Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 28

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Contents

"As with schools?"

This was claimed to be "discussed on the talk page". If so, guess I missed it. When I've seen the matter discussed, the general consensus seemed to be that schools are organizations, and must assert notability like any other. A7 is also often used and rarely challenged in practice for schools. I never saw a consensus to add this line, so I see no need for a consensus to remove it. Where is this supposed discussion? Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This discussion is here. :) It's been in the policy for about six weeks now. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I see. Very short discussion as to schools, and I was out of town then, so that explains it. To be clear, then, I object. Schools are organizations, and despite the fact that it's asserted this is "controversial", school speedies on genuine garbage articles generally go unchallenged. (For that matter, so do many others, I don't have a problem ignoring silly things on products and the like, and that usually doesn't get challenged either.) If it's truly controversial, they'll all get taken to DRV anyway, but in practice this rarely happens. Seraphimblade Talk to me 13:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't personally have strong feelings about it, although I can well understand that the deletion of school articles is typically controversial given that the whole question of what constitutes notability in schools is constantly under debate. (We seem to be on our fourth guideline proposal now.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I have seen school deletions under A7 overturned at DRV - Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 December 27. Hut 8.5 18:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
I am not asserting that a school speedy has never been overturned at DRV. I am quite certain there are speedies of bios, websites, bands, companies, and organizations that have been overturned at DRV. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be speedyable, only that the admin's judgment was off in that particular case or that new information came to light. That's not a reason to forbid speedying it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:28, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Also, reading that DRV, a lot of the objection was based on the wording added here, and that DRV happened after the change here. Do you have any that occurred before that was added? Policy should describe what's being done in practice, not attempt to alter it. In practice, this seems a backdoor attempt to stop schools from being speedied when before they quite frequently were without challenge, to create a bit of a feedback loop here ("well policy says don't do it, so now we won't let you do it since the policy says so, well we don't let you do it in practice, so now policy says so"). It's supposed to work the other way around—something's supposed to actually happen in practice and then get put into policy. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
It's quite all right to work by proposing a change in practice and seeking consensus to implement it, at least according to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
The point here is the basic principal that a speedy should be something upon which everyone reasonable with some experience at WP can agree. we agree about vandalism and garage bands that have never played a gig. We agree about blatant copyright infringement, unused categories, and user requests. No one can realistically claim we agree about schools from the point of view of notability. So what we do not agree abut has to be discussed. DGG (talk) 21:18, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
Not entirely sure of that. Can you show me a one-liner "X is an elementary school in Y" which has been kept at AfD? I've never seen it happen. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
That's not quite the right standard to use in evaluating whether CSD can be applied. The right question is "Can you show me a one-liner "X is an elementary school in Y" where no reasonable members of the community made credible arguments against deletion?" CSDs are deliberately limited to the very narrow circumstances where every reasonable editor would reach the same conclusion upon viewing the article. And while I personally think that articles about individual schools have no place in the encyclopedia for several reasons, the fact is that a number of good editors disagree and that there have been articles about elementary schools which, when discussed, were expanded to the point that the elementary school page was kept. Rossami (talk) 14:39, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
In answer to Seraphimblade's question, usually the article in question is expanded during the course of discussion. An examination of the schoolwatch archives seems to indicate that articles on elementary schools, if nominated for deletion, nowadays have about a 50% change of surviving the discussion. Even a good proportion of articles on infant schools seem to survive these days. --Tony Sidaway 14:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
the other reason is that most primary school articles never reach AfD any more--they are merged without opposition, or PRODded--and then usually merged. They ones that get there are either the ones that in fact can be improved, and are, or the ones where someone puts up an inevitably hopeless opposition. Putting up a PROD gives the opportunity for fixing them that speedy does not. The type of articles for which speedy is appropriate are the ones that are hopelessly useless as is, not fixable, and not going to be rationally defended.DGG (talk) 23:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Merger I can go for. I suppose the worst of the bunch (the boosterish and attack ones) go under G11 or G10, respectively, anyway, so I'll go for that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:09, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
There is also a good deal of no context, where they dont even say where the school is located. "XHS is a great high school" would not even be enough for a directory .DGG (talk) 02:54, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Template documentation pages

this is, I'm sure you'll agree, completely uncontroversial, and I was on the verge of simply claiming it as WP:CSD#G8, with which it shares many similarities. I've done a couple of these in the five days I've had my admin bit, so I was wondering: should deletions of documentation pages like this be recorded under G8 or G6? Would it be beneficial to add a phrase to G8 indicating that things like this are included? Happy‑melon 22:13, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

You can just delete them; that's why you have admin tools. There's no reason why every deletion has to cite or meet a CSD criterion. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:23, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
You mean, admins can use IAR or common sense -- not that they should just delete what they feel like deleting. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I know what you mean, and if that way of phrasing it makes more sense to you then I'm all for it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Although I agree with CBM, I think this is a pretty clear case of G6 Housekeeping.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 22:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

U4 proposal

U4: use of userspace as an archive for deleted material.

After the whole adult-child sex subpage debacle which ended up with half of the people !voting to speedy, and after long precedent, I think it's time we put it in writing. Will (talk) 12:52, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

"G4" is for all pages; maybe just adding a sentence onto the end specific to non-article space? Daniel (talk) 12:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
G4 doesn't apply to userspace or if they've made a few changes to the page, unfortunately. Will (talk) 13:02, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm proposing to alter it so it does. G4 does apply to all namespacesas a "G" criteria, but apparently the current definition makes it unenforcable in userspace, so why not fix it so it does? :) Daniel (talk) 13:07, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
We have to make sure this doesn't hit people who are working on a draft of something that has been deleted in order to overcome the reasons that led to its deletion, as this is perfectly legitimate. Hut 8.5 13:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. And given the judgment necessary to make that distinction, I don't think that this proposal will work as a speedy deletion candidate. Speedy-deletions need to be narrowly defined to situations where every reasonable editor looking at the page will reach the same conclusion. In this case, you need to divine the user's intent - is this a legitimate attempt to repair an article or is it an attempt to circumvent the deletion decision. That is something on which there is a high likelihood that reasonable editors will not automatically agree. Keep sending these to MfD where more than one person can help with the decision about the user's intent. Rossami (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Thirded. MfD and {{prod}} seem like better venues for these types of deletions. Black Falcon (Talk) 17:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
The usual position on userspace recreations has been that they're ok if done to enable the user to fix the problem necessitating deletion in the first place (unless the problem is unfixable, like copyright problems etc). I can see some merit in deleting recreations that a user has abandoned work on, but I don't see how existing mechanisms don't cover this already. --bainer (talk) 14:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Using userspace as a back door to deletion can be bad, but this is not something to create a speedy for. "Precedent" is often weak and flawed, and people voting "speedy delete" in an XfD are often using the term incorrectly (rather than simply saying they feel just really, really strongly about it. I've probably done this myself in the past). -- Ned Scott 23:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Suggested new wordings for CSD templates

Mainly for the purpose of bringing the templates more in line with the actual speedy criteria, Moonriddengirl and I have developed suggested template wordings. We suggest that discussion of the specific wordings of each template be in four subpages we've created for general, articles, images and other (redirects, categories, userpages, templates, portals), and that general discussion about it be here. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:55, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't looked closely at these proposed ammendments, although I disapprove of the replacement of {{db-meta}} - why not just edit it to do whatever you need it to do if this change is accepted? However, I think this would be a good opportunity for me to advocate a possibly parallel reorganisation which I've wanted to do for a while. As you can see from Special:Prefixindex/Template:Db-, we have a huge number of CSD templates, of which most are redirects. In general, the actual CSD template is held at something like {{Db-test}}, while the actual criterion number ({{Db-g2}}) is a redirect to it. I'd like to reverse that, and consolidate everything into one meta template ({{db-meta}}), from which we derive 43 templates at {{Db-XN}}, with all the other templates being hard or soft redirects to achieve exactly the same appearance but with an altered underlying structure. You might think that it's pointless, but not only will it make things easier to find, but a stock-take like Coppertwig has proposed would be so much easier if we knew clearly where to find everything. I would be willing to bet that many of the redirects listed at that prefixindex are rarely if ever used, but we won't know or be able to discuss them properly while the system is still in such an underlying mess. Cleanup, anyone? Happy‑melon 18:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
The main reason not to reword meta is that people use it as a stand-alone template and revising the wording would require that they formulate actual sentences rather than simply dropping non-notable after the colon. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
If they're using an abstract metatemplate on real articles, it's their own silly fault if it doesn't come out right. No one uses {{ambox}} directly on articles, do they? The meta template is there to serve the templates, the templates are there to serve the editors. What's wrong with {{db}}?? It's even a shorter template name! Happy‑melon 19:20, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
If the feeling here is that db-meta should not be used as a stand-alone template, then the suggesting wordings can be implemented by deleting "The reason given is" from db-meta. In that case, all the changes, if implemented, will have to be done at the same time; otherwise the grammar will temporarily look funny.
If db-meta is intended to be used as a stand-alone and Template:Speedybase is to be kept, then to avoid duplicate code, db-meta should be edited to be simply a transclusion of speedybase plus the words "The reason give is". However, given the existence of db (thanks for the reminder, Happy-melon), keeping the functionality of db-meta as a stand-alone seems redundant. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:43, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I realized when I created Template:Speedybase that it might need to be deleted again based on how the discussion here went. I've just put a notice on it to that effect. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:46, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I just had an idea: Template:Speedybase could be used as a temporary transition. If the templates are gradually moved to new wording which leaves out "The reason given is" for brevity, they can be switched one at a time to transclude speedybase (whether this is done over a matter of hours/minutes after discussion, or days/weeks during discussion). Once they're all migrated to speedybase, then db-meta can be edited with no fallout, and the templates can then switch back to transcluding db-meta just so it's back to the familiar name for the template. If it's done this way, maybe speedybase should have a name like db-meta1 or db-meta-temporary or something instead. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Um. Generally, templates are not noinclude'd with links to discussions. That's why we have talk pages (which were also spammed). Can someone please undo the noinclude'ing? Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I will be happy to remove the noinclude messages when it appears to be what is advisable or generally desired, i.e. when the discussion is over, or earlier if desired. At present I see my own opinion and that of one other user that the noinclude templates are a good idea, and a reason, i.e. that they make people aware of this discussion; and one opinion for removing them, and perhaps I'm just failing to read between the lines, but I'm not sure that you've backed that up with an explanation of any reason for such removal at this time -- please feel free to expand or clarify. The noinclude messages seem to me to be similar to merge notices, delete notices, dispute notices etc. on articles which are used as a way to inform readers of the existence of a discussion which may be of interest to users of the page. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Discussions about CSD tags take place all the time. At some point, someone has to go in and clean up the mess when the discussion ends, versus a talk page notice which would inform without needing to be removed in the future. Deletion and merge notices are placed in subject space because they can have a large impact on the page; minor wording changes are not going to have a large impact on anything. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds as if removing them now would have no advantage over removing them after the discussion. I've added it to my to-do list for later. Besides, it will be convenient to remove them when editing the templates to put in any agreed-on new words. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If people will excuse me for repeating something I've stated elsewhere, I'd like to explain here the reasoning behind the suggested reversal of the use of italic and non-italic font, since this is the place for general discussion of the template wordings. Some people just rely on the template wording and don't read the CSD; at least one person seemed to think the template wording was the CSD. Two suggested modifications are intended to reduce the likelihood that a reader will get the impression that the template is an exact quote of the CSD. One of these is to use italics for the first part, i.e. "This page may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion," rather than for the second part. Since in some styles of typesetting italics are used for quotes (I do this myself in my talk page posts, for example, though not in articles), the use of italics gives me the impression that it is a quote, and may be giving other readers the same impression. The first few words are not likely to be considered a quote and it doesn't much matter if they are. The other change is to say "(See CSD A7)" rather than just "(CSD A7)". I optimistically cling to a faint hope that the use of the word "see" will encourage a slightly larger proportion of users to actually follow that suggestion and click on the link. Even if not, I hope that inserting "See" makes it look less as if the mention of the CSD is a reference supporting an exact quote of the CSD. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirects warning

Added warning Watch out. Some redirect pages contain page history. It's probably not a good idea to speedy delete these.

Some people don't use redirects right, or put redirects over page history. As simply deleting such pages might cause GFDL compliance issues, and/or cause history of wikipedia to be lost (in the project namespace), it's not a good idea to delete such redirects. (I've actually made references to history of redirected pages in discussions. It's a long story as to all the possible ways things can go wrong).

At any rate, it's not a great idea to speedy redirects with history, so Don't Do That. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If only it were possible for a speedy deletion template for redirects to detect the presence of non-redirect versions in the history, a big blinking warning could be added. *sigh* — CharlotteWebb 21:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
I shudder to think of the modifications that would need to be made to the mediawiki software to permit that sort of check :D. Happy‑melon 21:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
A bot could do it. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Would a bot have time? The usual lag between tagging and deletion is very small. Rossami (talk) 23:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
There was discussion earlier about the idea of using a bot to increase the lag time between tagging and deletion. (Though as far as I know maybe nobody who knows how to write bots yet was involved.) --Coppertwig (talk) 03:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

All articles and redirects have history. At least 1 edit. What do you mean "it's not a great idea to speedy redirects with history"? If you don't specify it the sentence it's equivalent with "it's not a great idea to speedy redirects". Sorry, I am mathematician and I need more data to understand. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:58, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Speedying redirects with histories is a bad idea for two reasons: 1) Many redirects are created after merging the original contents of the page into another article. Deleting the history of such a redirect might delete the history of content that is still present on Wikipedia, which could run afoul of the GFDL requirements. 2) Within the histories of many redirects is information that is encyclopedic and could be merged out of the history at some point in the future. Indeed, many redirects are even created as an act of vandalism or at the very least without consensus. Deleting such a page would amount to a completely out of process deletion of non-speediable material. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Mathematical translation: "redirects with history" is being used as an abbreviation for "redirects with nontrivial history," which can be taken to mean "redirects with a history greater than 1 edit" or "redirects with a history containing material other than redirects" or "redirects with a history containing material in such amounts that recreating it would take more work than saving it now"; it doesn't much matter which, as most cases will be either redirects with a history of 1 edit or redirects with a history containing significant amounts of material, so all three definitions would give the same result in most cases. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Not quite. A redirect resulting from a recent pagemove has an edit history with only one entry but may have non-trivial history both because changes to page title are generally considered useful history and because the old title may have inbound links. Some argue about whether such pagemove-created redirects are useful in any specific case but they can represent non-trivial history and complicate your general case. Rossami (talk) 02:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
      • I'm not sure, but I think the same information about the page move is also in the edit history of the moved page, so that's OK; if I'm right you can still delete redirects with one-line histories. Inbound links are important but are not "page history"; they're "inbound links". So we need to specify that redirects with one-line histories (or whatever) can be deleted after all inbound links have been reassigned. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
        • Sorry but no. You might be able to fix all the internal inbound links but there are no tools available to even find, much less to fix, the inbound links from outside the project. Those could include research papers (online or offline), Wiktionary and WikiSource and a host of other places that don't show up under "what links here". And even then, all the old internal links would still be scattered throughout our history and could be restored by anyone who has to revert one of the changed pages (for example, to revert vandalism). Redirects created as a result of a pagemove aren't even deletable in the normal course of business. They definitely are not speedy-deletable. Rossami (talk) 05:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
          • You're totally right. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Second the original post. I spent a happy morning once tracking down the history of Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress/Wikipedia:Requests for investigation (I moved it to the Wikipedia:Historical archive once I found it). It had been speedied as an 'unneeded subpage' a wihle earlier... --ais523 13:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

CSD G9

Criterion G9 says, in pertinent part: "The Wikimedia Foundation office reserves the right to speedily delete a page temporarily in cases of exceptional circumstances". It would seem to me that the Foundation has the right to delete a page permanently or indefinitely as well. I doubt there's any time limit on an Office Action-related deletion. So I'm wondering if we should remove the word "temporarily" from this criterion. szyslak 11:46, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Well as office action puts it, office actions are temporary. I could be wrong, but I get the idea that it's "temporary" in the sense that it can precede discussion of the issue, and not that they're reserving the right to just circumvent procedure entirely (which they could do if they wanted to, anyway). Someguy1221 (talk) 11:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
If the office wants a page removed, it's not just going to be deleted. At the very least it will be oversighted, and maybe even purged from the database by the developers. So I think "temporarily" is actually quite appropriate: temporarily deleted pending complete obliteration :D. Happy‑melon 15:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change to criterion A7

Propose changing criterion A7 from:

An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. 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.

to:

An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content which is patently non-notable. This is distinct from questions of 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. If the article fails to assert notability but the subject is not patently non-notable, the Proposed deletion procedure should be used.

Reason for change:

Articles on perfectly notable subjects have been subjected to CSD under this criterion because the author didn't realize that the subject's notability had to be asserted and explained. If the article doesn't violate any other criterion (advertising, BLP violation, copyright, etc.), there is simply no reason not to give the author a few days to assert the subject's notability. This change would avoid damage to the project from newbies who find their articles deleted in a manner they consider unfair, without any real downside from keeping questionable articles around a few extra days. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I generally like the change, I don't like the word patently. One person's patently is another's objection. Also saying an article about a real person...that is patently non-notable. This is distinct from questions of notability... is a bit confusing to me. Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 21:16, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
If the article doesn't assert notability, how are we supposed to know that it's not patently non-notable? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
I should add that I do support the impulse behind this; I think there are plenty of perfectly salvageable articles deleted under A7. It just seems to me that if an article makes no assertion of notability, then there is literally no way for an admin to recognize potential notability unless she/he is him/herself familiar with the subject. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
The idea I had in mind was that A7 would still apply if the article itself made it clear the subject was non-notable -- "Jimmy and my friends have this great band and we're going to do a demo as soon as we come up with some songs", "Peter is this guy in my High School and he has this crush on Susan" and so on, cases where non-notability is clear from what the article says. (This is still a lot of articles). The category I'm suggesting moving to WP:PROD rather than speedy-delete is cases where it isn't obvious from the article, one way or the other, whether the subject is notable or not. I'd invite better wording. The case I really want to take out of CSD is cases like this, where the subject is really quite possibly notable but the author simply fails to assert it clearly enough -- it can be a bureaucratic gotcha. If it's felt this distinction can't be clearly defined, an alternative would be to move everything in A7 to WP:PROD without keeping anything in CSD, but I don't think this is necessary. I think enough obviously non-notable articles get created that we can come up with something to explain the distinction. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 01:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If their article is deleted because they weren't aware they needed to assert its notability, they are forced to read policy pages and gain knowledge.

If CsD is revised to account for their ignorance, they remain ignorant and continue to upload one non-notable article after another. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 01:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Do not understand how if editors are given a courtesy notice explaining the reasons for proposing deletion and a few days to correct it, they will end up more ignorant, or less likely to read policy pages, than if their work is simply summarily deleted. Is it reasonable to assume that "being forced" is the only way volunteers will learn about policies? What about WP:AGF? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Zenwhat. This is absolutely not the time when we should be relaxing our requirements for new articles. If anything, we should be requiring even better quality submissions than we did in the past. I strongly oppose this change. — Satori Son 02:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
How does a courtesy notice and a few days to improve an article result in relaxing requirements? This doesn't involve standards, simply the decision procedure. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Reluctant oppose - I'm reluctantly forced to concur with Zenwhat. The obligation is on the creator of the new article to make themselves minimally clear. The example Sirahadasha uses is a prime example; the ordinary (non-French or non-naval-buff) reader won't know who this guy is and why he matters, without much more context than the original article provided. --Orange Mike | Talk 02:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Note: The example article is on the former head of the French Navy. Is such an article really appropriate for CSD simply because the author didn't explain it properly? --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, my humble opinion is that article was not a speedy candidate under the current wording. I wholeheartedly agree with Mangojuice's statements below. — Satori Son 15:43, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I oppose this. I think this is a well-intentioned attempt to rewrite the criterion to make it clear that it is intended, particulars aside, to be used to delete only inappropiate articles, not appropriate ones. However, what matters much more in CSD criteria is how badly they can be stretched, because effectively many articles get deleted if the most liberal interpretation of the criteria applies to them. Wording like "patently non-notable" is so open to administrator opinion that it would be enforced very unevenly, and would also be a hard thing to explain to users whose article had been deleted, and would probably lead to a lot of DRVs. Plus, I don't like the idea of admins judging the appropriateness of a topic without community input, at least, not as a codified standard practice. Mangojuicetalk 03:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Modified proposal

Propose changing criterion A7 from:

An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. 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.

to:

An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that indicates, based on the facts stated in the article, that its subject is not important or significant. This is distinct from questions of 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. Note: this criterion should be used only for articles that make it clear from the facts stated in the article that an Articles for deletion discussion would be closed under WP:SNOW. If the article fails to assert importance or significance, but the article does not actually indicate that the subject is not important or significant so clearly to make the outcome of an articles for deletion discussion obvious, the Proposed deletion procedure should be used.


The phrase "patent non-notability" seems to have confused people. Perhaps this wording may explain more clearly why "Bob goes to my school. Bob rocks!!!" could still get deleted under CSD, but this would not. --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

First of all, none of this is necessary for Jacques Lanxade, because that wouldn't be deletable by the current criterion either. "Former navy chief" is way more than necessary to be a claim of significance. People who tag for speedy deletion don't always understand this kind of thing, but we can't really help that, we just have to educate them one at a time. As for the new proposal, this is even worse. Admins could still stretch this to delete anything they think is not a notable topic -- I can picture this leading to deletions of radio stations or small villages, if the admin wasn't clear on community consensus about those things. But also, this implies that we should keep articles that don't make claims. Your "Bob" example for instance shouldn't be deleted if this were the rule, because while it's implied that Bob is just a typical student, the article doesn't come out and say that, so it's possible that Bob is significant but it's not explained. You could still delete "Bob is a typical high school student." or "Larry's is a restaurant on the corner of Main and Oak Street known as an ordinary local diner." Now maybe admins wouldn't be that strict, but if that was the text of the rule, those who had their NN articles deleted would start challenging those deletions on this basis, which is just a big mess. Mangojuicetalk 14:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
My thoughts exactly. — Satori Son 15:43, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

This absolutely does not imply we should keep articles that don't make claims. It simply says we should use WP:PROD instead of WP:CSD. If the article literally says nothing at all, it can be deleted under one of the other CSD criteria, as patent nonsense or for lack of context. The idea is to limit CSD to cases where an AfD would be closed under WP:SNOW, and to use PROD for cases where and AfD might possibly result in a KEEP if the article contained more information. Admins have to use judgment including obvious implications of article statements. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't like either proposal, and this one seems much worse than what we have. Articles have to specifically indicate non-notability before they can be deleted? Besides vandalism, why would someone create an article and state in the article why the subject is non-notable? An assertion of notability is not hard to meet. If the subject is notable for something, why would you not include that in the article from the beginning? Also, if we were to change the criteria to require actual non-notability, does that mean we can bypass AFD if we can't find evidence the subject is notable? Right now, as long as there is an assertion, it can't be speedy deleted. With the proposals here, even an article with an assertion of notability could be speedy deleted if it cannot be proven. Finally, how is "patently non-notable" distinct from questions of notability? Mr.Z-man 18:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Currently, the article must assert notability -- it must affirmatively argue for it's subject's notability. I regularly turn down CSD requests where the article turns out to be on a completely notable subject and but fails to make this assertion sufficiently clear. I have no idea why editors regularly do this, it may not be logical, but this doesn't change the fact that they do. (If things are as you say, why does CSDs of notable articles happen so often as a rubber-meets-the-road reality?) Removing the set of cases where the assertion is unclear to PROD will simply not have the affects you indicate. If an article asserts notability, then "the facts stated in the article" will indicate it's notable -- there's no proposal here to go outside what the article says, doing so would be inappropriate for CSD. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Comment: A lot of comments have suggested that requiring patent insignificance would leave matters to admin judgment. But the current requirement of deleting absent a affirmative assertion of importance or significance equally leaves much more up to the admin, and the purpose of htis proposal is to take some of that judgment away. Letting the admin decide what's important leaves all the gray area to the admin, while letting the admin decide only what's unimportant lets anything gray go to PROD. For example, the President of the United States article never actually uses the magic words "The president is important"; this has to be inferred from the asserted statements based on general knowledge. Perhaps everyone can be expected to know this from general knowledge, but on many subjects this simply isn't so. For example, a "chief" can be a relatively low-level officer; so an admin might not be aware that a reference to a former French navy chief refers to a former head of the French navy as a whole and might think the subject's importance hasn't been asserted. When the admin has no knowledge of the underlying field or subject-matter, it can be very easy not to notice something's importance when an editor doesn't use specific magic words. This is the problem that the proposal is trying to solve. The fact that a subject's importance isn't clear to an admin doesn't mean it isn't important to an expert in the field, and potentially good subjects have been deleted under CSD simply because their importance isn't explained in a way that admins understand. These are the kinds of articles that shouldn't be deleted by CSD. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 20:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Are the admins actually doing anything wrong anywhere? Like I said, and like several others agreed, the example you gave was not an appropriate CSD candidate. For truly appropriate subjects, A7 is an extremely low bar to pass, and my experience has been that in the few cases where an article on such a subject is speedy deleted, things end up working out in the end anyway. If there are cases where these things are actually being wrongly deleted, I'd like to see it.. but I think I'd still believe that was a matter of misapplying a good policy rather than the policy being flawed, unless there's a serious, widespread problem. Mangojuicetalk 06:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
that's wildly overoptimistic. What appears at Deletion review is just the top of the iceberg. Problem is getting a suitable level--it relies to much on the admins--people should be given clearer guidance. Yesterday without searching for them I came across 3 separate speedies of schools for non notability, and 2 audio albums. DGG (talk) 07:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Shirahadasha that it's better for articles we're not sure about to go to prod. Remember the case of Ggggggggggggggg12, where the (incorrect) speedy deletion of an article, in combination with other circumstances, led to a valuable contributor apparently being permanently lost to the project. Speedy-deleting the article of a new user (or even of an established user) is not a trivial, easily reversible thing: it's perceived as an insult or rejection. It has an emotional impact. I'm sure it drives some editors away before we discover whether they were the type of person that would have become a regular contributor.

I suggest adding something like the following to the current wording: "If significance is not asserted but you suspect the subject may be significant, consider using prod rather than speedy."

Wikipedia is supposed to be editable by anyone. You're not supposed to have to read the rules before starting to edit. People put in articles based on common sense, and common sense says that you don't begin an article with "Tom Jones was a really important person." You begin it with "Tom Jones was a cello player" or whatever. At least, if it's a good, non-spam article you do. Or if you've read the NPOV policy. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the wording I suggested above now seems too strict to me. Why prod an article if you suspect the subject may be significant? Better to leave it alone, or put a "notability" tag on it, or use AfD, to avoid the possible deletion of a good article. I suggest: "If significance is not asserted but you suspect the subject may be significant, consider an alternative such as prod, AfD, notability tag or doing nothing." --Coppertwig (talk) 13:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
better yet: If there is no indication of significance, but you suspect the subject may be significant, consider an alternative such as prod, AfD, notability tag, looking for additional material yourself, or doing nothing."
I agree with Coppertwig that one of the important considerations is balancing upholding our standards with courtesy and friendliness to volunteers, particularly new contributors who don't know the ropes and who write articles in good faith without understanding all the requirements. Enforcing our standards in a courteous way that explains to people the difficiencies in their articles and gives them some time to improve them seems to me to be more in the long-term interests of the project than an approach that simply deletes articles on sight, as CSD does. Pure CSD is best applied to vandalism, spam, content that could expose us to legal liability of some sort, and similar problems. A gentler, more courteous approach seems better for legitimate articles that simply don't meet our discretionary content policies. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:06, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Rumours

What is the status of pages that describe a rumour, intends to clarify the rumour status and indicates that no official information is currently available? For example company xyz is rumoured be bringing out a camera of model 9D. Would a page, covering the subject, for example 'xyz 9D', indicating the page describes a rumoured camera be considered okay, or subject for speedy deletion? If it is a gray zone, what sort of information would ensure the page would be kept, since most references are likely to based on sketchy facts, like "representant x suggested y", and "this fits in with the current time line". I ask, because having created a page that was intended to indicate rumour status, I am now wondering whether it was the right thing to do. --AJ Mas (talk) 17:55, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Wikipedia's basic standard for inclusion is verifiability. If the rumor is not reported on by reliable sources, it almost certainly is not a valid basis for an article. If it is, it may be both notable and verifiable enough to include an article, depending on the circumstances. For instance, even verifiable rumors are generally not enough to write an article about a future film, as the notability guidelines on films indicate that only films in production are typically notable enough for an article. This question arises enough that Wikipedia has developed a specialized term to describe it: "crystal". If the article you created does not meet the sourcing requirements, you may want to tag it with {{db-author}} to request its removal until the article can be created as fact, not rumor. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:01, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
It might not be speedy-deletable but as Moodriddengirl said, a page about such a rumor should definitely be deleted through the regular processes under WP:CRYSTAL. Articles about future events should not be written until the future event has actually occurred and the event has demonstrated long-term impact on society or other notable reason for inclusion. Rossami (talk) 18:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps in the rare case that the rumor itself is notable (as opposed to it simply being a widespread but unverified or incorrect belief about a notable subject), then sources can be found. I can't think of any examples but its close cousins the urban legend, the hoax, and the campy conceit (e.g. Elvis lives among us) do sometimes pop up as articles.Wikidemo (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Why delete unused templates?

The following was originally posted here

I understand deleting unused fair use images, but why delete perfectly good templates just because they aren't in use? If it's a vanity, userbox, etc. template I also understand. In my opinion many other things should be first in line for deletion before informational templates. I don't think unused free images are deleted, are they? Free templates should be given the same treatment. This is pure bureaucracy just for the heck of it.--Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 23:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello? Anybody home? --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 22:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Alright, I have no idea if this is why the criterion exists (I forget) but this criterion would limit the accidental use of obsolete templates, so that discussion on how a template should appear can be performed on a single version at any one time. Why not just redirect them...I have no idea. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Unused free images are indeed deleted on IfD when it appears they are unlikely to be used in an article. The word people use for that is "unencyclopedic". In the case of unused templates, they have been deleted because they no longer serve a useful purpose, as part of general housekeeping. Of course there is no requirement that everyone has to go around looking for unused templates, or unencyclopedic images. But if someone chooses to spend their time tidying up old templates, it's their volunteer time to allot. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. While I am not fond of the phrase, Wikipedia is not paper. "Housekeeping" is not an excuse for bulldozing unused rooms in a home where construction never stops and money is no option. If somebody leaves, that does not mean that somebody will not move in sometime in the future. As long as no other rules are broken, it should not be deleted. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 19:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Unused templates generally just create clutter. Their existence can be a cause of distraction (e.g. if an editor is forced to spend time comparing two templates), confusion (e.g. new editors may not understand why there are two templates for the same thing, and this may discourage them from using one or the other), or inconsistency (e.g. different editors may use different templates on different articles). I think a more apt analogy for template deletion would be the act of throwing out bent paper clips scattered throughout an office. Black Falcon (Talk) 20:08, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I do not think we are talking about the same thing. I understand deleting templates that have been replaced. Just because a perfectly good paperclip is not attached to a group of papers at the moment is no reason to toss it in the trash. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 23:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
That could be... I had in mind templates that have been obsoleted or are single-use instances of a more general template; I wasn't referring to templates that may be useful but are simply not used at the moment. Black Falcon (Talk) 23:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirects

I had a discussion about speedily deleting redirects from Talk: pages to other Talk: pages, which some admins seem to be doing. If this is not policy, may I suggest that WP:CSD#R be amended to reflect that? I was confused by the wording myself until an admin explained it to me. — Zerida ☥ 21:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you please provide an example? Because if you're talking about a redirect created as a result of a pagemove, they definitely ought not to be speedy-deleting those pages. Rossami (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
That's not necessarily true. If a new page is created after a move, then the talk page should definitely not redirect. The talk page belongs to the new page. I normally would just blank the talk page in a case like that, but there is nothing wrong with deleting it. However, that's covered by G6 in my opinion and doesn't require a change. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I was referring to redirects to Talk: namespace as a result of page moves or merges. Almost every move I've made that is more than weeks old has had its Talk: redirect speedied. If this is something that is frequently done, I would suggest that policy reflect that more specifically--either adding something to that effect to R and G6, or otherwise, that it should not be done if it is not policy to avoid confusion. One page I tagged was deleted, then restored by another admin who disagreed. — Zerida ☥ 22:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Then I clearly disagree with the decision to speedy those redirects. The WikiMedia software creates those redirects for a reason. If there is consensus that the reason is no longer applicable, then the people who think the reasons have changed should be lobbying to change the way the software works, not making an end run around the tool. Rossami (talk) 22:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I think an example of what he means is Talk:Battle of Tel al-Kebir. If your an admin, you can see the underlying issue, but it was a page move to Talk:Battle of Tel el-Kebir and the "al" version was deleted. MBisanz talk 22:28, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
This and those moves I made before it. I do feel that some further clarification in the policy itself would be helpful. BTW, it's "she". — Zerida ☥ 22:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
In that case, there is no reason to have deleted the talk page. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Talk pages for articles should not redirect to different articles (except for limited cases where consolidation has been deemed necessary). The WikiMedia software creates the redirects out of convenience. If the convenience does the wrong thing, then we are not bound to by the software to do the wrong thing. However, that is only applicable to the specific case I mentioned. If the redirects Zerida is referring to are all of the type MBisanz found, then I agree those deletions are not necessary. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
In a move there is usually no need to keep the old redirect, since the old talk page content moves to the new one--can anyone suggest any possible purpose whatsoever? In a merge, the is a possibility that there is significant content on both of the pages, and unless the talk pages content is also fully merged, it may be necessary to keep the old. DGG (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally, that was the question I was asked but on the other end, namely what purpose does it serve to delete it? I figured if it were a candidate for speedy deletion (which is not clear), there was no point in keeping an empty talk page. — Zerida ☥ 22:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I can suggest one purpose - if the talk page being moved has a decent number of incoming links, it's better for them not to turn red after the move. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I had checked for incoming links on the talk page in question before tagging, but there was none. I want to clarify that most of the Talk: page redirects that were deleted after a move I made were done at the discretion of the deleting admin, not because they were tagged. Anyone has a suggestion for rewording the section on redirects to make it clearer about this point? — Zerida ☥ 03:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The simple suggestion is stop deleting the redirects resulting from pagemoves. Even if they serve little value, there is even less value to the project from deleting them. They do no harm, they consume no extra space and they aren't in anyone's way. As you asked two lines up, what purpose is served by deletion? Rossami (talk) 04:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I was wondering if there was a way to get admins not to delete the pages. By rewording the policy a bit, we could clarify that they are not necessary. See the message left on Talk:Egypt under Muhammad Ali and his successors for another example. — Zerida ☥ 04:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I think such deletions should not be done. If a user bookmarks a talk page in his/her web browser, we are breaking that user's link that way. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:11, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Standardisation

I notice that although we have {{db-iN}} templates on the standard {{db-meta}} format, they are actually almost entirely unused; with templates like {{di-norat}} being used instead; these do not follow the db-meta format, which is based on {{ambox}}. The formatting difference, combined with an absence of backlinks to WP:CSD to note which CSD criterion the image falls under, has the effect of largely dissociating image maintenance from CSD, which might or might not be a bad thing. What does everyone think - should the csd templates in the image namespace follow the {{db-meta}} format, or is the current format, which is standardised within the image namespace but is different to the other templates, acceptable? Happy‑melon 18:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot tagging speedy

A bot has been proposed, and is now actually running, that is by itself placing speedy tags on articles automatically and unsupervised. Among other things, it is making its own judgment on no-context, and is marking no-content on articles within seconds of its creation. The discussion is at [[1]]. 01:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Broken user page notification template

FYI, whatever template was added here isn't working correctly. The link which should go to Talk:American Leadership Project is instead going to User talk:American Leadership Project. Too busy IRL to try and sort this out myself right now. -- Kendrick7talk 19:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone even know which template this is? -- Kendrick7talk 21:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it was {{spam-warn}}. Let's have a look. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing that out! I don't know much about templates. I use them more or less like I use my car, with faith that they will work correctly. But this one seems fixed now based on the tests I've done on my own user talk page. It looks like it went wacky here, and I do not know with what rationale. I've simply put it back in line with the other notices. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

What if you're not the creator and you disagree

Several templates use language such as this:
If you created this page and you disagree with its proposed speedy deletion, please add: {{hangon}}

What if someone other than the page's creator disagrees? Should he or she use the {{hangon}} tag too. I suppose a neutral (non-admin) could simply remove the tag with an appropriate edit summary, but what if a non-neutral disagreed? Is it best just to comment on the talk page? Seems like we should tell people how to handle this.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 20:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest expanding the language from "If you created this page..." to "If you created or have significantly edited this page". 99% of all speedies are new articles, meaning that the only person to have edited the page is the creator, but I agree that there are occasions in which there would be other contributors who shouldn't be removing the speedy tag. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I didn't realize that the template now said "If you created this page". That clause should be dropped. Anyone can put the {{hangon}} tag on a page (though, as you suggest, in 99% of times it will be the article's creator). Rossami (talk) 21:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, the issue is that if you're an uninvolved editor, you can just remove the CSD tag. If you're the creator, you can't do that. I think Doug's concern is that it's possible you can have somebody who, while not the creator, is still deeply involved in the editing of the page, and that person probably shouldn't be removing the CSD tag either. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why they shouldn't be. They're certainly not excluded by the policy. If a page deletion is controversial, unless the article is in violation of BLP or copyright or some such inviolable rule, it should go through other processes anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
They're certainly not prohibited from doing so by current policy; the question is whether they should be. To figure that out I think we need to ask why page creators are prohibited from removing CSD notices. As near as I can figure, it's because they are very likely to be too involved in the article and unable to look at it objectively (in practice, of course, a great many are also SPAs and/or bad faith editors). Is this also not true of somebody who has substantially edited the page?
I'm not married to any particular solution here, in large part because this situation (a page that has had multiple editors being tagged for CSD, with the tag then being removed by an involved editor who isn't the creator) almost never comes up, but it seems reasonable to me that if page creators are expected to use {{hangon}} rather than just deleting the tag, so to should other involved editors. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:30, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't know. I think it's valid that creators should not be, since they can be expected not be completely disinterested parties. But, again, speedy is meant primarily for cases where "reasonable editors will agree what does and does not meet a given criterion". If there's not agreement, other processes are more appropriate. I know that there are cases where vandals tag-team on articles, but I don't know that this happens enough to warrant restricting other editors from disagreeing with and removing speedy tags. Those guys are just likely to remove the tags from self-created articles anyway, and likely wouldn't abide by the "hangon" requirement. I think in cases where an involved editor is tendentiously resisting a valid speedy, AfD is probably the best solution. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
When on new page patrol, I'll often substantially edit a page, even though I might not be all that interested in the specific topic. I might find some references to add or something, as a way of helping out the page creator. In such a case I think I should be able to remove the speedy tag -- especially if editing the page makes the speedy criterion no longer apply. If it is a topic that particularly interests me, maybe not -- but even then, if a page creator plus myself happening to come across it on new page patrol both think it should be an article, maybe it deserves to go to AfD.
By the way: for db-nocontent and db-nocontext, I suggest that it not just say that the creator can't remove the tag, but add something like "unless you are adding substantial content to make the criterion no longer apply." A condition like that might just possibly have saved Ggggggggggggggg12's Wikipedian career from ending before it really got started. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
My take is that the wording is really intended for new editors. Experienced editors should be able to tell whether or not the article meets our standards and thus whether the tag should be removed. But we don't want to WP:BITE the new editors, thus we word it as saying that page creators shouldn't de-tag. GRBerry 23:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I think I've been persuaded that there's no need to expand the list of people who can't delete a speedy tag. But I also disagree with Coppertwig's suggestion, because plenty of articles are tagged as speedies that are just misapplications of the speedy deletion criteria; in those cases, of course people should remove the tags without changing the article. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if you've misinterpreted what Coppertwig is saying. :) It seems to me that he's saying that on db-nocontent and db-nocontext, perhaps the creators should be allowed to remove the tags, too, if they add substantial content. He's not, so far as I can tell, proposing to limit the circumstances in which other people can remove the tag, but rather relaxing the standards to allow creators to do so under certain circumstances. Right now, of course, they're not allowed to remove it at all. Personally, I think a lot of that problem would be alleviated anyway if taggers would read the CSD page and not tag for no-content or no-context 10 seconds after the article is created. In a lot of cases, those tags seem overly hastily applied. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that falls under WP:IAR - I would have no qualms about removing a nocontent / nocontext / no claim of notability tag from an article I had just created if it arose from my saving it too soon without having bothered to apply an {{inuse}} tag. It would be a waste of everyone's time to use "hangon" and wait for someone else to delete the speedy tag, and anyone who seriously considered that a behavior problem is out to lunch. But I like to think I know a thing or two about how to create a legitimate article. I wouldn't want to enshrine this little bit of IAR as policy because anything that encourages people to remove maintenance and deletion tags from articles they have just created opens the door to all kinds of mischief, especially by newbies, COI editors, spammers, etc., who don't yet know or don't respect our content policies.Wikidemo (talk) 14:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC) I should note it's still probably better to ask the person who put the tag on if they would take it off, or at least politely inform them. just as speedy tags should only be for uncontroversial cases of deletabiliy, using IAR as a justification for violating the wording of a policy should only be done if it's an obvious, uncontroversial situation. - Wikidemo (talk) 14:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I certainly did misinterprety Coppertwig - thanks for drawing attention to my functional illiteracy, Moonriddengirl. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

the only real problem about people removing tags is the fear that the article would be missed. In my experience, most people who place speedy tags keep track of them just to deal with this. DGG (talk) 22:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Double redirects in speedy templates

this move from Template:Db-g1 to Template:Db-nonsense has created a lot of double redirects which were speedy templates. For example Template:CSD:G1 Template:Csd-g1 Template:Db-non etc. (see User:Coppertwig/CSDlist). I suggest that it be moved back. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I count twelve double redirects. But before I'd consider fixing them, is/was there a discussion anywhere as to the mass renaming of the templates? Someguy1221 (talk) 00:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm not aware of any such discussion. Happy-melon (talk · contribs) has renamed a lot of speedy templates on Feb. 19 giving reason "standardise CSD template names", for example this move which was undone by Vivio Testarossa creating double redirects as I mention above; and Happy-melon has also protected a lot of speedy templates on Feb. 21; I'm not aware of any discussion of protecting them, either. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:53, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I think the moves to, quite arguably better, new names are a proper application of WP:BOLD by Happy-melon, though failing to check for double redirects is a novice error that deserves a good WP:Whacking with a Wet Trout. I would support the renames and suggest we just go in and fix the double redirects. As for protection, however, I would object strongly to full-protection - otherwise don't expect any help fixing them from me.  :-0--Doug.(talk • contribs) 04:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Just for clarification, Happy-melon didn't create the double-redicts; those were created in the reversion of one of his page moves. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I admit at the time of reversion I did not check for any double redirects and Template:Db-nonsense was the only one I remember reverting. I also did not see any discussion for the mass moves, so I boldly reverted it. Retroactively thinking about it revert without discussing it with the mover may not have been the best choice on my part. Vivio TestarossaTalk Who 04:22, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I did fix all the double redirects when I moved all the templates to their respective shortcuts. I also categorised all the redirects into Category:Speedy deletion templates, so you can see just how many there really are. Other than a thoroughly deserved trout for managing to actually list {{db-move}} for speedy deletion, I think I managed to clear up after myself after the initial move. I am willing to accept that full protection of all the main templates may be overly bold, although there are certainly arguments in favour of it. I do feel that whatever protection is applied should be applied equally across all the (now easy to find) {{db-xN}} templates - what do we think is appropriate? Semi? Move? Or none? Happy‑melon 12:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if we need to protect them, unless they've been subject to vandalism. I've seen some templates vandalized, but haven't myself noticed that these have been. Has there been an issue? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:28, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I am not personally aware of any, but several of the templates have a "don't edit this template to explain why your page should not be deleted" notice on them, which suggests that there has been unwanted editing of this nature in the past. Is there support for standardisation of the templates at {{db-xN}}? If so I will move {{db-nonsense}} back to {{db-g1}}. It certainly seems ludicrous to retain that as the only exception to the standard. Happy‑melon 15:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I mildly prefer Happy-melon's standard namings; I don't want to block consensus either way. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:37, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
By the way, Vivio Testarossa stated in an edit summary, "No consensus for rename." In my opinion, that is not a reason: it is merely an assertion that there is a reason not to do the rename. If no actual reason is provided I think we can ignore that. WP:CONSENSUS emphasizes that consensus is based on reasons: "Wikipedia's decisions ... are based on a system of good reasons." and "... you actually need to carefully consider the strength and quality of the arguments themselves ..."
Reasons for renaming to standardised names e.g. "db-g1" per Happy-melon:
  • When discussing specific cases, I think people more often use the code letters/numbers e.g. "G1" to refer to the CSD, than they use wordlike labels.
  • Because a label such as "G1" is meaningless in itself, it clearly refers only to the CSD. However, a label such as "db-nonsense" can be misinterpreted as meaning, for example, "nonsense" and further interpreted to mean "what I consider to be nonsense" as opposed to the more specific criterion G1.
  • It may be easier to list and enumerate the templates under the standardised system.
  • (Note that the other names are still available and usable as redirects, for those who prefer them.)
Reasons for keeping the older, wordlike names as the primary names for the templates:
  • Wordlike labels are mnemonic and arguably easier to memorize.
  • With the previous system, there was one main wordlike name which one would see when following the redirect. With the new system, the various alternative names for the same template have equal status. So one person who likes to use a wordlike name might get in the habit of using db-contact, while another uses db-content to mean the same thing, and then when they try to talk to each other they'll say "I tagged it as db-contact," "Huh? What are you talking about?"
As I said, I therefore mildly prefer the standardised names but am not blocking consensus.
On another note: I would like to thank Happy-melon for putting all the templates into the Speedy deletion templates category. I propose recategorizing many of them into subcategories, to help keep them organized. (Note my list in progress at User:Coppertwig/CSDlist.) I suggest the following category structure:
  • Speed deletion templates
  • Basic speedy deletion templates
  • (contains db-g1, db-g2, db-a1, etc.)
  • Speedy deletion meta-templates
  • (contains db-meta and perhaps db-bio)
  • Speedy deletion template redirects
  • (contains some directly, e.g. db-imagevio, if not enough to make a subcategory)
  • Speedy deletion templates redirecting to db
  • Speedy deletion templates redirecting to db-r1
  • (etc.)
  • Oddball speedy deletion templates (is there a better name for this?)
--Coppertwig (talk) 14:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I have moved {{db-nonsense}} back to {{db-g1}}, to complete the standardisation. I'm not sure that the level of sub-categorisation you suggest is necessary - they all fit on two pages quite nicely, and it's easy to see which redirects are associated with which criteria. There are not so many of them that the category is unmanageable without subcategorisation, so WP:OVERCAT would apply. Happy‑melon 15:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
What is the consensus about protection?? Happy‑melon 15:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
WP:PROTECT says that indefinite full protection can be used for pages that are "very visible, such as the Main Page, or very frequently transcluded, such as Template:Tl, to prevent vandalism." I would argue that that is not the case with these speedy templates. At any given time, on average the number of pages which transludes one of these templates is not very big; they range from zero (when somebody's just cleared the backlog) to a few pages or maybe a few tens of pages or sometimes more, but not usually huge numbers of pages. The policy says that indefinite semi-protection can be used in case of "heavy and persistent vandalism"; that doesn't seem to be the case here. Maybe there's another part of that policy you were thinking of invoking? At a glance, I don't see anything that seems to apply. I would prefer that the templates not be protected, and that if they are protected that it be semi-protection, but I argue that we can't justify even semi-protection based on the protection policy, so I would like to request that they be unprotected again. Thanks.
Someone has started an AN/I thread about a "move war" over template db-g1. I suggested that it's hardly a move war and that they discuss it here instead. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Wow, I'm finally getting somewhere in life - I got a thread on ANI!! Lol. Thanks for spotting and calming that, Coppertwig. Consensus here appears to be against protection, so I have unprotected all the {{db-xN}} templates. Happy‑melon 21:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change to A3

I would like to propose that A3 be reworded to add soft redirects to the list of things exempted from it, in addition to the current exemption for disambiguations. Soft redirects are a valid mechanism on the project, and are in fairly wide and growing use, with over 1200 of them on the project at last count. Like regular redirects and disambiguations, they are generally short, with little content of their own. The most common soft redirects are to Wiktionary, showing where people can go for common terms that offer little encyclopedic content beyond a dictionary definition.

Soft redirects are in common use, and IMHO should not be subject to A3 deletion for a characteristic that is inherent in their nature. They cannot help being short, because that's what they are.

For previous debate on this subject, check out this AFD discussion and this attempt to get a discussion going on the issue (though the latter didn't get much response.)

New wording would be something along the lines of:

  • No content. Any article (other than disambiguation pages or soft redirects) 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.

- TexasAndroid (talk) 20:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Obviously from my other comments, I agree with you that A3 does not and never has applied to soft-redirects like {{wi}} but do you really think this is a common enough mistake to justify adding to an already over-long page? I only see one editor who misunderstood the policy in the discussion you cited above. Do we have any reason to believe that these are being deleted more widely? Rossami (talk) 22:41, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I know of two so far, and that's just on the small sample of 50+ of internet slang that I actively monitor. Short of setting up a tracking page for all 1200+ current soft redirects, I'm not sure how we can know just how many of these are A3 deleted. I'm seriously thinking of setting up such a tracking page, as it would indeed let me get a handle on the situation. But as things currently stand, we have a valid and useful project mechanism that can be validly A3 deleted at will. The ease with which these can be A3 speedied makes it much harder to consider soft redirects to be a useful mechanism on an ongoing basis. - TexasAndroid (talk) 04:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
If soft redirects are not supposed to be deleted, then I think the CSD should not be worded to state or imply that they should be deleted. It might be hard to find out how many are deleted by accident; someone might start deleting them in future; and I think it's better not to deliberately set up reasons for people to follow different rules from what's written -- there are enough of those situations that come up accidentally or inevitably. So yes, I support the proposed addition of a couple of words. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Appropriate mechanism for enforcement of Foundation Licensing Policy

We've had our marching orders for over a year now, in [2]:

As of March 23, 2007, all new media uploaded under unacceptable licenses (as defined above) and lacking an exemption rationale should be deleted, and existing media under such licenses should go through a discussion process where it is determined whether such a rationale exists; if not, they should be deleted as well.
[...]
By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted.

Needless to say, most of our tagged non-free media hasn't been accepted under our Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP), which is WP:NFCC. Most hasn't been through any kind of discussion process (frankly with that volume of data it would have been impossible).

Nevertheless our EDP is required to be minimal. Stuff that doesn't make the boat really does have to be deleted.

The resolution is worded strongly, and should be taken in the spirit in which it is intended. This makes our choice of mechanism easy.

1. Non-free media may be deleted by any administrator who cannot positively confirm, from the media's wiki page, that the media complies with all provisions of the Exemption Doctrine Policy.
2. At deletion review, the media may only be undeleted if there is consensus that compliance has been achieved.

This is simple and allows for the mass deletions we will have to perform in order to comply with the Foundation's resolution. It also minimises the work and places the onus where it belongs: on the person who uploads an image or wants it undeleted.

I propose that we consider how to reword our media-related CSDs so as to enable this mechanism in time for March 23, or at least very shortly thereafter. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 04:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that discussion is needed on what will happen after 23 March, and I have been saying this for a few weeks now. Thanks for raising this issue here.
My view is that a non-free image with an existing non-free use claim (ie. a rationale) that is disputed should be tagged for review much as it is now. The disputed criteria should be explicitly stated, and a clear reason given for deletion. After a seven-day period, an admin will review the tagged image and whether any attempts have been made to dispute the tagging, and either reject the reason given (or state that the reason is not explicit enough), or accept it and delete it. The deletion log should say clearly under which criteria it was deleted. Disputed cases should be taken to IfD and then DRV. Carcharoth (talk) 07:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
That sounds fine to me. I presume you mean that someone who disputes a non-deletion goes to ifd and someone who disputes a deletion goes to deletion review--this is how it operates at present.
We've had a year or so to get used to the system now. Many of our images, despite taggings and warnings, have no fair use justification at all (not even a bit of boilerplate that doesn't mention the article in question). Those images will, I imagine, become deletable on sight, thanks largely to the bot work. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 07:09, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
But then just use CSDI6 and CSDI7 to delete after a period of tagging. Why change anything? Carcharoth (talk) 07:44, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I believe English Wikipedia has an exemption doctrine policy in place, to the second point you cite doesn't apply to this project (alternatively, if it doesn't have an EDP, the first point doesn't apply). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 07:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh it applies. Anything not covered by the EDP gets deleted. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 07:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh, this is the unclear wording of the Resolution. Anthere has said that it may have been unclear. Others have said it may be unclear. Regardless, as Anthere has said, the spirit of the resolution is that a deadline exists, and we might as well say it is 23 March 2008. Carcharoth (talk) 07:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, obviously it would be an unrealistic reading to expect everything to disappear overnight just because of the date. The word deadline there was not appropriate. It's a cut-off date at which, in principle at least, media not explicitly covered by the EDPs, across all Wikimedia projects, becomes summarily deletable. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 07:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the most sensible interpretation is that our deadline was last year. This deadline this year was to allow projects to write up their own EDPs. Those projects without an EDP get all their non-free media summarily deleted. We just carry on as before. So no need to change anything. Summarily deleting things is rarely a good idea when the EDP is as subjective as this one is. Carcharoth (talk) 08:01, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Good, I prefer to have all deadlines safely in the past. :) --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 08:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Betacommand has said that the majority of images that did not have rationales have already been tagged. S/he is currently doing smaller runs through all the non-free images to catch any without rationales that might have been missed in the previous runs. All these bot-tagged images will either have their exemption rationale added or be deleted for lacking one by March 23, so I do not think that the relevant CSDs need to be reworded. Bláthnaid 09:32, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

There will be many, many images that haven't been touched by Betacommand which will still be deletable. He's only been able to tag a quite specialized subset of all non-free images. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 09:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there may be images that have an exemption rationale but fail other parts of the WP:NFCC. However, they do have the rationale so they can't be deleted for that reason. Once March 23 passes, we can concentrate our energies on other areas of the WP:NFCC. I've seen a comment from Betacommand that s/he plans to work on images that are used in more than 1 article but only have a rationale for one article (I can't find the diff for that comment right now). I plan to work on replaceable images of living people, and I've tagged a few of those for deletion already using {{replaceable fair use}}. There are templates like this and {{Di-disputed fair use rationale}} that can take care of these problematic images. I think that the templates and CSDs currently in place can take care of these problems. Bláthnaid 10:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree. What might be worth doing is encouraging people to help make sure that all non-free images at least have some rationale on them. Many images will name the articles they are used in (thus eluding BetacommandBot) but will lack any rationale. Rationales don't have to be done using a template, but a good first approximation can be done by having a bot look at images not using a rationale template and not having the word "rationale" anywhere on the page (a bot may already do the latter, I'm not sure). Carcharoth (talk) 10:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Carcharoth, due to my current activity level I cant get everything I want done. Here is a thought we get a template like {{non-free media}} maybe {{non-free rationale}} that we use as a blank (empty template) and add that into all of our rationale templates. that will give us a quick and simple method of tracking the use of those templates. once that is done I can whip a script up that ignores pages that have that template, and list all pages that dont have the word rationale in it. (should take about 15 minutes). βcommand 23:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Better yet, the template contains <div id="non-free-rationale" display="none"> </div> or some such, then we can track them with javascript and so forth (plus it will probably make your script more efficient). Happy‑melon 10:39, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Wiki graffiti, when good faith can be dragged in (by it's hairs)

Sometimes, one comes across pages, that could be best describes as graffiti. They usually hold bold claims like "Joe Smith is the greatest guy in the world!", "The Rolling BeatGees are the greatest band ever", etc, etc. In my opinion, these should be clear candidates for speedy deletion. However, there is currently no criterion to delete them under. A1 does not apply, because a (minimal) context is provided, nor does A7, as there is a assertion of notability. G3 would be the best bet and the closest thing to a matching criterion, but vandalism is always a word to avoid, as vandalism in the wiki sense assumes bad faith. Now assuming that the creator of the article really thinks that the Rolling BeatGees are the greatest band ever, and this user doesn't know criteria for inclusion, maybe thinks that Wikipedia should be used as some sort of blog, we can safely say that the user placed that article there in good faith. Are there any options left to speedily delete such an article? And if there aren't, would a new criterion for these types of articles, or an expansion of another criterion (possibly A1 or A3) be in order? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

These are soundly deletable under A7; an adjective ending in "est" does not an assertion make.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
My standard is whether a reasonable person would possibly think they were notable in terms of any reasonable interpretation of an encyclopedia. Not whether they know our standards exactly, but whether there is any reason to think a case can be made. Nobody could reasonably think that a band that had never played a gig or released a recording is notable, or an author who had not yet published a book--to give the most common examples. Or a high school student whose main accomplishment is getting admitted to college, or who played on the school team. People, frankly, are the easy part of this. Companies or clubs can be much harder. But maybe we should discuss a few real disputable borderline cases for people. DGG (talk) 22:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, there are assertions that are hard to call. The "wiki graffiti" examples given in the opening post, however, are as far from any grey area as you can get; empty puffery depending from no assertion whatever.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
A7 is not for deleting non-notable articles. Notability is not a part of any CSD criterion nor should be. If you like to snowball, cite IAR. Dcoetzee 09:48, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Here's some actual questionable ones, from today's batch--opinions invited
  1. Scott McGrew is a technology reporter for NBC owned KNTV. He appears on the morning news program during the weekdays and TechNow Saturday nights. According to the station's online biography he has been with the station for seven years.
    Jonathan Pierson is the creator of commonun.com and CEO of Organa Incorporated. DGG (talk) 05:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I think I decline more speedies than your average admin, and I accept A7s of the sort under discussion here. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 05:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
possible misunderstanding: when I said "questionable" I did not mean ones I though necessarily invalid A7s--I meant ones that I thought would be borderline. These two are ones where I am not sure of my response., not ones I though obviously invalid. DGG (talk) 22:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that could be covered under the "chat-like comments" clause of A3. ViperSnake151 21:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

T3 revisited

I realize this may be a case of "deja vu all over again" for many of you, but I have concerns that CSD-T3 is seeing considerable use beyond its stated scope. Specifically, rather than being used only where a template is orphaned, and duplicates a specific other template, it seems to be being used en masse on all orphaned templates not tagged as "transclusionless", and omitting either a named other template this is being 'deprecated' in favour of, or any stated other rationale. I urge rewording of this template to follow that of the CSD clause more closely, and to restore the mandatory nature of the detailed deletion rationale. (Though why on earth not just turn these into redirects or parameterised transclusions, if they're actually being used in line with the stated scope of T3?) See my detailed comment here. Alai (talk) 21:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

No. It would be cumbersome to put in the name of the template that has been superseded; and from my experience, in a lot of cases, these templates have been superseded by not having a template at all. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
My opinions on this issue are already recorded, and are largely in line with Alai's. While I do not deny that the majority of the templates recently deleted under WP:CSD#T3 will not be missed, I agree with Alai that T3 is regularly applied far outside its remit. A "deprecated and orphaned template that no longer serves a useful purpose" is quite simply not elegible for deletion under T3 unless it is, specifically, an instance/duplicate/inferior alternative to another template that a thorough deleting admin should have to find to confirm that the template is elegible, and that the other template really does make a satisfactory alternative. If such a template has to exist in order for T3 to apply, why not provide it in the CSD template, to make the deleting admin's job easier?? I would also like to point out that a template that "has been superceded by not having a template at all" is not elegible for T3, as it doesn't meet any one of the necessary criteria! Happy‑melon 22:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
HM: quite. MZ: candidly, I have very little sympathy with the "cumbersome" argument, since IMO the entire exercise is largely unnecessary, and is imposing a burden of effort onto others. So "streamlining" the process to facilitate mass-tagging doesn't seem at all a sensible priority, as it's (further) prioritising the time and convenience of those wishing to purge a (fairly moderate, in the grand scheme of things) number of templates, over that of those who wish to continue using same, in the cases where they're not, in fact, "useless". So such a process that would be more "cumbersome" for you would not only be more accurate, it'd impose at least two layers less effort on others: by having slower throughput overall (for what's at best a profoundly non-urgent task, if not borderline for being a "task" at all), and by having fewer of those tagged be T3-false-positives. If you really wish to tag non-duplicated templates (or indeed, templates you don't wish to go to the effort of finding the counterparts for), then either argue for an explicit widening of T3, or tag them by some other method. Alai (talk) 22:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
What about G6 (housekeeping)? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:30, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I can't say I'm thrilled about the lack of specificity of that one, but it at least has the merit of not being outright inaccurate and inapplicable. If there's wider support for using it in that manner, I shall endeavour not to grumble (too much). Alai (talk) 22:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I would much rather have seen {{000000}} deleted under G6 than T3, yes. As was mentioned innumerable times in the T3 discussion, T3 is very much a fork of G6 for a narrow range of cases: anything which is a good CSD candidate but not clearly T3 belongs under G6, IMO. Happy‑melon 22:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
(e.c.) Well, personally, I don't care which criterion is used. I want to give people seven days (for cases of substitution, etc.) and I want to notify the original author. Both of those things I've been doing. If you prefer G6, I can update the CSD template being used (it's a wrapper template that can point anywhere) and I can update the message that's substituted to users. (On a side note, G6 seems to have semi-acceptance for this purpose -- WP:DOT used to use it, and I've spoken with other admins who regularly use it for cases like this.) Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I certainly agree with author-notification and with a seven-day period. One might indeed argue that which template to use is in many respects something of a nicety. My real concern is in the area of how well-defined a class of templates "cases like this" and/or "good CSD candidate" actually is. I'm pretty skeptical that "orphaned" is, by itself, a very good indicator of "suitable for enqueuing as presumptively deletable", by whatever mechanism, if there's not some reasonable level of examination of the individual cases somewhere in the loop. And ideally, right at the start of said loop, at the tagging stage. That's why I'm not too convinced we can immediately go from "some orphaned templates have been deleted on such grounds" to "let's tag all orphaned templates for deletion on those grounds". Alai (talk) 23:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Well, I've certainly been skipping large numbers of templates for various reasons. Some of the them are obviously substituted, others are only ever used for speedy taggings. I also skip templates that follow a pattern so as to avoid hitting someone's talk page 30 times. I also look at the date the template was last modified, I verify that it still doesn't have any transclusions, and then I tag and notify the author. If it's been created recently (December, January, February), I usually leave it alone. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

T3 was created to address a very practical issue - that a duplicate template may be used instead of the correct original one - and clearly loses nothing, since the original template can be used wherever the duplicate template may have been. There is no compelling reason, on the other hand, to delete merely orphaned templates, particularly in light of the fact that an orphaned template may be as yet unused but still potentially useful. There is no quick or objective way to determine whether a template is likely to be used in the future. Orphaned templates should not be eligible under T3 or G6. Dcoetzee 09:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
That's my personal feeling too. I have no particular objection to "housekeeping" deletions of templates on a case by case basis, where individual judgement's been excerised as to the clear and present uselessness or redundancy is concerned. OTOH, mass-tagging of orphans with "opt outs" puts the presumption the wrong way, for me. If anyone particularly wants to slim down the database by 20k items, look at the numerous redirects-from-case that give no benefit to search, are themselves "orphans", that would be outright errors if they were ever linked to, and serve only to clutter up served pages with "redirected from" messages. Alai (talk) 04:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

What is the difference in usage for these I-6 templates

{{di-no fair use rationale}}
{{db-norat}} (aka {{db-i6}})

These seem to be entirely different templates, but both are referenced here an both will bring you here and both have similar language as to the 7 day waiting period. The first doesn't seem to be anything like an ordinary CSD template and isn't listed in the table. The second is a standard CSD template but doesn't appear to be mentioned in the description of I6, only listed in the table. Also the first one, even though it refers people here, seems to put the images in Cat:Images_with_no_fair_use_rationale; whereas the second one puts the articles in Cat:Candidates for speedy deletion; I'm confused. Also, why is the first one subst?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 17:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Another difference is that {{di-no fair use rationale}} is fully protected whereas {{db-norat}} is unprotected.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 17:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I raised this issue above, but got no response. Essentially the di- templates are fully-protected duplicates of the CSD#I series ({{db-i1}}, {{db-i2}}, etc), which categorise into various wierd and wonderful categories rather than CAT:CSD or its subcategories. There is some merit for the argument that templates in the Image namespace shouldn't necessarily be based on {{ambox}}, but if these templates are kept separate, they desperately need standardisation. There's no reason why {{db-meta}} can't be switched to display an ambox format in most namespaces, but something more along the (admittedly very eye-catching) lines of {{Di-no source}}. The question is, do we want all of BetacommandBot's image taggings being added to CAT:CSD?? Happy‑melon 17:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I can see why we wouldn't want that, but if one is manually tagging and using CSD as a reference, they get conflicting instructions as to the proper tag. Also, when you tag, the template will tell people that the image is a "Candidate for Speedy Deletion", and link them here. It's all very confusing and needs some clean-up after we figure out exactly how we want things. Any idea why we'd want the di templates subst.?--Doug.(talk • contribs) 04:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
  • As another related issue I-7 seems confusingly close to I-6, a very large number of images seem to be being deleted very recently under I-7, which has a 48 hour deadline as opposed to 7 for I-6. Then again WP:CV says to use {{db-copyvio}} for blatant violations and {{imagevio}} (which also has a 7 day period but results in listing at WP:CV) for what must be "non-blatant" by default. This is all very confusing and I really hope we can get more discussion on this issue so we can sort it all out.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 04:25, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

CSD#R4

Resolved.
“ Redirect loops that do not end with a page with content. Make sure you check the page history of the redirects to make sure redirects were not mistakenly made to loop. ”

I have boldly added the above text as CSD#R4. -- Cat chi? 18:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I can't dispute the appropriateness of speedy deleting such redirects, but I have always found G6 enough for that. (1 == 2)Until 18:19, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
In the cases of newly created self-redirect pages that would not be a solution. Fundamentally I want to have a {{db}} template to handle these. -- Cat chi? 18:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Does this type of thing come up frequently enough to merit a separate criterion? (Also, why would G6 not be applicable to newly-created self-redirect pages?) Black Falcon (Talk) 18:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I cleaned something like six of them today. I do not believe frequency has anything to do with this. I'd prefer not to interpret G6 to handle redirects. -- Cat chi? 19:05, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Frequency is important, to avoid instruction creep (see #Read this before proposing new criteria). Why would you hesitate to apply G6 to looping redirects: it would, after all, constitute "non-controversial maintenance" and "cleaning up redirects"? Black Falcon (Talk) 19:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
It isn't 'instruction creep' to point out a special case for redirects. I suppose CSD#R1 can be amended to include CSD#R4. Would that work? -- Cat chi? 21:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I would say that redirect loops are broken redirects, as defined in R1. However, if you feel clarification is needed of R1, I think that would be more appropriate than adding a criterion. Personally, I interpret the spirit of criteria like G6 and R1 to cover cases like this. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I've merged the wording of R4 into R1, leaving out the note about checking the page history (that's is/should be a required step before any deletion, not just deletion of redirects). Black Falcon (Talk) 22:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the point, myself. Most often, these are errors that can be fixed by changing the redirect to point to the correct target. There is no need to encourage deletion when fixing is better. As for those few that cannot be fixed, G6 covers it fine. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I always use R1 when Scepbot stumbles upon circular redirects. Will (talk) 19:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Four separate criteria for redirects seems a bit absurd. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be an extension of CSD R1 - why not write it into there? I deleted self-redirects "under R1" before it was worded to explicitly include those. The logic is simple - I understand it as including any redirect which wouldn't lead to a non-redirect page eventually. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Given the new wording, I submitted a patch for the redirect script to take the load off the owner's shoulders, which works (yay). Seeing as there's nothing wrong with the wording (it's been practice for some time, and no-one's opposed to it), I'll tag this as resolved. Will (talk) 14:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed new general category for speedy deletion: PDF

I would propose a new general category for speedy deletion:

  • Articles or images submitted in PDF and similar formats that do not allow direct editing or inclusion in Wikipedia articles.

A couple of these have turned up on AfD over the past couple days:

These are apparently intended articles submitted as PDFs.

Submissions in this format are possibly GFDL violations, because GFDL requires copies to be "transparent", and says that "(y)ou may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute." My understanding of the PDF format is that it is designed to enable authors to preserve their text and formatting inviolate, although the GFDL itself states that "PDF designed for human modification" is a transparent file format; my understanding is that the PDF format and the Adobe free reader is designed to allow PDF creators to allow or disallow modifications and even text selection for cut and paste, at their option. GFDL also says that "(a)n image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text," and many PDF files I have seen contain only a sequence of scans of the original pages.

Whether submissions like this are GFDL compatible or not, they break just about everything else. They can't be wikified using ordinary syntax; instead, external links would have to be manually inserted into the PDF document itself. They can't be edited by people who don't have PDF writing software.

While PDF files might be useful in other Wikimedia projects, I can't imagine why Wikipedia itself would ever need or use them. It seems an appropriate subject for a blanket rule. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:56, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I haven't thought in detail about the merits yet, but I would strongly recommend reformulating the proposed category in terms of a clearly stated policy violation, e.g. a file format which cannot be further edited, before there is any further discussion. CSD categories need to clearly refer to the policies they implement and need to be generic, not favoring or disfavoring particular companies or non-Wikimedia technologies. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 18:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Looking at these examples, they are clearly deletable but I question whether this is occuring often enough to justify a new speedy-deletion criterion. (See bullet 3 of #Read this before proposing new criteria.) There is an astonishing amount of overhead that goes with the creation and maintenance of a new speedy category. I'd want to see several dozens more examples and some evidence that this is an on-going problem before pulling the trigger on a new criterion here. Rossami (talk) 18:58, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I've written a computer program to analyse data from the Jan 2008 database dump to generate some statistics on the number of PDFs Wikipedia has. In December 2007 (the most recent month for which my data is complete) 496 PDF files were uploaded to Wikipedia. Previous months are similar. Even two years earlier (December 2005) 89 PDFs were uploaded, so this problem has clearly been around for some time. The program also reckons there are nearly 2000 PDF files currently on Wikipedia (if someone wants to investigate them I'll post the list in my userspace). Hut 8.5 20:31, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to learn whether any of these PDFs are actually used in articles? and if so, what for? It's always possible that PDF files are useful here in ways that my limited imagination has not figured out. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I've posted a list of PDF files on Wikipedia at User:Hut 8.5/PDFs. I've been looking through the list (and have nominated some of the really bad ones for deletion), and I have yet to see one which is actually used in an article. A few were uploaded in order to get information out of them for an article, and it might be possible to turn a few more into legitimate encyclopedia articles, but most of them should be deleted one way or another. Hut 8.5 18:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks - this is most informative. I went through and tagged some of them myself. It seems that the issues raised by these files do need to be addressed somehow, somewhere.

I see you've nominated an entire series of images of text in Arabic script as images for deletion. (Image:Ahmorg1.pdf et. seq.) If we take this as attempts to submit text, due regard for ritual suggests that, if these are attempts to submit information, they need to spend two weeks at Pages Needing Translation before being proposed for deletion. PDF files are transgressive in other ways; there's some confusion as to whether their deletion should be discussed as articles, or as images. It seems to me to be simpler to say simply that PDF ain't allowed, rather than to go through them on a case by case basis. Unless, of course, there's a good reason not to. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 20:51, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, it's rather annoying the way the various templates bark at you when you use them on texts submitted as images in PDF formats. (See, e.g., Image:PurgatoryBelongsToSatan.pdf) Would it be possible to fix them so that PDF files can be submitted to either page? On AfD the consensus seems to be that text in PDF form is their bailiwick. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 21:05, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it very likely that content contained within a handwritten letter will be useful for any encyclopedia article (and three of that editor's images have already been deleted at IfD: Image:Ahmorg20.pdf, Image:Ahmorg21.pdf, Image:Ahmorg22.pdf. You can list them at PNT if you like though (or make a note at IfD to that effect). Hut 8.5 21:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
If they're attempted article submissions, why not just talk to the original author and ask them to merge their contents into articles and then request deletion of the PDF? Or do this for them? No sense deleting good content. Dcoetzee 19:33, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Dcoetzee. I don't think articles in PDF form should be speedied; assuming the article is valid (that is, it would not be speediable for other reasons) the first thing to do is to just extract the text and replace the PDF with the text (and then request deletion of the PDF as CSD:G6 housekeeping). If that is not feasible, ask the author to do it (maybe there could be some boilerplate or a template for that), and if neither of these are feasible, then and only then propose deletion via PROD or AfD. --MCB (talk) 20:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
For those PDFs that do not allow copy-and-paste, I think one might make a case that WP:CSD#I3 already covers it? After all, it is "media" with an "improper license" (i.e. it does not meet GDFL if it is not transparent...) --Jaysweet (talk) 20:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Many PDFs are spam, improperly sourced/tagged, vanispamcruftisement, copyvios, original research or some combination of these things. Here is a sample of these (tagged = tagged for various forms of deletion).

  • Image:UKCDR_Visualisation_v2.pdf - obvious copyvio. Tagged.
  • Image:UKrecognizesIsraelJordan.pdf - copy of 1950 UK Hansard. It's in the public domain (the crown copyright expired seven years ago, see also s:Template:PD-UKGov) but should be on Wikisource.
  • Image:UNIX1.PDF - obvious copyvio. Tagged.
  • Image:US4709418.pdf - US patent, move to Wikisource.
  • Image:USAE-858.pdf - no source. Tagged.
  • Image:US_6906495.pdf - another US patent
  • Image:US_and_Vietnamese_Trade_Agreement.pdf - somebody's international relations essay (OR), suspected copyvio (did the author assign the rights to the publisher of the magazine?)
  • Image:USpatents18002004b.pdf - a graph. Should be reuploaded as SVG/PNG and the PDF deleted.
  • Image:UTILICRAFT2.pdf - obvious copyvio ("confidential" and "proprietary" presentation). Tagged.
  • Image:UVlayout.pdf - no source. Tagged.
  • Image:Ullas.pdf - copy of uploader's resume. Vanispamcruftisement, tagged.
  • Image:Uncommon_SQL_Injection.pdf - yes, this is a how-to for SQL injection. Tagged.
  • Image:Underuse_of_statin_.pdf - somebody's research paper on statins (OR), suspected copyvio (most journals require you to assign the copyright of the article to them)
  • Image:Undoing14Mistakes.pdf - copyvio ("all rights reserved"), vanispamcruftisement. Tagged.
  • Image:Unknowing_Savior_book_summary.pdf - copy of a book blurb. Vanispamcruftisement, suspected copyvio. Tagged.
  • Image:Upspace.pdf - the contents of the PDF (three sentences) is replicated on the description page.
  • Image:UrbanChallengeBW.pdf - copy of uploader's presentation. Vanispamcruftisement, original research.
  • Image:VEGF_isoforms.pdf - can't tell what this is. Should be reuploaded as SVG/PNG with a decent caption and the PDF deleted.

We should think about disabling PDF uploads altogether. Only five are salvageable (about 28%) but all should be deleted for some reason or another. MER-C 09:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm really considering deleting all the orphaned ones that are here for more than a month. They were obviously uploaded and forgotten. Wikipedia is not a free webhost. What do you think? Massive Mfd? -- lucasbfr talk 10:28, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I can see people objecting to such an MfD on the grounds that there's too many pages. We ought to go through them and see if any make decent articles/images at least. And the list provided by my program isn't comprehensive - it could have missed anything up to 20 or so. Perhaps a prod-type system (or just IfD) could be used. Hut 8.5 17:33, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I have also managed to compile a list of PDFs with links - User:Hut 8.5/PDFs with links. Hut 8.5 20:05, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to help you guys out, I've made a new template, {{BadPDF}} ViperSnake151 16:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirects to non-existent pages

I see that this list of criteria now contains a quite unqualified statement that all redirects to non-existent pages should be deleted, and there's a standard template to put on such pages, and bots to help make sure it's done fast and efficiently.

I think it's important to the well-being of Wikipedia to remember that this came about because of bullies whose stated reasons for what they wanted to do were insincere.

I don't know whether a day will eventually come when we will fix this problem, but we should remember how it came about. There is a software bug: if you link to a redirect page that redirects to a non-existent page, then your link appears as a blue link; it should appear as a red link. That was the real reason why some people were so opposed to links to non-existent pages, and some people were honest about that. The list of criteria for speedy deletion included some exceptions; some links to non-existent pages were to be allowed. They are useful when they redirect from plural to singular, or from a commonplace misspelling or misnomer to a correct term. They prevented needless duplication of articles that would then have to get merged. So people opposed to their existence (1) denied that the rules contained explicit exceptions, even though they were there in black-and-white on the criteria-for-speedy deletion page, and (2) denied that there were any reasons why anyone would want such "broken" redirects to exist, even when the reasons were patiently and thoroughly explained to them, and (3) denied the existence of people who disagreed with them about this, and (4) were abusive and disrespectful to such people.

For now, those people have prevailed. It is important to the well-being of Wikipedia that we remember how that happened. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Those are some strong accusations. Could you post a link to a talk archive or something? Mangojuicetalk 02:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what Michael Hardy is talking about, and don't have any links, but I think the point is that deleting such redirects is a bit pointless if the redirects need to be recreated once an article is created. The classic example is when people come across a set of three or four redlinks used in several articles, all of which should point to the same article, but with no existing article to point the redirects at (this is usually variants on a person's name). I think the best compromise that was ever worked out was to either have people create the pages in question (ie. create the non-yet-existing destination for the redirect, which runs into stubs versus red-links arguments), or to list the non-existent page and its possible redirects at WP:Articles for creation, in the hope that people tidying that page would notice if an article was created but someone forgot to create the redirects. I tried to list such a set of redirects on the talk pages of all the possible variants, effectively doing some of the groundwork for whoever created the article, but the talk pages got deleted as orphaned talk pages... Carcharoth (talk) 03:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I have in mind events that I seem to recall were mainly in the spring 2005, and also some in later months of that year. I'll see if I can find links. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Change to CSD A7

Allow it to apply to all articles that do not assert notability. There isnt any reason I shouldnt be able to CSD an article about non notable software, or karate styles or books. RogueNinjatalk 08:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

  1. Not notability, but importance/significance.
  2. I believe that the idea is that too many people kept putting up articles about themselves, their friends, their organizations, and their websites, so a decision was made to raise the minimum level of articles in these areas. We don't want it to be too high - see WP:INSPECTOR.
עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
There is a very good reason why you shouldn't be able to CSD articles on any topic. It is generally held, for instance, that any historical event (a battle, say) is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia if it can be written within the confines of WP:OR, WP:RS, etc. There is no requirement for these articles to have sources to assert their notability. Similarly for books - if there is enough to write about, it is worthy of being written about. How do you define a non-notable book? Or a non-notable karate style? Od Mishehu has it right on the nose - CSD#A7 is very much an act of desperation in these few narrow categories where we would otherwise be utterly swamped by undeniably useless pages. CSD was never designed to be, and never will be, anything other than a set of "emergency" measures for deletions which would otherwise overload our XfD processes. I am not aware of serious concern that we are drowning under the weight of AfDs for books, software, karate styles or any other genre, which would be elegible for CSD#A7 if it was expanded in the manner you desire. Happy‑melon 19:18, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
There have been too many examples of books and other media proposed for deletion via prod or afd which turn out to be notable, but which have simply been written in a wholly inadequate way & not been searched adequately or at all. if they were speediable, an admin who was not aware of it as being important would likely delete. for people, its much easier to tell which are the obviously unimportant. For books, it is not. DGG (talk) 18:05, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been skeptical of a single admin's ability to tell if a person is notable and have suggested tightening rather than expanding A7. I'd certainly oppose an expansion of A7. My view is that CSD should be reserved for vandalism, patent nonsense, advertising or self-promotion, blatantly non-notable subjects, and similar. I believe matters of dubious notability -- where the CSD claim is simply that notability has not been sufficiently asserted -- should be addressed by PROD or some other method that gives the author an opportunity and some time to improve the notability claim prior to a second look, rather than by speedy. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 01:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
well, first of all, I have always thought it a poor idea for a single admin to delete anything except the most obvious. I usually tag, and let someone else check, unless its really the sort of stuff which cannot be mistake, such as the traditional "John is the sexiest guy in my class" article. But if one person has even a 10% error rate, then two people gets it down to 1% which is 15 items a day overall. I think I can do people with less than a 10% risk of a goofup, I dont think I can do it for books--or for companies. DGG (talk) 05:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I'll throw my two censts in her, as well. I would like to see A7 tightened, rather than loosened. I feel confident about seeing an assertion of notability in people, and small groups of people. I already feel uncomfortable with deleting article on most companies and web content, and often pass. For stuff like books, software, or Karate styles, there is no way that I could always recognize an assertion of notability. On books,I would regard an assertion that a book is by a notable author to be an assertion of notability. I also know I don't know enough to recognize the name of every notable author. The same logic can apply to software. Dsmdgold (talk) 07:09, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the necesity of A7 at all. From my experience, it's simply been used by Admins in an abusive manner. One admins deletion logs had a minute by minute (some withing the same minute) deletion of articles to which he sited A7 as the reason for deletion. How is it that any one user/administrator can be an ultimate judge of notability for such a large collection of information? It's just not possible. To make matters worse, A7 is used in such a manner that it is denying users from proving any kind of defence against A7 allegations. From my perspective, being hit several times, by admins that haven't even engage in any sort of discussion prior to deletion. Ultimately A7 is being abused and should be removed until a more moderate mechanism can be established to replace it. Zenasprime (talk) 23:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

products

What do products or objects come under? if I come across a page that says "Computer X is being developed by george smith, he thinks it will be ace". Well it's not about George's notability is it? --Fredrick day (talk) 23:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Products don't generally fall under any criteria. Although if it really would be shockingly uncontroversial to delete, you could consider G3, vandalism. The basic argument is that any content that would be reverted on sight (regardless of what article it's in) and lead to the poster's being warned/blocked could be considered vandalism if it's the sole content of a new page. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
That would be a stretch to consider vandalism unless there were other evidence such as an on-going pattern in the contributor's edit history. You might have a better argument under A1 (insufficient context for expansion) or A3 (keepable content so thin that it's really a mere restatement of the page title). Generally though, I would recommend using the prod deletion process instead. If that doesn't work, what Frederick described would be a pretty straight-forward AFD under the WP:CORP guidelines (which do cover products). Rossami (talk) 00:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
In addition to A1 and A3, G11 (blatant vandalism) also sometimes applies. Since a claim of vandalism involves an allegation of intent to disrupt, I think criterion G3 (vandalism) should be used fairly rarely. And, as Rossami notes, PROD and AFD are always options. Black Falcon (Talk) 00:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
If you bothered to read what I wrote, I'm referring specifically to content that would be reverted on sight (regardless of what article it's in) and lead to the poster's being warned/blocked. Anyone can easily write an article that bypasses the criteria (Let's say someone giving a very detailed description of how he likes his toast, he can make it clearly coherent, full of context, and maybe even referenced to a personal website). There's no reason to bother with prods if you would block the guy for posting it in an existing article. And if you would do just that, you've already passed the threshold for vandalism. A lot of people don't realize this. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I did not intend to suggest that G3 could not be applied in the circumstances you noted, but rather to note that such circumstances are relatively rare. Many articles that end up being speedied are created in good faith and do not justify a warning or block against the article creator (repeated creation of speedy-able article is another matter...). In the absence of a consistent pattern of disruptive behaviour, I would prefer to avoid making any judgment regarding the intent of a user (it is, after all, intent that defines vandalism) except in the most blatant cases. Black Falcon (Talk) 06:11, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories

I've changed the category to Category:Redirects from other template for the templates that are redirects to the other templates at Category:Speedy deletion templates, since all the redirects are listed along with the speedy deletion templates that they redirect to. It should make finding a specific template in that category easier, as it separates the redirects from the actual templates. --Silver Edge (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, and welcome, Silver Edge. I'll take a closer look later. Note that there was a discussion about doing something along those lines in the now-archived thread Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 28#Double redirects in speedy templates, starting with my post of 14:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC). Note also that (as far as I know) the documentation pages are not yet included in the templates, but will be included when the new versions of the templates e.g. Template:db-g2/new are moved or copied or whatever to the standard names. Other related discussion (if you're interested) is in the thread on this page Suggested new wordings for CSD templates and on the subpages linked to from the top of this talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:01, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I object to this recategorisation. Having both the raw templates and the redirects in one category is much more useful than burying them in Category:Redirects from other template, especially given the finite and easily-manageable size of Category:Speedy deletion templates. For instance, the script MediaWiki:Sysop.js is used to preload deletion rationales for administrators patroling CAT:CSD. As the script parses the wikitext of the page looking for deletion templates, modifying this script requires a knowledge of all the pseudonyms that may be used in place of the actual template name. Being able to browse Category:Speedy deletion templates for these redirects (especially since I spent several hours sorting them so that they appeared in the right order, underneath their respective live template) is much more useful than trawling WhatLinksHere for redirects, some of which might not be obvious. I am reluctant to simply revert your recategorisation, as adding the links to Category:Redirects from other template is certainly also useful, but why did you feel the need to remove the existing categorisation? There is no reason why it must be a binary decision - they can quite easily be in both categories. I would very much appreciate it if you would assist me in restoring the category links to Category:Speedy deletion templates, with the sort keys they previously had. Happy‑melon 21:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Having both category systems sounds like a good solution to me. I wonder whether having them categorized in the right order would tend to be maintained in the long run, whereas I think subcategories would tend to be maintained. I think I prefer having subcategories (in addition to the overall category perhaps) but am not sure and don't want to insist on it; but I think if Happy-melon is doing stuff with bots that needs a single category, then that should be provided. If there are subcategories, I think it's more important to have a subcategory of templates that are not redirects than a subcategory of ones that are. Sorry, Happy-melon, maybe I should have mentioned your previous objection more specifically. --Coppertwig (talk) 22:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't really mind how else the templates and redirects are categorised as long as they all include a single category, sorted by CSD criterion, as they were before. I personally think that having 43 subcategories is massive overkill, and one for each namespace is actually less useful than having them altogether. But I really don't care one way or another as long as I can get my list back :D Happy‑melon 22:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
43 subcategories? I didn't think there would be that many. I guess I was thinking of lumping some of the smaller categories together "other speedy redirect templates" or something. Anyway, now I'm thinking of relying on your ordering system rather than putting work into developing a set of subcategories. (I have enough to do just creating the new draft templates.) --Coppertwig (talk) 23:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
As I said, it would get a bit ridiculous, but most of the templates have about the same number of redirects, so if you were going to do it properly you would need one for each criterion. I'll cook up a script or something to undo Silver Edge's recategorisation tomorrow. Good work with the new templates, BTW - they're coming along nicely. Happy‑melon 23:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, OK, never mind the subcategories then. Don't want 43 of them. :-) And thanks for the good words. It's taking me far longer than I thought, but I've kindof gotten into a rhythm with them. Couldn't really do it with a bot, since I keep running across little differences among the templates. Not that I've learned to do bots yet. (Thanks for the instructions though.) And good work putting the templates into order within the category in the first place. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:23, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Template:db-g8 uses {{Documentation, template}}. What's the difference between that and just plain {{Documentation}}? Should I be putting the former instead of the latter on all the draft new templates? It seems to have some additional features, but I haven't figured out what they are. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:29, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I think the only difference is a nicer title, with a little inline image to make it look prettier. Still better than the bog-standard {{documentation}}, though, so I'd recommend you use it on the new templates. I've had MelonBot run through the existing templates converting, so you only need to worry about the new ones. Happy‑melon 10:57, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Happy-melon, would you please do me a favour and delete Template:speedybase, which has been superseded by db-meta/new? Also perhaps delete the redirect Template:db-a4/new (not the page it redirects to), which I created by accident, not realizing that db-a4 was merely a redirect, but which has since been edited by Silver Edge and you re categories. The redirect Template:db-a4 (the real one, not to be deleted) is currently protected, which I assume is also an accident, in which case please unprotect it. I don't want to put speedy-delete tags on speedy-delete templates, as that could create confusion. :-) I've blanked the two pages but if you think db-a4/new is useful, just revert the blanking. Thanks. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
All done. You're right - putting speedy templates on CSD templates is likely to send people's heads in a spin! Happy‑melon 20:01, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, it wasn't so much the immediate effect I was concerned with, as not wanting to get people in the habit of thinking funny-looking speedy template combinations were really supposed to be deleted.  :-) Thanks! --Coppertwig (talk) 23:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
ObCategories: Template:db-bio didn't have a category, so I just added one. Perhaps somebody (or somebot :-) would like to check whether there are any other templates ultimately transcluding db-meta or redirecting to pages that do that aren't in the speedy deletion template category. (Maybe I could do this if/when I get started using bots; a non-editing task, so relatively safe as a first try.) --Coppertwig (talk) 23:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I7 an exception, or just G12?

I'm in a dispute over whether an image should be deleted. Basically, the copyright holder of an image can not be identified. However, the image has survived an IFD and a DRV. The question is: does I7 fall under the "copyright infringement" rule, or just G12? Will (talk) 15:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Propose a modification to Deletion policy (specifically WP:CSD#A7)

Moved from WP:VPP: Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:57, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve convinced myself that we should scale way back, and possibly eliminate, our current method of speedy deletions based solely on lack of assertion of notability. Before you get too excited, note that I’m proposing an alternative method of deletion that would be almost as easy for the deleters, but significantly less painful for the article writers.

Of all the speedy delete criteria, deletions based on "lack of assertion of notability" is the most likely to annoy people who are trying to be productive editors. Vandalism, or attack page? Nuke it. By definition it was not created by a good faith user. Copyvio? Nuke it. Once it’s explained, a good-faith editor will understand why we can’t do that, and by its very nature he doesn’t have a lot of his own time invested in the page.

But consider someone writing an article on a non-notable person or organization, likely a newbie who hasn't even heard of WP:N yet, and who was seduced by the phrases "anyone can edit" and "be bold". Two minutes after he hits “save page” for the first time, to see what it looks like so far, he gets a boilerplate {{nn-warn}} notice with a glaring red icon on his talk page telling him that his contribution isn’t good enough. If this doesn’t browbeat him into submission, then two minutes later, as he’s writing a {{hangon}} message (which the notice implied might actually do some good), or as he's trying to understand where to put it, or while he's simply adding the missing assertion of notability, he discovers that the article is already gone. This isn't speedy delete, it's supersonic delete; this isn't "edited mercilessly", it's shock and awe. Maybe he mistakenly re-adds the article while trying to save the {{hangon}} tag; he gets yelled at for recreating deleted content. Maybe he doesn’t understand that it’s not truly gone and can be undeleted, and he thinks his hours worth of work is gone forever. If this doesn’t cause him to say “well fuck this, I’m gone”, he’s already pretty upset, and demands that the deleting admin explain what’s going on, gets more red notices about WP:NPA/WP:CIVIL that set him off even more, and things quickly deteriorate after that.

This isn’t theoretical, and it isn't overly dramatic. It happens all the time.

In short, the supersonic deletion of new articles written by good faith editors is an insulting way to treat a new editor, and an excellent way to drive them from the project before they understand how things work. Some of our more prickly longer-term, productive editors get quite upset when this happens to them as well, leading to noticeboards full of unnecessary drama.

I’m not proposing we simply keep the page, or change our notability criteria, or get rid of speedy delete completely. A very large majoirty of all of these articles will still ultimately be deleted. But I’m suggesting we find a more civilized way of deleting articles on non-notable subjects, and avoiding alienating good faith editors in the process. I propose a couple of different solutions, in decreasing order of my personal preference (i.e. the top two are my favorites).

  1. Give authors at least 1 full day (and possibly more; 3 days or 7 days would work too) to address the issue of notability in an article tagged {{db-bio}}, {{db-web}}, {{db-club}} or {{db-band}} before deleting. The deleting admin should check when the tag was placed, and make sure the author didn’t (a) sufficiently assert notability, (b) put a valid hangon tag with a reasonable rationale on the talk page, or (c) reply on their talk page to the message the tagger left with a valid objection. I don’t know if it would be easy to create a datestamp for a speedy tag or not; if it is possible, this would reduce the confusion of the CAT:CSD and CAT:NNSD pages.
  2. Consider userfying all non-notable articles by default, without the author having to request it. This immediately reduces adrenaline and addresses their biggest fear (that all their work is gone forever), making subsequent questions about "how to make it notable" more civil and less likely to spiral out of control.
  3. Get rid of WP:CSD#A7 altogether, and replace it with a modified notability WP:PROD, which (unlike normal PRODs) could not be removed by the author. Basically the same as Option 1, except the datestamp thing is already set up.
  4. Get rid of WP:CSD#A7 altogether, and replace it with the normal notability PROD. Unlike the other options, this would significantly increase the strain on AFD, since many authors might remove the tag themselves without improving the article, and AFD would be the only remaining option.

My main point: We jump thru numerous hoops to ensure vandals are treated gently at first, in the (extremely optimistic) hope that they decide to stay on as valued contributors, but we don’t treat people who have just tried to actually contribute with as much care. I think the gains we’d make in not losing potential editors, and the time we’d save not dealing with vengeful people who turn to the dark side with personal attacks, incivility, and sockpuppetry, would more than offset the extra time it would take to remove non-notable articles using one of these methods. Plus, it's the nice thing to do.

Thoughts? --barneca (talk) 20:51, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Of your proposals, I think the one that I like best is the automatic userfication. I'm not crazy about letting flagrant A7s hang around for longer than we currently do, but I think "I've moved your article to your user space" is probably a lot more helpful a message than "I've deleted your article." Of course, then we'll wind up with a lot more junk in people's userspaces than we do now. There's also the fact that there are a lot of A7s getting deleted, and I'd be leery of making the process of deleting them too much more labour-intensive, since it could create some serious backlogs. I think the best solution might be the one we have now, although it might make sense to change the CSD user talk template to include a mention that the content isn't lost forever and that there are admins (with a link to the relevant category) who may be willing to restore the content in userspace. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 21:02, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
In addition to the risk of having lots of userspace clutter, it also increases the risk that people will start using Wikipedia server space as a sort of Wikifiable MySpace (e.g. "I created a page for my band, they said my band is not notable so now it is in User space, oh well, now I just send all my friends that link instead of the link to main space").
Barneca raises an excellent point, though, that vandals are treated better than people who are actually trying to contribute but just don't get it. (Part of the problem is that blatant vandals are treated waaay too nicely on Wikipedia, but I digress...)
Maybe automatic userfication, but put some kind of tag on the page so that it doesn't linger in userspace forever? --Jaysweet (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm against any speedy criteria that take a week to kick in. Waiting a week isn't speedy at all; you may as well just prod it if it's going to be hanging around that long. As a semi-frequent new-page patroller, I really don't think there's anything wrong with A7 the way it is, because it's mainly used for obvious cases of vanity, like "Bill dawson graduated from arizona in 2006 hes awesome cause he drives a van". If anything needs to be done, it's to encourage new-page patrollers to use prod and AfD more often in edge cases where the subject is not obviously non-notable. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 21:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Just so we know how many articles we're talking about, I've just run a program to analyse deletions. Wikipedia gets 12,000-13,000 A7s per month - for comparison, there are about 3,000 PRODs and about another 3,000 AfDs. (Note that the program is just looking for deletions with "A7" in the summary, so this is probably an underestimate). Replacing A7 with prod is therefore completely impractical as it would simply swamp the existing PROD infrastructure, and if the prod tag was removed (which given my experience of speedy deletion will happen quite often) AfD will become completely swamped as well. What's more, almost all of these extra articles will get deleted. The idea of 12,000 articles per month hanging around in userspace is not good either.
I think we should be a little more lenient with existing policy - being more rigid about not speedy deleting articles that are not about people, organisations, companies, clubs or web content, as well as taking more borderline cases to AfD or PROD. Hut 8.5 21:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Non-notable fancruft staying up on Wikipedia is a far worse problem than people temporarily losing notable articles. The reason is because the latter problem can be fixed: just file a deletion review request. The former problem can't be dealt with currently and would be made worse by this proposal. Therefore, this proposal doesn't serve any purpose than to subtly support non-notable material, hinder the ability of the individual editor (the sysop, in this case) to have deference over when to delete an article in favor of another layer of bureaucracy, that will probably end up getting ignored a lot, and will be just another bulleted point in witch-hunts on ArbCom. Strong Oppose. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 22:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Most so-called "fancruft" isn't even A7-eligible. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:10, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Also please note that Barneca did not bring this proposal because of the problem of "people temporarily losing notable articles," which we all agree is not a big problem. Barneca brought the proposal because of the problem of new good faith editors being turned off to Wikipedia because of an over-speedy speedy. This problem is particularly ironic since Wikipedia bends over backwards (to the point of creating massive amounts of extra work) to let first-offense, second-offense, third-offense, and sometimes even fourth-offense vandals have an opportunity to reform, even though experience tells us the odds of this reform actually happening are virtually nil -- and yet people who create articles in good faith are being given much nastier template warnings on the very first offense.
I totally agree that this is a travesty, especially given how soft on vandals Wikipedia is. I'm not sure there is a workable solution here, but let's not pretend the problem at hand is accidental article deletion, because it's not. The problem is biting the (good faith) newbies, when we simultaneously are so kind and gentle to the bad faith newbies. --Jaysweet (talk) 22:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The more I think about it, the more I think modifying the wording in the speedy deletion notification templates to be more gentle and to encourage them to work on the page in their userspace (along with linking to Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles) would help with this problem. What do others think? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
(resetting indent) I was just thinking the exact same thing. I can't help but notice that all of the level 1 vandalism/test edit warnings start with "Welcome to Wikipedia," whereas none of the CSD templates start with a welcome. Also, the CSD template is front-loaded with technical terms like "A7", etc. A "Welcome to Wikipedia, thanks for the article, but you might want to read WP:N -- and by the way, don't panic if the article gets erased, it's still stored on our servers" might be a much better approach. --Jaysweet (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that there is a serious problem, I've occasionally gone through CSDs just to see what I could find and found salvageable articles - I usually manage to remove the tags and help fix things; but in one case recently, I sent the creator a welcome message, ran a Google search by name only and got instant verification as to the notability of the subject (a 19th C. company), I went back to remove the CSD tag only to find it already deleted. My request to the deleting admin to restore it was granted but with some skepticism (I expect the creator wouldn't have had as much luck), I checked the article the next day and it had expanded to a rather sizable stub/start article with three good sources. I find enough of these things to make it worth my while to go through the CSDs periodically, I almost always find things that I'm at least unsure about. I'm not sure what the best solution is though. It certainly would be a lot less bitey if we could send the creator a message saying to the effect of "I'm not really sure this is notable, could you provide some sources to show me why we should have an article on this". Even when the article clearly isn't notable (the main gist of this thread), it would be nice to find a gentler way of removing it. Also, newbies usually have no idea that it might help to add {{inuse}} or {{underconstruction}} to new articles - nor do they understand that experienced editors usually create a fairly complete draft off-line rather than doing a dozen or more edits to create a stub, often they start with one line of text so G7 often looks like a nobrainer when in fact the article is under development.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 22:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
(ec) In reference to the disparate treatment of contributors of seemingly non-notable stuff and outright vandals, I think it's kinda like how if you drive without a license at all, you get a slap on the wrist, but if you drive with a suspended license, you can get six months in jail. Looked at from a certain view, it seems illogical at first (after all, at least the guy with the suspended license went through driver's training and did have it at one time!), but there's something else going on.
In this case, I think there are a lot of people who get a kick out of playing these childish pranks, e.g. replacing an article with "WIKIPEDIA SUX!!!!11" but they're easily detected and reverted. And it wasn't really all that premeditated; someone just sat down at a computer and did it in a few seconds. But the people who create articles on "fancruft" and whatnot, we view as being more sophisticated and/or devious, and therefore beat them over the head for it. To use another example, it's kinda like how we're lighter on people who kill someone in a fit of anger than in cold blood. The result is the same – someone died – but we're easier on the person who was less sophisticated about it.
That's my theory, anyway. Does anyone else have some thoughts about how the disparate treatment arose? Because we may have to address the root causes if we want to change it. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 22:37, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Those who mention the unfair treatment of good faith newbies compared to blatant vandals bring up a good point. Part of the issue is that we should be harsher on bad faith editors, who aren't welcome here.

Which is why the proposal is not a good idea. "Articles" like "$SCHOOL_STUDENT attends $HIGH_SCHOOL and is $AGE (less than 18) years old. His favorite band is $BAND. He is extremely cool!" need to be nuked on sight and their creators larted. Hard. The vast majority of the A7s I tag are of this form (equivalent forms exist for other types of speedyable band/website/club/company vanispamcruftisement). There is no excuse for missing the bit about Wikipedia being an encyclopedia, especially since it appears multiple times (e.g. the HTML title, under the title of the article and in top left corner of each page). MER-C 06:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Speedy deleters are even worse than barneca suggests

I agree with barneca's proposal. I have seen numerous occasions when articles that had clear assertions of notability were instantly deleted for lack of assertion of notability merely because the admin was an ignoramus who didn't understand the article, and then the admin and a chorus of cheerleaders attack the creator of the article and anyone who defends it in the most severe language they know how to use. In one such case the creator was a world-famous scientist and the admin made me wonder if he could spell scientist. When I see an article speedily deleted for lack of an assertion of notability, I now start from the presumption that the deleting admin is at best not paying attention to what he's doing. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Speedy blanking (combined with prod)

Another possibility is placing a "candidate for speedy blanking" template on the page, and then if a second editor reviews it and concurs, blanking the page and putting a template such as Wikipedia:Experimental Deletion/XD2/Example. It could then be PROD'ed, which would give the contributor five days to get it in suitable shape to survive. Alternately, we might move it to userspace or some other kind of article limbo where the collaborative process could continue, while keeping the temporarily unacceptable article out of mainspace. However, that might create issues when the user attempts to move it back to mainspace with a copy and paste move or something, that violates GFDL. We might have a technical fix that lets pages be moved on top of pages whose only item in the edit history is to place the intentional blank template (similarly to how we can move a page on top of a page whose only edit history item is a redirect). Any thoughts on this? Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

What is the purpose of blanking in this case, if the text can be easily restored by the author? In other words, why is this type of process better than PROD alone? Also, I believe that various proposal for page blanking have been rejected over the years, so... Black Falcon (Talk) 22:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Time switch

It may be useful to this discussion to consider {{db-t3}}, which is used to enforce WP:CSD#T3. It takes the timestamp of addition as its first argument, and only adds the templates to CAT:CSD after they have been tagged for seven days. There is no reason whatsoever why we cannot apply the same code to other templates, with entirely arbitrary time limits. We can alter {{db-a7}} so that it only adds the page to the category after an hour, or six hours, or 24 hours. That ensures that editors will have the time to at least write a hangon without their page being deleted from under their nose. There is no deadline, and there's no particular rush either - there's nothing illegal about having non-notable articles that requires we get rid of them ASAP, like with copyvios. We can certainly have them hang around for an hour, or six, or 24. We can discuss the exact length of time as much as necessary - it can be specified to the second - but I think that this is the easiest solution, and one that is sorely needed. There's no reason why adding a time delay preculdes one of the other solutions suggested above, but it could also function as an acceptable alternative. Happy‑melon 23:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Some people are really touchy about this stuff. They think that if we let something spammy/non-notable hang around for even an hour, we're letting the bad guys win. It's a philosophical difference. Personally, I would rather err on the side of leniency, because I think encouraging the good guys (i.e. those who act in good faith) is more important than driving away the bad ones. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 00:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't - you let things hang around for an hour and people miss it, it slips through the cracks. You try and add this code and I'll break it and keep tagging spam and I will not be the only one. superpowerful you'll have to block me oppose --Fredrick day (talk) 00:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
You can still tag it immediately - it just wouldn't be added to the category until an hour after the tage. I think it's a great idea. Waiting 30 minutes or an hour before adding A7s to the category would reduce the bite and give the editor a fair chance of figuring out hangon.--Kubigula (talk) 00:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
so they can say "woah dude! it's great" - I've never seen a crap article turn into anything of benefit and I've processed over 50,000 articles - maybe 1-1000. This is a solution looking for a problem. --Fredrick day (talk) 00:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Maybe it's because people don't give an article a chance. By way of example, though, legality of the Vietnam War got speedied and was turned into an acceptable article. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 03:09, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't read this whole proposal and discussion yet, but the time switch part caught my eye, and I gotta say I love the idea. It won't even slow down the rate of deletions, so people don't have to worry about that. There would be a single, one time pause of A7's for one day and then they will resume their normal rate, while giving new editors more time to adjust, understand, and perhaps save a few good articles (even if it is a very small percentage). I can't really think of any reason we wouldn't want to do this. -- Ned Scott 06:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I generally like ideas that can make things less bitey. I've been thinking of creating (or encouraging Happy-melon to create) a "slow-speedy" template similar to T3 that allows people to mark a page as non-notable within minutes of creation but have it not added to a speedy-delete category until an hour (or a day) later.
Fredrick day, with no disrespect intended, I had a good laugh about your "superpowerful you'll have to block me oppose" -- really enjoyed it. (This does not in any way mean I don't take it seriously: I often laugh at things and also take them seriously at the same time.) However, suppose there are two templates available: one for deleting stuff immediately, and one with a delay, so that people can choose to post one or the other depending on their inclinations, the characteristics of the article and/or the amount of time that's already passed since article creation. Would you oppose that so powerfully?
I think the problem some people are seeing is that during the delay of an hour or a day or whatever, the article creator might remove the tag. There are ways of taking care of this. When I speedy-tag an article, I make a link to it, and I can glance at my links later and check out any that aren't red. Maybe most people find that too time-consuming. Perhaps a userscript could automatically make links like that, saving the time and trouble of doing it manually. Perhaps a bot could check for deletion of speedy tags by article creators. It would be nifty if pages were automatically marked patrolled when they had speedy tags added and then automatically marked unpatrolled again if the speedy tag is removed: or not marked patrolled, but the newpages display would not colour it yellow as long as it has a speedy tag. --Coppertwig (talk) 16:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Wait -- the capability to do "slow speedies" already exists?! See Template:Db-g8/doc and Template:delayed. I'll have to look into whether you can specify a length of time less than a day -- I think it should be easy to set it up so you can specify any number of seconds (or hours, etc.) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
That's very clever, and yes, if you specify a full date and timestamp, you can get it to work to the second. However, there are benefits to building this functionality into the speedy template:
  1. The editor can simply add the timestamp with five tildes rather than having to faf around working out what the timestamp will be two hours from now
  2. The speedy tag is still displayed, so it still provides the warning to the author
  3. The grace period length is standardised
Of these, I think that the first is the most significant benefit. Happy‑melon 20:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I was unaware of the {{delayed}} template, and am somewhat excited about it, as it would allow me to customize the wait period, and would standardize the templates used by speedy-hawks and speedy-doves. I agree with Happy-melon that in a perfect world, this (or a similar) template would allow for something like:
{{delayed1|~~~~~|4 hours|{{official db-whatever notice}}|{{friendly "I'm about to db-whatever" notice}}}}
Unfortunately, I tried out the delayed template, and it seemed to have some kind of caching issue. Once I load a page, it displays the same message even when I re-load it past the switching time, and even after I purge the cache. I had to make a null edit to the page and save it before it displayed the correct message. Still, quite promising. This, along with a friendlier db message, would go a long way toward addressing my concerns. --barneca (talk) 23:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been wondering about that -- for example, with the T3 template. What prompts it to execute again and put the page into the category? I don't expect it to just happen when the time arrives. I thought it would be the next time the page is displayed, which is OK I think -- if nobody ever looks at the page then it's doing no harm, I guess. If it's not until the page is edited that's more of a problem. Does anybody know how the T3 one works in practice? I.e. does the tag switch after about 7 days or so even if the page has not been edited after the 7 days are up? --Coppertwig (talk) 22:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Unless it's changed lately (and I doubt that it has) categorizations are done only when a page is saved, not when it's displayed. So any of these time delay techniques that are category based would put the page in the category the next time the page is saved after the delay. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:26, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Possible nn-warn template revision

Just threw this together, and it's now too wordy and probably too sacharine sweet, but it's an idea someone could run with and clean up. The theory at least being that you want to bend over backwards from getting their dander up. If you want to mess around with it, it's at User:Barneca/Sandboxen/Page3. --barneca (talk) 02:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


Hello Criteria for speedy deletion, welcome to Wikipedia. I'm sorry, but I've placed a tag on John Q. Public requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The article appears to be about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable. If this is the first page that you have created, then you should read the guide to writing your first article.

I know this is distressing, but I didn't do this to be a jerk. I did this because long-term, I don't believe this is going to be able to be included in the encyclopedia, and it's better to nip it in the bud now, rather than have you spend time creating something that won't survive.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the page (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies.

If the article is deleted before you can use the {{hangon}} tag, you still have options!

First, please read the policies and criteria listed above. If, after reading, you honestly believe you can satisfy our notability requirements, you can do one of the following:

  1. Explain your reasoning (calm and polite works better than stressed and rude, even when you're angry) to the deleting administrator on his or her talk page. If they agree, they can undelete the article.
  2. Ask the deleting admin, or any admin listed here, to place a copy of the article in your user space, for you to work on. Note that this cannot be a permanent home for articles about non-notable subjects, but is a temporary measure to allow you some breathing room.
  3. Contest the deletion at Deletion review. This takes the most effort, so it is suggested you use this only as a last resort.

If you are new here, I'm sorry for the rough start. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. --barneca (talk) 02:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I like it! I touched it up to formalize the tone just a little. What do you think? —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 03:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it needs to be more formal, more concise maybe, but formal is too police-like.--Doug.(talk • contribs) 06:18, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that this is exactly the sort of thing that I was suggesting above - great work! I'm not too concerned about the length; I think all of what's in there needs to be there for newbies, and more experienced editors who have articles tagged for speedy deletion are likely to just delete these things from their talk pages anyway. 06:24, 8 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarcasticidealist (talk • contribs)

I'd hate to see this on vanispamcruftisers' talk pages. The message "sorry we inconvenienced you by deleting your article" is silly because the reality is you inconvenienced us by creating unencyclopedic crap that has to be cleaned up afterward. That said, if a honest effort to write an encyclopedia article is made then using this template is a good idea. What I'm worried about is sending the wrong message, especially when people use Twinkle or other tools to automatically post warnings no matter what the content of the article. MER-C 06:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I also dont like elaborate warning; the longer they are, the more options they give, the more bueaucratic they sound. I usually yes a single sentence; sorry, but you need to have actually done something notable before you can get an article. sorry, your band has to actually release a recording before it can be considered for an article, etc. Sorry, when you win a championship of become a profession, then your athletic accomplishments may be possibly suitable for encycolpedia. ..People understand these things perfectly well if you talk to them in ordinary language. Dealing with obvious disruption is easy, Dealing with naivety takes care. DGG (talk) 08:18, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
MER-C, would you please explain in more detail why you think it's a problem to post a silly message on a "vanispamcruftiser's" talk page? I feel it's important to put polite, welcoming messages on good-faith user's talk pages, for the very important reason of avoiding driving away good contributors (and this includes vanispamcruftisers who will become good contributors in the future.) If this results in some silly messages too, I don't see why that's a problem.--Coppertwig (talk) 16:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Coppertwig. Many vanispamcruftisers are still good faith, albeit misguided, contributors. Moreover, even for the ones who aren't, there's nothing wrong with being polite to the disruptive. Indeed, that's always struck me as a central tenet of WP:AGF. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 16:37, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
You and Coppertwig are assuming that the "vanispamcruftisers" (I hate that word but don't have a better one for now) made their contributions in good-faith and will become productive editors in the future. It is my experience that while a very few such editors will redeem themselves in time, the vast majority do not - that they have little intention or interest in learning to comply with Wikipedia policies and standards and do not really share our goal of writing an encyclopedia. The question becomes "To what degree do you design your template and communications for the exception rather than the rule?" A "sorry we inconvenienced you" message is not so much "silly" as potentially counter-productive if it inadvertently sends the message that there are no consequences to inappropriate contributions. Balancing that against WP:BITE is a challenge. Rossami (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I think maybe I'm just starting to see your point, but you're mistaken about my assumptions: I make approximately the same assumptions as you, that a tiny (or smallish) percentage of people doing some kind or other of unconstructive edit will become good contributors, while the majority will not -- the percentage may depend on what kind and pattern of original unconstructive edit we're talking about, as well as how optimistic one is. :-) I think a "sorry we inconvenienced you" does a great deal of good when read by a good-faith contributor, and makes little difference when read by someone who's being unconstructive and is going to have their page deleted or be blocked or whatever. It could be worded with an "if", as in (better wording than) "if this was a good-faith edit, then we're sorry we inconvenienced you." Do you really think that would make any significant negative difference to intentional vandals or whatever? I thought the idea was that if you're polite to them, the game isn't much fun to them so they go and bother people on some other wiki where people get all upset about vandalism. :-) But to a good-faith editor, those few polite words can make all the difference in the world. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that we need to be as polite as possible to everyone, and i agree with Coppertwig's experience that being treated civilly gets most of the annoying people to look for another game altogether. I further dont think most of the vanity and spam is malevolent--just naiveté and misunderstanding. I've seen many people with injured feelings get nasty who otherwise would have understood--the last thing we need to do is provoke people. There are a few true troublemakers who persist regardless--and if we act humanely the inhumane will stand out very clearly and can be immediately removed. We're pretty good at spotting them actually DGG (talk) 04:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Giving too many options is probably a bad thing, and specifically apologizing to the person who created the A7 article is way overboard. Phrases like "Welcome to Wikipedia" and "it may not have been your intention" are a must-have though. So-called "vanispamcrufters" are annoying, but first-time offenders deserve at least as much respect as people who replace an entire page with the text "I LIKE POOP". Furthermore, I disagree with the assertions that the percentage of VSCers acting in bad faith is so low. Even the most blatant spammers often seem to have a genuine bewilderment as to what they are doing wrong ("What, it's a real company... yes, I own it, but it's a real company and I'm adding factual information to your collection of facts. What's the problem?")
I would trim down the proposed warning template to just a paragraph or two, and I would remove the apology (they made the mistake, we don't need to apologize in order to be civil). But I like the general direction. --Jaysweet (talk) 14:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree; that was just something I did minutes before I had to leave. In particular, I think it can be shortened by referring them to Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?; all the details are there, no need to say it all twice. I think keeping the big bold "if the page was deleted before you could place the hangon tag, you still ahve options", but instead of a list of options, just refer to the article. --barneca (talk) 14:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The template gives the impression that the problem is the notability of the subject, however CSD A7 makes it clear that it is about an assertion of importance/significance, as opposed to our requirement that the article meet our notability guidelines. Taemyr (talk) 14:48, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I7 self-contradictory

The begining of I7 is "Non-free images or media that fail any part of the non-free content criteria and were uploaded after 13 July 2006 may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader. For media uploaded before 13 July 2006 or tagged with the {{Replaceable fair use}} template, the uploader will be given seven days to comply with this policy after being notified. " If someone reads only the first sentence, they get the impression that, well, that what it says is true, and might go ahead and delete something after 48 hours. But the second sentence states that such images which are tagged "replacable fair use" require 7 days notice, not just 48 hours.

I suggest changing it to this: "Non-free images or media that fail any part of the non-free content criteria may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader, except that for media uploaded before 13 July 2006 or tagged with the {{Replaceable fair use}} template, the uploader will be given seven days to comply with this policy after being notified. " I think this is clearer, and also has the advantage of being shorter. (Here for once I'm talking about the wording of the CSD, not the wording in the templates.) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, I suggest removing the curly brackets, i.e. changing it to "or tagged with the Replaceable fair use template". The reason is that with the curly brackets there, it suggests that people could just cut and paste the curly brackets and template name. But actually they shouldn't, because if you go to that template it says not to use it directly but to use "{{subst:rfu}}". --Coppertwig (talk)) 01:40, 12 March 2008 (UTC) sig added 12:52, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Online games and A7

In the deletion review at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2008_March_1 a speedy deletion of Wakfu was endorsed. The point raised by the nominator who has proposed and implemented a change of the template [3][4] is that A7 only applies to web content such as web forums and browser games, but not to online forums and online games in general. I don't think that is a helpful distinction and that the template should be reverted and maybe rather this page here should be updated to be more clearer in its inclusion of online forums and games, whatever the client used. Thoughts?--Tikiwont (talk) 13:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

A7 implies, in general, to any content that has been published only on the web. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:30, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
It should be noted that an earlier deleted revision claimed the game to be in development for Nintendo DS. This seems like an assertion of importance to me (and also implies that it is not simply web content). I didn't get a chance to chime in on this though. IronGargoyle (talk) 02:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
An interesting find, that didn't really surface at the DRV. In general this indicates that we rather have a spectrum here and need to be clear where to draw the line. What we're currently doing, looks to me like this:
  1. Browser based stand alone games (web content, subject to A7)
  2. Browser based online games (web content, rather subject to A7)
  3. Online games with custom-clients (unclear / contested)
  4. Online games with stand alone component / spin-off (probably not subject to A7)
  5. Computer games with online component (not subject to A7)
Now i see on one hand the reason to consider the third type rather as a form of computer game than as web content, but would also find a delineation of A7 based on technical characteristics unpractical for speedy deletion. But I'm just thinking loud here.--Tikiwont (talk) 11:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I've made a courtesy revert to Template:Db-web pending consensus. I wrongly assumed the change would be uncontroversial. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 14:42, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, it wasn't really a problem, and and you certainly raised an important point.--Tikiwont (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

As I said above, it seems to me the overriding criterion for subjecting web content to A7 is that the only publishing medium is the web. For the problem here is that publishing on the web is too easy, and so the vast majority of such material can be presumed non-notable. It might be worth explicating that criterion when describing "web content," if this confusion is wider than a single DRV. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

It will be best to continue to interpret the criterion narrowly, just like the usual practice. The only justification for including web content at all as a category for A7 could be that so many of the web-related content articles submitted here are truly trivial and impossible to be considered notable. But I think that's an anomaly, and we would do much better to remove it. What we need is a way to delete stuff like things from YouTube and FaceBook, and we should be able to think of a more specific criterion. "self-published web content." perhaps. DGG (talk) 02:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, that is partly a new question. With respect to games I agree that the basic idea is merely to be able to speedy delete simple browser games that can be put by anyone on the web, and will endorse and restore the template change from 'online games' to the narrower 'browser games'.--Tikiwont (talk) 09:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Should "I6" be considered a "Criterion for speedy deletion" or an "Opportunity for speedy correction"? It seems that in many cases, a rationale is either plainly obvious or plainly unlikely. While the policy of requiring a rationale for Fair Use when new non-free content is uploaded is plainly important, I suggest that when the policy isn't followed, a review could be implemented alongside notification. To me, relying solely on "notification of the uploader" is a bit contrary to the normal progression of adding content (e. g. WP:BOLD; "Wikis like ours develop faster when everybody helps to fix problems."). Generally when problematic content is contributed in good faith it is more productive for other Wikipedians to just fix the problems rather than track down the source and nag them into doing it. The problem is made even worse when the nagging party is an automated script rather than a helpful Wikipedian who can offer assistance and resist "biting the newbies". I feel like this issue may lie at the heart of many complaints against the activities of BetacommandBot, and I wonder if the scope of the required intervention is small enough to be filtered by a review process now that the backlog of legacy images has been tagged. --Dystopos (talk) 22:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Images tagged for WP:CSD#I6 should, as they stand, not exist on Wikipedia, in the same way that an article tagged for WP:CSD#A7 should not in that state exist. In the same way A7 articles can be salvaged by providing evidence of notability, I6 images can be saved by adding fair use rationales. There are users who devote enormous energy to saving as many I6 images as they can, and their efforts are invaluable to the project. But the problem is so massive, or certainly has been in the recent past, as to make any co-ordinated effort to manage I6 images impossible. The reason this is a speedy criterion is because it has legal ramifications - tying up potentially copyright-infringing images in another layer of bureaucracy is not acceptable. So while any effort to "salvage" images from I6 rather than deleting them is valuable, and any image saved in this manner is a benefit to the project, it is not possible to divert the entire stream of I6 images through this salvaging system, as the most important priority is to ensure that the images are removed from the I6 category swiftly, either through salvaging, or through deletion. Allowing a long backlog of I6 images awaiting recovery to build up would be legally unacceptable. Happy‑melon 22:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)