tell us about how good (or bad) X is.

Basically, if we ignore the adspeak and peacock claims that make no assertion of fact, then I think almost everything under G11 ought to be deletable under A7. And ultimately, as a matter of principle, we delete articles because their subject is not notable; we don't delete them because they're written in a spam-like tone. Thus where a G11 article can't fit under A7, it probably shouldn't really be deleted at all.

I think this all comes down to different interpretations of A7, though (which I'm aware has been a controversial question in the past). Walton^One 12:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

A7 is about what is stated in the article, not what the facts of the matter is. There is nothing to stop me from claiming that "Troll is one of the largest Norwegian car providers", which would be an assertion of importance. The fact that it's a complete fiction does not change this. G11 can be used to delete articles on perfectly notable topics, the relevant issue is if the article is spam or not. If the article has a good enough quality that it would not be easier to write a good article by starting from scratch then the article is probably not a good G11 candidate. As an unrelated point it's worth noting that A7 is about importance, not notability. Taemyr (talk) 12:57, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I know. You misunderstood what I was trying to say (which is my fault, as I didn't make it totally clear). Yes, "Troll is one of the largest Norwegian car providers" would certainly be an assertion of importance, and I know that whether it's true or not is irrelevant. What I was saying is that if it said "Troll is one of the best Norwegian car providers", or alternative peacock terms such as "leading" or "innovative", then we should still delete under A7. The assertion of importance must be a concrete assertion, not just a peacock term. It must be an assertion that would establish the article's importance if it were verified from a reliable source. Obviously you can't verify "Troll is one of the most innovative car providers on the market", because it's an opinion not a fact. Walton^One 14:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

No we should not. Because Speedy deletion criteria should be objective. What the real world fact of the matter is might be something one could disagree about. While the lack of anything in the article to indicate importance is a readily available fact. I would also disagree with you about what peacock terms we can dismiss. Both this company is the leading whatever and this product is the best of it's kind is encyclopedic facts when attributed to third party sources. Taemyr (talk) 16:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

One of the problems with letting A7 carry this is that A7 does not cover products. It may be useful to speedy an article on FictionalCompanyA, but it can't be used to speedy an article on that company's AMAZING NEW INNOVATION, now YOURS for only $19.95!!!! :) These could be prodded, but I think taking them through PROD and then AfD when FictionalCompanyA's designated rep opposed the PROD is unnecessary bureaucracy. (I know you mentioned expanding A7; I haven't seen that successfully proposed yet. :)) That said, I think that G11 is applied far too liberally. A single promotional sentence seems to be seized with fanatical zeal by some taggers. I think I probably decline more of these than any other speedy type, except maybe mistagged A7s. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

G111 bothers me, because of the lack of firm criteria for it. I agree completely with mooriddengirl that there are articles that clearly and unmistakably fit, and also that it is overused. Not just one liners, but a description of where the information is simply not the sort one would see other than in a press release. Butt his does in fact vary depending on whether the product is notable enough. When the articles do get to AfD, that is usually the criterion. Perhaps the emphasis should be of stubbifying it if at all possible, and speedy only if it is impractical, or would leave nothing worth keeping. This would require a change in the language from " Pages which exclusively promote some entity and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten" to " Pages which exclusively promote some entity and which would cannot be practically rewritten or stubbified to eliminate the promotional aspects. " —Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs)

Although not to the same degree as A7, G11 is widely misinterpreted as "the advertising criterion" and applied to anything that looks like advertising - or is even about a commercial entity. The phrase "fundamentally rewritten" is incorrigibly subjective - in my opinion, it almost never applies, as even the worst of advertising articles contains a number of neutral, verifiable statements, like "Dudesoft was founded in 1982 and is based in Ohio". Many corporations are only relevant to a region, and random administrators are not qualified to evaluate the factual accuracy or relevance of these articles, as demonstrated for example by the Chips Ahoy! fiasco. If we're going to have an advertising CSD at all, I think this one needs to go back to the drawing board. Dcoetzee 20:07, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Its not just for commercial entities. A good deal of the articles that properly fall under it are by local charities and arts groups advertising their events--often in some many words. A good deal of this can of course be spotted and dealt with as copyvio, but there remains a good many people trying to use WP for advertising. I try to improve these articles and remove the speedy when i can, but even my my rather flexible standards, there are many which really have to go quickly if people are to think we have even minimal objectivity. DGG (talk) 05:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that CSD G11 is annoyingly misapplied on a regular basis. The problem is that people use it to try to get rid of what they see as sneaky advertising, in which someone writes an advertisement deceptively masquerading as a real article. But G11 is only supposed to be used for "blatant advertising." Thus, I would say that unless the article says something like "V1agra tablets contact me 800-555-1234 $19.95 limited time only!" then we should give it the benefit of the doubt and either AfD it for notability or CSD it on some other grounds. I think that if people consistently misuse CSD criteria, they should be warned and eventually prohibited from tagging/deleting any more articles. Sarsaparilla (talk) 02:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed G8 exception

General exception for "non-article talk pages where significant policy discussion has taken place", as a widening of the existing exception for old VFDs. The existing exception "useful to the encyclopedia" was sufficient for me to justify undeleting Template talk:Spoiler (now Wikipedia talk:Spoiler/old template talk), but not sufficient to prevent it from being deleted in the first place. —Random832 21:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Eh. I would say that discussion is clearly "useful to the encyclopedia," so this looks like a mistake rather than a problem with the policy. And that situation is sufficiently rare that I think better to keep the text as is. Mangojuice^talk 21:33, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Why are articles deleted so quickly?

I have tried to make several articles and all of them have been candidates for speedy deletion. I have figured out why and have tried to fix them. However, they are deleted while I am working on correcting them. One I made was about a large construction company based in Raleigh, NC that has a national clientèle. However, it was deleted because it said I was violating copyright from their website. It said to put it in my own words, so I did and did everything everyone said. Also, it was formatted correctly. I was not given enough time to finish the article because it was deleted with no message or explanation. People need to be a little more forgiving around here and let someone finish an article without jumping to conclusions. Contrary to popular belief, I am just trying to help Wikipedia and am not trying to pirate info or violate copyright laws. Can someone explain all of this? --Scdog99 (talk) 01:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I suggest if you are having problems like this, write the article as a subpage of your usespacae (like User:Scdog99/New article) then move it to the correct name in the article space when you have finished writing it. Viridae^Talk 01:34, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry you've had a frustrating time trying to create an article.

There have been numerous discussions about whether articles are being deleted too quickly in general. Also, sometimes speedy-delete tags are put on articles by people who aren't sufficiently familiar with the criteria -- I've done that, hopefully only in the receding past.

However, there are a huge number of new articles coming in all the time, and many of them are just a line of profanity or something, obviously needing to be deleted. Many others require judgement as to whether to delete them or not; but there's a limit to the amount of time available by various volunteers (new-page patrollers, Articles-for-deletion voters, and administrators) to do the work of judging and deleting all those articles. It takes up a significant amount of time, and for example the new-page patrolling has a big backlog. So, sometimes people are rushing and make decisions too quickly. Also, there's discussion on this page about trying to create a new deletion procedure in between the speedy-delete and the other methods (AfD and prod) which take five days, allowing more opportunity to avoid deletion. However, there are procedural difficulties in trying to make other methods work. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Things you can do include:

• writing the article in a file on your computer first, then copying and pasting the whole thing into the edit box.
• Putting an {{inuse}} template in the article to show that you're in the middle of editing it. (Although the new-page patrollers ought to know that an article created two minutes ago is likely still being edited, they/we often don't act that way, unfortunately.)
• Using the "Show preview" button a lot. You can do a lot of editing, just clicking "Show preview" each time, and when you've finished the whole article or a large part of it, then click "Save page". The article won't actually be created until you click "Save page". The dangers of doing it this way are that you might lose your edits if your Internet connection goes down, or if you navigate (too far)away from the edit window in your browser, for example by clicking "edit this page" at the top again, a mistake I used to make from time to time. It's actually helpful to use the preview button a lot (though not so much that there's danger of losing very large amounts of editing) because it reduces the number of edits that the Wikimedia computers have to keep track of, and makes things simpler for people looking at the page history.
• After creating the page, you can check it very frequently for a few minutes by refreshing the page in your browser, to see if anyone puts a speedy-delete tag on it. If they do, you can quickly edit it to insert {{hangon}} and then put a message on the talk page explaining why you don't think it should be deleted.

I'm just guessing, but maybe when you tried to put it in your own words you used too many words and phrases from the original, at least in someone's opinion.

Sorry again for the hard time you've been having. I appreciate your being willing to contribute to Wikipedia, and hope you manage to get through these initial difficulties and enjoy contributing here. I also experienced deletion of one or two pages near the beginning of my time here; one of the pages I created early on is up for deletion discussion right now. Feel free to ask me for help on my talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Coppertwig and Viridae have good advice here. However, having looked through Scdog's deleted contributions, I actually think the problem is very different than they imagine. Scdog: those articles should probably not have been speedily deleted. One was a bio that sounds a bit unremarkable, but has claims to notability. The other is about a company, again, a bit unremarkable, but not blatant spam. So they should not have been deleted via this policy... but these articles would never have survived a deletion debate; see WP:BIO for notability guidelines about people and WP:CORP for notability guidelines about companies. So the best way to stop having your articles deleted is to stop creating inappropriate articles. Mangojuice^talk 14:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

No, the best way is for these admins to quit misapplying policy. There was a reason why we made a policy against speedily deleting articles on non-notability grounds. Sarsaparilla (talk) 05:39, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

OMG! You're telling people to not use the wiki to do their editing? --Kim Bruning (talk) 01:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you... yeah some of my articles are not very notable, but I agree with some people deleting things too quickly. Thanks for the advice, and hopefully this problem can be solved. --Scdog99 (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Hypothetical technical question

I think most longtime CSDers agree (and certainly a ton of article writers feel this way) that it's best not to delete articles 1-2 minutes after creation, except for the most obvious instances of vandalism, spam and other totally unsalvagable content.

So my question is, would it be possible to modify the {{db}} family of templates to add the pages to C:CSD but also to something like Category:Candidates for speedy deletion for over 1 hour when the time comes? This would allow for a different level of CSD patrolling, where you see pages where the creator/other parties have had a reasonable amount of time to realize the page is tagged for speedy deletion, and either improve the page or present an argument against speedy deletion on the talk page.

No one would have to wait an hour, but this would make it much more practical for those of us who wanted to. It also has less obvious benefits - it seperates out the "lingering" CSDs from the fresh ones. As anyone who does CSD a lot can tell you, the hard call CSDs tend to linger... sometimes for hours (I've even seen a few linger for 24+ hours). Seperating them out would let them be addressed more systematically, as presumably more experienced admins would tackle the "older than 1 hour" category.

I really hope this is technically possible... it seems like a good middle ground between the ever-present camps of people who want a time delay for speedy deletions, and those who do not. --W.marsh 16:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It isn't possible for a template to add a page to a category after a time limit, unless the page is edited again after the time limit expires. The category links are updated each time the page is saved. I would support a one-hour delay, however, for all but the most obvious CSD criteria. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:01, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That is not true you can configre it in such a way, cat links are also updated with the job queue. β^_command 18:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

How would the jobs get into the job queue? Wouldn't that require editing the template once per hour to refresh all the pages where it is used? I think I remember we have run into this issue before, with the expired prod or other timed deletion templates. What are the details? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:29, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

i Suck at template syntax. I stole some code for the top of my user talk page. you might be able to use that. β^_command 18:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The way the template system works, it requires a null edit in order to update the category links. This is why the prod system uses dated categories. I don't know of any automated way to do what w.marsh is asking for. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess it was too good to be true... thanks for the reply though. --W.marsh 18:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

For images for deletion, they deal with their time limit by categorizing by date. Maybe we could do something similar. But the categories an article is in can only change when it is edited. Dcoetzee 18:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Easy! You can use 2 categories ("C:delete_later", "C:delete_now"), a template with a date ("T:delete_later"), a template without a date ("T:delete_now"), and a bot.

• All the user does, is place template T:delete_later. That's all they need to do.
• T:delete_later belongs to the category C:delete later.

• The bot runs at regular intervals (30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week? )
• foreach page in C:delete_later:

  if current_date>page.deletion_date then replace T:delete_later with T:delete_now

• T:delete_now is in category C:delete_now
• admins check C:delete_now, and delete pages, as appropriate.

notes

• By having 2 cats instead of 1, you drastically reduce the number of pages the bot has to scan, and things become feasible.
• If you have a bot anyway, there's no reason not to consider giving people longer intervals to work on their pages. The immediatism is gone, because now there's a system to track things over those longer intervals

--Kim Bruning (talk) 20:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC) Now to find someone to write your bot. :-P

Sounds good to me. I support technical solutions wherever possible. If you don't find anyone else, feel free to contact me about it. Dcoetzee 22:52, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I really like this concept. Perhaps we could craft something similar to what was developed for new page patrolling, where you can tag a page as having been patrolled. For example, we could have an option to tag a page as "non-obvious speedy" or something similar. Then the reviewing admin would have three options - (1) decline speedy if the criteria is not met; (2) immediately delete the obvious junk; or (3) tag as non-obvious (or whatever terminology) to give some time to address the concern - or allow a more experienced admin to take a look.--Kubigula (talk) 23:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

yes, it frequently happens that I pass over a speedy I don't feel qualified to decide, or alternatively decide to delete/decline one that other admins have clearly passed over. I suppose we could put notes on the talk page, but if we find something simple it would be better. No reason not to communicate with each other. But i dont think you mean "non-obvious"--if it's non-obvious, it wasn't a valid speedy; perhaps the right word is "difficult" or "tricky" DGG (talk) 01:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I honestly don't think speedy deleting very new articles is a big problem. Most of the time, my BS detector goes off on CSD articles and my instincts tell me these articles aren't going to improve with more time. Every once in a while I see something that looks like it could be appropriate but is too short, and then I would often de-speedy and watchlist the article. I think this works fine. What I do think a system like this could help for is to identify articles that have had CSD tags on them for a particularly long time, because if I knew that going in, I'd be more likely to send the article to another process instead of passing it over, which I think would be a helpful thing. Mangojuice^talk 03:23, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deleting very new articles is a big problem. See this case for example: User talk:Ggggggggggggggg12.

I think it would be a good idea if admins could see a list of all the articles in a given category of speedy tag, sorted by time, with numbers next to them to indicate how many admins have marked them as having been looked at but not decided on. That way they could look at the oldest ones first. Less experienced admins could choose to look only at those that nobody has looked at, and more experienced admins could choose to look at the tough ones, the ones that have been marked as already looked at. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:38, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, any user who is making a clearly legitimate contribution whose article is deleted wrongly is going to have a problem with us. But I think that example has more to do with the fact that the deletion was wrong than that it was so soon. Mangojuice^talk 06:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

judging by what they say, the speed is indeed a problem. They feel we are jumping down their throats. But there is a need to have a reliable way of catching them perhaps 24 hours later. Even with patrolled new pages, a good many new pages do not get attention. Try limiting to unpatrolled & going back say 3000 edits and see how much should have been speedied or prodded. DGG (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree with the initial complaint. I had an unhappy experience last week while creating In_Your_Bright_Ray... started with the infobox (which appears as the first element in album articles), saved it, returned and added the album cover image, saved it, then discovered it had been tagged for SD. I went to call up the article to add a hangon tag, but it was gone. Entire episode, from my first save to the deletion, was two minutes. The unrepentant (and quite smartarsed) user who nominated it for SD claimed the article was empty, which it was clearly not, and the fact that it had it had two edits within a minute clearly showed I was in the process of working on it. The admin who deleted it restored it to my userspace, again without admitting any excess haste. I learned something -- create a longer article before saving the damn thing -- but it was sheer stupidity to delete the article (clearly no vandalism, and my history shows I'm no vandal) within two minutes. An infobox without supporting text probably isn't wise, but it certainly doesn't warrant a speedy deletion, which ought to be reserved for such egregious sins as vandalism. Grimhim (talk) 06:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Mod to Db-redirmisnomer

On the speedy deletion page, it suggests we add a comment onto the talk page. Many other templates include this in the speedy deletion notice as a line that can be copied and pasted. However, this is not included in this template. Could it be added, please? (duplicated request from the template talk page) StephenBuxton (talk) 12:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Does CSD:G6 cover deprecated userboxes and templates?

Recently on WP:TfD, in particular, I've seen a lot of outdated templates particularly userboxes and infoboxes about geographic/political subdivisions of various countries. Many are part of the work of projects that have replaced them or merged them all into a single template. I have taken the position that these are housekeeping and should be summarily deleted (after taking a close look in each instance to ensure they are in fact deprecated or at least out of use) under CSD:G6 and I believe the discussions above about not expanding CSD often rest on the point that G6 covers the matter. Another editor has challenged this use of G-6 as inappropriate. What do others think of the question in general (of course each instance is distinct on its facts)?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 05:50, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'd much rather we stop deleting deprecated templates and just start redirecting them, or placing a deprecation notice on them. It seems rather rare to me when we actually need to delete a template, and it makes things a lot more difficult for anyone working with an older version of an article. Often times I look for old templates because I remember seeing an idea there, and often finding the template has not only been deleted, but finding it very hard to find the template that replaced it (which might not even be related to why I was looking for it in the first place). Unless there's an issue with people trying to reinstate a template, or if there's really no value to keeping it (something made recently that hasn't had a chance to be used), or is some kind of violation (attacks, bad "stuff", etc), I'd strongly encourage people to not delete a template, let alone speedy it.

It's actually funny that I read this post just now, because earlier today I was just thinking about this. I'll likely propose this in general to the community and see what happens. -- Ned Scott 06:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Does CSD cover templates and userboxes? Clearly. Does CSD:G6 cover the deletion of the templates User:Doug has recommended for such? I don't think so. JPG-GR (talk) 06:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I see Ned's point - not sure I agree, but I understand. But Ned better get going on this - part of my reasoning for using G6 is that these are going to go down anyway based on other discussions, they're WP:SNOW, so why bring them to WP:TFD. If they shouldn't be Snow, then minds need to change - and not just mine. --Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

JPG-GR, note the word "deprecated" - also intended was the word "unused" (particularly with respect to userboxes). Also please reference the discussion below as that reminded me of where exactly I developed this interpretation. I agree with the objections above that we don't need T3 because we already have G6. I see these as "non-controversial", though I guess Ned might object to that. I do note that Ned's comments do at least partially address this. --Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, with respect to userboxes, I don't see that Ned's comments apply. I'm referring to the sorts of nominations that are coming up on TFD, where they are unused, non-standard, or duplicates, NOT the sort that have been the subject of MfD's recently, where POV is the issue, of course.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 18:15, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I encourage the use of redirect when possible for the benefit of editors who are trying to find things through common names. Perhaps a deprecation template should be created for use on redirects whose use can be replaced anytime, so a bot could run through all tagged redirects and replace the old names with whatever the replacement is. -- SEWilco (talk) 19:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

No, case G6 is not for use on anything "deprecated" - that is, anything that was once used and is no longer. If it was in use once, it's still going to be in the history. Sometimes, we need to investigate that history to see what was done with an article or other decision. When you delete the template, you make it far harder to conduct that research and to understand the context of the earlier decision. Instead, deprecation should be noted either through redirect or a deprecation tag (like the way {{historical}} works for policy pages). Rossami (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this as a good reason to keep unused templates indefinitely, or build up a mass of redirects to them. I have no compunctions about deleting old templates under G6. Templates are only a part of the encyclopedia content to the extent that they are used; if unused and all but forgotten, removing them seems like a perfect example of 'housekeeping'. I do realize that not all editors believe in the concept of housekeeping as I do. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Rossami, have you looked at the situations on TFD that resulted in this discussion? That might help give context to this. If these need to be kept so badly for historical purposes we have a problem. I am extremely doubtful that these would survive TFD - in fact, I am doubtful they would receive a single Keep vote. To me that is WP:SNOW and these should have simply been nominated for Speedy because, well, WP:SNOW, it's a forgone conclusion. Clogging up TFD (or MFD in the case of userboxes) with technical nominations that are obvious deletes is a waste of everybody's time and doesn't really inspire the new editor to participate in an XfD IMO. Some of these have been challenged as incomplete nominations but that's just bureaucracy, if they are WP:SNOW they are WP:SNOW and a class of WP:SNOWs deserves to be covered by speedy.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not typically frequent TfD but it sounds like there are a couple of points that ought to be cleared up (here and perhaps at TfD). First, remember that deleting an old template (like any page) doesn't actually keep those pages from building up. Deletion saves no server space and reduces no workload. Deletion just moves the page from the "visible to all" space to a "visible to admins" space. Housekeeping solely for the sake of "cleaning up the database" is not only pointless but actually somewhat self-defeating since the act of deletion actually adds yet one more record into the database. We should always have some other reason to delete a page - it's confusing to readers, it's an attack page, it's a hoax, it's vandal-bait, etc. Housekeeping for the sake of housekeeping doesn't actually help the project. (I know neither of you used that phrase here but it's such a common misconception that I thought needed to be addressed. If these templates are being SNOWed because of a misunderstanding of what deletion actually does, we really need to fix that misunderstanding.)
Second, if your primary reason to try to create (or expand) the CSD criterion is to avoid the TfD process, then deprecation by a tag or redirect is even easier. Any editor can make a page into a redirect or apply a tag. No special admin powers are needed and no formal discussion is required. (If a discussion does become appropriate, it can be held right on the Talk page without all the extra steps and bureaucracy of an XfD nomination, closure, etc.) And it's only one step. Even a speedy-deletion takes more that that. Minimum effort would argue for deprecation of non-offensive, non-confusing pages via something other than deletion.
Finally, I'm going to stick to a strict interpretation of the CSD cases. CSD G6 was written to allow for pagemoves, history mergers and other operational requirements, not for the deletion of content. It was approved with that very clear understanding and should not be inappropriately stretched. Rossami (talk) 22:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

"CSD G6 was written to allow for pagemoves, history mergers and other operational requirements, not for the deletion of content. It was approved with that very clear understanding and should not be inappropriately stretched." - I agree entirely. Of all the criteria, this one seems to be the most clear, and any stretching of it is a stretch of the imagination. JPG-GR (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• Since someone who doesn't know this might read this thread: Please remember that deleted material can be removed from the database at any time and is not a method of archiving. This is not intended to support the above position, just to make sure it's out there.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 02:37, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• • A very large number of MfD and TfD nominations are based on inactivity of projects or obsolescence of templates - essentially boiling down to: "adds nothing to the encyclopedia". If some think this is an inappropriate basis for deletions, that does need discussion - though probably not here.
  • If the main argument against either G6 or T3 for obsolete templates (including userboxes) is that (at least in the case of the non-userboxes) they shouldn't be deleted at all - then the editors taking those positions should be participating in a broader range of XfDs, because my point is that these should apply to those cases where the templates will be deleted in any case, i.e. where the results of the XfD are WP:SNOW so they shouldn't have to be nominated in the first place. Whether this is the way things ought to be is one issue, whether this is the way things are is another. I understand that User:JPG-GR takes a narrower view of CSD:G6 and maybe CSD in general, which is a different issue and a matter of interpretation.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 16:13, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
    • To follow up on my last comment here, I note that both WP:DEL#REASON and WP:TFD list duplicate templates as a reason for deletion. TFD also includes that the template is not used (there is no discussion of history), or that it is itself not helpful or noteworthy. So the deletion of templates that are duplicates or are no longer used is in policy. That's not to say it may be a bad idea, but that needs to be discussed in a broader forum rather than raised here simply to force the matter to discussion when it will inevitably be deleted there.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 23:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
      • If you look at the history from when those clauses were added, they were reasons to delete new forks and duplicates. They were not intended to be interpreted as reasons to deleted deprecated versions which would still be heavily scattered through the history. Rossami (talk) 05:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
        • Do you have the links to the relevant talk page archives handy? You may be right on both the purpose they were added and problem this creates, but if so, I think we need to investigate it further and suggest the policy be further modified. The change to the TFD page is rather minimal if we can support the changes as clarifying a prior discussion, but the WP:DEL#REASON might require an RFC. Even if you can't find the history, maybe we should get more discussion going as this sounds like an important issue if you are right. On the other hand, does it really matter if historical versions of pages have calls for deleted templates? I'm not sure.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 05:38, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
          • I'm afraid that I don't have links easily available. I vividly remember the debates, however. I think it was 2004 but I don't remember as clearly which pages were wrapped into the discussions. The deletion policy spawned many sub-pages during that time. And unfortunately, we weren't as structured about archiving discussions back then.
            To answer your other question, yes I do think that recreating the history can be important in some circumstances. We have, for example, deprecated a large number of the user-page anti-vandalism templates. By the theory above, those old versions are no longer valuable. But many times, we need to evaluate the pattern of alerts on a user's page to determine if a block is appropriate (or a longer reblock). If the template's just gone, the investigating admin will have a far harder time researching the degree of the infraction and confirming that the user has had a fair chance to rehabilitate him/herself. (Yes, I know that my example is imperfect since most anti-vandalism templates are supposed to be used via subst to avoid just this problem but 1) user's don't always remember and 2) that's only been the rule for the past few years. I'm sure there are better examples - and that one will occur to me at 2 am.) Rossami (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

New criterion proposal: Wrong namespace

I frequently come across articles that have been accidentally created as templates or categories. I feel it would be useful to have the following as a speedy criterion:

Articles created in template or category space should be moved to article space - the original template or category name should then be speedied.

It gets the article into its proper place and then removes any cross-namespace redirects. (Most of these articles are themselves likely prod candidates, but that is another matter). Grutness...wha? 23:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It sounds good - so straightforward it almost classifies as housekeeping. How frequently does this occur? Dcoetzee 23:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This sounds like a clear cut case for GSD 6 housekeeping, as uncontroversial page moves is already mentioned there. Taemyr (talk) 23:40, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Good point - I'd forgotten what a catch-all G6 was. As to how frequently, I patrol the new pages' template section daily, and I'd say I see at least one or two these per week. Grutness...wha? 00:17, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It is absolutely not a case for G6. G6 was designed to make room for a non-controversial pagemove into a currently-occupied title, not for the deletion of every redirect ever created by a pagemove.
This is not even a clear-cut case for regular deletion. Redirects are automatically created by the pagemove function on purpose. Redirects resulting from a pagemove can play an important role in preservation of attribution history (a requirement of GFDL), preservation of internal and external links and general user-friendliness.
Remember that it's usually a new user who made this mistake and it's usually innocent. If you move the page then destroy all traces of the move, the new user is going to come back to the page, find nothing and either 1) think that they made some mistake that failed to save so they recreate the page or 2) feel bitten by the unexplained deletion of their good-faith contribution. Redirects point the new user to the correct location where their future edits will be welcomed.
Cross-namespace redirects are only a problem when they go out of the article-space into a place where the reader could be easily misled into believing that he/she was still reading article-space material. Cross-namespace redirects into the article-space do no harm. Rossami (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I hate to be "that guy with the contrary view", but when I delete redirects like that I don't even think about CSD. I do, however, always leave a note for the user who created the page. I can't imagine not contacting them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

As for the criteria itself, it's unnecessary since it doesn't arise very frequently, and the deletions will be uncontroversial if you provide notification. Since IPs can't create pages we can be reasonable sure anyone who creates a page will see a notice left on their talk page. --W.marsh 02:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm a little confused by Rossami's GFDL point, the page history normally goes with the move, redirects don't normally have much history.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 02:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

GFDL is only satisfied for very recent pagemoves. Many redirects are the result of pagemoves made before the software automatically moved the history. In those cases, the redirect still holds all the pre-move contribution history. Second, the title itself is generally considered "content" under our interpretation of GFDL and changes to the pagetitle are generally considered useful history. The automatic recording of the change in title is even more recent. Rossami (talk) 16:08, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe that that is what the nominator is suggesting. I believe the process this is intended to cover is this:

• An article is created in a namespace other than the mainspace, eg Portal:Foo rather than Foo.
• The creation is noticed by a Special:Newpages monitor, and moved into the mainspace at a suitable title
• The pagemove creates a redirect from the Portal: namespace to the mainspace, which could be potentially confusing, and should perhaps be deleted.

I can sympathise with the points raised above: if the article creator is not informed that the page has been moved to mainspace this appears abrupt and bitey; however if the creator is notified on their talkpage, the deletion of this redirect is entirely uncontroversial. This seems like a textbook use of WP:CSD#G6 - I can't see the need for a new general or redirect criterion. Happy‑melon 21:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• So to be clear: We are only talking about deleting the redirect page that is left after a cross-namespace move, right? Since the pagemove itself is neither part of what we deal with here, nor does it require any permission - i.e. anyone with an account more than four days old can move the page. But the redirect will show as a page created by the editor who did the move and will normally show no other edits, right? So why isn't this already clearly within G7?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 22:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  • User X creates an article at Template:Articlename. User Y comes along and moves it to Articlename. It is thus user Y who would wish this to be speedied. G7 only works if it is user X who requests deletion. Grutness...wha? 00:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
    • No, that's not how WP:MOVE works. It renames the page and creates a new page that is just a redirect. Thus your user Y will show as the creator of Template:Articlename, which is now just a redirect, there will be no other page history so G7 works just fine. - If user Z comes along and finds user Y left an unnecessary redirect, you would be right, but that's why I added the comment below.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 00:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
      • No, you are again gaming the system. The automatically-created redirects do far more than what you have described. The person who moved the page may not use G7 to hide his/her tracks after the move is executed. The author of the page was the author at the original title. Rossami (talk) 04:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
        • "Gaming the system"? "Hide his/her tracks"? I thought this was about people fixing pages in the wrong namespace, not trying to move an article and then hide the evidence. Just notify the creator, as Carl suggests and then delete the redirect as G6/IAR/whatever. Leave a link to the target article in the deletion summary if you feel so inclined. There is no need for an RFD or more CSD criteria. Mr.Z-man 04:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
          • Yes absolutely, you should definitely notify the creator (of the original page, of course) in most deletion cases under any process (WP:CSD, WP:PROD, and WP:XFD). We've discussed that at several of the XfD's, it's not policy but it's definitely a "Best Practice" for which I always advocate. This is why we have templates like {{db-reason}} and the corresponding notification template, because obviously the G6 and G7 CSD Templates don't give enough detail to the reason or any sort of notification template, but the criteria being used are still G6 and G7.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:28, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
          • You should also notify any relevant Projects IMO, but this is way beyond the scope of the question, My only point is that we don't need a new criterion, the issue is covered. There is no intent to be sneaky (though I know User:Grutness didn't mean that in a bad way), just to avoid WP:BUREAUCRACY.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:35, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Ahhh - good point. In which case, technically you're simply creating the redirect and can delete it. Sneaky. That solves the problem nicely! Grutness...wha? 01:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
• And if you happen across one that someone else created, then G6 as User:Happy-melon suggests.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 22:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
• Agree that deleting redirs from Template:SOMETHING that point to SOMETHING because someone created an article by mistake in template space (or vice versa and etc.) is simply "routine housekeeping", already qualifies for speedy deletion as such, and ergo no new point needs to be added to WP:CSD. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

An other situation which sometimes occurs, is when a user accidently welcomes an other user on their userpage, in stead of their talk page. Here, WP:BITE should mean that you do delete the redirect on the user page, as a new user who wants to create a user page is unlikely to understand redirects. I've recently deleted 5 of those under G6, but this would also fall into the proposed CSD here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The subtleties of CSD#I9

Have I tagged Image:Bennati in the golden jersey.JPG correctly? It appears to have been copied from this website (which I mentioned in the edit summary), and has no assertion of being freely licensed beyond the license tag, so I assumed it was covered by I9; yet no admin has been willing to delete, so I'm wondering whether I'm misunderstanding the criterion. --Diagonal P. (talk) 20:58, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• User:East718 has removed it under CSD#G12 - essentially the same thing.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 05:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

In general, no admin being willing to delete a page, is no evidence of it being mis-tagged, as lon as no admion has removed the speedy tag. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

T3

The WP:CSD#T3 criterion has now been under discussion for 24 days. The RFC was opened on January 6 and has been open for 16 days. Notice was placed on AN and VPR on January 12, 10 days ago. I believe it is time to consider the points raised above and determine if consensus supports this policy. My interpretation of the discussion above is that there are no significant objections that have not been retracted or suitably responded to. But of course, I have something of a conflict of interest! I would therefore appreciate other editors' interptretations of the discussion above. Do we have consensus for T3? Happy‑melon 12:29, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

• Exactly my point - my understanding of the consensus of the discussions above about T3 was that there IS an objection and that is that it is already covered by G6.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:22, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Then write it into G6 for clarity. –Pomte 14:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Doug, could you be specific about the objection you see? — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:59, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
    • On re-read it was primarily your comments (see e.g. 11 Jan 08) and IronGargoyle's that I thought of, but re-reading the full discussion it looks like consensus, including your own opinions developed away from this. Maybe there is no objection, I only commented because it was the references to using G6 that had sparked my use of G6 as referenced in the discussion immediately above. I have no particular concern over whether a new criterium is established.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 18:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
      • So to be absolutely clear, Doug, you don't see any objection to T3? I just want to make sure there's no later discontent about this :D. Happy‑melon 19:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
        • To be absolutely clear I don't object to T3 nor to the use of G6 for the same purpose, I advocate the latter in the absence of T3 being policy. Please don't trust my eyesight and careful reading though as to whether there is any objection. I certainly could see (as in make up ...er find) several, but that's my job and it's not relevant to this discussion. ;-)--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 21:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
          • Thanks. Of course I don't intend to trust only your reading - if anyone else can see any objection raised above that, or has one of their own, speak now or for ever hold your peace, etc etc. Happy‑melon 21:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• The link [[WP:CSD#T3]] does not point anywhere useful. If that link is not replaced, readers are invited to hunt in the TOC of this discussion to find a relevant definition of what T3 means. -- SEWilco (talk) 19:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
  • It now points to the relevant section. Happy‑melon 19:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
• Sorry I'm a little late to the discussion, but I am very opposed to T3. I noticed that I've even commented on this talk page without noticing this proposal. It's very easy for editors to miss something like that, and I really don't think it's safe to say that there actually is a consensus for this. The ironic part is that when I was here on this talk page, it was a comment about how I felt we should stop deleting depreciated templates altogether, CSD or TfD. -- Ned Scott 08:00, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

A7 again

The current wording is : " does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. " but this can be taken to mean "that does not indicate why the article is significant or important enough to pass WP:N", and of course that is not the criterion. We've had a lot of back and forth over the wording, and it is still not right. I think the intent is to be permissive, reserving the possibly important ones for community discussion, and I propose some alternatives:

1. "does not indicate or assert that the subject might be important, significant, or notable"
2. "does not give any indication or assertion that the subject might be important, significant, or notable"
3. "does not give any indication or assertion that the subject might possibly be important, significant, or notable"
4. "does not give any indication or assertion that the subject might possibly be important, significant, or notable in any manner"

in each case, along with a statement that this does not mean the article must show that the subject is notable enough to pass WP:N, DGG (talk) 20:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding your first sentence, it should definitely not be taken to mean that because of the second sentence of A7, and because the text does not encourage confounding subject with article (latter doesn't even make sense as WP:N applies to subjects, not articles). Anyway, I oppose putting the heavily loaded term 'notable' into the criterion this way, as it would be misinterpreted even more. –Pomte 21:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the notability section is included in the next sentence. I think your first wording might well clarify work without it: "does not indicate or assert that the subject might be important or significant". The more permissive A7 is made, though, the more it requires that we WP:IAR when we delete an article about the 12 year old from Montanna who can gargle chocolate milk longer than anyone else in the school. :) I wonder if there's an easy way to offset that without inviting more A7 misuse than we already see, say by adding the word "encyclopedic" as well. This begs the question of what constitutes encyclopedic importance or significance, but I suppose one could argue that if taggers don't know that, they're probably not the best editors to be on new page patrol. (And yet they do it anyway. :))

"does not indicate or assert that the subject might be of encyclopedic importance or significance"

Something along those lines would both relax standards and tighten them. ("What do you mean not important? I said he was the coolest kid in the whole world!") Thoughts? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

something along those lines, but not encyclopedic is taken to mean not meeting WP:N. I think of it as "no good faith showing of anything that a reasonable person could have plausibly believed acceptable in an encyclopedia." (and on the suggestion of a more experienced admin when I got start, I sometimes delete MRG's sort of thing as G2, test, if only to not give the people any satisfaction. )DGG (talk) 09:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

"Encyclopedic" is a risky term I think because people get these notions about what an encyclopedia should be like when they're not encyclopedists in any meaningful sense of the term. Why don't we just go with a common sense way of saying it like your explanation, "no good faith showing of anything that a reasonable person..." This can be split into a new criterion and then A7 can remain as it is with all the stuff MRG mentioned deferred to the new criterion instead of inexact deletions using G2 etc. –Pomte 09:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not quite clear on what you're suggesting here, Pomte. :) Are you proposing that we go with something like "does not give any reasonable indication or assertion that the subject might be important or significant" or suggesting that A7 be subdivided in some way? DGG, do you think that this wording would serve? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedy?

Aside from opposition or support for T3, isn't it more of a prod for templates than a speedy deletion? Not just because of the time, but because the criteria itself would suggest that if someone has a use for a template, they can remove the tag (assuming it's a legitimate use, and not just one for the sake of keeping the template from being deleted). I only bring this up because I've seen a few people start to cite T3 in WP:TFD, which would rather mean they would have to wait for deletion, in the same way they would have to wait for the TfD to end, not making it any "speedier". -- Ned Scott 09:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You're right that T3 does not make very much sense as a vote in TfDs. The reason that I've been using it is to increase awareness that we now have this new option for dealing with a narrow class of deletions; as I said here, for instance, no it's not useful in this instance, but in future this editor will now be aware that T3 is available for deletions like this. Happy‑melon 11:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

From my understanding, that's the exact same way images work. A non-compliant image can have a fair use rationale added and then the tags can be removed by anyone. Right? As for people citing this in TfD.... --MZMcBride (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A secondary issue is that the general use of prod for templates has been discussed several times on the prod talk page and never found agreement. This is a much more limited criterion - it is not a general prod for templates. It does have a time delat similar to the image criteria. — Carl (CBM · talk) 06:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

T3 opposition

• I am very much Opposed to the idea of T3, and am also very bothered by the lack of time given for a proposal to CSD. I'll go into detail in a moment here. -- Ned Scott 07:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I've moved this comment to the bottom of the page because it didn't seem appropriate to have it above. It's been nine days since T3 went active (for the second time); any opposition to it now deserves a new section. Also, just because one person strongly objects does not mean that there isn't consensus. At this point, the burden is on the opposers to show that there isn't consensus.

I will say that this was announced pretty widely on RfC, WP:AN, and some other places. Just because some people missed the discussion doesn't justify calling the entire thing disputed. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That's hardly enough for a new speedy deletion criteria. I was very involved with TfD in the last few weeks and knew nothing about this, and (as I pointed out) even commented on this talk page (ironically, to oppose the idea that we should delete such templates at all) without seeing it. Now, maybe I'm a moron, it's been known to happen, but even when I think about it again and again, it seems like it's very easy for a great deal of people to have missed this discussion entirely. We are talking about speedy deletion, something that normal users do not have any practical way to track or have any form of self-correction. We are talking about removing edits people have made, that people often look for, especially when it comes to working on templates. And everyone seems to have forgotten GFDL concerns. We don't do "votes" and even if I am one person, the arguments I present are strong, and any addition to CSD should have careful discussion, and take concerns such as this seriously. -- Ned Scott 05:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A lot of eyes and a lot of thought went into this. Still no evidence that your arguments (where are they?) are strong or not already covered. –Pomte 05:36, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

For a community like the English Wikipedia, the number of eyes on this was painfully small. That's evident in the number of users in the discussion, and the size of the discussion. But hey, thanks for keeping a closed mind and not even stopping to consider what I've just said. Is it really that absurd to believe that a great many editors who are deeply involved with templates might not have even heard about this? What about the GFDL concerns? What about all the comments I gave here, which were very much ignored by the discussions in the other sections? -- Ned Scott 05:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a painfully small amount of people dedicated to templates within the whole of English Wikipedia, and I've just posted on a couple of template-related pages in case they watch those. I agreed with your post there for the most part, and think it's compatible with T3. Some like to delete; others like to keep and deprecate. Viewing past revisions transcluding kept templates isn't really useful if parameters change, and the code being left around could encourage editors to undeprecate and fork away again. (Viewing past revisions transcluding current templates is even more misleading.) A delete followed by a redirect would also help in finding old templates. I expect that before deleting, any closing admin would check for the need to preserve the edit history, though admins being unaware of this is another problem. –Pomte 09:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) And given the participation on this page, I'm very bothered that you people went through with this without getting more comments out of the community. If you came to a consensus, it was a very weak one, and not enough for a new CSD. There's all sorts of concerns this brings up, as well as presenting a false dilemma in the first place. -- Ned Scott 05:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never used the T3 option yet as have tended to just do a redirect to the other version of the same template instead and would continue to do so if T3 was removed. According to the wording of T3, it's only there for when you've got two similar templates, so that one can be quickly deleted if it's not used. If both are used then a redirect on one of them may be a better option. So is there any need to object to T3? -- WOSlinker (talk) 08:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

GFDL concerns, templates that are used via subst or are used only at certain times but are not marked as such, a lack of need to outright delete unused templates, the ability to understand the context of a template, or how it made a page appear, when looking at an old version of an article, making things easier for people who work on templates, just to name a few. I don't completely oppose the concept, but the way it's worded and the way it's being used raises a lot of concerns. Far more often than not I see older templates as a part of the editing history of another template or an article, and deleting those can make whatever you are working on a lot harder. There's no real need to completely delete most of these templates, and there are many reasons for keeping them. A lot of these templates can easily be deleted, and a lot of them have no real history worth saving. I don't seek to remove T3 completely, but to consider these other objections. -- Ned Scott 08:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Consider away. Let out any objections you have in essay format. Paragraph format. Bullet-point format. Use colors, numbers, bold text, and headings. Go crazy! But those objections by a single individual do not make the criterion disputed or proposed. As such, I've removed the tags. Please do not re-add them unless there is clear evidence of a dispute (i.e., more than a single user). --MZMcBride (talk) 08:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Never has it been a rule that more than one user has to bring up the same argument for that argument to have merit. I've re-added the tags. Do not take changes to our policies lightly. The fact that you don't even discuss what I've just brought up, but only say "well, there's only one of you, so you must be wrong" shows a great lapse in your judgement. Wikipedia is not a democracy, nor am I even the only one who's objected to this. -- Ned Scott 09:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed one inconsistency between the policy and one of the templates:

• CSD:T3 states: Templates that are not employed in any useful fashion, and are either substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template
• {{Old template}} states: This template appears to be unused or it is a substantial duplication of another template.

-- WOSlinker (talk) 08:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I have corrected this inconsistency in the process of converting {{old template}} to the {{db-meta}} format. Happy‑melon 11:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

←I have to say I agree with Ned Scott, to the extent that the MediaWiki solution of old versions of pages transcluding current versions of templates is definitely not optimal. But barring developer-intervention, I can't see any possible way of solving a problem like this. Essentially I think the correct view is to say "we can't ensure that old versions of pages display correctly, so we shouldn't try". Templates are deleted; templates are restructured such that the parameter combinations in old page versions no longer display correctly; templates are reworded such that old discussions no longer make sense. We can't (and mustn't) stop the development and change of templates, so it seems pointless to try and make a half-hearted effort to preserve old histories when the software itself means it's never going to be possible. Happy‑melon 11:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Ned Scott has a good point re "subst" -- does anyone have an answer to that? If someone disputes something, then it is disputed. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wait, I think I have an answer. Templates that are normally (or often) used with "subst" could have prominent documentation saying so, and the T3 criterion could say "except templates that state that they're used with subst." (Such templates would I suppose have to go through the more thorough TfD process.) Maybe this is already implicitly covered by "not employed in any useful fashion". (But what if a template is used, but less often than once per seven days? What if it's used via subst about once a month?) I think it's better to make the subst exception explicit in the criterion. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you read the older discussions. The reason there is a seven day wait and that the {{Old template}} isn't <noinclude>'d is exactly for this reason. All of this (and more) has been previously discussed. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

GFDL

Since we maintain an article history, and templates which may be out of use currently may have been used in articles in the past, speedily deleting them would be careless and potentially a GFDL violation. I've been bold (probably too bold) and removed the new T3 criteria until this is at least discussed. —Locke Cole • t • c 10:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm wondering about parameter changes breaking past revisions. It's not feasible to create a new template or to keep the old parameter every time that happens. Changes in current functionality also change them entirely. This seems more like a MediaWiki issue as templates should be expanded based on past revisions. –Pomte 10:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Most important thing to remember is that deleted pages are not gone for ever. I'd also repeat my point above, and say that template pages are unavoidably distinct from articles because they can evolve and change independently of one another. I can't see how the GFDL could require that we maintain the interlocking matrix of page histories that we actually do for an entirely different reason (increased durability and transparency). Remember, the GFDL dictates what we can do with the data, not what we can do to it. Happy‑melon 11:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no important GFDL concern that I can see; could you explain why you think there is? — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that the template Template:db-t3 exists. If you're deleting the criterion, you might want to have this template deleted (or temporarily blank it, or edit it to state that it's merely a proposed criterion, or something). --Coppertwig (talk) 14:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Far from deleting the criterion, we are trying to get Ned and Locke to explain why they don't think there was acceptable consensus for its introduction. At the moment the most that can be legitimately claimed is that it is disputed by two editors. Happy‑melon 14:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you please give me a link to where you explain why you think there was acceptable consensus? --Coppertwig (talk) 15:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

We must maintain a history of who has contributed to a GFDL work to remain GFDL compliant, and part of that history is in the templates used in those articles. Deleting them makes that history inaccessible, thus making it a GFDL violation. At least that's my interpretation of things. And yes, I think this is very important– people really ought to be less dismissive if they ever expect to keep consensus on this... —Locke Cole • t • c 21:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It's certainly true that we cannot distribute a Wikipedia page without also including the list of contributing editors (although the GFDL actually only demands that five principal editors be named!), but I stand by my comment below: the "Document" referred to in the GFDL in this case is the pure wikicode of the article. This is what is released under the GFDL by the foundation, and every editor also licenses his or her modifications to the wikicode in the same way. Wikipedia happens to also release the templates that generate dynamic content from the wikicode, the MediaWiki engine that generates formatting from ''' and the like, the css stylesheets that beautify the output into something professional-looking, the parser engine that manipulates {{CURRENTDAY}} and {{BASEPAGENAME}}, and so forth. Wikipedia is a vast collection of individual objects, each of which are individually licensed under the GFDL. But nothing within the GFDL (go on, read it) prescribes or proscribes anything to do with how those interlocking pieces fit together. The deletion of a page, be it template, article, redirect, whatever, represents a decision to end Wikipedia's association with, and its licensing of, that particular GFDL object. If that deletion had any bearing on the other GFDL objects, Wikipedia would be unable to delete anything, because even deleting a stub turns a bluelink into a redlink on some other page - what's the difference, except in scale of alteration? A change is still being made. That's my interpretation of the text of the GFDL - I can see absolutley nothing wrong with deletion as a whole, or template deletion as a part of that. Happy‑melon 22:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is considerable opposition on this page to deleting such templates at all, let alone speedy-deleting them. Have there been a lot of TfD discussions ending in "delete" for such templates? any ending in "keep"? --Coppertwig (talk) 15:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

You can gain an overview of the discussion simply by searching for "T3" on this page; but as a guide:

• WT:CSD#New template criterion is where I first proposed the new guideline, resulting in a lot of valuable discussion which saw the proposal evolve and incorporate a time delay, amongst other things. Here we see support from CBM, Richard0612 and Ceyockey, among others.
• WT:CSD#Path to adoption - here the question of how to achieve a valid and widespread consensus is raised by Ceyockey. It is decided to open a RFC and then to post on various noticeboards.
• WT:CSD#CSD-T3 - Discussion - the RFC template was at the top of this section, where monitors of the RFC process were invited to comment. Mine and MzMcBride's response to John Broughton's question might be worth reading, as it is substantially similar to Ned's. Note that while MZMcBride opposed T3 in the previous sections, he argues in its favour here. I won't put words in his mouth, but this looks like a conversion to me. We also see support from Pomte and a conversion of IronGargoyle.
• WT:CSD#T3 - with the discussion having been open for over three weeks, we ask whether consensus has been established. With another apparent conversion (Doug)
• The {{proposed}} tag is finally removed by MzMcBride after 26 days of discussion, 18 days of RFC, having spent 12 days on ANI and VPR, and having had the consensus itself discussed for 48 hours.

All told, I can see above at least eight editors in clear support of the criterion, and not a single one in unwithdrawn opposition, until Ned arrives on the scene no less than eleven days after the discussion had closed. That's the situation - do you still feel that consensus was not satisfactorily arrived at? Happy‑melon 16:31, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

In response to your question "are there any examples at TfD", I will simply repeat a quote from above, although if you insist I can go through more recent TfD archives to find dozens more examples: "This criterion covers two extremely narrow cases which nonetheless come up depressingly frequently at TfD (I have found literally dozens of these in a few weeks at TfD), and where deletion is (in my experience) invariably uncontroversial". Do you want more? Happy‑melon 16:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for summarizing the situation, Happy-melon. I still don't know whether there was consensus or not. This is not a statement that I think there wasn't consensus; I'm just asking for clarification. You stated the number of days of discussion, but I'd like to know how many editors, if any, had concerns which were not addressed to their satisfaction or such that they were willing to compromise, or how many concerns, if any, were expressed and remain unaddressed. Simply stating that there was discussion for a certain length of time does nothing to convince me that there was any kind of consensus. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

There's no point me reprinting the entire discussion - it's just a few screens up the page, give it a read. But as far as I am aware, there were no concerns that remained unaddressed at the time of removing the {{proposed}} tag. Happy‑melon 21:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for summarising and clarifying the situation. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Happymelon commented above "that deleted pages are not gone for ever". This is, unfortunately, not the case. As has been pointed out several times, deleted pages are subject to purging by the developers whenever they want and with no notice at all. They have not needed to exercise that right in several years but if the system demands it, they could remove all those pages and the accompanying history at will. So no, the deleted pagehistory is not sufficient to ensure our compliance with GFDL. Rossami (talk) 17:14, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I accept that it is not necessarily true that deleted pages will be kept permanently, although my argument that deletion does not result in in the instantaneous loss of information is also valid. Fortunately, my other point - that we already do far more than is required under the GFDL in maintaining the interlocking network of histories that Wikipedia uses, and so the GFDL does not limit us in this regard - remains valid. Have a read of WP:GFDL - it's actually very accessible, and you can clearly see how it's intended for static media, giving very little thought to a "document" as dynamic as Wikipedia. My interpretation is that the GFDL would come into consideration only when the template itself was redistributed - remember, the only "contribution" an editor has made to the article is to incorporate a template call. The fact that that code does not just output "{{chess}}", but a piece of dynamic content, has no bearing in terms of the GFDL. While an old version of a page might look different in terms of outputted product, in terms of the underlying text it is the same as it was when it was originally written - no GFDL issues AFAIK. Happy‑melon 17:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

This entire discussion is entirely without merit. We delete things every single day: images, articles, templates, stubs, categories, talk pages, etc. It is clearly not a violation of the license under which contributions are released to do so; arguing so is entirely inaccurate. The arguments about article history relating to templates are entirely without basis. This entire discussion belongs on WP:VPP, if anywhere, and frankly, would extend beyond just this criterion.

What is being proposed is to effectively stop the deletion of templates. This discussion (was) about T3, i.e., speedily deleting unused and orphaned templates. This conversation is irrational. Unless someone can show demonstrable violation of the GFDL, can someone please throw an archive template around this discussion to stop the madness? Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I woke up today thinking that I had been to harsh with my comments last night, but now I see MZMcBride calling this discussion without merit, accusing me of wanting to stop deletion of any template (WTF?), and calling this whole thing madness and demanding it be archived. MZM, did I do something in the past to royally piss you off? You're clearly not understanding my messages, and you clearly don't understand my behavior or my philosophy towards template deletion.

To Happy-mellon, I think you misunderstand me when I talk about old revisions of articles. I'm not suggesting that we even attempt to preserve the actual look of an old-revision article, and we certainly shouldn't be inconveniencing ourselves over that kind of thing. Let me give an example of what I was thinking:

{{Episode-unreferenced}} is a template I was involved with for WP:TV-REVIEW, a somewhat failed attempt to have group discussions for episode articles. It got tagged as T3, and I removed the tag. A quick look at WT:EPISODE or the recent RfArb case will tell you that it's still a very hot topic, and many of us are still looking for similar solutions. In the currently active Arbcom case at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2, as well as a recent RfC on WP:EPISODE, I've often gone and explained to people some of the good ideas we wish to salvage from the TV-REVIEW process, as well as learning what didn't work. One of the big issues there was the way the template was worded. One template had completely gotten deleted, and this second one got replaced by {{notability}}. Trying to review our past work in current discussions is a lot harder when the template messages we used are gone in chunks, and when many of the concerns were directly related to the content of the templates.

Here's another one, but a much lesser example. {{EssjayBot II}}. It's nothing more than a simple archive template from a bot that is no longer active. Why would we need to keep this? We don't, but if it was just speedy deleted then anyone looking to find out simply what the heck it said, because they saw it was used once, won't know. This can easily be solved by simply encouraging deleting admins to include a brief description of the template. Someone could say "T3, old archive bot message", which would show up in the deletion log, and be informative. Which brings me to another point, that I'm not completely opposed to T3, but more on that in a moment (short version, I like it, it seems to work for a lot of templates out there, but there are a lot of red flags that show this proposal wasn't completely thought out, and needs tweaking)..

There are a number of templates that, when deleted, can totally change the context of an older article version. Sometimes this is necessary, but sometimes it isn't actually helping us to just delete the templates simply because we can, nor does it actually hurt anything to keep the history of a template in some way (redirect, userification, etc). If it really is a bother, then sure, delete it, but if it seems like it might have been widely used at one point, or key to a way a page looked, at least consider preserving the history. We know that looking at past versions of articles won't give us a real view of what it looked like at that time, but as long as the history of the template isn't deleted then editors can put the pieces together, which I've had to do a number of times. So obviously I'm not asking that we stop working on templates, or even suggest that we don't change their parameters, and if you thought I was suggesting such a thing I can understand why some of you were so quick to dismiss my concerns.

I've looked over a ton of templates that have been tagged with T3, and certainly didn't remove their tags. Most of these templates were never in widespread use, or had only a handful of edits, etc. Obviously, we need some way to realistically deal with them, and with that T3 is a great idea. I believe the criteria for T3 and the instructions given to admins could definitely be improved to address most of these concerns without changing how useful it is.

I'm on my lunch break, so I don't have time to go into detail, or find better examples, but I wanted to clear up some stuff, especially Happy-mellon's misunderstanding of what I meant.

As for GFDL concerns, I have noticed a few templates with a lot of prose being tagged. Sometimes editors will put paragraphs in a template to share between articles, which another editor sees and subst's, because we don't really do that (etc etc), but then you contribution history for that text being lost . Same can be said for replaced message templates, where prose is defiantly copyrightable and needs the edit history. I'm not sure about what extent of non-prose templates would be copyrightable, but I'm sure there's at least some where it can be argued that they are. Most (if not all) non-prose templates, however, will not likely be copyrightable.

I hope to write more when I get back from work. Thank you to everyone who is keeping an open mind and at least listening to these concerns. I know it's frustrating when someone tags something you've worked on as "disputed", but it's nothing personal, and I don't seek to stop the spirit of what T3 is doing. -- Ned Scott 20:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A lot of that has little to do with T3 and is just about template deletion in general. If this is such a problem, we should scrap TFD as well and only delete templates if they were never used or only used on a deleted page that will never be undeleted. Mr.Z-man 22:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

That was exactly my point. This has little, if anything, to do with T3 specifically. It seems Ned has an issue with template deletions in general. Which is why I'm confused why he's using a new speedy criterion to discuss this. Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that if these templates were listed on TfD, they wouldn't be deleted? In fact, I'm of half a mind to begin listing them there. And then they'll be deleted, with full community support, after seven days. Perhaps I could set some sort of record for most TfD nominations for a single day.

The arguments being raised here are pretty loosely connected with T3 and are much more strongly related to deletion in general. Which is why I suggested that WP:VPP or some other place be used.

Happy-melon: I've interpreted T3 to include unused and orphaned templates; and part of the discussion about creating T3 included slight overlap with G6 (housekeeping). One way or another, these templates should go as they serve no purpose. As I said before, I'd be happy to list these templates at TfD, but both the people behind WP:DOT and the people behind WP:CSD#T3 agreed that that would be rather silly. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps my good faith in my fellow Wikipedians has been misplaced. I assumed people were being smart about TfD, and not making GFDL violations, or making for mindless busy work when all you have to do is redirect something for most of those cases. If this is not the case, then yes, lets bring this to a larger discussion area, but that hardly makes opening the flood gates a good thing.

I wrote my reply on my lunch break, and there are more concerns than just that. One of those concerns is that this process isn't even clear among those who have supported it, as shown in these very discussions. A bit above I notice MZM saying "look at older discussion" regarding something that someone should be able to find out about in CSD#T3, and not in the talk page archives. The instructions, more than anything, need clarity.

I was planning on going into more detail on all of this, but I have come home to be greeted by an incredibly stupid decision from the arbcom (or I should say, a clarification to it). Right now that is my top priority, so if MZM or anyone else wishes to throw out everything I've said as "madness", and steamroll me on this, it would be a good chance to do so. -- Ned Scott 05:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I still don't see the GFDL violation here. We could delete these templates under TfD, and in practice do so all the time. It seems unlikely to me that we have an entire process (TfD) that violates the GFDL. So concerns about this particular criterion and GFDL seem misplaced; if there are valid concerns, they need to be addressed more generally. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

There is no GFDL violation, you only need to show the history if you are still publishing it. The templates are a separate entity than the pages they are on. _(1 == 2)^Until 06:02, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

No, you misunderstand me. I am not talking about the articles the templates were used on, I am talking about other templates using content form the templates that are being deleted. -- Ned Scott 07:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

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