Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (general)

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 Note: New versions of the templates based on this discussion have already been implemented, on 24 March 2008.

Reasons for changing speedy-delete template wording:

  • Correspond more closely with the criteria for speedy deletion (CSD)
  • Brevity/clarity
  • Avoid using italics in a way that might imply a direct quote of the CSD
  • Often saying "(See CSDXX)" rather than just "(CSDXX)" to avoid implying a direct quote

Implementation:

  • To delete "The reason given is:", for brevity, transclude new template Template:speedybase instead of Template:db-meta.

It's suggested that discussion take place at:

(Moonriddengirl and Coppertwig.)

People may edit the table and change the suggested wordings. Comments section is below the table.

Contents

[edit] Table

Criterion for speedy deletion Current template wording suggested wording New! summary parameter (wording for edit summary of deletion log)
G1 nonsense Template:db-g1/new Template:db-g1/doc Patent nonsense and gibberish, an unsalvageably incoherent page with no meaningful content. This does not include: poor writing, partisan screeds, obscene remarks, vandalism, fictional material, material not in English, badly translated material, implausible theories, or hoaxes of any sort; some of these, however, may be deleted as vandalism in blatant cases. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: This article or other page provides no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. It is patent nonsense (CSD G1) This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as an article or other page which is unsalvageably incoherent with no meaningful content or history; it is patent nonsense. (This does not include poor writing, vandalism, material not in English, badly translated material, hoaxes, etc. See CSD G1) Unsalvageably incoherent with no meaningful content or history; it is patent nonsense. (CSD G1)
G2 test Template:db-g2/new Template:db-g2/doc Test pages. Testing is permitted in the sandbox and in users' own user space. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is a test page (CSD G2). This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as a test page (See CSD G2). Test page. (CSD G2)
G3 vandal Template:db-g3/new Template:db-g3/doc Pure vandalism. This includes blatant and obvious hoaxes and misinformation, and redirects created by cleanup from page-move vandalism. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: Pure vandalism; this includes redirects created during cleanup of page move vandalism. (CSD G3) This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as pure vandalism; this includes blatant, obvious hoaxes and misinformation, and redirects created during cleanup of page move vandalism. (CSD G3) Vandalism. (CSD G3)
G4 repost Template:db-g4/new Template:db-g4/doc Recreation of deleted material. A copy, by any title, of a page deleted via a deletion discussion, provided the copy is substantially identical to the deleted version and that any changes in the recreated page do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted. This does not apply to content that has been moved to user space, undeleted via deletion review, deleted via proposed deletion, or to speedy deletions (although in that case, the previous speedy criterion, or other speedy criteria, may apply). This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It was previously deleted as a result of an articles for deletion (or another XfD) discussion, and is substantially identical to the version of the page that was deleted. (CSD G4) This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It was previously deleted via a deletion discussion, is substantially identical to the deleted version, and any changes do not address the reasons for which the material was deleted. (See CSD G4). A recreation of material deleted after deletion debate. (CSD G4)
G5 banned Template:db-g5/new Template:db-g5/doc Banned user. Pages created by banned users while they were banned, with no substantial edits by others. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It was created by a banned user while they were banned (CSD G5). This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It was created by a banned user while they were banned, with no substantial edits by others (CSD G5). Created by a banned user while banned. (CSD G5)
G6 maintenance Template:db-g6/new Template:db-g6/doc Housekeeping. Non-controversial maintenance, such as temporarily deleting a page to merge page histories, performing uncontroversial page moves, or cleaning up redirects. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: This page needs to be deleted to merge histories, reverse a redirect, or perform other non-controversial housekeeping tasks. (CSD G6).
 This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. This page needs to be deleted to merge histories, reverse a redirect, or perform other non-controversial housekeeping tasks. (See CSD G6).
 For housekeeping reasons such as merging histories. (CSD G6)
(notes included like a comment in the current template) notes=
Please try to avoid using the template. If you can't find a better tag, please use {{db|reason}}, replacing the word "reason" with the reason for the requested deletion.
G7 author Template:db-g7/new Template:db-g7/doc Author requests deletion, if requested in good faith, and provided the page's only substantial content was added by its author. If the author blanks the page, this can be taken as a deletion request. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: No one other than its original author has made substantial edits to this page, and that editor requests its deletion or has blanked the page. (CSD G7).|self=yes|rationale= This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The author of the only substantial content has requested deletion in good faith, either explicitly or by blanking the page. (See CSD G7). Author requested deletion. (CSD G7)
G8 talk Template:db-g8/new Template:db-g8/doc Talk pages whose corresponding article does not exist. This excludes any talk page which is useful to the project, and in particular: deletion discussions that are not logged elsewhere, user talk pages, talk pages for images on Wikimedia Commons, and talk subpages (such as archives) whose corresponding "top-level" page exists. This includes talk pages of pages which were deleted since the creation of the talk page. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is a talk page of a page which has been deleted, is itself currently tagged for speedy deletion, or has never existed (CSD G8).}} This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It is a talk page of an article which does not exist. (This does not include pages which are useful to the project such as user talk pages, talk page archives etc. See CSD G8). Talk page of a nonexistent article. (CSD G8)
G10 attack Template:db-g10/new Template:db-g10/doc Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). These are sometimes called "attack pages". This includes a biography of a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no neutral version in the history to revert to. Administrators deleting such pages should not quote the content of the page in the deletion summary, and if the page is an article about a living person it should not be restored or recreated by any editor until it meets biographical article standards. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is a page created primarily to disparage its subject or a biography of a living person that is controversial in tone and unsourced, where there is no neutral version in the history to revert to. (CSD G10). This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It serves no purpose but to disparage its subject or some other entity. (This includes a biography of a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no neutral version in the history to revert to. See CSD G10). Attack page. (CSD G10)
G11 spam Template:db-g11/new Template:db-g11/doc Blatant advertising. Pages which exclusively promote some entity and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic. Note that simply having a company or product as its subject does not qualify an article for this criterion. This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: It is blatant advertising for a company, product, group, service or person. (CSD G11) This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. It does nothing but promote some entity and would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic. (Note that simply having a company or product as its subject does not qualify an article for this criterion. See CSD G11) Promotional (advertisement-like) material. (CSD G11)
G12 copyvio Template:db-g12/new Template:db-g12/doc Blatant copyright infringement. Text pages that meet all of the following (for images and media, see I9):
    • The material was copied from another website or other source (but consider the possibility that the other copy was obtained from Wikipedia—see Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks);
    • There is no non-infringing content on either the page itself, or in the history, worth saving;
    • The material was introduced at once by a single person; and
    • There is no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a free license.
 This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The reason given is: This item appears to be a copyright infringement of {{{url}}}, and no assertion of permission has been made. (CSD G12) This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as a blatant copyright infringement of {{{url}}}: the material was introduced at once by a single person, there is no non-infringing content on either the page or its history worth saving, and there is no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or free license. (See CSD G12) Copyright infringement of {{{url}}}. (CSD G12)

[edit] Comments

I reversed the role of italics and non-italics so that it's still fairly easy to find the beginning of the part of the template that is unique, but without implying (as italics sometimes do) that it's an exact quote of the CSD. --Coppertwig (talk) 17:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] G6 maintenance

Firstly, I support removing "The reason is" in all of the templates. That phrase is superflous in the context of the wording.

Secondly, I would like to see some mention of duplication of articles in the examples listed in CSD G6.

Recently, I have found a couple of articles that had each been duplicated. When I looked into the criteria for speedy deletion, I was unable to find any reference to duplicate articles and couldn't be sure under which category duplication would fall, although I was fairly sure that they should be candidates for speedy deletion. (Of course it might appear somewhere but I missed it.) After the article was deleted, I learned it falls under "Housekeeping". If there was a mention of "duplicate/d articles" in the wording for CSD G6, it would make it easier for Wikipedians to be certain that these articles can be listed for speedy deletion. Thanks, Ozzieboy (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Sorry I didn't see it until now!! That sounds very reasonable. However, the actual CSD G6 doesn't mention duplicated articles. May I suggest that you present a suggested new wording for the G6 criterion itself (i.e. a proposal to edit the policy Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion) on the talk page Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion, and if there's consensus for that and the CSD gets modified, then the wording of the template can probably be easily modified after that. Anyway, that's my suggestion, but I'm not insisting on any particular way of proceeding.
E.g. you might want to suggest changing the CSD to "Housekeeping. Non-controversial maintenance, such as temporarily deleting a page to merge page histories, performing uncontroversial page moves, deleting a page which is a precise duplicate of another page, or cleaning up redirects." --Coppertwig (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
By the way: Thanks for expressing your support for the removal of "the reason is"!! It's nice to get some positive feedback. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Good question. :) We should probably bring that up at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. In most cases those will be history merges, which is a deletion under WP:CSD#G6, but only partially as the content is restored at the destination article. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah. I thought there might be complexities.
Is it possible to take two completely different articles and merge their histories? Or do the articles have to be the same, and in what way -- an earlier version the same? The last version the same? or what? How does that work?
In a way, it wouldn't be a deletion at all, because after merging the histories, you'd presumably leave one of them as a redirect rather than as nothing. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
In Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations, we see that the bullets for "housekeeping" are 1) "Done anyway as part of numerous other processes; this codifies common practice", 2) Not controversial, 3) Little or no content is deleted. In cases of a sequence of deletions and undeletions for fixing page moves, any content which is deleted is later undeleted. I've seen history merges done with different articles when one is being merged into the other, but they're usually done to address copy & paste moves or to mingle content forks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] G8 "as it is"

In the table above it said "It is a talk page...". In the draft template it said "as it is a talk page...". I just changed the draft template to say "as a talk page..." which I think eliminates unnecessary words. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:46, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] wpReason

Note that I've added another column at the righthand side of the table, for the wpReason parameter, which specifies what will appear in the edit summary of the deletion log. The one I just put there for g1 is just about precisely the length of what will fit in an ordinary edit summary. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] G12 blatant

I'm changing "blatant copyright infringement" in g12 to "apparent copyright infringement". More accurate and less bitey. --Coppertwig (talk) 19:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

If I had read this note, I wouldn't have changed it back. :) The CSD criterion says "blatant". I think if we want to change it to "apparent", we should start there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. I think this is one place where the CSD and the template should say two different things. (Gasp! Going against the whole spirit and purpose of this whole lengthy exercise!) The CSD is talking in general and is read by people who are about to tag an article or by admins about to delete an article. The template, on the other hand, is making an assertion about one specific page, and is read by the creator of the page as well as by the person tagging the page. If it says "blatant," it's rather insulting. Also, if it says "blatant copyright infringement" or even "copyright infringement", it's accusing the page creator of breaking the law. That's almost, though not quite, a violation of the Wikipedia:No legal threats policy; also, in many cases it's just plain false. Wikipedia policy requires deleting things which are apparent copyright violations. maybe it doesn't? They may actually not be copyright violations at all; they may be being posted by the author and that just hasn't been proven yet. It's OK for the CSD to say "blatant" because it's not saying it about any one particular page. Saying it there discourages people from over-using the tag in unclear cases. But once an article is tagged, it should have wording with a loophole to cover such cases where it isn't actually a copyright violation even if it does have to get deleted anyway. OK, how about just "copyright violation infringement 11:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC)" without either "blatant" or "apparent"? I guess the problem with "apparent" is that people will tag articles and delete them based on the template wording even though they ought to read the CSD &ndash same problem we've been working to avoid with all this work. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, as I interpret the word, apparent copyright infringements should be listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems for investigation. Only blatant copyright infringements are to be listed for deletion. But, then, there's some latitude in interpreting the word "apparent". What about if we just eliminate the words "apparent" or "blatant" from the speedy tag altogether and let it flatly announce its purpose as "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as a copyright infringement of"? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:52, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] etc.

I inserted "or other entity" in the draft template for G10 as suggested by Moonriddengirl. The extra curly brackets in G11 had already been deleted in the draft template. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] G4 previous deletion discussion

Currently, if the user supplies the name of a previous deletion discussion I think it's mentioned in regular-sized font near the top, and also other possible deletion discussions are mentioned in small print lower down. Possibly the behaviour should be different although I'm not sure exactly what. (Mention the user-supplied discussion again when listing possible discussions? Not list the other possible discussions if the user supplied one?) --Coppertwig (talk) 02:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] G3--Pure vandalism

Would it be possible for this tag to say "...this includes, but is not limited to..."?
I usually tag pages that consist of "poop" or "When can I leave school" and the like under G3, but I am not 100% sure if that is what I should be doing. If we added the caveat I suggested, I think that G3 would be much more useful, as we could use it as a catch-all for obvious crap that isn't directly attacking someone/something. J.delanoygabsadds 16:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)