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G5: what's the point?

If an article wasn't deleted upon creation then it presumably is in line with all of Wikipedia's policies - why then, some time later, would it be necessary to revisit it solely due to its creator's decisions (to do whatever it is they did to get them blocked)? Articles are independent from their creators as soon as they're written and should be judged on their own merit.

If the articles fall under any other criteria then they should be tagged as such (and if it's a more complex case, potential copyvios included, then AfD/CCI is there for a reason) - G5 is insubstantial by itself. Thus, I ask: what is its purpose, and if it doesn't have one why can't it be removed? -- Mentifisto 02:34, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

G5 is for an article created in violation of a ban or block. It does not apply to articles created by users who were blocked or banned at a later time. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
A couple months ago, there was a case where an editor blocked for disruptive behavior nominated an article for deletion in retaliation for being blocked. The articles for deletion discussion page was deleted under this criteria for that reason. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
True, but he made that nomination while he was blocked, using another account, correct?—Kww(talk) 04:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
That's the point behind G5. It applies the same rationale of the closed deletion discussion to articles, templates, and categories created by banned or blocked users. This applies to topic bans, sockpuppets, meatpuppets, or any other kind of evasion. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 04:49, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... G13 discussion reopened?

Looks like editor Colonel Warden reopened the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#G13: Abandoned Articles for creation submissions with this edit. I didn't see any consensus or discussion to do so. But, since it seems pointless to start a vote on consensus that the reopening of lack of consensus makes sense, I'm just going to point it out, and let other editors comment here, maybe. Apparently, this is "Being BOLD!" at it's finest.

In fact, I'm going to close the discussion again ... since it seems like the original proposal can be closed with overwhelming support per WP:SNOW. However, it still looks like the details of the actual timeframes for when G13 applies, etc. still need to be discussed. Steel1943 (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Considering Colonel Warden opposition and wild accusations that the criteria is being created just for administrators to see the content and the regular users not, that was a bad reversion. I support closing the discussion for G13 again. Secret account 02:07, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

  • As discussed above in the Shenanigans section, the RfC should have been allowed the standard 30 days for discussion. It seemed that user:King of Hearts was edit-warring in his repeated attempts to close this and so my action was to revert this and I did so just 8 hours after that close. As it now seems that Secret is deleting the articles in question, while the details are still being discussed, it still seems that the matter is being improperly rushed. Warden (talk) 10:57, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Rubbish. 30 days is not compulsory, there was no edit-warring going on, and consensus had been formed already, whether you like the consensus or not. Some of the details may still be being discussed, but the basic guideline is there, and thus, it can, and indeed should, be used. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 13:06, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
    • We agreed on doing this in some manner;we did not agree of the manner. We still need to determine that. We cannot have a G13 without specificity on how to do it. I suggest we remove it from the policy page for the time being, and for Huggle, until we have consensus on just what the specifications should be. I have no object to the close on whether we need some such guideline., but we need another more focussed discussion on just what it should be. See the discussion between me and Secret above, where we compare ideas. DGG ( talk ) 16:53, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
Weird. I was mistaken, my apologies. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:56, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, if you want to delay G13 until there are "specifications", could you please start a proper discussion on them? As far as I can tell, most people in the original RfC and first follow-up agreed that G13 is wanted, and no extra hurdles should be implemented (waiting period and so on). Waiting until most people thought this discussion was closed, and then implementing all kinds of hurdles among the few remaining people here, doesn't seem to respect the consensus from the previous discussion. Either start a sub-RfC or simply implement the thing without further restrictions, but don't let it hang around in eternal limbo. "We cannot have a G13 without specificity on how to do it. " is not correct of course, we can easily have that. It's not what you prefer, but that doesn't mean that it isn't feasible. People have already deleted pages under G13, and nothing broke down or blew up. Fram (talk) 08:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Good idea. I'm going to do that right now ... so we can finally get to the bottom of this. Steel1943 (talk) 08:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  • At this point, I also Propose to close all other discussions related to G13 so that at least the basic parameters of the criterion can be determined in a method that doesn't have 10 discussions happening all at once. Steel1943 (talk) 08:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Template:Orphaned non-free revisions

I do very little file related deletion so I wanted to pass this by some of you who do. Isn't {{Orphaned non-free revisions}} geared toward and referring to the wrong criteria in it's documentation? It seems F1 is a perfect fit: "Unused duplicates or lower-quality/resolution copies of another Wikipedia file having the same file format." F1 has no waiting period. Yet, the template states a a seven day wait period, and its documentation says it calls to "F5/F7" and that files tagged with it "can be deleted ... after being tagged for 7 days." What's the deal?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Why do we need sources for {{PD-textlogo}} ? They're not protected, so why are they showing up at Category:All Wikipedia files with unknown source tagged for deletion (F4: {{di-no source}}) because they're missing sources? -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 05:35, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

We don't. Tell whoever tags them as such that they're wrong. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:47, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, Sfan keeps doing this to {{pd-text}}, {{pd-shape}}, {{pd-chem}}, and {{pd-textlogo}} files. I've talked with him before. Quite frankly, I'd suggest filing an ANI report, because it's ridiculous how he doesn't check any of this stuff. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 05:54, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Please be nice to Sfan. He does an incredible amount of work keeping file space clean. As an aside, I personally think a source should be required for these logos, even if it is just a link to the company's website, etc, in order to show that the logo isn't bogus. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:11, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
After I'd noted some reversions, I'm using the approach that the source is likely to be the organisation it's logo for.Sfan00 IMG (talk) 09:52, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
What about File:Psi (large).png ? It's a greek letter, he just nominated it for deletion a couple of hours ago (the day after the textlogo deletion nominations) Or this simple file File:Vector a icon.svg ? -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 16:07, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the tags. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:51, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
I've put an unequivocal message on Sfan's talk page to stop deletion tagging categorically public domain images without superfluous source info. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 00:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
This is ridiculous. The only reason why we need a source is to prove that the work is freely licensed, but if an image is below the threshold of originality, then it is free regardless of whether it has a source or not. Without a source, it is impossible to tell whether the logo is the correct logo, but that is a completely different problem (violation of WP:V) which is better taken at WP:FFD if there is reason to believe that the logo is fake. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
To be clear I don't disagree that it is a problem, particularly for things like pd-simple. However, while I think the spirit of the rules is fairly obvious and in line with what you are saying, Sfan makes a good point at his talk page: the actual written documentation (Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source, {{di-no source}}) does not make it clear that PD files do not require a source. Also consider the intro to our guideline WP:PD: "Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required to avoid plagiarism." — This, that and the other (talk) 12:18, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Which is wrong - public domain works don't require attribution. Our requirements for a source are only so we can verify it is actually public domain, but this is not necessary for things like {{PD-ineligible}} so we need to change that documentation. Thryduulf (talk) 13:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
{{PD-textlogo}} doesn't require a source. {{PD-1923}} requires a source so that you can tell that it indeed is {{PD-1923}}. How can you know that a work was indeed published before 1923, if there is no source indicating when or where the work was published? --Stefan2 (talk) 21:56, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Except there's no reason to believe the source would tell you that, either. Public domain stuff just ends up wherever. I'm wondering if {{information}} should be updated with a pd-justification parameter for these sorts of situations. Making category:Wikipedia files with unknown source conditional on both source and pd-justification would help keep overzealous editors from tagging public domain articles for deletion without sourcing, and a category:PD-ineligible files with unknown source would be easily reviewable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanisaac (talk • contribs) 2013-04-20T22:19:01
I think that we should be careful not to add any fields which don't exist on Commons as the contents of those extra fields might be deleted when files are moved to Commons. Things like this may be better for the "permission" field. For example "Source = A book from 2005 [insert the title of the book here] | Permission = Published in this or that newspaper on 1 January 1905". --Stefan2 (talk) 22:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I think a more pressing issue is to somehow "codify" these views into our policies and guidelines. At the moment, our projectspace resources (those mentioned above, as well as this) do not agree with each other and are quite unclear. Which PD files need a source? Which do not? What level of detail is needed where a source is given? How can this be communicated to uploaders and filespace maintainers? — This, that and the other (talk) 07:45, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Files which are inherently PD due to ineligibility need no proof at all. Files which are PD due to age need a source or otherwise some kind of proof of publication/creation date. Files which are PD as a government work need a source or otherwise some kind of proof that they are really government work. Files which are released into PD by author need to be own work or require an OTRS release. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:29, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
I've added a note to the documentation of {{di-no source}} and {{Nsd}} that they are not applicable to files categorically ineligible for copyright. We'll see if this keeps happening. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 02:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
Good addition. Images correctly tagged as PD-ineligible, PD-textlogo, etc. should never be deleted on copyright grounds. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

F6/F5 deletion and files already under discussion at PUF/FFD

Shouldn't F6/F5 deletion be suspended until a file has cleared PUF or FFD? Afterall, those discussions may indicate why the file is insufficiently templated or not in use at the moment (such as being removed prior to deletion nomination, or recent conversion to fairuse from free-use); especially in the case of conversion from free-use to fair-use, the maintenance of the fair-use rationale templating may fall behind, depending on who switch the license template and whether they forgot to add the FUR or not. -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 03:49, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Of course. Being subject to a deletion discussion automatically makes an image ineligible for deletion until the discussion is closed. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

A7 wording

"It is irrelevant whether the claim of notability within the article is not sufficient for the notability guidelines. If the claim is credible, the A7 tag can not be applied. Often what seems non-notable to a new page patroller is shown to be notable in a deletion discussion."

What's the point of this paragraph? I've often declined A7 tags on articles that don't discuss importance but do appear to demonstrate notability — in other words, they seem to be about unimportant people/companies/etc. that still deserve encyclopedia articles. Is this paragraph telling me that I should delete such pages instead of declining the speedy? Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

That paragraph is saying that if an article asserts the importance of the subject, it doesn't matter if the subject meets the notability guidelines or not (i.e. importance is a lower standard than notability). If you find a page that doesn't assert importance but does appear to meet the notability guidelines then you are correct to decline the speedy deletion as we want articles about such subjects. In other words a new page needs to assert importance or be notable, it doesn't necessarily have to do both. Thryduulf (talk) 09:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
An important bit is 'credible'. The fourteen year old multi-millionaire who is engaged to Emma Watson is definitely not credible (without excellent evidence...). A7 deals at the lower level of 'significance', rather than 'notability'. What passes A7 often fails prod or AfD. Basically, if there is no claim to significance ("Shaun Weinburg is a student in the third year at Bloggsville County College"), A7 applies. But if Shaun Weinburg is claimed to be the first ten year old to attend Harvard, there is a claim to significance if it's true. (If it isn't, then it's a hoax...) If it's true, it can be taken to AfD if thought not to be notable. Like the whole of CSD, it's a shortcut that takes the pressure off prod and AfD by removing the obvious fails. If they take knowledge you haven't got (like me in the case of American football), leave them. Someone else will know. If no-one knows, AfD is the answer. Only a moment's thought and a quick dive into Google should ne needed at CSD. Peridon (talk) 10:26, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

CSD A10

Criterion A10 states that duplicate articles are eligible for it. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to make it a general criterion (g-series), since project pages, templates, etc. that are pure duplicates should also be deleted (userspace would be exempt from this criterion). King Jakob C2 22:31, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with this. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 22:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
oppose. Similar criteria exist for templates (T3), files (F1/F8) and categories (C1) but they each have different requirements so aren't suitable for merging, and Portals are already covered by A10 (via P1). We generally want duplicate redirects unless the title is implausible (R3), so they too would be excluded. That only leaves project space, and I'd argue that essays (in any namespace) should never be speedily deleted as a duplicate as some differences can be subtle and it would stand a really good chance of pissing off the author so a discussion is a must. Are there many instances of duplicate non-essay project-space pages with titles that would be implausible as redirects? My gut feeling is nowhere near enough to justify speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 23:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Thryduulf. Jclemens (talk) 02:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Combining them all

I think Jakob might just be on to something here, but his idea needs some refinement. Perhaps something like:

Gxx. Duplicate pages
A page that duplicates another page, has no relevant history, does not expand on any material on any wikipedia page, and whose title is not a plausible redirect, excluding user essays, article drafts, user pages, redirects, and files also found on Wikipedia Commons. Some types of pages meeting this criteria include:
  • An article that duplicates an existing article and does not add anything to any article
  • Unused files that are duplicates or lower-resolution copies of another file, in the same file format
  • A template that is a duplicate of another template, or a hard-coded instance template whose function could be met by that other template
This might allow eliminating A10, T3 and F1 (F8 is too complex to fold into this). Maybe a bit unruly, though? Ego White Tray (talk) 12:48, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, too unruly. "excluding user essays, article drafts, user pages, redirects, and files also found on Wikipedia Commons" is too long a list of exclusions for a G-criterion. Wikipedia essays would have to be excluded as well. It would then require defining what an essay is and is not. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:47, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Yes, far too unruly. Templates and files have different requirements to articles and to each other, and these would need separately defining so you'd just be renumbering A10 as G14A, T3 as G14B, F1 as G14C, etc. Far better to have three or four simple criteria than one complicated one. Thryduulf (talk) 17:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Should/does A7 "web content" apply to software applications?

I recently CSD'd Hidden-capture with {{db-web}}. Its content—written by Medtemp (talk · contribs))—when I added that template was

Hidden Capture (HC)

an application that captures from desktop or another area secretly if an user uses your computer without your permission. this application is designed and programmed by an iranian muslim developer he is nobody except mohsen e.davatgar. www: Hidden-Capture.blogfa.com

programmer: Mohsen-E-Davatgar.blogfa.com

29611670.x (talk · contribs) challenged that nomination, on the grounds that a7 doesn't apply to software. Xe went on to remove the blatant advertising from the page (as per policy on a potentially salvageable promotional article), so that it simply read

Hidden Capture (HC) is an application that automatically takes captures of a computer's desktop or active window.

Subsequently, Tentinator (talk · contribs) re-CSD'd, though I suspect he may not have known about 296's previous challenge. I definitely see the merit in 296's points, since while it's software, it's not web-based software. However, part of me still feels an article like this should be eligible under A7. What do others think? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 10:26, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it could be included, although people have raised objections before about it being hard to judge whether a piece of software is "important". Possibly if the "assertion of importance" criterion were made a little more clear this could solve the problem—it can be hard (at least for me) to tell whether or not an article "asserts importance" of its subject, minus an obvious "this was the first _ to _" or "this is the most popular _ in _ area". – 29611670.x (talk) 10:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't think it should be included, as it doesn't seem to be what it was intended for: personal homepages and the such. Currently neither the practise nor the letter of the criterion reflects that. The criterium doesn't seem to have kept up with the development of webpages to webapplications. Though I would disagree with a new criterium for non-notable software products, there may be consensus for it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:50, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
There is no way this article is important or significant let alone notable. Delete on any grounds necessary. Leave it with me.--Launchballer 14:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
It now reads

Hidden Capture (HC) is an application that automatically takes captures of a computer's desktop or active window; essentially, it records everything that happens on that machine, so the user can see if another user has been using it without the user's consent. It was developed by Mohsen E. Davatgar.

. I'm warning you; I'm using a school machine at the moment, so not only am I adding refs blind, I have no idea what they even say because they've been blocked. Could someone else format the links?--Launchballer 15:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment So far as I am aware, A7 does not apply to software that is downloaded for use at home or office (or wherever you are...). If it is only usable online - that is, it is actually running at THEIR end - yes, it is liable to A7. This means that the Great Aardvark Browser is not an A7 candidate, but greataardvarkbrowser.tk (where you download it for the low price of $73.67) is liable. A game for use at home is not liable, but a planetwide multiuser (so far, one user in New York, one in Little Snodbury on the Frizzle, and one in Macao - but it's up and coming!) is liable. I'm open to correction by those who have been mopping for longer than I have, but that's what I operate A7 web as meaning. Peridon (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
As to the present case, I think 29611670.x was correct that A7 did not apply, but I have grave doubts about the notability of the thing - but that has to be prod and/or AfD. There is a vast amount of non-notable software about - but assessing the significance isn't as easy as it is, say, for an author of a self-published book (available from next month at the author's website). Peridon (talk) 10:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Which is clearly stupid - and I have been thinking so for quite some time. A solution would be to exclude web-applications from this criterium. Another solution could be to create a criterium for non-notable software. A third criterium could be that it is not broken/stupid enough to bother us, and maintain the status-quo. My preference would be the first, but seeing the lack of traction this thread is generating, I think it will come out as the third. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
I am a bit nonplussed by the fact that web applications are speediable but desktop applications are not, especially if A7 was meant to cover personal websites. Could I ask why you wouldn't be in favor of a criterium that would cover software? Is it because of the ambiguity surrounding what software is "important"? – 29611670.x (talk) 16:46, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Indeed - pretty much the same as with other products, no indication of importance the way it is generally interpreted on CSD is hard to do for software, be it web or desktop (or mobile). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:57, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
(ec) There seems to be another similar thing in A7 - you can A7 a company, but not a product, or an author but not a book. Actual web-based progs aren't nearly as common as local based ones, but it's not those that the web bit is primarily there for. I see it as being to deal with the YouTube etc video perpetrators, the bloggers known to all of their friends (about seven if they've made it up with Charlotte again), and the rivals (launched three days ago) to eBay, that could hardly be described as companies (Wayne and Shaun working from Shaun's bedroom until they get the office open - in the garage). Never forget that CSD isn't designed to cover everything. It's a time and space saver to reduce loads at prod and AfD, and to deal with only obvious things. OK, there are problems. How blatant does a hoax have to be? "Shaun is awesome" is blatant (he's obviously insecure and pathetic, and an A7 candidate to boot...), but a case like Tillery illustrates my point. (Non-admins can work out what the article said from the AfD.) This is getting off the track. CSD is deliberately limited. The alternative is giving powers of life and death over all content to the admins. Most of us wouldn't misuse it. I hope... But...... Peridon (talk) 17:02, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Tillery is actually on view - it seems to have been recently dug up and pickled as a specimen hoax for study purposes. Peridon (talk) 17:09, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Makes sense. I suppose it really isn't that big an issue to have to wait a week or so to see an article deleted—if people decide it truly should be deleted. – 29611670.x (talk) 20:16, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I think instead of jamming more categories into what A7 applies to we should just say what it doesn't apply to, and we all know what that is: inherently notable things. We can deny that inherent notability exists, but it wouldn't be productive, because we all know that our practice is to give certain things a pass on demonstrating notability, which is why A7 doesn't apply to everything. Gigs (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

the problem is that for the computer software cited above, as for products in general, and certainly for books, there is no way of determining if it has even minimal importance without looking for reviews; it is very common for people to write such naïve article about actually notable products without knowing they are needed. Obviously if nothing can be found the article will be deleted, but if they are it's an opportunity to get an article. The exception for recordings is that the amount of publicity is so great that if the group does not have an article the chances of a recording being notable is essentially zero. This is not really true in other fields of activity. Although the extremely large number of web apps produced do make it very unlikely that one will be notable, I do not myself think they fall within A7; some admins do, and they are likely enough to be right that I don't argue with them. DGG ( talk ) 02:25, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. A7 is not about creative works, but about individuals and organizations. The "web content" portion of the criterion is more to grab articles about websites, which can be thought of as entities, rather than the creative content thereupon. A9 could, however, be expanded to include other creative works, which I argue includes software. —/Mendaliv/2¢/Δ's/ 04:02, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm sympathetic to the inclusion of applications under an A7/A9-like criteria, but I don't think they are currently included. I think it's problematic in the modern "phone app" era to entirely separate out web content from general software applications, so if you want to make it A9, move web content there as well. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:24, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

A7 again — what does it mean?

The explanation given in WP:CSD#A7 is utterly useless. There is no definition of "significance or importance" other than it's a lower standard than "notability". There are no examples given of what might be considered "significant or important" but not "notable". I have no idea what such a claim would look like. It's really a matter of opinion, isn't it?

Furthermore, the tag for {{db-bio}} links the words "importance or significance" to Wikipedia:Notability (people), where there is no discussion of the distinction between the two standards, suggesting that they are in fact the same standard. So what exactly are we trying to get across here? ... discospinster talk 02:21, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Basically, the threshold for A7, as I understand it, is that any article (of the types outlined in A7) which cannot even begin to claim that its subject is notable can be nominated as A7. (e.g. "The N BAND plays in parks" in the lead sentence might mean the topic is a suitable target for an A7, where as "The N BAND' played at this large stadium" might not be.)

This is as opposed to the threshold of WP:N, which says that articles must have reliable secondary sourcing which go into detail on their real-world relevance. Those are very distinct. The land in the middle is usually "governed" (I use the term loosely) by PROD or at AFD. --Izno (talk) 02:34, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, so what makes a large stadium more important or significant than parks? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. You could say "well, obviously larger venues are more important than parks" but we're not talking about degrees of importance, just whether it's important or not. And that's why I'm contending that it's a meaningless standard.
I will often see speedy deletions contested with the reason "It's important to the people in Crunchy Pillow, Indiana" and how am I supposed to answer that? It's a claim of significance or importance, and I have nothing with which to refute it. So does A7 not apply now?
I'm an administrator, so why should I even have to ask these questions? ... discospinster talk 02:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
We made you an administrator because we felt you had the good judgement to make these decisions. Good judgement is required for this one and there is no way to avoid that. And a music group that plays in local city parks usually isn't that important to the town. So, first does it claim significance beyond its small community, and second do you believe the claim. You have to use your brain and make the decision. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I removed the link to the notability standard on the template. It had no business being there. Ego White Tray (talk) 03:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

{{db-web}}, {{db-inc}}, {{db-music}}, {{db-event}} all suffer from the same confusion. ... discospinster talk 03:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
The way I see it is that if there is a claim that the subject is significant, it passes A7. It has to be a CREDIBLE claim, though. "Shaun is the King of Spain" - obvious hoax. "Shaun is the CEO of Wiggle Runners Inc" - a claim to possible notability. But he is only 12 years old, so it's not a credible claim to notability, especially as the company site is at wordpress or weebly. As EWT says, it's a decision. It's a reversible decision. And when in doubt, there's prod and AfD. It's not even a question of references - although good ones can bolster credibility. Lack of them isn't a reason for deletion by itself. Significance and notability - looks like a silly distinction. CSD is a short cut to prevent overloads at prod and AfD. But they work on 'notability'. No significance - it goes. Significance - it should be discussed. Notability by the policy - it stays. (I have doubts at times, and do a rethink. Usually coming back to this position. But always remember you're not the only admin. It's not a TV quiz show where you have to answer of lose. You can close the page and look at something else. The only time you HAVE to make a decision is at RfA...) Peridon (talk) 09:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
As to local vs non-local significance - if it's not known outside a small area like Crunchy Pillow, no. But always remember the Unst Bus Shelter - an island bus shelter with a web site, which is internationally twinned, and has an article. As a mere bus shelter, it;s purely of limited local significance. As a phenomenon, it's notable. Peridon (talk) 09:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
The guideline I use is that if a editor might in good faith think it suitable for WP, or if there is any chance that there might be sources that show it suitable, it's not an A7. No rational person can possibly think someone belongs in an encyclopedia for having written a self-published novel, or for being a teacher in a high school. Someone might think a headmaster suitable--and some are. Somebody might thing a small town mayor suitable, tho it's very unlikely. Someone might rationally think a college athlete on a major team suitable. Companies are harder. Some local business are notable; conceivably even a major local car dealership might be, but it is so unlikely that without a reference, I'd use A7. I sent what looked like a local bike shop to AfD because it had one decent references, and the people who knew found many more & it's been kept. Planned events are harder, so hard that I still doubt the criterion., though at the extremes it's clear enough. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
As with all the criteria, the best rule to work to is if there is any doubt that the criterion applies, it doesn't. Thryduulf (talk) 09:42, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed new G14

I propose to merge A10, F1 and T3 into 1 CSD, simply duplicating pages. In the same way that A8 was merged into a general criteria as a copyvio can be in any namespace, but is most likely in the mainspace. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 10:40, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  • oppose. The three criteria are so disjoint that I don't see how they could be even remotely combined into a single workable criterion; and I think that's why you haven't even attempted to put forth any sort of proposed wording. There's nothing wrong with the three preexisting, so leave well enough alone. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 10:54, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
The proposed wording:

"Recently created page that duplicates an existing page; A recently created page with no relevant page history that duplicates an existing English Wikipedia page, and that does not expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing pages on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include split pages or any page that expands or reorganizes an existing one or that contains referenced, mergeable material. It also does not include disambiguation pages. (When the new title is a reasonable term for the subject, converting the new page to a redirect may be preferable to deletion.)"

The point that I am proposing is that a duplicating page can be in any namespace, just more common in mainspace for example we don't have a criterion for portals. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 11:08, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Support spirit of proposal - the way this has been put forward really makes a strawman argument out of it. However the idea of merging all 'duplicate/redundant' criteria is actually a very good idea.--Launchballer 11:12, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose a criterion which just said "duplicated pages" would prevent people from copying pages to their userspace to work on them. If you did want to merge these criteria into one you would need to apply an awful lot of caveats in order to prevent it going wrong. A10, F1 and T3 all have instructions about when those criteria don't apply, and the resulting criterion would be quite unwieldy and not any simpler than the current version. Incidentally A10 does apply to portals through P1. Hut 8.5 11:14, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
    • In addition to userspace drafts (or any other sort of draft) copying material from mainspace articles, the wording of the above criterion would allow the deletion of almost all redirects (two redirects to the same page have exactly the same content), any image hosted on Commons (even those which don't qualify for F8), and copies of the same image in two different file formats (which wouldn't qualify for F1). T3 is about templates with duplicate functionality, which isn't considered in the wording at all. Hut 8.5 11:26, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as there are too many caveats in each that separate them from the others. Technical 13 (talk) 14:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above and the reasons I opposed merging these when it was suggested a few days ago at #Combining them all. In particular no effort has been made to address what pages are not subject to speedy deletion currently that should be, nor why combining three simple criteria into one complicated one would benefit the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 21:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Nope I suggested this a couple days ago and it came obvious as I was writing it that it would be way too damn complicated. Look at the section above #Combining them all and see how many exceptions and caveats there were - plus some that other users pointed out after I suggested it. The problem is that duplicate has different meanings for different kinds of pages, and and entire categories of pages (redirects & user pages) should never be deleted as duplicates. Ego White Tray (talk) 01:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • See an example of where this could be used, there was a page on Conde NiRa also at Template:Conde nira, Especial:Cómo empezar and User:Edurena. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 11:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
    • No need, the Template: namespace page was a hard-coded specific instance and so I deleted it under WP:CSD#T3. The user page was a page created in the wrong namespace (G6) and would have been excluded under this criterion anyway, and the "Especial" page was an article-space duplicate (WP:CSD#A10). Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There would be enormous trouble getting this right (which probably means we would get it wrong) for no very obvious benefit. SpinningSpark 14:48, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose This would be an extremely messy criterion. For example, F1 only applies to files in the same file format, but pages in other namespaces do not use any binary "file format", so the file format issue is only relevant to F1. It is better to use separate criteria. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:24, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose due to the likely misinterpretation/misapplication by New Page Patrollers who are often very inexperienced themselves. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:15, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

G5 clarifications

At present, the criterion is "Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others. G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates.". Might it be a good idea to clarify that this only applies to pages created during the block or ban? I know it says "in violation of their ban or block" already, but I've seen cases where this seems to have been misunderstood. Fairly obviously, sockpuppetry will be involved anyway, as few, if any, site banned users will not also be blocked. (Or are there cases of this? I don't know...) What is the position of an account created before a ban or block? Sock, yes, but are pages made before the block or ban regarded as being in violation? Another thing I'm not sure on is how much proof of a sock's affiliation is required. I've seen cases where the contributions of a suspected sock were being hauled up at CSD. Is a duck block enough, or does it have to be a full SPI conclusion? Peridon (talk) 13:03, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Another point - topic bans. Does G5 apply to pages created in violation of a topic ban? G5 just says 'banned' not 'site banned'. Peridon (talk) 13:06, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
  • This particular criteria has always somewhat befuddled me. What difference does it make who wrote the article if it is a good article? I just don't understand it. Do administrators seriously speedy delete articles that could be candidates for GA or FA status just because they were written by a confirmed SP? That just seems, for lack of a better term, stupid to me. I believe that articles should be kept or deleted based on their own merits; are the articles notable, neutral, and encyclopedic? I do not believe that any article should be deleted because "the creator is a bad Wikipedian". That being said, I would like to understand why this general criteria is acceptable that has complete disregard for the article. Thank you. Technical 13 (talk) 13:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
First, yes, this really happens. In my experience, it seems to get specifically applied in sockpuppety cases, where there is an element of WP:DENY involved, but in my experience there's also generally, in the cases I've seen it applied, a severe content problem with the contributions, such as a user perennially introducing copyright violations. Perhaps even difficult to detect ones. (Which can get inserted into signficant articles, and often cause the deletion of later non-violating edits when they are later discovered. Best to kill them fast, and soon.) You might consider spending some a few weeks over at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations if you never have, it's eye-opening.
By the way, I tried to find some history about this, it appears this is a very old rule handed down from the ancients, not that that inherently makes it right, of course. This 10-year-old comment suggests what I've always believed about the criteria, that it should be applied with some level of good judgment about the pros and cons of a particular deletion. --j⚛e deckertalk 14:19, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
We need either some rewording like: problematic articles by .... , or some statement of how it is normally used. I think some admins do use it for everything from banned editors, some use it for everything from such users except good and needed articles (I'm in that group) , some use it for anything worthless from such editors regardless of whether it would be speedy deleted by other rules. In addition to serial copyright violators, I know of some particular banned users to whom it might be applied broadly. But the guidelines about whether to do this should not be left to float unwritten in the collective memory. DGG ( talk ) 16:08, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
For the second time today, I find myself quoting from JamesBWatson's talk page his words which explain more clearly than I could the reason why G5 is written to apply to any contribution from a banned or indef-blocked user:

There is a perfectly reasonable opinion that an article should not be deleted because it was created by a blocked or banned user, since if the article is a good one then it doesn't matter how it came into existence. However, there is also another, equally reasonable opinion, that if an editor has been banned or indefinitely blocked, and keeps coming back with sockpuppet accounts, then the net damage to the project by encouraging them to think they can get away with doing so, and no matter how many accounts are blocked anything they write will stay, is more than enough to offset any slight advantage that might come from a few useful edits they may make. The issue has been discussed repeatedly over the years, and each time consensus has supported the second of these opinions. That is why Wikipedia policy is that any page created in defiance of a block or ban can be deleted.

I have removed from WP:CSD#G5 the words "It is recommended that this criteria be used mostly for pages that are a part of disruptive behavior" added a few hours ago by User:Ego White Tray, because I think they undermine the whole point of G5 by opening the "but it's a useful contribution" loophole to encourage banned users to carry on socking rather than deal with the issues that led to the ban. JohnCD (talk) 16:31, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
I disagree, though I do not like that wording. We are not consistently using it the way JBW proposes. . Many of think we should not be using it that way. I do not think there is consensus to use it that way, and the rule should express what we do. As with other CSD criteria, a disputed instance should not be speedy deleted. When such material reaches afd, they are sometimes kept there. Even as JBW words it, "can be deleted" is not quite the same thing as "should be deleted". Even for such things as copyvio, which we must remove, we can delete them, but we can also rewrite them. On the rare occasions that I want to keep a page subject to G5, I normally do add something., thus removing it from the criterion. The fundamental rule is that we are making an encyclopedia. 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, we are making an encyclopedia, but that principle does not help decide this issue, where the question is whether acquiring some more content is worth the price of weakening the sanctions available for editors who will not comply with community standards by allowing them to edit in defiance of a ban, so that bans become ineffectual. The present policy may not be consistently applied, but it is quite clearly stated at WP:BAN#Bans apply to all editing, good or bad. We may decide as a matter of judgment to ignore it in particular cases, but we should remember why it is there, and we should not weaken G5 unless there is consensus to revise WP:BAN. JohnCD (talk) 22:42, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Bot?

There should be a bot that deletes rejected AFC's in Category:Declined AfC submissions that do not have any edits in over a year. There are like 60 or 70 thousand pages that meet the criteria for G13. It should also put some sort of message on the creator's page similar to or just {{Db-afc-notice}} that notifies them about it, how to request undeletion, etc. See: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Deleting_pages_that_meet_G13 Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 04:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Scottywong (talk · contribs) promised to do this, but I imagine he will want to wait until the RFC in #G13 - The discussion for the official criterion has been closed. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Oh ok. Sounds good. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 17:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
Hmm...I wonder if User:7SeriesBOT could be used to delete them afterwards, or would we need human review? (✉→BWilkins←✎) 17:52, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't think human review is needed because it is a pretty straightforward defined criteria. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 18:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
No, human review is needed It is not a straight forward criterion, as the discussion there proves. Most such articles are beyond rescue--most of the rest may be tenable, but are not worth rescuing, but a few just need the attention of any competent editor. I find I could rescue about 5% pretty quickly--sometimes in fact by just accepting them-- That may not sound like much, but it's several thousand articles (not that I personally will have time to do that many, but I expect I will do several hundred.) I can't do them if I don't see them. I think a few other people will try also, and not all of them are admins who can look at them after they are deleted. The proper check, as for any speedy, is nomination by one person, and then review by an admin. In some cases where G11 or G1 are also involved one admin many be enough--I have deleted a few dozen such old AfCs already, under the existing criteria of G11 or G12. But always at least one person. DGG ( talk ) 00:59, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Should_G13_apply_to_articles_that_have_mainspace_promise.3F. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 02:40, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. Indeed, speedy deletion of articles that have mainspace promise "defeats the purpose of speedy deletion".If there is agreement that it should not apply to article that have mainspace promise, then how can we tell without looking at them? If the agreement is that it should apply even to articles that have mainspace promise, then we should not be doing it at all. Put mote bluntly, why on earth would we want to delete tries at articles that could become articles. We're trying to make an encyclopedia, which requires articles. there are so many current possibilities, that I probably will ask for an AfC round two for up or down on whatever the final statement may be. I know whatI personally advocate: Letting WP:PROD apply to AfCs after 6 months. I am not in favor of keeping hopeless junk. I have been already deleting an average of a dozen AfCs a day. But I am also not in favor of deleting what is promising article content. Are you? DGG ( talk ) 03:11, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
As DGG has pointed out these articles require individual review - and some simply need acceptance. If that means we need more admins then the solution is to fix RFA and get more admins. If it means that AFC needs fundamental reform then I'd be inclined to agree. AFC is supposed to be a gentler way to start articles because not putting them straight into mainspace means that we can spend more time getting them to an acceptable state. But somehow it has become a more deletionist environment even than new page patrol, and articles that would not merit speedy deletion get stuck in some sort of limbo there. My preferred option would be to merge AFC back into mainspace, make unpatrolled newpages noIndexed, mark unpatrolled articles as "draft article not yet accepted into Wikipedia" and then get rid of most of the haste from speedy deletion. A bot to delete the AFC backlog without review would simply automate an unsatisfactory process. ϢereSpielChequers 03:23, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

No bot deletions. Bots are for routine uncontroversial tasks. Deleting deadend redirects is uncontroversial. Blind deleting an article someone has put some of their soul into is not uncontroversial. There is no urgency to get this done, just because there are a lot of these articles is no reason not to take care. It is fairly harmless to leave them sitting around. I agree with DGG that there is far too much of a deletionist mentality here. Our aim in sifting through abandoned drafts should be to see how many we can save, not see how many we can delete. I said somewhere above that there are alternatives to on-the-spot deletion ((e.g., move to mainspace, submit to AfC, XfD, incubate, or give to the Article Rescue Squadron). I expect that will only be a tiny minority, but they are worth looking - you won't know they're there unless you look. By the way, where is this 60-70 thousand statistic coming from? Phrases like "I heard somewhere" make me think 90% of statistics are made up. SpinningSpark 22:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

A speedy deletion criterium is per its definition uncontroversial tasks. I for one vehemently oppose blindly deleting everything that meets the 'no edit in a year' guideline, but consensus seems to gravitate there. If we are going to have that criterium, with that understanding, having an admin just do 100 a minute manually is just stupid. If we are going to have admins blindly hitting the delete button on those, it makes no sense not to have a bot do it. No bot will ever be able to judge an article like any human can, but they are perfectly capable off checking if the article is rejected, and the last edit was over a year ago. Having an admin do it blindly is just a false sense of being prudent. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
See my response at #Bot deletions: I support the mass deletion by a bot, and even if there is no consensus, we should at least delete many submissions declined by particular reasons (as e.g. "hoax" or "joke", there should be a doubled check for blank submissions which are larger than theavaerage page size as the content could be hidden by an HTML comment!) mabdul 22:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Support a bot doing this, but in a time-based, relatively slow timeframe, say 1000 per week, starting with the oldest; this way, people wanting to review and save particular ones can know beforehand which declined AfC submissions are up for deletion that week, and can check them if they want to. I would oppose a bot deleting all 50 or 100,000 eligible AfC submissions at once next week or next month. Fram (talk) 09:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I have submitted at WP:BRFA (✉→BWilkins←✎) 09:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I have no problems with a paced deletion process as Fram suggests here. 1000 per week would probably take about a year and a half to complete given new articles coming into the system, so that's probably about the slowest pace I'd support. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:45, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Support It is impossible for G13 to accomplish the goals it intends--getting rid of the real problems in the declined pile--without this automation. Manual review of the better part of 70000 articles seems a fantasy. I've seen no realistic plan for even holding the backlog of unaddressed rejected articles with anything short of automation here. (Fram's plan above would still require automation, I'm sure.) This issue has been raised several times in the thread above, but never once responded to.
I think it might be helpful to compare this with the URBLP/URBLPR effort. This is different from for three reasons: (1) there's a much higher proportion of non-notable to notable material, (2) there's a greater amount of material overall, (3) we took additional steps (BLPPROD) to drastically reduce the recreation of new problematic articles. We have none of those advantages here, and even that easier ureferenced biography effort was the source of quite a bit of editor burnout, it pushed to the edges what Wikipedia's salvage crews are realistically able to accomplish.
Finally, I believe that rejected-AfC-rescue efforts expended on 12-month rejected AfCs are fungible with those expended on 4-month-old rejected AfCs in terms of our ability to rescue articles. However, aiming at those "less than six months old" are a far wiser place to spend our efforts. The newer rejections are every bit as good as the old ones but they are more likely to be attached to editors who are still around to be engaged by our efforts. In short, we may actually get a small benefit in terms of new editor engagement by actually putting our limited resources where we still have a chance to engage new editors. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I think we may need to separately consider conduct for bots and the actual criteria. Right now, it seems that we have two bots proposed to work on G13. One bot tags the articles, and another bot deletes them. I'm wondering if we shouldn't have the tagging bot be restrictive: use the 1 year rule, absolutely no edits, for the bot. G13 would still apply to 6 months abandoned - as is distinctly favored, above - but a human being would be able to tag anything earlier than a year, or where a file renaming necessitated a maintenance edit. The deletion bot would still be able to go about its business: confirm that the AfC hasn't been edited in 6 months, except for the G13 tag. The maintenance edits are going to need an admin to assess that they weren't substantive edits anyway. So we might as well have the bots do the tedious stuff that don't need a determination, and save the human involvement for where you actually need someone to figure out whether someone was actually working on the AfC, or whether it was someone who moved something, and was just updating all the links. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:37, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Observation - if the only edits since the decline were by the declining reviewer, then I would say that no further review is needed. I'm assuming that these bot-deletions would be treated like a PROD, with notification ahead of time, some way to prevent deletion during a waiting period, and a free WP:REFUND after deletion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:01, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
    It's not a prod, so there's no set time frame between tagging and the deletion, but tagging with G-13 is supposed to be accompanied by {{db-afc-notice}}, at the same time on the editor's talk page, which is both a notification and simple REFUND instruction all-in-one (seriously simple: it's copy, click link, paste, save). Since G-13 deletions are without prejudice and can be restored or userfied without discussion, but contesting a speedy requires justification, REFUND may actually be the easier route for keeping G-13 eligible content. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:58, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Three questions about removal of a tag

Prompted by a discussion at my Talk page. I took a closer look at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion and came up with three questions. I'll list all three questions now, but will start with a discussion of the first.

  1. Define Creator The rules preclude the creator of an article from removing a CSD tag. When an admin restores a deleted article, the admin, not the original creator is treated as the article creator. Do we really mean to say that such an admin is precluded from removing a CSD tag?
  2. Non creators can remove Do we really mean this literally? If someone tags an article as an unambiguous copyright infringement, an editor with no experience in the area, as long as they aren't the creator, can remove it?
  3. Crystal timing If an article is deleted because it is too far in the future, then recreated some years later, the article itself may be substantially identical, but the arguments may no longer be valid, simply to the passage of time. Should we address this formally?

Define Creator discussion; I thought the creator of an article is the first editor. However, William noted that when he used Twinkle to add a CSD, it notified Ronhjones, so it appears Twinkle thinks the restoring admin is the creator. For the purposes of the CSD rule, though, I'm not sure that we should accept that the restoring admin is now the creator, and thus preclude form removing a CSD tag. On one hand, if the restoring admin simply restores and does nothing else, it should still be eligible for G4, as we do not grant admins the right to simply override an AfD close. However, in this case, it was restored, partly because time had passed, and it was no longer so far out in the future, and partly because there were new references to be added. I do not want to debate here whether this article should be kept, it is at Afd and can be discussed there. My narrow question is whether Ronhjones is in violation of the rules. My view is that if we really do re-assign the creator to the restoring admin (which surprises me) then it is a technical violation, but was not contemplated in the spirit of the rule. Thus we ought to either modify the CSD rule to cover this situation, or modify Twinkle so it doesn't deem that the restoring admin is the creator.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:59, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Twinkle does not override policy, so quirks in how twinkle processes articles are not reasons to re-do the policy (and, indeed, are precisely why I don't twinkle - it's rubbish). The creator is the creator, and in cases like this we might have multiple creators - the editor who started this most recent version or converted the redirect, and the editor who started the oldest deleted version (now restored). I think the debate moots that concern, though. On point, it's not a violation - Ronhjones (correctly) restored the article's history so that it could serve to inform the current AFD. It's all context.
In theory, any editor but for the creator of the page can remove a speedy tag, even on a copyvio speedy nomination. They can also be wrong. If the article is indeed copyvio (and feel free to ask them to explain how it's not when they remove the tag), tag it with {{copyvio}} and send it to AFD. Obvious Copyvio is frequently speedied at AFD. The alternative is tagging and retagging, which amounts to "It's Copyvio." "No it isn't." "Yes it is." "Nuh-uh" "YES-HUH" etc etc - not good.
As for the rest - G4 covers articles that are substantially similar to the article deleted via AFD, and for which mitigating factors do not exist. In the context of CRYSTAL deletions, and looking at the present case, I do not believe G4 would automatically apply. The mitigating factor here is time; the consensus at AFD was that an article on a Formula One season 5 years away was too much CRYSTAL Ballery to be supported. But there is also precedent to suggest that articles two years out are acceptable, with sources. It's been long enough, and facts have changed (new sources, more detailed information, etc etc) to revisit the issue. G4 lets us delete articles where someone re-posts the material just to override the AFD consensus, and that does not appear to be the case here. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 15:55, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
If someone reverts me when I tag something as copyvio, I'm going to ask them why. But I'm also going to send it to AFD with the URL in question, as that trumps CSD (and cannot be removed). The first admin who happens by will say "Yup, that's copyvio" and will delete the article. As for the issue of who the article's creator is - an admin restoring a deleted article in light of new information is nothing new. The result would have been the same, I think, if he had gone to REFUND or DRV or wherever. As you note, below, IAR was applied on the basis of the new information and on precedent. The deletion log pops up whenever you undelete a page, so clearly he was aware that the article had been deleted before, else why would he be undeleting? UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 12:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
WP:Requests for undeletion would not restore the article in main space. The page header is clear that pages deleted at AfD will be at most userfied or emailed and that the deleting admin and DRV are the proper avenues of appeal. Considering the contention at the current AfD, a free and clear allow recreation at a DRV with similar participants (most seem to be from WP:WikiProject Formula One/Members, who could be notified easily) is not a foregone conclusion. For the version recreated by Ronhjones (and with one of two sources rebutted as unconfirmed speculation), provide a draft is more likely, with a chance of send to AfD. Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
{{UND}}, specifically {{subst:UND|discussion|Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Page|Adminname}}, provides the standard decline for a REFUND of an article deleted at AfD. Flatscan (talk) 04:07, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
Had I had a long enough thought about it, I could have restored 25 of 26 revisions and not restored the G4, and we would not be having this conversation. The main intention was to get a transparent view of the very old version and allow the AfD to run smoothly - how people can claim G4 well over two years later when they cannot see the deleted version is a mystery to me...  Ronhjones  (Talk) 18:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Please don't use WP:Selective deletion/undeletion for a trivial reason like removing a tag. Would it be appropriate to use WP:Revision deletion? Flatscan (talk) 04:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with everything UltraExactZZ says above, they are spot on. Further, Ronhjones did everything correctly, and I share his bewilderment that anyone can call any page identical to any other page when they can only see one of them. Finally, any speedy deletion nomination may be, and indeed should be, challenged by any user who has a good faith belief that it should not be deleted or does not meet the criteria for a speedy deletion. Anyone can do this by posting on the talk page of the article explaining why; anyone who is not the article creator may also do so by removing the CSD template, ideally with an edit summary and/or talkpage note explaining why they have done, and optionally nominate it at the relevant XfD instead (although note WP:SK point 1). Administrators will evaluate the article against the criteria taking into account any statements made by the nominator and any made in its defence, they will then decide the article should be deleted, kept or sent to XfD for discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 19:12, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
The page log shows three G4 deletions from July 2012 to the current dispute and creation protection added at the beginning of February 2013. I see no messages to the deleting/protecting admin (User:RHaworth) and no filing at WP:Deletion review (WP:Deletion review#Purpose 3, "significant new information ... that would justify recreating"). The recreation was not unambiguously better than no article, as it was quickly listed at WP:Articles for deletion/2015 Formula One season. (The AfD has been trending keep, but four new refs were added since the G4 tag/deletion.) I prefer letting the AfD proceed over the G4 deletion. Restoring the page quickly to keep the AfD open could be justified by WP:IAR due to active discussion, such as the reasoned contributions of User:Dricherby. The log comment, "26 revisions restored: rv Deletion discussion was Three Years ago - it don't last forever - there is specific 2014 data added - take to Afd if you like.", appears to be unaware of the current (clarified Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 4 May 2013 (UTC)) AfD, so it looks more like an WP:INVOLVED reversal. Flatscan (talk) 04:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
The whole point of the full restore was to show users that G4 based on a 2010 version was not really valid - and suggest that an AfD would be a better choice, it was only after the page displayed that I saw there was an AfD already started. Hence the edit summary (with a typo - it should say 2015).  Ronhjones  (Talk) 18:34, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Sphilbrick, I think all your examples are cases where people should use their brains and not "enforce" our rules strictly. If someone is enforcing the letter of the rules instead of the spirit then I think that person is the problem, not the rules being insufficiently detailed to cover every possible exception. Gigs (talk) 14:29, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Defining creator - the person who most recently intentionally added the content that led to the speedy-deletion tag being placed is the one who should not be allowed to remove it. When I say "intentionally" I mean either they added it in the first instance or someone else took it away and they specifically restored that content knowing it was speedy-able. This does not count bots, admins undeleting a PROD without realizing that they are undeleting speedy-deletable content, a person rolling back another editor's changes not realizing he is restoring speedy-deleteable content, etc. You can argue that the person doing the restore shouldn't remove a speedy tag, and that may be good practice just to prevent arguments, but the fact that the content was deleted and later restored "without deliberate thought" does not allow the person who originally placed the content to "gain" the ability to remove the speedy deletion. If we have to make this a policy, we are probably better off saying "any editor who uploaded the content that is the subject of the speedy, whether in the first instance or as part of a revert or restore, should not remove the speedy template." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:09, 18 May 2013 (UTC)


Time Limit for G4?

Maybe we should apply a time limit on a G4 speedy? I appreciate that a lot of editors could easily see a re-created article and recognise one that had been deleted a short time previous - but when we start moving into a year or more post deletion, then maybe we should not allow that action and have a proper discussion instead. I would guess that the number of articles that are re-created after a year's passing would only be a small increase in the AfD total.  Ronhjones  (Talk) 18:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

✔ Technical 13 (talk) gives his support for this section's subject at 19:41, 3 May 2013 (UTC).
  • Oppose. Strict time limits are not needed, and indeed could be counterproductive. The requirement of G4 is that the reasons for deletion have not been addressed, not that it was recently deleted. It requires seeing the deleted version of the page and the old deletion discussion in order to assess whether the reasons why it was previously deleted still apply. Obviously the more time has passed since a deletion the greater the likelihood that more sources are available or notability has changed, but that is not always going to be the case (a young footballer who has just signed for a professional team is likely to become more notable, a 1997 musical recording is unlikely to). If an article presents the same information as the version was deleted and there is no indication that anything has changed in the real world to change the notability of that information then it gets speedily deleted as a recreation. If the article presents significant information that was not considered at the last discussion then the speedy gets declined either completely or converted to a regular deletion. It is a judgement call if the article hasn't changed but significant time has passed which might alter the notability of that information. The problem with strict time limits is that how long "significant" is depends on the subject, the sources, real world events (both planned and unexpected) and changes in Wikipedia culture. Say a time limit of 3 years was chosen, the same non-notable 2003 album, 1890s footballer or 13th Century monk could be at AfD every third year but an article where the significance of the sources changes 2 years after a deletion would be speedily deleted without thought. Thryduulf (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Minor consideration better left to admin discretion. The "substantially identical" clause is much more important. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:29, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree in principle but I think we've gradually been getting admins to apply G4 more properly by giving them corrective instruction in DRV. Jclemens (talk) 03:32, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree - but how long? In my experience, an article under the title Herbert Wiggle appearing in 2013 is probably not the same Wiggle as the one deleted in 2005, let alone the same article. If the age difference is over a year but under four, it's likely to be the same Wiggle, but a different article. Under a year, it's the same drivel as before, only with two more links to YouTube. I do decline G4s where the article is same subject, different wording. Those can be treated under whatever other CSD cat applies, or AfD if none. Or left if now showing what they didn't previously. I'd go for a year as the limit for G4. The age can be seen by non-admins. If it's not suitable and over the year, just use the other cats and procedures as though it were new. Peridon (talk) 11:17, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    A year "might" be a little too short. I'd opt for two years to be on the safe side, but wouldn't really be opposed to just one year either. Technical 13 (talk) 11:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment Can someone refresh my mind on how non-admins know an article has been previously deleted? Memory, yes, but back more than a couple of years? A currently deleted article has the deletion history visible. But with a currently extant article, I have to click on the delete button to see what's gone before. They can't. Peridon (talk) 12:14, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Topics such as Wikipedia game (AfDed in 2005) keep popping up on a regular basis without addressing any of the reasons for deletion. WP:SALTing the title has not even fixed the problem as newly registered accounts, thinking they have an original idea, just use a misspelling or slightly altered name for recreations. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day is frequently ignored and many new users fail to realize that they may not have been the first person to think of a common idea. --Allen3 talk 12:24, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    I'm not sure what the Wikipedia game is, but is it illogical to think that there may never be a suitable article with that title? As a non-admin, I have no idea what was there before, and to be honest, being an admin on other wikis including test.wikipedia, I assume that you don't either unless you either restore the old revision to see what it was or worked on it before. I've not found a way to view a deleted version without restoring it yet anyways. Technical 13 (talk) 12:30, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    An admin can look at the contents of a deleted page without actually restoring it to the encyclopedia. I guess some reliable sources could report on the game described in that article and that would allow an article. I do not see a reason to impose some arbitrary limit on how long it should be between an AFD and when the article would have to go through another AFD. Admins should be looking at the contents of the old article and the reasoning in the AFD to see if the new article addresses the concerns. If the new article does not then it should be deleted, if it does, then it shouldn't be deleted, no matter how much or little time has gone by between AFD and new article creation. GB fan 12:39, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    I guess I need to do some more research then, because I still haven't figured out how to view a deleted page without restoring it. That aside, the current wording of the criteria and what is posted in the deletion log is turning editors away because it implies that the article was deleted per discussion and may never exist on Wikipedia. Now, I know that is not what it really means, but the wording makes new users that don't know better think that. I know that is what I read when I first saw it and only a couple months of working on other stuff and reading a lot of policy/guideline/essay pages has taught me otherwise. I'm certain there are others, however, that just say, "Oh, it was deleted and can't be recreated as it is not acceptable on wikipedia" and then just walk away and give up. I ask you if that is really the message that should be getting sent to new editors. Technical 13 (talk) 12:59, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    I do not read WP:G4 as once an article is deleted by a deletion discussion it can never be created again. Can you point out what part o the criteria implies that once an article is deleted by AFD it can never be recreated? The criteria itself says: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion." That tells me, if it is basically identical to the deleted article and hasn't been improved it can be deleted. If the article has been improved then it should not be deleted under this criteria. This does take the admin reading the old article, the new article and the most recent AFD to see if it has been improved. GB fan 13:14, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    Which "assumes" that new editors can see what was deleted. However, because they can't see what has been deleted, they either say someone else has thought of this and it was turned down or they create an article with less than full effort and because it is a half-asses attempt, it is deleted as G4. No-one is going to waste hours and hours and hours creating a good article on a topic that says if their hard work is about the same topic as the previous page that was deleted, it will be deleted as well. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy type deal. I think that if it is not consensual to add a time limit to this CSD (which I think after two years tops it should go to a 7-day XfD unless it fits one of the other CSD criteria), then the message in the deletion log should be changed to encourage new editors to try creating their article using AfC. Technical 13 (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    (ec) Admins can read all deleted things (including revdel) except for oversighted stuff, which only oversighters can read. Non-admins cannot read any deleted stuff. There is no bar on using a deleted title for a new article, unless it's been salted. If salted, an admin can create the title on request if convinced that the article is going to merit a place here. G4 is for substantial re-creations of content - under whatever title - that has been deleted via XfD. Not prod or speedy. A reword containing only the same info and refs (if any) is for me not different in substance. A repost with changes that show notability and having RS should be declined on G4 - but is still liable to G11 or G12 if they are thought to apply. If it's got good sources, attack is out, and so is hoax. AfD is always an option, and it should be remembered that CSD is a shortcut for reducing the load at AfD and prod, in certain limited categories. G4 is a waste of time on articles that are old, as they can be reviewed on their current value anyway. If they're obviously A7, tag them A7. Use G4 for the rapid re-creation of recent junk, and then salt after about four tries. (And then watch for the new title...) The only way (other than long memories) that I can see of non-admins seeing that something has been deleted is if the author's talk page carries warnings of AfD (but there are SPAs too), or by viewing the 'Create page' screen in an interval between deletion and reappearance. Peridon (talk) 14:02, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    The Wikipedia Game cited last appeared as that in 2006, and actually looks quite fun in the last deleted version (and doesn't involve alcohol or vandalism). I've not looked for variants. It could possibly be a useful thing for educationalists getting kids to use the encyclopaedia. Peridon (talk) 14:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose It's the lack of addressing the reasons for deletion that's the key, and any editor can review the previous deletion discussion in order to make a reasonable effort to address them.—Kww(talk) 04:17, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment G4 is to some extent different from the other criteria because only an admin can know whether the item they are nominating has been substantially improved to address the problem, as the deleted version is not available. (I should really say not officially available, for there are various places on the web where many deleted articles will be found.) This means that editors will inevitably nominate items that are in fact substantially improved, because they cannot tell. The burden is then more than usually upon the judgement of the admin who does the deletions. I certainly hope that all of us do check, but judging whether something substantially address the problems is not always as straightforward as other speedy decisions. Fortunately, the great majority of G4s clearly and obviously represent unimproved and often unchanged versions. I hope admins give those that are changed significantly the benefit of the doubt, either by simply declining the speedy, or in borderline cases declining the speedy and instead nominating for AfD. ANd obviously anyone who is dissatisfied with a G4 deletion can and should go to Deletion Review--I wish more people would, for then either the item will be relisted or the reason why it is not adequately explained. (In the reciprocal instance of not speedy deleting, the speedy nominator could in principle go to deletion review also, but this usually makes little sense, for it is just as quick to simply list for another afd.) I would encourage Technical 13 to challenge all cases where he thinks the article could stand. My normal response would be to either send the ed a copy of the original version so they could see, or if there were some clear reason not, to explain--as for some ne of the most comprehensive collections of videotaped theatre productions in the world. [1]-- or list for AfD. I have never understood the admins who do not relist when there is a rational good faith challenge to a speedy. No matter how sure we may be, it is so much simpler to undelete and AfD than to argue about it. DGG ( talk ) 01:10, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • "And obviously anyone who is dissatisfied with a G deletion can and should go to Deletion Review".

    I think that anyone dissatisfied with a G deletion should ask the deleting admin to undelete and list at AfD. Likely outcomes: (1) The admin explains the deletion to the satisfaction of the requester; (2) The admin warns the disruptive reposter about being disruptive; (3) The page goes to AfD where the requester learns about our inclusion criteria; (4) A brief argument that leads to DRV. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

  • I thought that was clear: the meaning was "remains dissatisfied" after the deleting admin explains. But there may be some actual differences in admin style --beyond a certain point, I stop arguing and say, ok, go try to make your case if you insist on it; some other admins carry on the argument themselves for longer than I would. DGG ( talk ) 01:57, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

G13 - The discussion for the official criterion

Per a request at WP:AN/RFC, this discussion is closed with consensus for the following:
  1. An AfC draft will become eligibe for G13 after 6 months.
  2. G13 will apply to both rejected AfC drafts and unsubmitted AfC drafts
  3. G13 will apply to all articles, including those that have mainspace promise, that are older than 1 year. (It is unclear what exactly "mainspace promise" actually means.)
  4. G13 will apply anywhere there is an AFC submission template.
  5. G13 deletions should not be done by bot.
-Nathan Johnson (talk) 14:53, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is an attempt to centralize and clarify the remaining criteria up for discussion regarding what should be implemented into the criterion of G13. Below are the major topics up for debate; from what I am seeing above, all other miscellaneous proposals were either "no consensus" or "unsuccessful" per WP:SNOW: Steel1943 (talk) 02:04, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

It's been over a month, and we haven't gotten more than a trickle of input for about a week, so I've asked at WP:ANRFC for an uninvolved editor to close this discussion. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

How much time before an AfC draft becomes eligible for G13?

Since there were three time frames that were popular over the others, they are stated below. To vote, please put a hash under the timeframe of your choice, as well as your signature and any additional comments.

1 year

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous year.
  1. I think that being conservative with G13 applicability will greatly reduce any additional strain on WP:REFUND, and since AfCs must still meet BLP and copyright policy, we have a good method for dealing with definitely problematic AfC content. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 17:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. There is no harm in being over cautious. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:54, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  3. One year is really simple to explain and calculate, and people, such as tentative editors, tend to live in an annual cycle. If a page is not offensive for a week or two, then it is not offensive for a year. Keep in mind that the other G criteria remain available. When we have experience with the use and problems with G13, then modify it for efficiency. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:28, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  4. mabdul 12:11, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  5. Miniapolis 23:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
  6. This is such a landmark change (it will likely go from no criterion to the most used criterion, and will delete stuff regardless of potential merit to the encyclopedia, based on lacking the workforce to deal with it in an other way), that we should be extremely conservative with the implementation parameters. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:32, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  7. They aren't in mainspace. As long as there are no BLP or copyright issues, there is no reason they can't hang around for a while. (If they do have those issues, there are other ways to deal with them.) A year is a nice obvious time period at a glance. There is no reason to rush such a process. (Six months is a distant second choice.) LadyofShalott 12:50, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  8. Simple and can be far more sure that the user won't come back to complete their draft. Will also live with six months though; would oppose three months as too short. CT Cooper · talk 20:23, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  9. What's the rush? ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 23:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support - see Wikipedia:There_is_no_deadline. Also, real life can interfere with article drafting, and we have proven that we have enough server space to support keeping drafts around.  — TORTOISEWRATH 16:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  11. Suppory per tortoise above me. However, I'd like to point out that "deletion" doesn't free up server space. It just restricts visibility to admins. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:20, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  12. Support. Sometimes other editors can salvage a weak submission. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 00:59, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
  13. Support. On balance, this is the best starting point. By choosing 1 year, we get to see how this works out and see how editors support this. If we find out in the future that shorter is better, we can always go to a shorter time more easily then we can change to a longer time.
  14. Support but would prefer to "start at the tail" and go slow (e.g. start with 4+ years and move up 2 months every 30 days until we are at 12 months) then sit at 12 months for at least 6 months, then see if there is a consensus to move to something less than 12 months. I would have no opposition to blanking submissions after a much shorter time, such as 3 months, starting immediately. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  15. Support. Original editors should certainly have the courtesy of several months of inactivity before a rescue effort for relevant articles is undertaken by other editors. One year is the earliest non-problematic (e.g. Copy-vio, BLP) articles should be deleted. The clean-up should clearly start from the back-end and be deliberate; this should not be an effort to see how quickly we can delete everything that meets the criteria. SBaker43 (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

6 months

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous 6 months.
  1. Support 6 months. Steel1943 (talk) 08:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support, with 2nd preference for 1 year. 3 months is really too short. Fram (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support. One year would also be fine with me. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support. One year as second option, 3 months way too short... Lectonar (talk) 11:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  5. Support for 6 months. One year is too long, it doesn't take that long to know that something is abandoned. 3 months would be acceptable. Peacock (talk) 12:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  6. Support. Strikes a reasonable balance between allowing newbies to work on submissions that have a chance and cleaning out the crap in a timely manner. MER-C 12:25, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  7. Support If we do both rejected and unsubmitted drafts, I have a strong preference for them having the same time frame. The 7 vs. 10 day differences between PRODs and BLPPRODs are a slightly uncomfortable itch that one can't quite scratch. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support, but also happy with a year. Not happy with three months, as these are (theoretically, at least) works in progress. Articles that get A7 are supposed to be articles that should stand on their own feet, but don't have what it takes. ("Shaun is aaawwweeessssoooommmmmeeeee!!!!!" is never going to stand, as he obviously is very unawesome. Others can be restored easily if the author or someone else wants to have another go.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peridon (talk • contribs) 15:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC) "Ooopppsss" Peridon (talk) 21:21, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support would also be happy with a year, though three months is a bit short. Hut 8.5 15:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support - One year is also fine, three months, not really. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:31, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  11. Support, second preference one year. JohnCD (talk) 19:29, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  12. Support. As with most above, second option is 1 year. I wish those who did AFC better understood the applicability of existing criteria. When this was first implemented I started looking at at the categories for different types of rejections and after emptying out some I came across an entire category of AfCs declined as copyvios. That is, a populated category, with everything inside it being retained copyvios, all of which should have been G12'ed immediately.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  13. Support Things which are obvious no-hopers will probably be A7. (And there's always WP:IAR....) —Tom Morris (talk) 11:45, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  14. Support I think 6 months is more than enough time. Gigs (talk) 15:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  15. Support Anywhere from 6-12 months is fine with me JayJayWhat did I do? 17:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  16. support - although i would like to see any evidence of any article that had been in the AfC for longer than 3 months where anyone came in to fix it. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  17. Support, six months seems reasonable and logical. — Cirt (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  18. Support - 6 months is much better than 1 year. Command and Conquer Expert! speak to me...review me... 23:36, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  19. Support - The current policy of waiting for 1 year seems like an overly long period of time. Although I can understand the need for conservatism on such a significant issue, articles untouched for 6 months seem to have been taken off of the back burner and left on the counter. It's doubtful that anyone will return to an AfC after that period of time. I most strongly oppose a lower limit of 3 months, though. Chri$topher 15:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
  20. Support 6 months - Happysailor (Talk) 01:10, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
  21. Support 6 months seems reasonable. - Camyoung54 talk 13:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
  22. Support 6 months is plenty. I wouldn't mind three months, but there is so little support there that I may as well go for the best option that has a reasonable chance of success. There is absolutely no need to wait for a year. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:39, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  23. Support 6 months seems about right, but I am not opposed to 3 months or 1 year either. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  24. Support I think a year is too long and three months "might" not offer enough time to find research or have enough reliable sources created on something that was created fresh off the press. I think six months balances this fairly well. Technical 13 (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  25. Support 6 months is enough time to improve an article. —mc10 (t/c) 04:41, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  26. Support 6 months sounds like a reasonable amount of time to ponder improvements— Gmt2001 (talk) 14:15, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  27. Support However we define the criterion, 6 months is enough. Very little material gets improved after that point, at keast by the original author. DGG ( talk ) 03:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  28. Support 6 months sounds sensible and it's a safer option than one year for all those copyvios, neg BLPs and other nefarious submissions that slip through the net. Pol430 talk to me 19:11, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  29. Support. Six months seems like the best option, on balance. We could always increase or decrease if it proves a problematic length of time. AGK [•] 14:06, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  30. Support. I regularly come across declined, speedy-deleteable drafts (copyright infringements, spam, negative biographies, a combination thereof - the lot) that have gone two years or more without a single edit. If a user were truly committed to producing a quality article via WP:AfC, they would not leave their draft unedited for as long as a year. Six months is perfectly sufficient. SuperMarioMan 23:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  31. Support with second preference for one year. Three months is too short. - tucoxn\talk 11:06, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
  32. Support. As per JamesBwatson, I think 3 months should be enough, but the consensus seems to be in this section. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:34, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  33. Support. Three months seems too little; some Wikibreaks last that long. One year seems to be too long, so 6 seems right. Marechal Ney (talk) 21:36, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  34. Support -- Although I think 3 months is a sufficient period to wait for an editor to make an attempt to improve their submission, I'll be fine with the six-month waiting period. — CactusWriter (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

3 months

Vote here if the criterion should apply to drafts that have not been edited during the previous 3 months.
  1. Support. Consider an article that is submitted straight to mainspace and gets speedily deleted typically for A7, lack of notability. If the same article is submitted via AfC it hangs around for weeks. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support , 3 months of wait is a sufficiently long time. I suggest to analyse the statistics of abandoned article to optimise the time. I mean if most the abandoned articles at 6 month wait period and 3 month wait period are same then, why to keep the high backlog. --Vigyanitalkਯੋਗਦਾਨ 02:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support. Though a year might not be enough time to finish a doctoral dissertation, and six months could be tight for a master's thesis, we are talking about getting a one page encyclopedia article up to snuff for "C" or "Stub" status. Three months is more than enough time, and if someone has not touched it in that long then it is time to let it go and move on. ~ Ningauble (talk) 11:43, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Additional comments for G13 time

This section is for additional comments regarding this entire discussion.
  • So let's suppose in the end we get something like 40% support 1 year, 20% support 6 months, 40% support 3 months. Then what do we do? We can choose either of the extremes without offending the other. Clearly the logical choice is 6 months, even though it is the least popular, under the condition that supporters of 1 year or 3 months are willing to compromise. So I think !voters should specify their preferences should their first choice not be chosen. Otherwise, by default, 1-year !voters are expected to have a preference order of 1 year > 6 months > 3 months > reject G13. For 6-month !voters, it's 6 months > 1 year = 3 months > reject G13. For 3-month !voters, it's 3 months > 6 months > 1 year > reject G13. If your preferences deviate from these "expected" values, then be sure to make this clear in your !vote. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  • For now, the best option would be to see if any one choice has preference per WP:SNOW. If not, then those values can be determined at a later time. Right now, the point of this discussion is to centralize these values, not determine which one's vote holds more weight over the others. Steel1943 (talk) 08:55, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Comment, see User talk:Passioninyou and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Passion In You which was deleted today, but was created in November. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 15:39, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Note that I marked their user page for deletion, however not their AFC as we generally just decline as spam, however as noted the account is now indeffed and it came from the "about us" page anyway. Begonia Brandbygeana (talk) 11:12, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
That was deleted quickly because of the copyright, not G13 issues. However, I did procedurally err (and I've already noted this and said I'd avoid it in the future elsewhere) in deleting it rather than tagging it for review by a second admin. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:46, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Should G13 pertain to just rejected AfC drafts, or both rejected AfC drafts and unsubmitted AfC drafts?

There also seemed to be discussions to apply this to just rejected drafts, or both rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts. (Previously established consensus was formed that G13 should at least apply to rejected drafts.) So, which type(s) of drafts should be eligible for G13? To vote, please put a hashtag under the AfC draft type(s) of your choice, as well as your signature and any additional comments.

Rejected drafts ONLY

Vote here if the criterion should only apply to rejected AfC drafts.
  1. Support rejected drafts only. Steel1943 (talk) 08:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support. Note that "unsubmitted ones only", the option below, is not really an acceptable option, as that was clearly not what was proposed and supported in the main G13 discussion above. Including unsubmitted ones as well is a possibility, but excluding rejected drafts, what the "unsubmitted ones only" would do, would simply contradict the originally agreed upon new criterion. I have no objection against including unsubmitted ones, but I would like to have some numbers about them first. Fram (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support. We already have WP:STALEDRAFT for instance of old, unsubmitted AFCs. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support Some people may have stopped when they were almost done, and some unsubmitted AfCs might be acceptable as articles. Let's get a bot to submit them all for review first. Fine to delete immediately if they satisfy any other speedy deletion criterion, of course. --Stefan2 (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
    Was the other option ever seriously up for debate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amorymeltzer (talk • contribs) 22:27, 15 April 2013
    • The other option was essentially mentioned from time to time, but was neither formed into any type of "support/oppose" voting system for discussion, nor worded as specifically as this. Steel1943 (talk) 00:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  5. mabdul 12:13, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
    Oppose [rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts], only rejected submissions. Pages are checked fast, let us do a review on the not submitted submissions and let us review them. Then, a year later, we simply can delete them under G13... mabdul 05:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC) merged by King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:21, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
  6. Support There are situations where an editor may have written a decent draft yet hasn't been able to submit it (Regularly we receive questions of that nature because the AFC submission template was accidentally removed or changed to its collapsed format). Unlike declined drafts i would say it is preferable to look these drafts over before deleting them. Note that i am under the assumption that a bot will be utilized to delete the old 90k pages, thus the distinction between rejected and never reviewed. If this assumption is incorrect i am in favor of marking both types for deletion straight away. Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 07:51, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  7. Support this option. I could support a new prod process for unsubmitted drafts, but people should get some sort of warning before their draft goes poof. If it's hung around long enough to go "stale", 10 more days will not hurt, and might be what's needed to encourage an editor to finish up the work. LadyofShalott 12:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support although I opposed the creation of G13, and although my position was opposed it was closed as "Unanimous Consent", the only deletions that should occur, when using G13, is when the AfC draft is proposed, and fails its review. This way there is a process where it can be seen if the subject meets notable or not.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support I'm afraid there "may" be drafts that haven't been submitted that may actually be decent articles. I think they should all get their day in review. I also think that for un-submitted stale drafts, they should only get three months after rejection before being eligible for G13 as they have been sitting around for six months or more already before they are found and submitted by a bot or an AfC reviewer and shouldn't get an extra six months. Technical 13 (talk) 13:51, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support rejected drafts only, but have a process for unsubmitted drafts in AFC space as WP:STALEDRAFT doesn't apply. Recommend userfying these after 1 year and immediately applying WP:STALEDRAFT and notifying user on his talk page. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:17, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Rejected drafts and unsubmitted drafts

Vote here if the criterion should apply to both rejected AfC drafts and unsubmitted AfC drafts.
  1. Support If it's abandoned, it's abandoned regardless of whether it has been formally submitted or not. Peacock (talk) 12:20, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support. The same problems (BLP, attack, copyvio, spam) exist here, but worse because they haven't been screened yet. Perhaps the time to deletion should be increased as a compromise. MER-C 12:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support the arguments concerning the deletion of old rejected drafts also apply to unsubmitted drafts. If anything the problem should be worse because these pages haven't received any sort of review at all. Hut 8.5 15:48, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support - If they're unsubmitted and 6 months/a year old without being edited, they're stale, and should go. Unsubmitted drafts are often worse, for the reason Hut 8.5 gave. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 17:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  5. Strong Support - It has to apply to all stale drafts. The entire point is to get rid of marginal or otherwise problematic content that doesn't get reviewed by the normal editorial process. If anything, unsubmitted drafts are more problematic because they have undergone no editorial review. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 18:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  6. Support per MER-C and Hut8.5, particularly because of attack pages. SuperMarioMan has been doing a good job recently flushing out attack pages that have been lurking, sometimes for years, in the AfC archives, but we shouldn't have to rely on him to do that. JohnCD (talk) 19:33, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  7. Support. I see no good basis for making a distinction, plus the un-reviewed/screened issue noted above militates toward including unsubmitted. We are making it fairly user friendly to seek undeletion with the new mediawiki deletion dropdown summary that points to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13 (which will need to be tweaked if the criterion changes from what it was before), so I see little harm for the few people who will actually seek to continue after 6 months of inactivity.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support Subject to my caveat somewhere in this lot about the author not being around (in which case, contact should be made). As with all this stuff, if anything having real (and I mean real) potential can be rescued. I would second JohnCD's thanks to SMM - I'm amazed at the crap he's digging out of AfC (and other places). A lot of it indicates that patrolling and reviewing have tightened up, but there is some far more recent that should have been tagged on first sight - even by the most inclusionist editor. Peridon (talk) 10:29, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support , preferably with some sort of nod to active editors with inactive drafts. In that case, they can always be deleted elsewhere if necessary, and who knows, perhaps they'll be improved and mainspaced once the editor is reminded. (Removed the "preferably..." explanation, I think there are arguments on both sides of this, and I don't feel strongly about it, so I'll leave it simply at "I support some version of this option.") --j⚛e deckertalk 00:50, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
  10. Strong support - AFC isn't a free web host; it's a temporary place for potential articles. If the article was abandoned at a point where it wouldn't possibly make it into the mainspace, it should be deleted. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:10, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
  11. Mixed bag depending on timespan outcome. I would support in case of a year, but not for a shorter term. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:33, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  12. Support we already delete stale drafts unrelated to the AfC process. We go through the motions of an MfD for them, but in most cases it's uncontroversial. If it's controversial, then give them the draft back and send it through MfD if it's still objectionable for some other reason than staleness, or give them some more time to work on it. A check on how active the editor is would be fine with me and could be put into the twinkle logic. Gigs (talk) 15:57, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
  13. support -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 19:12, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
  14. Support - At anytime an AfC submission about a non-notable subject is rejected and has no potential of ever going into mainspace, or where the draft has no chance of being submitted as its primary contributor has ceased editing or been blocked, it makes sense to delete them. But anything shorter than a 6-month timespan should go to MfD instead, unless the editor responsible for the draft/submission has been indeffed for any reason. hmssolent\You rang? ship's log 01:14, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  15. Support, essentially per PCock (talk · contribs), above. — Cirt (talk) 18:15, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
  16. Support: 6 month old denied drafts, 12 month old unsubmitted drafts seems to me to be the best way to go about this. — Train2104 (talk • contribs) 20:51, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
    I would be happy with that as well, but I'm just a bit worried about having too many different criteria. My understanding is that the more complex the CSD eligibility, the more likely we are to have errors. So I think we would want to establish a pretty compelling justification for two separate timeframes. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:39, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
    Vanisaac, my thoughts exactly. That was the reason why the section below had to be put on hold, at least until the basic points of this criterion get ironed out. Steel1943 (talk) 06:53, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
  17. Support Miniapolis 21:33, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
  18. Support Writing an article-like page not in article space and then walking away and leaving it amounts to using Wikipedia as a web host. There is no good reason at all for treating such a page as more acceptable than an submitted article which has not succeeded. JamesBWatson (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  19. Support Wikipedia is not a web host. If an editor stops working on an unsubmitted draft for a year, it is at least as unuseful as a submitted draft that hasn't been edited for a year.  — TORTOISEWRATH 16:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  20. Support. We shouldn't make an exception for drafts that haven't been submitted. If authors want to get their drafts back after they have been deleted, they can always make a request at WP:REFUND. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:59, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  21. Support Unsubmitted drafts should not be indefinitely allowed to remain; they should be subject to the same guidelines as other drafts. —mc10 (t/c) 04:42, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  22. Support No matter if a draft is submitted or not, abandonment is abandonment and we do not need abandoned drafts cluttering AfC — Gmt2001 (talk) 14:13, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  23. Suppoert If it's hopeless it's hopeless; anyway, the manner in which the AfC system marks drafts as submitted is indecipherable and inconsistent. DGG ( talk ) 04:01, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  24. Support pretty standard housekeeping. Pol430 talk to me 18:47, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  25. Same rules apply - unsubmitted are even more abandoned. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:11, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  26. Support - I would say it is even more abandoned if it is unsubmitted than rejected. Command and Conquer Expert! speak to me...review me... 22:38, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
  27. Support. Good housekeeping, and protects the integrity of our projectspace from unvetted psuedo-articles. AGK [•] 14:08, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  28. Support. I think that restricting the criterion's application to declined drafts would allow far too many undetected BLP/copyright violations and unencyclopaedic advertisement/vanity pieces to slip through the net. It would also do nothing to counter the impression of some (by no means all) new editors that Wikipedia is little more than a free webhosting service, where low-grade material can be kept on indefinitely without any prospect of re-evaluation or management. SuperMarioMan 23:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  29. Support per SuperMarioMan above me. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:16, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  30. Support per Cncmaster and JamesBWatson. - tucoxn\talk 11:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
  31. Support also per Cncmaster and JamesBWatson. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:36, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  32. Support -- as already stated by others: Drafts could be considered even more abandoned when unsubmitted, Wikipedia is not a webhosting service, and there are methods for requesting un-deletion for the occasional disputed deletion. — CactusWriter (talk) 13:29, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
  33. Support. AfC should be used for articles in development, not as an archive of abandoned efforts. ~ Ningauble (talk) 11:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Additional comments for G13 AfC type(s)

This section is for additional comments regarding this entire discussion.

If this isn't expanded to include unsubmitted articles, it seems to me that submitting unsubmitted drafts is a plasuaible alternative. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:17, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

If the unsubmitted stuff has been around for a year and is clearly AfC stuff, I'd say definitely plausible - if the author has not edited for at least six months. If it's a user space draft, and the author is still around, then no. Peridon (talk) 15:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
I'd say more generally, "if the author is still around, ask first", yes, for sure. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:46, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but if they don't agree, what then? Do we then require them to submit their AfC? How long do we have to wait for a reply? You are suggesting a process that is going to absolutely swamp efforts to clean out all this content that is not currently under any editorial review, because every single article has to be researched as to whether a contributor has edited in X amount of time, and then you have to remember to go back and check on their response. That is a huge management problem replicated over tens of thousands of articles. As it is currently implemented, if the author is still around, they'll get a notice and instructions for WP:REFUND if they want to userfy. If it turns out that the process is bringing too much traffic to REFUND, then we can look at tightening up on the criteria, but convoluted is not a good CSD process, and is directly antithetical to how CSD works: "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag", and "A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the Click here to contest this speedy deletion button which appears inside of the speedy deletion tag." Why does the standard CSD process, plus the additional G13 notification requirement and the REFUND process not work for you? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 21:40, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm, help me out, how many of these, that haven't been touched for six months, are still the work of active editors? I'd assumed a very small percentage. As for process, I'm more than happy with "work on the article or it will be submitted next week for you." That's lighter weight than a REFUND, if there are going to be a high percentage of REFUNDs for the relevant cases. --j⚛e deckertalk 22:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
If it's as small a percentage as you think, then the effort to check on the contributions of an editor for each AfC is even more onerous, and having to check back is even more of an outlier in process. Not to mention that we would have to find some sort of definition of an active editor. Does one edit this month count? How about several dozen three months ago? Again, why is a REFUND to user space inadequate to such a minor concern? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
The check on the contributions of an editor is easily calculated by a bot. A REFUND will require human attention, and it annoys a well-meaning active editor in the case of a well-meaning active editor. Annoying existing editors isn't minor, it's part of why we have an editor retention project. That having been said, I don't hate the REFUND answer, I just lean the other way with what I know so far, please note I haven't given a support or oppose on this question. --j⚛e deckertalk 06:27, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Keep in mind it will reduce load at MfD, so much of what we see there could have just been speedy deleted. If it is forced through MfD, then a REFUND might fail due to consensus against keeping. Speedy deletion with no bias against giving it back to them if they ask makes more sense in my eyes. We can always monitor the situation at REFUND and if it's overwhelming, we can change the policy again. We don't have to try to speculate about all the potential repercussions right now, we can try it and see. Gigs (talk) 15:54, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
Fair enough. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:36, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
"I'm sorry, but if they don't agree, what then?" If any editor in good standing doesn't agree with a deletion, then it is not speediable. Take it to MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
I still think that an AfC page should not be speedied if its original author is active. Checking on this should be easy for a bot, and such cases are supposedly very rare. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 06:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
Well, that's something, although I'm wondering on what basis you ask for MfD; but I was actually talking about the larger problem of what to do. If the author objects, do we give them X amount of time to submit? Do we just ignore it for another (year/6 months) until it comes up for G13 again? How much notice do we have to give them before just deleting the junk? You have suggested the beginnings of a procedure; I want to know the other three quarters. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 19:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
I ask for an MfD on any userspace content where something thinks it should be deleted and the user does not.

If the author objects, it should NEVER be speediable per G13. Better to userfy for them, with MfD being an option at all times. The problem with AfC is the massive ammount of abandoned material. The very few pages where an active user actively speaks for the material are not the problem with old AfC. If the author ever objected, use MfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:34, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

So are you saying that a G13 eligible AfC should be automatically userfied if the editor objects? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 03:19, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
If an AfC author objects, options include: Mfd; userfication; leave it alone; help the author improve it; help the author understand the project. The intent of G13 is to deal with abandoned submissions. If someone is defending the existance of an old uneditied rejected AfC submission, its not abandoned. This is extremely hypothetical, isn't it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:37, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
We seem to be agreed on (1) removing material that is not ever conceivably usable for articles (2) removing material that nobody is working on that is not reasonably likely to be made into articles by them or anyone else (3) deferring action on material that, while harmless, is unlikely to make an article, but possibly still is being worked on, (4) not removing material that might reasonably make an article and possibly is still being worked on.. But we do not seem to be agreed on (5), the advisability of removing material that might reasonably make an article but is clearly not being worked on.
We seem to have lost sight that there is no need for this process to be fast -- in the sense that speedy deletion of harmful material must be fast. We are all agreed that it ought to be easy, because of the large amount of material to deal with.
I therefore suggest that we are discussing the wrong procedure: the appropriate process for material that should be deleted but is not of any actual urgency is Prod. When material is exposed to the community for a week, it is up to those who might be interested in a subject o pick it out and work on it or at least set it aside for working on. I therefore simplify further my original simplified proposal: after 6 months inactivity, AfCs, submitted or not submitted, be subject to Prod. If the Prod is removed, they are then, as now , subject to MfD. I can't see how anyone could say why a faster procedure than 7 days is necessary for already 6 month-old material, Prod already is subject to refund--we need no special provision. Prod can be for any reason justifying deletion--we need not try to find special rules. Prod can be removed by anyone -- people can use their own standard of what is rescuable. All we might need is the way of special rules is that the prod is repeatable after another 6 months. I think we could easily accommodate 40 or 50 a day into the prod stream. , which would clear them out in a year or so--perhaps quicker if we made a effort to stop the ones that could go by existing speedy General criteria. DGG ( talk ) 04:12, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
DGG, I was actually thinking along the same lines regarding this prior to trying to figure out some way to get this discussion arranged in a way that would be a bit simpler, and here's a proposal that I came up with that could possibly fall in line with some of these thoughts: when an article is speedy deleted for G13, there should be a bot created that scans the recently deleted articles for the G13 "proof of deletion" in the deletion notes, finds the original author of the draft in the edit history, then posts a notification in a new section on the user's talk page about how to go to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13 to revive that article. I could see some editors taking advantage of this, but not all, and not even most. (On a sidenote, there is an editor who stated trying to build such a bot to perform such a task, but I'm not so sure how far along that task is.) Steel1943 (talk) 04:26, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Or, as is discussed in the #Implimentation section, above, we place the {{Db-afc-notice}} on the user page. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:59, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
Ah, there's already a template created just as I was stating, it seems. Thanks for pointing that out; that whole conversation seemed to have been missed in the whole lot of discussion happening right now. So, that template ... could either be manually put on the article creator's page by the deleting administrator, or a bot. Either way works ... as long as the author of the draft is notified of the deletion and the WP:REFUND/G13 process. Steel1943 (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I personally believe it should be mandatory to place it, which is one of the reasons why I so strenuously object to getting permission from still active editors to delete their stale AfCs. If you require notification of REFUND, there's no reason to start out with some onerous permission scheme. The back side of that is that if we have a high REFUND rate, then it probably would be better to get permission from editors, but we won't figure that out until we actually start implementing deletions and doing the db-afc-notice. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 08:25, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I strongly agree with DGG and Steel about a prod process, similar to BLPprod. If it's hung around long enough to go "stale", 10 more days will not hurt, and it might be just what is needed to encourage an editor to finish up the work. LadyofShalott 13:13, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
I've proposed prod for drafts before, it met a lot of opposition. Hopefully consensus has changed on that idea. Gigs (talk) 14:36, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
Again, PRODding stale drafts will just overload the system, and it won't decrease the backlog. Also, what about including Wikipedia:Article Incubator pages that have been unedited in a year (or six months, if that is what is implemented)? That would take some more work away from the MfD system, and those articles are very similar to AfCs in some ways (especially as 90% at least will have been previously deleted due to lack of notability, or something similar.) Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:42, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
The incubator is basically dead. I think we need a little more decisive solution for the stale incubated articles. Gigs (talk) 20:04, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
Prodding will not overload the system. Put in 50 articles a day, a week later 90% of them get deleted without anyone being worried about it, and nobody having to do any more screening than they want to. We may have to revisit the 10%, but the problem has been reduced by an order of magnitude. It's just as easy for us admins who have to do the deletion--in fact, it's easier, because we can assume that the 7 days will have led to the rescuable being rescued, and only a sanity check is needed. It's just as easier or easier for the people nominating for speedy--ig they make an error, there will be time for it to be picked up. Prod is a very safe process, and an effective one. If many should be removed, and challenged at mfd, and deleted there, yes, then we will need to revisit the problem. But let's try the easy way first. I am every bit as interested in this being easy as it being safe, because I know I'll be doing a good deal of the deleting.
The reason I don't want to rely entirely on Speedy followed by REFUND, is that people other than the original author may be interested in fixing an article. With prod, they have a chance to learn about it.
Of all the people discussing this, how many are working on the actual parts of the backlog we can already uncontroversially work on? There are several thousand articles tagged for G11, and I'm going through them. If you want the junk deleted, put some work into it, and nominate them. I assure you they won't be there at CSD for very long. DGG ( talk ) 03:36, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Using a PROD method is pointless, as if it doesn't overload the system, the backlog will increase, not decrease. What's the point of waiting another 7 days when something hasn't been touched for 6 months or a year? All it is, is yet more pointless red tape which we should avoid. Also, why should an admin have to waste time diligently checking through a long-abandoned draft, when they could be doing much more constructive things? The CSD proposal is far more efficient. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 07:14, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Still this discussion? DGG, you went wrong at "Put in 50 articles a day"; put in 50 articles a day and the backlog of stale drafts will only grow, not shrink. Put in 100 articles a day and you may keep it barely as it is, put in 200 articles a day and you will tackle it. Very few people seem to be enthusiastic about the idea of increasing ProD with 200 pages a day. Fram (talk) 08:41, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
  • There is a simple solution to this: have a bot notify the author(s) 3 weeks (or some other period) before the expiry of whatever is decided the "stale" period is going to be. The bot can deliver a message saying to the effect "please make a token edit to the page if you don't want it deleted". That will be totally transparent to those involved with removing stale pages and would not slow the system at all. If they do make an edit the page won't get tagged for CSD in the first place so no effort needed looking into case by case. SpinningSpark 06:36, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Should G13 apply to articles that have mainspace promise?

collapse top|This whole discussion defeats the purpose of defining speedy deletion criteria. Steel1943 (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Uncollapsing. Just because something can be deleted via speedy deletion doesn't mean it has to be or that it can be done by bot. ϢereSpielChequers 03:36, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

AfC rejects articles that may be suitable for mainspace: the criteria for being accepted at AfC are more strict than the speedy deletion criteria for articles. Do we want to move some of those articles to main, rather than deleting them? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:41, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of should G13 apply to articles that have mainspace promise?

Isn't there a WP:WikiProject Abandoned Drafts that might be interested in the AfCs that were abandoned but "almost" are acceptable? Technical 13 (talk) 14:34, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

That project seems to be largely inactive at the moment, and if their list of articles moved to mainspace is at all accurate they've only ever fixed up a few dozen drafts. I doubt this would result in any significant action. Hut 8.5 15:26, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

No, delete every draft older than a year

  1. support This process is never going to work if every article has to be reviewed manually. If someone does look at an article and sees promise in it, it's up to them to start editing it (which will protect it from deletion). Mangoe (talk) 16:32, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support - Mangoe hit it right on the head there. All this detritus that people are trying to add on is going to kill actually having a workable process. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 18:21, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support not that I object to people moving these things into mainspace, but I do object to making people examine submissions one by one for potential viability before deleting them. If we have to put in that kind of work then, as noted above, the process won't be workable. Hut 8.5 18:32, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support Mangoe said it. Personally, I doubt that there will be all that much that's savable without a complete rewrite (jack up the radiator cap and fit a new car underneath it...). The stuff we're talking about isn't near miss FA material. It's mainly crap, waffle, promo, copyvio (often promo anyway), and so on. Those of us in the deletion business will know rescuers if we see anything worth rescuing. Anyway, DOES AfC apply tougher standards than CSD? If they're rejecting articles that could stand in main space, there's something seriously wrong, and it needs looking into. Peridon (talk) 18:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  5. Comment How does an admin deleting this with no further check differ from a bot deleting these articles? I trust any editor to have better judgement than a bot, but I trust a bot to be able to check faster and more efficiently if the article is rejected, and if the last edit is more than a year ago. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:09, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  6. Support per Mangoe. Anyone who thinks an article can be salvaged is welcome to do that, and just as with PROD an admin reviewing a G13 can decide not to delete, but we should not require a review process. JohnCD (talk) 19:14, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  7. Support It is easy to create stubs in a day; one can do this directly in mainspace.  — TORTOISEWRATH 16:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support. This would allow a bot to do the deletions, and the backlog might be unmanageable otherwise. As I said above, if authors want to recover drafts that have been deleted, they can always use WP:REFUND. (Also, in my case it should be every draft older than 6 months, not older than a year.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:03, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support - For any other solution, who would bell the cat? --j⚛e deckertalk 07:21, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support per above. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 16:40, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  11. G13 is a speedy deletion criterion. Get rid of everything eligible for it, without prejudice. There may be some gems among old AFC submissions, but it is highly unlikely - hardly worth looking for them. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:41, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  12. Support. If anyone thinks any submission has value, they need only move it to their userspace. Others have already pointed out that there are other far more worthy backlogs. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:31, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  13. Support Agree with SmokeyJoe here. If the article shows promise, then someone can move it to their own userspace or just start editing it where it is— Gmt2001 (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  14. Support The burden should fall on the article creator to improve an article to appropriate standards. If it has not been touched in a year, then it should be deleted, regardless of its current state. —mc10 (t/c) 03:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  15. Per above. As always, the reviewing admin can move to mainspace/decline the CSD nomination if warranted. There are more important backlogs than this. MER-C 11:58, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  16. Support If it's been abandoned for over a year, it is unwanted. In the hypothetical case where someone wants it years later, it can be undeleted/userified. Peacock (talk) 17:20, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  17. Support Per Mangoe and HUT. Pol430 talk to me 18:49, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  18. Support per Mangoe and Mr Stradivarius. AGK [•] 14:09, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  19. Oppose as strongly as possible Every article can be looked at. Since 80% can be immediate rejected, that reduces the size of the ones that to be serious considered to a reasonable number. I have been going through them doing this--it would be immensely easier if someone figures out how to get some indication of subject field. I thought the idea here was to build at encyclopedia and its the content that's important. If this actually goes through in this manner, I will probably screen every one of them as far as I am able in the hope to keep ahead of the blind deletions. It would help if we figured out at least a sequence to go, so there is a chance for those who might want to rescue--that;'s what we did with unsourced BL:Ps, and it worked . 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 20:56, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
  20. Oppose To blindly delete a potential article based on its age seems to go against the entire premise that CSD was built on, to quickly handle the most uncontroversial and obvious deletions where the outcome if it were taken to AFD is certain. How long before we expand it to cover abandoned stubs in main space? Some kind of review system that requires more than a single click of the button is needed. I don't think we need a bloated bureaucratic system to deal with these older submission, but surely we can do better than this and add a bit more oversight. There is no deadline. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 14:07, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
    • There is no deadline works both ways, there is no deadline to finish this, not having an article is not a big deal either. If this process is made too complicated, cumbersome, or time-consuming, it simply won't get done, and while you will keep some potential articles, you will keep a lot of copyvios and BLP violations as well. This area has existed for years, and no one was interested in patrolling it (either to delete those that fit G10, G12, ..., or to work on rejected, abandoned, but somewhat promising drafts). Going back to the status quo is not a solution, but it will probably be the result if your (and even more DGGs) opposition would prevail. Note that your comparison between CSD and AfD (and the resulting slippery slope) obviously doesn't apply, these would be MFDs, not AFDs. Fram (talk) 14:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  21. Support The 100,000 rejected AfC submissions and potentially magnitudes more of unsubmitted ones will never get reviewed, and this will have been a waste. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:20, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  22. Support - if nobody has cared enough to edit the article in a year and the community is given a "head start" before we implement this so they can review articles before "the process" nukes them, then it's better to just sweep them all away. I know of at least one editor who is slowly going over at least a subset of long-ago-declined AFC submissions and as a result at least 1 has been re-reviewed and accepted. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  23. Support. AfC should be used for articles in development, not as an archive of abandoned efforts. ~ Ningauble (talk) 11:49, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

If an article is at least B quality it should be moved to mainspace, rather than deleted

  • Comment If an article is good enough in any editors eyes to have hope, all they have to do is make an edit and the clock starts over. If you see an article that is B (or C, or Start, or GA or FA) quality and you know that if you do not edit it that it may die, I have to wonder why you didn't click the edit button. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

If an article is at least C quality, and it is not promotional, it should be moved to mainspace rather than deleted

  1. Support. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
  2. I'd go further and say not "overly promotional". Yes there will be lots of crap that an admin can delete with minimal review, but we need that review to take place as there will be incorrectly declined articles and articles which have subsequently been fixed but not rereviewed. There is a fundamental difference between enabling speedy deletion subject to an admin's judgment and automating it. ϢereSpielChequers 03:35, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

If an article is at least C quality it should be moved to mainspace, rather than deleted

If an article does not meet the A criteria for speedy deletion, nor any non-13 G criteria for speedy deletion it should be moved into mainspace rather than deleted

If an article shows promise it might in the future meet the speedy deletion criteria for article space, it should be moved rather than deleted

If an article might be able to pass AfD, even as a stub, it should meain in AfC but not be deleted

  • Yes This is what makes sense to me. I've been examining cross sections of articles--about 1/10 of them have some degree of possibility. The idea that the original editors might take them up again even if deleted is unrealistic--the more likely course is that if they are around to be worked on, someone will work on them. I'm really puzzled at how this discussion as gone. Everyone wants to discard hopeless attempts at articles, but the majority seem to want to discard even the promising ones. There is obviously something I don't understand--all previous attempts at mass deletion were at least on material that was radically unsatisfactory in some definite way, not merely unfinished. DGG ( talk ) 05:11, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Should G13 only be valid in WT: namespace?

According to the discussion and question at WT:Twinkle#CSD G13, the Twinkle people (heaven thank them) seem to think that this criteria only applies in in the Wikipedia talk: namespace. Is this how it should be, or should it be usable in any namespace so long as the article has the {{Afc submission}} template on it? Technical 13 (talk) 14:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Good point, but limiting this criterion to project space might invite gaming. OTOH, I'd love to see at least one project-space-only criterion, just for the sake of completism. So what'll it be, G13 or W1? szyslak (t) 14:22, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Technically the question is G13 or WT1... ;) Technical 13 (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Support anywhere there is an AFC submission template

  1. Technical 13 (talk) 14:00, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  2. As long as AfC only uses the Wikipedia talk namespace the question is purely academic, and if AfC does ever change its working pattern then the criterion would have to be changed to reflect that. As far as Twinkle goes it might make sense for the software to reject any attempt to tag pages for G13 outside project talk space even if the criterion does technically apply elsewhere. Hut 8.5 15:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    AfC submissions are often made outside of the WT namespace, I don't know how many rejected entries stay outside of it, though, since the usual helper scripts seem to only work in WT space. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:16, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    The reason I decided to pose this question is because I often enough find submissions in Wikipedia:Articles for creation/ - User: -- User talk: Technical 13 (talk) 15:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    Yep, and even rejected submissions often end up outside of WT space. Examples:
    User space: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
    User talk space: [6]
    WP space: [7], [8]
    I'm pretty sure I've seen one in article space (as a sub-article!) (The article I was thinking of wasn't an AfC, nevermind this)
    Anyway, that's some data. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:26, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    I see, I wasn't aware of that. In that case it definitely needs to be applicable outside the Wikipedia talk space. Hut 8.5 20:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. Support outside of article space. If someone creates an article in article space and then submits it, and gods I hope that doesn't happen often, I'd be tempted to consider that as an article. However, I really don't care if Twinkle enforces that restriction, it's enormously infrequent. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:36, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  4. Support. At least AFC submissions are valid in the WP space, many reviewers decline submissions in the User/User talk space as they were submitted throught the {{userspacedraft}} template (instead of moving them "by hand"). mabdul 22:30, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  5. Support There seems to be plenty of AfC submissions in a users own space, so G13 should be valid in those too— Gmt2001 (talk) 14:25, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  6. support Whatever we do , it should not be limited by technical considerations, especially considering the extreme erraticness of what is included in the AfC process; the relationship between it and items in user space is variable, as many items ihave been arbitrarily moved to AfC, as "the preferred location,". Editors have been very erratic about moving material to and from AfC, and where they place them. An effort is made to put them in WT space, but it is not always complete or successful. DGG ( talk ) 05:52, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  7. Category:AfC submissions in userspace says it all. MER-C 11:56, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  8. Support, especially for userspace. Abandoned drafts are still abandoned wherever they reside. Peacock (talk) 17:22, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  9. Support The housekeeping should extend to userspace drafts, that for whatever reason, have not been moved to WT:AFC space. Pol430 talk to me 18:50, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  10. Support Abandoned drafts in userspace regardless of whether or not they have an AfC tag are routinely deleted anyway. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:22, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  11. Support in reasonable namespaces like the usual WT:AFC/ and User: subspace, WP:AFC/ sub-space, variant spellings of WT:AFC/ and WP:AFC/ sub-space, etc. Anything found outside of these spaces should be flagged for human attention to figure out why they got there in the first place, and this flagging should happen well before the draft is over a year old. Updated per some opposes below: Anything in a user's sub-space should only be deleted after a long warning period so they can edit-and-save and a no-questions-asked (other than a cursory check for COPYVIO/BLP/other-delete-on-site checks) REFUND policy in case they missed the warnings. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:53, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  12. Obviously. Why would it make any kind of difference? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:46, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  13. Obvious support - If it has an AfC submission template, it's an AfC. Doesn't matter whether it's in the AfC space, or in some deep, murky part of Wikipedia. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 07:09, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Support only in Wikipedia_talk

  1. G13 should explicitly exclude userspace drafts: I think this was discussed earlier. It should be restricted to subpages of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation (and possibly Wikipedia:Articles for creation, which seems to have some older stuff underneath it). — This, that and the other (talk) 06:43, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  2. Support Only AfC subpages. Consider this a conservative first round. Broaden later maybe. Broadening now breaks the original proposal and previous concensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. Absolutely not for active editors. If there is a problem with having one of their drafts hanging around then go talk to them about it, or tag it under another CSD. There would be a massive clearout in my userspace if this were implemented, I have literally dozens of drafts that have not been touched in years, but I am definitely actively working through them. Inactive users are a different question, keeping abandoned drafts forever is not doing anyone any good, but six months (which seems to be how the RfC consensus is shaping up at the moment) is much too short, editors frequently disappear for six months when final exams are coming up. Even a year is too soon - maybe five years, and even then I don't think the appropriate action would be to delete without process. A better scheme would be to move them somewhere where they can be reviewed and improved (e.g., straight into mainspace, submit to AfC, XfD, incubate, or give to the Article Rescue Squadron as appropriate). SpinningSpark 09:16, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    Are your userspace drafts declined AfC submissions? Because in order for them to be tagged as G13 they would need to have been not edited in a year and be declined AfC submissions with the AfC template on them. Technical 13 (talk) 22:49, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
    No, they're not. I wasn't thinking when I used myself as an example. But I still would not support. SpinningSpark 23:01, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Bot deletions

There is a lot of talk in the voting above about allowing bots to carry out G13 deletions. I do not see this as being in any way acceptable. Bot deletions have not been proposed anywhere as far as I can see, so whatever the result of the AfC, it is not a licence to let bots loose on this task. I appreciate that the vast majority of these articles are rubbish and am cool with allowing deletion without any preconditions. I am not cool with deletion without even a cursory look in from a human. Very unlikely I know, but it's always possible that someone has written an FA class article and had a heart attack before they could press the submit button... SpinningSpark 17:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Isn't it more unlikely in the case of those articles which have already been rejected? --j⚛e deckertalk 17:40, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Spinning, would you be opposed to semi-bot deletions? This would manifest as a user with AWB loading a list of G13 submissions and pressing delete. I would like to mention there will initially be thousands of articles needing to be tagged and deleted. Technical 13 (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Tens of thousands, actually, I heard "60,000 to 70,000" used somewhere here, and it sounds right. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:18, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Oh! How about this Spinning... "Most" of the "declined" submissions have a timestamp on the template saying when the article was declined. Would you be opposed to a bot going through and deleting all G13 tagged articles that had no edits between the date of declination and the current time (ignoring the tagging with G13 itself of course)? Technical 13 (talk) 18:24, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm cool with AWB assisted deletion as long as a human is taking responsibility for it and has actually looked at the page. What I don't want to be hearing is "there is nothing wrong with this deletion because the bot has approval" and other such responses. As long as a human has looked at the article, even cursorily, then I think it's ok. Deleting completely blind without seeing what has gone is not ok. There is no urgency to get this done. As long as they can be deleted faster than new ones are added the backlog will eventually be cleared. I might be persuaded that very short (one sentence) articles completely devoid of references could be bot deleted. How much of the backlog would fall into that class? SpinningSpark 05:20, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
There are almost 100,000 in Category:Declined AfC submissions. It would be impossible otherwise. Ramaksoud2000 (Talk to me) 20:50, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Many articles are declined since years and not touched by anybody (even bots!). I know that the possible that there is a false/positive rate, but do we really want to "keep" declined (and I'm only talking about declined!) submissions which aren't touched since years, or declined as "merge to", "already exists", "submission is a joke", "blank", etc. should be kept and reviewed by an human? We might distinguish by the decline reason at least! mabdul 22:35, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I could go along with "joke" and "blank" declines being bot deleted. But if a submission was declined as "merge" then that is what should happen, it should be merged. An "already exists" submission might also contain material that could usefully be merged and thus requires human review first. SpinningSpark 10:49, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
I have been rechecking materials in the various categories, and there are several problems with using it as a guide for a bot. The most critical one is that the categories of reason are rather frequently assigned incorrectly. Even for what ought to be as plain as "blank", I've found instances where people simply picked the wrong item from the scroll-down list of reasons, often just as a slip of the mouse. More worrisome, is that some of the articles listed as blank are not in fact blank, but have been added to after the review, but not reviewed again. But a substantial number of the ostensible blanks are actually afcs that have been withdrawn, and could and should have been immediately deleted as G7, sole author requests deletion. The afc system is so inadequate that there was no way of checking on these, and they have survived till the present. I suppose a bot could be designed to verify that nothing ever was added, and no later edits made, but and that there is in fact no content, but a person could do this better. For "joke" also, I have come across gross errors. Most recently, I found that someone had marked as "joke" an article on Tullius Servus, one of the early kings of Rome. The naive afc article gave some unlikely-sounding highlights of his legendary career, and the equally naive reviewer didn't realize it was an actual semi-historical person. (of course the article should have been removed, probably under under G6 , as essentially a partial duplicate.) Early in my WP career, I did similarly for what foolishly seemed to me the impossibly strange bio of a baseball player. I do not see how a bot could be designed to catch erroneous use of "joke". 'DGG (at NYPL) (talk) 19:07, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

'and in fact at least one administrator (whom I have notified) is already doing deletions single handed as if they were a bot, at the rate of over 20 a minute. As far as I can tell, they are not even looking at the articles, but maybe they've figured out how to do it at that speed. So far, in their work in the last day or so, I have already identified at least two rescuable articles: one head of a university, one person who meets WP:CREATIVE as the author of a several books, one of which has been made into a notable film. I've done both of them, and am looking for others. (I will say that if they looked only at the titles, both of them might have looked improbable). I consider this an unfortunate but convenient example of the reason why this sort of deletion must be regulated or modified or qualified in some manner. DGG ( talk ) 04:12, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Article Incubator?

Is this going to apply to the drafts in the WP:Article Incubator ? -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

My gut says this is a case that might be best excluded, there's only about 100 articles there, and, if I understand the usual path to the incubator, there was, for most of these, a specific community consensus for the specific article to give it a chance at retention. That's a small enough patch that I'd think MfD could handle any that needed to go, and that would honor the preexisting, specific consensus. --j⚛e deckertalk 04:53, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New criteria 2

Since there are objections that my first proposal was too nebulous, can we please approve this:

Under US law editors uploading or using of sexually explicit photos may be required to provide documentation establishing that the subjects are at least 18 years of age. Documentation may be submitted to OTRS. Any sexually explicit photos lacking proper documentation will be removed from pages and the media file may be speedily deleted if hosted on Wikipedia. In cases where "sexually explicit" is debatable, there will be a community discussion before deletion. For the purposes of this policy, "sexually explicit" includes the depiction of sexual activity, sexual arousal of the subject, or poses designed to arouse the viewer. Typically, medical, artistic, and educational photos are not sexually explicit. "

Under this policy, artistic nudes such as Virgin Killer would not be sexually explicit, nor would a photo of a naked baby, nor a child in a bathtub, nor a medical exam, nor childbirth. Sexually explicit photos are NOT banned nor censored. The uploader merely needs to provide the LEGALLY REQUIRED evidence that the subject is not a minor. If editors don't like the law, they should take it up with Congress, not Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia servers are hosted in the United States, Wikipedia should endeavor to comply with the law, and to make sure its volunteers are in compliance. It is not acceptable for Wikipedia to disavow responsibility and leave volunteers exposed to arrest and prosecution for uploads found to be in violation. Make no mistake, just because nobody has been prosecuted yet, does not mean editors are safe. When the law becomes involved, there is no anonymity: they can get your IP address from Wikipedia, and get your name from your ISP. Jehochman Talk 13:58, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

No, doesn't cover it at all. Jehochman Talk 17:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • This is still pretty subjective and not the sort of thing speedy deletion criteria are for. Now an individual administrator is being asked to evaluate the artistic or educational value of an image. If a policy has to be implemented for legal reasons then it ought to be drafted by actual lawyers, not amateur editors. Geni does also have a point above: it isn't a great idea to draw attention to these images by labelling them with a distinctive speedy deletion criterion. Hut 8.5 15:08, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, tell me how the media on Ejaculation are not sexually explicit photos/videos of real people of unknown (and thus possibly illegal) age? Some edge cases need to be discussed, but others are pretty much obvious. Jehochman Talk 17:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
If we simply create a criterion for sexually explicit images, then it will be applied to all images someone thinks are sexually explicit, blatant or not. We could create a criterion which says ambiguous cases should be sent to FFD, but deciding whether or not something is an ambiguous case is itself a highly subjective judgement. For similar reasons we don't have a speedy deletion criterion for original research, even blatant cases. And, of course, all this assumes we are legally required to implement such a policy, a decision which is best left to more qualified people. Hut 8.5 08:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
First, we don't need to create a criteria because "sexually explicit" is a legal term that is already defined by 18 USC 2256. Simple nudity is not sexually explicit. Virgin Killer is not sexually explicit. There has to be some sort of genital contact or lasciviousness. Administrators are chosen for their good judgement so we can trust them to delete blatant sexually explicit photos or videos of subjects lacking age information, as much as we can trust them to delete blatant copyright infringement or blatant advertising. Your objection could be applied to any CSD category, so I'm not convinced. Please try harder to convince me, or think about whether you might be able to support my position. Jehochman Talk 11:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
The word "blatant" in "blatant copyright violation" or "blatant advertising" has an explicit, largely objective definition. A copyright violation is "blatant" if there is no credible assertion that the text is available under a free licence. Advertising is "blatant" if the content would have to be completely rewritten to remove the promotional content. The proposed criterion has no such definition of "blatant". To apply the proposed criterion, an administrator would have to decide, amongst other things, whether or not the image has artistic, educational or medical value. These are complex issues, and I suspect that such a policy would draw lively debate from editors with wildly differing opinions, just as editors have wildly differing opinions over fair use images. If the argument that administrators can generally be trusted to delete pages that are blatant violations of policy was accepted, then you would expect us to have adopted policies allowing the speedy deletion of pages which blatantly fail WP:NOR, WP:NOT or WP:N. Attempts to introduce such criteria have been consistently rejected on the grounds that speedy deletion criteria need to be objective, and that other sorts of deletions should go through processes which allow for review by other editors. Hut 8.5 12:22, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
If there's a picture of two people having sex, and there's no assertion that the subjects are 18+ years of age, what's not blatant about that? There's no debate worth having. Jehochman Talk 13:10, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
Not all pages which will be considered for deletion under this criterion will be that obvious. The criterion must be such that individual administrators consistently make correct decisions in more ambiguous cases. Hut 8.5 14:05, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. 1. There is no need for this - see WP:CHILDPROTECT. 2. It still requires subjective judgement of whether something is "artistic", whether "sexually explicit" is debatable, whether a young child is a "baby" or a toddler, whether they are in a "bath tub" or some other container, whether the subject is sexually aroused, and whether the pose is designed to arouse the viewer. 3. It leaves "sexual activity", "artistic" and "educational" undefined. In short this is just a recipe for massive arguments between those who believe that nude pictures can almost never be educational and those those who believe that whether the subject is exposing parts of the body typically covered in contemporary US society or not is irrelevant to the educational nature of the image.Thryduulf (talk) 16:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
CHILPROTECT doesn't authorize removal of images lacking proper, legally required documentation. This is a different issue. I recognize that you are advocating an image free for all, regardless of what the law says -- I get that -- but if you can't come up with something more logical, I'm not going to take your objections seriously. Jehochman Talk 17:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
You have not recognised my argument at all, let me try again. I am saying that images that are illegal can be and already are removed by existing processes, this is as it should be. Images that are legal to host as determined by the law as interpreted by the Foundation's paid legal professionals should not be deleted for being illegal, because they are not. You are suggesting that legal images which do not meet certain subjective criteria need to be speedy deleted, my point is simply that speedy deletion criteria must be objective in order to work. Thryduulf (talk) 07:52, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Absolute oppose. Again, you are trying to craft a convoluted criterion to take care of something outside of the legal processes under which it should be handled. This is not an oppose to your particular proposal here. It is a complete and total opposition to ever having anything even remotely approaching this sort of CSD criteria. For the record: if you find a possibly illegal image, bring it to ANI. The first admin there will hide the image from the public and bring it to the attention of wikimedia legal so that actual lawyers who are paid to understand this stuff can make a legal determination. Until wikimedia lawyers come here and say that we need to have a CSD criteria on this basis, it is completely and unequivocally inappropriate for anyone outside of wikimedia legal to handle these matters. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 12:24, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I am an admin, and I am concerned that I don't have clear authority to remove such images. People routinely scream "Wikipedia is not censored" and argue that every piece of porn is sacred. Rather than making destructive comments, why don't you suggest a better alternative. I want to solve a problem, not get involved in fights. Jehochman Talk 13:07, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I am not an admin, and I am not a lawyer, so I don't try to act like one. I am concerned that anybody who is not a lawyer for the wikimedia foundation could find themselves in legal trouble for touching this. I am not trying to be destructive, but destruction of evidence can be considered complicity or conspiracy in a crime. I am telling you that this criterion would endanger admins and editors, and until those lawyers actually say how and when we can delete this kind of content, this CDS criterion would be a ticking time bomb that will get a member of this community thrown into prison and registered as a sex offender. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 22:18, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
You misunderstand our software. "Deletion" does not destroy anything. The objects are just hidden from view. They can later be undeleted. Jehochman Talk 22:28, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not talking about software, I'm talking about law. I fervently believe that doing anything with these files can be construed as complicity, collusion, or co-conspiracy in an illegal act. This is not something that an editor or an admin has the legal training or background to handle. The Wikimedia Foundation does, however, have lawyers who are trained to handle these issues. I believe that this proposal endangers members of our community because it flirts with illegal activities outside the guidance of legal counsel. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:54, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Note http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Age_Record_Requirement --Andreas JN466 14:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    So, you are supporting this based on: "Courts have suggested that the statute would be unconstitutional as-applied to a producer of sexually explicit content clearly involving only adult actors and it remains possible that they will find the law facially unconstitutional."? Technical 13 (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • support with the qualification that "designed to arouse" is the only case where there is any ambiguity and thus the only case where there could be a need for discussion. Every other case can be objectively determined, and the criteria are (contrary to statements above) straightforward and uncomplicated. I personally think we should get rid of anything that isn't being used but at least keeping us within the record-keeping law for sexual sites is a standard that should be routinely observed rather than argued about in extremis. Mangoe (talk) 14:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    I'm still unsure why you think that our administrators should be the ones that are forced to decide what the image is designed to do. I'm still of the opinion that the legal team should make those decisions, and that where there is any possibility of there being an issue with an image it should simply be forwarded to them and let them decide if any legal stuff needs to be done to accommodate or delete the image. Technical 13 (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I am of the opinion that in these cases the decision is trivial, so that to be "forced" to make it is no burden. It is the administration that is burdensome, and laying it solely upon legal team, whom I gather are not in general editors of the encyclopedia per se, is a means of ensuring that no deletions ever take place unless they be brought about through external legal threats. Mangoe (talk) 17:05, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Look, if there is a suspiscion that actual child pornography has been uploaded, all one has to do is email the foundation. They don't have the personell to do the legwork but they are more than willing to do the enforcement once such things have been brought to their attention. They will not only delete it, they will contact the relvant authorities, usually the FBI, to investigate the matter. This is an area where we should of course be vigilant, but when we do find such material I think it is better if the volunteer community actually does not hendle it ourselves. This is part of what the foundation is here to do for the community, and if there is actual child porn here it won't simply be deleted, they will at least try to find out who the real person is who uploaded it and will share that information in order to stop further exploitation of children. I think that's a slightly better way to do it than leaving such matters up to a single admin. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:21, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  • comment OTRS is not in a position to handle 18 U.S.C. § 2257 record keeping requirements and it is unreasonable to demand that it do so.Geni (talk) 20:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per Beeb. Handling such images is rightly the job of the foundation and its functionaries. Drawing attention to them on-Wiki is precisely the wrong thing to do. Pol430 talk to me 22:35, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

A7 prone to misuse

A couple of weeks ago I bookmarked Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and noticed that the csd-A7 tag is regularly misused. Assuming good faith of people who place the tag, I may only attribute this to poor language of the criterion and it exsessive generality. Consider the most recent example I de-tagged: Orange County Business Council. The cited credible source describes it as merger of "Orange County's two dominant business groups", one of which is with 100 yers history. The article says "The Orange County Business Council focuses on four core initiatives: improving infrastructure, enhancing workforce development, increasing the supply of workforce housing, and advancing economic development." How this falls under "No indication of importance", beats me.

The way I see it, unlike notability, we don't have a reasonable guideline, nor set of examples for "importance". Therefore "importance" is mostly in the eye of the wikipedian only, so for one person "advancing economic development" may easily be but a political buzzwork, while another one will take it for its face value.

Therefore I would strongly suggest to add more explanation about "importance". Staszek Lem (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I don't see this as a critical problem, since I trust admins to have reasonable judgement in the issue, but still, better ideas about tagging will reduce admin's burden.Staszek Lem (talk) 20:55, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Well, for me it doesn't show anything more than localised importance. It looks very promotional too, and I've tagged it G11, reckoning it's a promo piece (the other thing by the author is about the leader of the council which does claim significance and may pass notability). I find quite a lot of A7s for things that it doesn't cover - like software, buildings etc. One trouble with A7 is the differentiation between significance and notability. A claim to significance can pass A7, but when it goes to AfD it gets deleted as not notable. One important part of A7 is that the claim must be 'credible'. An example I used in another thread: 'Shawn is the king of spain' - hoax; 'Shawn is the CEO of Wiggle runners Inc' - claim to significance (but reduced by his date of birth showing that he is 12, and rendering the claim to significance null and void in the absence of very good coverage); 'Shawn Johnson is the CEO of Wiggle Runners Inc, a multi-national corporation founded by his father Mick in 1983' - passes A7. Wiggle Runners may turn out to be a ten man (and a dog) operation marketing personalised toilet paper, with one ghit other than their adverts. That's then a case for PROD or AfD. Peridon (talk) 21:50, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Well, I would not call county-wide importance as "localized", when a county is larger than some countries. Lacking criteria, IDONTLIKEIT in action. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. Salvio giuliano agreed with me... Peridon (talk) 21:51, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Hmm back. My point exactly. Both of you think that an organization described in a major newspaper as "dominant business group" for Orange County and freely ignore the fact that some (me) may disagree with this judgement. Lack of minimal standards for the concept of "importance" is a direct path to IDONTLIKEIT. Well; as I see, nobody in wikipedia is going to shed a tear for a "dominant business group"; fine with me. But I see that I am not the first who doubts the wisdom of A7, yet nothing changes... Staszek Lem (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
There is going to be some degree of uncertainty wherever we draw the line. That's why I try to use G11 as well as A7 whenever both are applicable. Personally, I do not think notability is that clear a dividing line either, as we have about 50 rationally disputed AfD discussions a day. There is no way to eliminate human judgment, either here or anywhere else at wp . (for the OCBC article, I agree A7 was really stretching it, but G11 it certainly was.) DGG ( talk ) 00:20, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

CSD is only misued if 1. The NPPer does not understand deleting policies, and 2., The deleting admin takes the CSD template on face value without checking. Historically, NPP has been traditionally operated by a large number of inexperienced users (which still needs to be addressed); however, there is no excuse for an admin not doing his/her homework before pressing the button. There are of course some grey areas, and that's what AfD is for. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:38, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

No disagreement intended, but I do think there might be room for better guidance in our explanations. --j⚛e deckertalk 01:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
NPP quality has been one of my bones of contention for years - partly, because unlike Rollback ofr example, it does not need any demonstration of competency. A team of us did a huge amount of research into it which culminated in the Foundation's offer of the new patrolling interface. A great piece of software who know their stuff already, but it neatly sidestepped the problems and did not in anyway address the core issues. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:30, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree completely, I wasn't involved in your NPP efforts, but I've admired them from a distance. --j⚛e deckertalk 01:54, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree that A7 is often misused. I just checked the category, saw four articles, declined two, I'd argue the other two should likely be declined as well. One of them I could argue either way, in the other case, the tagging editor might hear the message a little better if he or she heard the same story from multiple admins. Now, I'm sure that 0-for-4 is unusually bad as A7 noms go (they're not all the same editor, this is probably a bad run due to selection bias), but it does suggest that a little more explanation at WP:CSD might be warranted. --j⚛e deckertalk 01:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I also tend to think "notability" vs. "importance" is an unnecessary hair-splitting in context, at least in one direction. An important business should not have troubles to demonstrate notability foer wikipedia. Otherwise I'd take that our notability criteria are heavily biased in favor of pokemon and drama queens. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:24, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Our notability criteria don't always generate results that I like, nor will any set of rules. I find it more comforting to take "notability" as a "term of art" in our system, and simply try and responsibly honor the rules and precedents. Unfortunately, not all of the precedents are written, and right now, learning A7, or WP:N, is as much a task of spending time and learning precedent through experience as it is a task of objectively reading a written criterion.
I do think that companies should have to demonstrate notability. Not because of some intuitive sense of notability. But because the general way that they demonstrate notability is through the presentation of reliable, secondary sources. Those are the same sources we need to ensure articles are verifiable and neutral. If you can't show me some secondary coverage of a company, why should I, or anyone, believe you can write a fair and accurate article about it?
Yeah, there are exceptions. I'll give you that a member of a national legislature is worth writing an article about even if we only say "so and so was a member of the 93rd Congress", and source it to a government list. But companies? I'll stick by a certain amount of cynicism about nearly anything written about a company without a signficant source. --j⚛e deckertalk 01:54, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Cynicism? No..... This article in question had already had an attempt made (by a neutral editor) to remove the puffery - but what was left was still unencyclopaedic. As to companies, I can remember a case of a company whose products were used daily by millions of people. But it failed WP:CORP. No coverage in RS. It made own-brand stuff for chain stores. Not one thing had its name on it. Its employees had heard of it, the corporate buyers had heard of it, and the Infernal Revenue had heard of it. But no-one wrote about it. Conversely, Carl Fabergé's business was tiny. But, oh boy, was it notable... Peridon (talk) 09:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

A yet another example of I(DONT)LIKEIT: I tagged Good Humor Party with A7 but was declined. I find it difficult to understand why this article shows importance ("The goal of the Good Humor Party is to make people happy"), while Orange County Business Council. ("The Orange County Business Council focuses on four core initiatives: improving infrastructure, enhancing workforce development, increasing the supply of workforce housing, and advancing economic development.") -- does not.

OK. so far it was handwaving. Question: is anyone willing to join me in a attempt to formalize the concept of "improtance"? I am not going to start this alone. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:27, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I apparently declined that, saying "sourcing from potentially reliable third-party sources if often construed as an indication of claimed importance" as my rationale. To put it more succinctly, the sources there appear to make a plausible claim not only of importance but appear to, depending on one's interpretation of the reliability of the sources, meet WP:GNG. A claim of notability under our guidelines is strictly greater than a claim of notability, ergo, it's plausibly important. Still, I could be wrong, and you are welcome to appeal at WP:DRV.
I appreciate that you might wish a more subject-oriented ontological approach, but the community has never had much success with that, outside of athletes, beauty queens, porn stars, politicians and high schools. (I leave it in your hands to put any logic to that list.) I think we'd be better off having more specific guidelines in other areas--an idea DGG has often argued for. I would be happy to try and find such a way, but the community has tried and failed for years to come to any such agreement, and I would be kinda surprised if we managed a great deal better.
I would particularly love a relatively objective test for businesses. Even addressing that would be of huge benefit. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:56, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
I for one would very much welcome clearer guidelines. I have always found myself having a far broader interpretation of importance than most others - I have generally drawn a blanket line on any independent sources with editorial control including local newspapers, and, well, any claim of importance in its most general sense. I have always interpreted A7 as a subject that has no answer (rather than a bad answer) on the question why we should care. To me "is a community leader in village x" is a claim of importance. "is a guy with pretty eyes" is not (bio). "is a major local employer" is. "sells all kinds of bolts and nuts" isn't (org). "squirrel s is known and loved through the entire village" is, "is the cat-in-residence of pub x" isn't (I can't believe we have a guideline for individual animals). Any personal website isn't. Any commercial website with more than one person on staff without being family is. (web content). I don't think the community wants it to currently mean this, but it is how I interpret it and believe it should be interpreted. but don't enforce it like this, because, again, I think the community doesn't want it like this. I do feel there is a clear distinction here between no claim whatsoever, and a claim I and probably everybody else doesn't care about: I do think all my examples would probably all easily and unopposed fall with PROD, but "a claim, any claim, to anything that anyone could consider important" is good enough a line for me, and is the only line I think can be objectively drawn. Something hanging around to be prodded is not a big deal. How to deal with self-rejected prods by spammers is a different issue. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:42, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes. The whole point of CSD is to short cut the week long prod and AfD procedures in cases that are obvious - and in certain areas. A7 is a minimum standard to be met, and a pretty low standard at that. It's a filter to save time and effort by removing quickly stuff that has no chance. Things do have to be believable to pass A7, just as in G11 they have to be unambiguous ("We strive to offer the best solutions" says "please delete me!" and very few people outside PR departments would honestly think otherwise...). Is the 13 year old CEO really head of a multi-million business? If so, why is his first ghit Facebook, and the second Twitter? (And his book is published through lulu...) Peridon (talk) 10:49, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Colleague, you are giving very evident examples no one argues against. They do not address the point of this talk section, namely, if the case is less trivial, then there is too much room to wiggle. "We strive to offer the best solutions" - yes, sure. But "We offer the best solutions" is not so trivial. Specifically, the first claim is not falsifiable, hence not even wrong. However the second claim may be supported by third-party sources, and only due diligence of the full deletion process, with its time slack to find/fix references, must be used here. Surely it is not the job of the admin to find all these sources or to prove they don't exist: xe cannot an expert in each and every thing deletable. But just as well the admin is not an expert to dismiss such claims outright just because they look like PR bragging. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Coming back to my "sore in the eye", Orange County Business Council, which is for "increasing the supply of workforce housing, and advancing economic development",- clearly it is not simply a PR speak. It is a reasonable goal for the organization of the type the name suggests. At this moment it is an irrelevant question of how well the OCBC addresses this agenda, but surely "workfrce housing" and "economic development" are important issues. [Please notice I don't bother about the deletion review of this article: a council with multi$$$billion members can take care of themselves :-) But it is a good example, a touchstone for the policy]. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I made my interpretation of (credible) claim of importance fairly clear - though i didn't touch upon incredible claims of importance, as Perion pointed out a non-credible claim is indeed worth nothing - and it should go without saying that I agree that I do consider the OCBC example to have a claim of importance (they claim they are doing that lot, and they seem to indicate that that is important, so claim of importance right there). When reading the article however, it consists entirely of PR drivel, to the point the article should indeed be entirely re-written to be non-promotional (and there would probably be two or three lines left), which does meet criterion G11. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:31, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I do agree it fits G11: there was nothing in the article about what the councial actually does. Somewhere above a colleague mentioned that A7 and G11 is better to come together, to cover all loopholes. And the OCBC case seems to be an example of this: the article does claim importance, but it does not say anything about actual work beyond usual PR. Did anybody think about combining the two criteria into one? Staszek Lem (talk) 17:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I for one wouldn't like to see Wikipedia:Vanispamcruftisement as a speedy deletion criterium. Generally G11 would cover it. If not, A7 might cover it. If not, PROD is IMO generally fine. If we have enough actual examples of the combination not applying (it does happen) and we agree it should not be done by PROD, and we're not finding counterexamples to show we should not be speedily deleting by finding rescuable material (and I'm rather torn on the latter. On the one hand we shouldn't let potentially good content go to waste. On the other, we're not the corporate cleanup department for PR drivel, and our spam problem is big enough without actually encouraging it. Not to mention, for most organisations, WP:IDONTLIKEIT.) then it would be a good idea to discuss it. But to be pragmatic, we need examples of articles we want to handle differently. Speaking of pragmatism, A7 has no meaning outside of article space. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
So, speaking off, what do we think of Invensis? It is probably meant to be promotional, but it isn't promotional in the sense of G11. The organisation doesn't seem to be very interesting to anyone other than those who work there (I think, or is this WP:IDONTLIKEIT at work?). But the million dollar question seems to be, do we want to delete these kinds of articles through speedy? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 18:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Not the job of this talk theread, but I do agree that G11 is inapplicable to it: the text simply describes what the company does, with no PRspeak. So I am replacing db-spam with notability|org there. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
another editor changed it to Prod. If that fails, there is of course AfD, which should deal with it fine. At AfD, though not at CSD, I think the combination of borderline notability and significant promotionalism is a reasonable argument for deletion. I wouldn't want to use it here because it's too subjective, and really needs to be a community decision. I consider my wording here the essential equivalent of Vanispamcruftisement. I agree with Martijn it should be used wherever it appliers at AfD. As he says, one virtue of AfD (or prod) is that it allows anyone who thinks the organization actually important enough to rewrite the article. DGG ( talk ) 17:59, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

New criteria

I suggest adding a new criteria for sexually explicit media. "Any sexually explicit media file that appears to show under age 18 individuals will be deleted immediately. Appeals may be filed with OTRS by providing documentary evidence that photo subjects are 18 or older." Thoughts? Jehochman Talk 16:38, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

My first question is how are you going to get this past the WP:NOTCENSORED people? Technical 13 (talk) 17:01, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
One can but try. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
I'd certainly support something like this in a general sense, in view of 2257 regulations--I'm not a lawyer, though. You'll want to put some clarity as to whether "media" includes only photos/videos or also includes drawings/illustrations (2257 doesn't apply to the latter). I suspect this is going to take some thought as to how to make the criteria as objective as possible. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
This should be specific to 2257. There's a law that says sexually explicit media (photos, videos primarily) require record keeping. The status of the law is hazy. For a good analysis see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Age_Record_Requirement. I think we should implement a common sense criteria within the spirit of the law: if there is a doubt that sexually explicit image might be of an underage subject, then we delete it first, and ask questions second. If sufficient documentation is provided, the image could then be restored. This isn't about censorship; it's about complying with the relevant law. We should at least try to comply, as we do with copyright law. Jehochman Talk 17:51, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Not a great idea, at least not in this form. It would result in the deletion of encyclopedic images such as File:Virgin Killer.jpg, which the WMF is clearly aware of, as it fought rather hard to keep it. Hut 8.5 18:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
I thought of Virgin Killer as I read this, too. I don't think that a Speedy deletion criteria will work here, not so much because we should keep the material (kill it with fire), but because such deletion is not likely to be uncontroversial due to NOTCENSORED and the Virgin Killer precedent, etc etc. I would love a way to delete such images outright, but not if it's going to cause more problems than it solves. The other alternative would be to shuffle it under OFFICE and refer any such deletion to foundation counsel. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 18:39, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm. I see why Virgin Killer is a problematic example in a number of ways. Bother.
Here's a separate angle--what about the subset of such images where we don't really have a clear sense of consent to publish from the subject of the photo? Compare something like Virgin Killer (major record label, etc.) with an image of someone uploaded by a random photographer, no other context. In that latter case, we don't have any sense that the subject (or their parents) have given consent, but that's a pretty reasonable assumption for the record company. In the case where we don't really have any reason to believe that the child has given consent, and assuming it's a modern image, might we not consider those serious BLP issues?
I guess I'm not as smart about finding a principled line in the sand here here as I imagined. Again, bother.--j⚛e deckertalk 21:03, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I think I could delete right now any illegal image under WP:IAR. Codifying this will simply reduce the drama. If a sexually explicit image features a person appearing to be <18 years old, it should be deleted on the spot, same as we do with copyright violations. What's the difference? Both are illegal. Copyright is not a judgment call: you either own it or you don't. Likewise with age. The models are old enough or they aren't. Suitable documentary evidence can be demanded and supplied. Jehochman Talk 18:51, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the Virgin Killer image, where the subject is clearly not of legal age and which would be covered by the proposed criterion, the WMF issued a press release in which their general counsel stated "We have no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world". The WMF general counsel is clearly the best person to decide what should and should not be deleted for legal reasons, and he apparently didn't think Wikipedia's use of the image was illegal. Hut 8.5 19:29, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
The debatable thing is whether that image is sexually explicit, or simply an artistic nude. That's an issue that could be debateable in a deletion discussion. Jehochman Talk 22:58, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Which means that "sexually explicit" would make a poor speedy deletion criterion. Criteria are supposed to be as clear-cut and objective as possible, fine artistic distinctions aren't going to produce a workable criterion. Hut 8.5 23:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
  • As mush as I dislike the content and think it should be deleted or at very least modified in such a way as to eliminate the possibility that is no longer distasteful, the fact is going to remain that the burden of proof that the person in the image is in fact not of legal age is going to be on the person requesting the deletion. I think at very least, this is going to take time and result in the required process being a FfD (File for Discussion/deletion) and not a speedy deletion. What I'm wondering now is if there is a way for an admin to lock a file so that it cannot be used in any namespace outside of File where it resides and the appropriate project space where the deletion discussion is taking place? Technical 13 (talk) 19:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I like that idea - we let the image remain where it can be viewed and discussed, but do not permit its use in articles (or elsewhere). Not bad. Maybe incorporating noinclude into the deletion template? Might be a question for VPT. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 20:59, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Nice idea there. --j⚛e deckertalk 21:07, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
The bad image list could theoretically do this, but at the moment it's only used to prevent images being used in vandalism. Hut 8.5 22:14, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Could a parameter be added to the FfD tag that a bot could recognize and add the image to that list? It could be something like |illegal=yes. Of course, there would have to be a policy in place to punish anyone that misused the argument. OR, I suppose a bot could update a section at the bottom of the list for all files that are listed for discussion/deletion. That would seem most fair to me. I'm assuming it is an extension that handles that list and makes it work, can I get a link to the extension so I can see how it works better? Technical 13 (talk) 13:06, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
The MediaWiki:Bad image list is part of the MediaWiki software. It works simply by having a list in the format "File:Example.jpg except on Example" with one entry per line. Files on the list cannot be displayed inline except on the pages explicitly listed. I would very strongly oppose putting all images up for discussion on that list as it would be complete overkill, hinder discussion of the images and harm the encyclopaedia while discussion is ongoing (particularly for images that are kept) and make maintenance of the list much harder. There might also be a server impact from doing so (it was originally requested to keep the list short for performance reasons [9]). The "illegal=yes" parameter would, despite any instructions to the contrary, also get used for copyvios, freedom of panorama, etc. making it useless for the purposes intended here. Calling it "sexually explicit" or anything like that would suffer from the same problems of subjectivity noted in other parts of this thread. Thryduulf (talk) 18:24, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This is a community run project. The community makes decisions on allowed content. This proposal moves control of sexual explicit media out of the control of the community at large to under the control of administrators. This proposal wold give administrators too much control over ordinary editors. XfD are well capable of handling deletion discussions, and closing promptly per SNOW. The involvement of ordinary editors in such discussions is essential in maintaining of sense of ownership of the project by its authors, and is very important in passive continuing education of our inclusion standards. Maintaining a few debatable inappropriate images for a few days to inform the discussion is a very small price considering their existence in caches, mirrors and different sites, and downsides of immediate deletion on one persons allegation is a dangerous method. In practice, there are fuzzy lines as to what is "explicit" and "appears to show". I'm not sure there is clear policy on "sexually explicit" material that "appears" to show under age 18 individuals, such as cartoons, or older individuals who look younger. The thrust of the proposal is fine, except that it should not be governed by WP:CSD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:41, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Nobody supports hosting child porn here, but this idea is hopelessly vague. I believe we should continue to rely on consensus, which is supposed to be our fundamental model for decision making, to determine what is and is not an appropriate use of this projects resources. In other words I agree with SmokeyJoe's remarks above. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Neutral: I support WP:NOTCENSORED. And besides, any suspected illegal content can be dealt with through existing processes, or through an office action (which is already considered a very special form of speedy to begin with). Though, if we have to comply with U.S. law, the criteria could instead read "A non-artistic and sexually explicit image (as defined by U.S. law) subject to the 2257 Regulations without documented proof that the subject is of legal age. This required information can be provided via OTRS.". ViperSnake151  Talk  01:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose. It is not possible to objectively define "sexually explicit" or "appears to show", and are thus completely inappropriate for speedy deletion criteria. If you believe that any media file is illegal for us to host then contact the Foundation's legal team and they will take any necessary action. Thryduulf (talk) 09:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • pointless Such images are already vaporised on sight with follow-up with oversight and foundation. If you think admins are going to start labeling such deletions you are mistaken.Geni (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose When you get to my age you'll find that most people look as if they are under 18. Thincat (talk) 14:47, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
  • As a note...is this policy at COMMONS? That seems to be where the problem is. I only asked because I do not know where to even begin looking there...--MONGO 23:18, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    Commons is out of control. I expect that some sort of intervention is needed there. All is well until some minor's sexually explicit photo gets uploaded, then his or her parents complain to the law, the law subpoenas the server logs and ISP records, and arrests the uploader. For the sake of Wikipedia and our editors, we should make sure that any sexually explicit photos have suitable documentation to prove that the subjects are not under age. I'm personally not going to bother with edge cases, but if I find clearcut violations of that principle, I'm going to remove them first, and ask questions second. There are surprising few such images on Wikipedia (but way too many on Commons!). Our sexuality articles tend to have drawings or medical-type images that are not problematic, at least in my layperson's understanding of the law. Jehochman Talk 23:23, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    • "at least in my layperson's understanding of the law" And this is the crux of the issue - lay people attempting to impose their personal understanding of the law on everyone else, regardless of how legal professionals understand the law. This is why if you see something you think is illegal you report it to the legal team for action. I've lost count now of the number of people who have asserted that Commons need to keep records despite the Foundation's legal team explicitly stating that they do not. In some situations, uploaders who are subject to US law are required to keep records. Thryduulf (talk) 07:43, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
      • I have news: everybody is required to follow the law. If you see a speed limit sign, do you call a lawyer and ask what it means, or do you consider the law and do your best to follow? Moreover, the law is the minimum standard. We at Wikipedia should aspire to a higher standard of ethical conduct. Regardless of what the law says, it is wrong to upload and use images of minors or people who did not consent to have their private, sexually explicit images posted. Currently we do little or nothing to attempt to verify the propriety of these uploads. I think we need to do better. Jehochman Talk 22:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
        • And again you miss the point. If you see speed limit sign you know whether it applies to you and how to comply with the law if it does - the meaning is simple, explicit and most of all objective. This interpretation has been upheld in countless legal opinions and judgements. The laws regarding age verification and record keeping etc, are much more complicated, and have not been subject to the same legal opinions, such that it is not always clear whether it applies to the situation or not and if so what is required of you for compliance. What you are presently arguing is the equivalent of saying that because some people wearing tall hats have to prove they have taken them off before walking under a bridge, everybody has to prove they are not wearing a tall hat before walking near the bridge, even though the legal team have said that this is not true. Thryduulf (talk) 14:00, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Andreas JN466 14:00, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I oppose codifying this as a speedy deletion criteria because of the difficulty in definitions and standards, and the possibility of opening the door to abuse and constant debate from both ends, but I absolutely expect every admin to use common sense and delete anything that seems to be child porn, as is already the unwritten practice. Sometimes it's better to leave things to common sense than to try to write down every little nuance, and then spend inordinate hours debating and negotiating. Gigs (talk) 18:52, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as too much subject to interpretation. Experience shows that people will interpret whatever language we use here differently (and perhaps some people supporting this may be doing so because they wish to include under it things which the law does permit, and which our present consensus supports including.) We already have a sufficiently effective policy, and apply it quite stringently in practice. Anything further would just add confusion. DGG ( talk ) 05:30, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per DGG and Thryduulf. If anyone has serious doubts about an image (or text, even), they can ask the the legal dept. And for preference, discuss it with an uninvolved admin first (to save the time of the legal bods and to at least hide it pending further investigation if thought necessary). As to the Virgin Killers cover, the outfit that made all the fuss backed down on that, so far as I remember. It can sometimes be hard, I suppose, to distinguish what it and isn't legal. Mere nudity is not illegal - in the right place and with relevance. Which is not to say that an article on child pornography should have relevant but graphic illustrations... Common sense should be applied there. Peridon (talk) 09:16, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Templates

I added to Criteria G7 that "this also does not apply to pages needed by other pages, such as transcluded templates". My change was reverted with the explanation that "here doesn't seem to be any consensus for this on the talk page & used images are often deleted as G7". Is there consensus, however, not to speedily delete templates which are transcluded elsewhere? Suppose a user creates a useful template, which is transcluded onto ten thousand pages, show he be able to have it deleted per G7, no questions asked? -- Ypnypn (talk) 14:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

I believe that things like this need to be discussed before inserted in the policy. I think that it is usually a bad idea to delete things which are in use per G7, but that is just my opinion. As far as I've understood, tagging {{db-g7}} is no guarantee that a page will be deleted in case someone else opposes deletion. I assume that an administrator would think twice before deleting a heavily used template or a heavily used image. Also, if an image is free, you could always prevent G7 by simply moving the image to Commons before an administrator gets the time to delete it.
By the way, boldly editing policies is permitted per WP:PGBOLD. -- Ypnypn (talk) 16:06, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
In some way, G7 is similar to G5, with the exception that G5 is requested by someone other than the page creator. I think that it would make sense to use similar criteria for both of them. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:41, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
I only accept G7 deletes if they are non disruptive. Most of them are, but sometimes the item is too useful to delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:44, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment I would think that any template that has been transcluded more than once would fail the author requested deletion anyway. If something has been edited by more than the original author in ways other than minor typo correction, categorisation, etc, then that invalidates the request. Multiple transclusion involved work by other editors (and a lot of work in sorting the thing out if deleted...). It's not work ON the thing in question, but work involving far more than the appearance of a red link here and there. Peridon (talk) 11:11, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Exclude transcluded templates Since G7 is rather explicit that it does not qualify if the page has had substantial edits by others, I think excluding templates with substantial use by others is in the spirit of that. Used templates should not be so quickly deleted without discussion just because one user wants to. Ego White Tray (talk) 16:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - I think that transcluding constitutes contribution by another editor for any CSD criteria. So transclusion makes a template ineligible for either G5 or G7. These need to go through a deletion discussion, so that editors who have used the template in other places have the chance to either lobby for keeping the content, or to make allowance for it disappearing, hence "G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates." G7 should have a similar caveat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vanisaac (talk • contribs) 2013-05-26T17:17:02
  • Support exclusion of transcluded templates per Vanisaac, although there is no need to have a deletion discussion for a template used only in the original author's userspace or a sandbox (e.g. requested deletion of a failed template that still has transclusions on a template sandbox, particularly one that would be subject to G7 or G8). I can't think of a good wording for this though. Thryduulf (talk) 22:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
I would agree without reservation, except that I don't think that's likely to be a frequent enough occurrence for an exception be more useful than onerous. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:31, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

G11 and AFCs

I was challenged yesterday by 2 other editors about applying the G11 deletion criterion to new afcs , on the basis that the instructions on the AfC page do not specify this. My opinion is that the General criteria apply everywhere in WP, to articles old and new and to all spaces. (with the necessary tolerance to allow things to be discussed). My reason for doing it is to avoid accumulating junk in afcs that must be eventually removed. The argument of the other editors was that since it is not indexed it doesn't matter, and we should not be unfriendly to new editors. The specific afcs the question was raised about are Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kneading Touch Massage , Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/M Models and Talent Agency - Toronto, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Robert's Diamond Bond,Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cliffside Malibu, and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Burger Bakar. My practice so far has been to nominate new afcs that meet the general criteria for Speedy, and to simply delete the old ones that meet the criterion. Many other editors too have nominated promotional afds, old and new for speedy, and I ad other admins have been deleting them. (I've notified the 2 eds. mentioned of the discussion) DGG ( talk ) 15:09, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Neutral: Interesting theory... I can see the points for being a little more lenient to these drafts in the regards that if we are properly assuming good faith, then drafts that appear advertisemental might not be intended to be such. However, if it is outright blatant advertising, then G11 should be applicable anywhere. I think it is really up to the admin that reviews them. I think if there are only a couple of sentences or a paragraph, than perhaps it is an attempt from a misunderstanding person to suggest a topic for an article and not actually create the article. In these cases, I don't see how it hurts anything to let it sit around for six months and get swept up with G13. Technical 13 (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse G11 I only looked a the Diamond Bond article, but it seems to me that that particular example should be a pretty uncontroversial G11. Noindex or not, Wikipedia is not a webhost for corporate advertisements. There isn't anything there that would be of use in writing a decent article. I'm somewhat more sympathetic to giving a few days before placing a speedy if there's any sign of some salvageable text--carefully formatted refs, for example. If there were something that might be saved, I might instead wish for an expansion of PROD into AfC space, or a "time-delayed" G11, but at least for the example I looked at, but I'd have a problem with forcing all such articles through MfD.
Technical 13 raises a good question that deserves an answer: Why not leave it for six months? Because even if we NOINDEX it, not all the Wikimirrors do, and this creates an additional incentive for spam, which is counterproductive to our goal of building an encyclopedia. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Additional note: Another reason to not let these sit for six months is that at least two of those three submissions are copyvios--and often copyvios don't get noticed as copyvios, but do get noticed as G11s. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:47, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Copyvios are WP:CSD#G12 and should quickly be deleted as such. I honestly only briefed over Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kneading Touch Massage which is a couple of sentences and a link to the official website. I think in these cases it is appears more to me as someone suggesting it as a topic that could be developed into an article, and not necessarily an attempt to advertise. intent means a lot to me, and I feel that it should be factored in. Technical 13 (talk) 16:12, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
They can be deleted as such, but so many articles that are archived as promotional, but never caught as copyvios, are copyvios, that I still believe that it's a concern as well. If we did a better job at detecting copyvios, that'd be great, but as a matter of evidence (having spent some time in the declined-as-promotional category), we don't. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Normally it is best to mark articles as both G11 and G12 if they both apply. But there are so many thousands of these, because of the failure to deal with them properly over the past several years, that if it is clearly G11 then I've just listed it as such, because it's faster. And I try never to single=-handedly delete a new AfC or article of any sort, unless it is patently ridiculous--all of these I would have listed for another admin to review. I make a few percent of mistakes, and I am willing to admit it. DGG ( talk ) 16:34, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
With regard to review, yes, I mean to suggest tagging G11/G12, not single-handed deletion. Single-handed deletion, while I've unintentionally done it, is almost always the wrong choice. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:08, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
digression

Just because you have opened another discussion there give you no justification for removing comments by Joe and myself on the topic... I'm restoring them. Technical 13 (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Probably just an accident. AGF, and all that. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:01, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Technical 13 - there was no intent to delete anything here at all - this was an edit conflict but I received no edit conflict message, which I can't understand at all. --nonsense ferret 16:06, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I'll assume so... Technical 13 (talk) 16:12, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I also had my message removed at the Afc talk page in what I assumed was an unannounced edit conflict. I had to enter it again. If no one is deleting things, maybe something is wrong in the system. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I didn't get an edit conflict when I should have on a user talk page yesterday. Thryduulf (talk) 16:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
The possible modification of the speedy policy belongs here, The proper topic at WT:AFC is how to make the instructions conform to policy, once we've confirmed it or modified it. DGG ( talk ) 16:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure who suggested changing the speedy policy? bit of a straw man. --nonsense ferret 16:49, 16 May 2013 (UTC)


  • Mildly Oppose - While we certainly don't want spam in our encyclopedia, one benefit of the Afc is that it is in talk space, so the spam isn't indexed by search engines. This gives us time to get rid of it; no need to be speedy, as long as it doesn't fit other criteria such as copyright or attack. Some good articles have started out promotional and then been improved. However, DGG is right that we sometimes waste our time on articles that will never be anything but ads. Can we find some middle ground, such as deleting those which have already been declined and are not improved after (1) they are submitted again, or (2) a time period such as 2 months? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:48, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)Endorse general case - i.e. G criteria apply everywhere that has not been explicitly excluded in the criteria (e.g. G8 excludes user talk). We do not accept spam anywhere on Wikipedia, and AfC should be no exception. The task for the AfC reviewers is how to express this in the least bitey way possible while still removing the spam. It's probably right to be more lenient on the borderline cases than in mainspace though. I haven't looked at the specific case that started this so I express no opinion on that. Thryduulf (talk) 16:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
Here are the two articles that started the discussion, and the fact that they have not been changed at all let alone improved since being declined in April shows that DGG was right in these cases, and they were drive-by spam: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kneading Touch Massage and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/M Models and Talent Agency - Toronto —Anne Delong (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse when used properly. Obviously, we don't want to tag a new submission without looking around a bit first but I don't see that this has been a problem. For promotional articles that have been untouched for a while, or after looking for sources, could never pass A7 anyway, this seems a proper application of existing policy. Some of these may also qualify as G12, but it is more efficient to G11 them in obvious cases. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 17:26, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    Plus we don't want to accuse people of a copyright violation on what is likely their own work, if another deletion reason will suffice. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse G11 per my comments here. There are times when G11'ing an AFC is entirely appropriate and there are times when it may be better to just decline it and see if the author can tone it down. As DGG has pointed out, the submissions likely notability might be an important factor in that decision. Pol430 talk to me 17:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment - The Afc is a good place for editors to work on articles in which they have a conflict of interest. Sometimes its hard to see the promotional qualities of articles about things that you love. Even though I was writing articles in mainspace, I put my article about the Mandolin Society of Peterborough through the Afc because I'm in that group. It was rejected as advertising, but since it wasn't deleted I was able to take my time improving it until it passed inspection. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:47, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
    Indeed, I tend to treat AfC submissions more leniently that articles when speedying. However, I frequently patrol WP:UAA and when I'm blocking users with promotional usernames, I simultaneously delete all their spam no matter where it is, and G11 is very useful here. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 17 May

  • Comment I feel the original discussion is being somewhat misread here, the question as I understood it was whether as a matter of routine practice, as well as declining a draft article for being too much like an advert (ie promotional), reviewers should automatically also nominate the draft article for deletion per criteria G11 of speedy deletion. There is no question that if a draft article is a copyright infringement or an attack page, it should be swiftly removed from AFC. Clearly there is broad agreement that unduly promotional articles have no place in main article space, but it is not clear whether immediate deletion is consistent with the goal to give editors a gentler introduction to editing with proper coaching as to what is promotional and not. In my experience in many cases new editors often appear in other help channels after their article has been deleted without any idea of what they needed to do differently or to rewrite, and having the article no longer there to discuss with them makes it much harder for non-admins to offer them help as well as depriving them of viewing the reasons given for declining by the reviewer. I see no reason why any of this requires a change to speed deletion criteria, it is simply a question of practice regarding what should a reviewer do when carrying out a review at AFC and unless anyone is proposing that the speedy deletion criteria 'obligates' a reviewer to nominate an article, then nobody is suggesting that any editor is wrong to nominate particularly stale promotional draft articles (but in fact since there is discussion that the will be automatically deleted anyway one might question how worthwhile that would be) so I would conclude that this discussion seems to be framed in the wrong terms and in the wrong forum. --nonsense ferret 17:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
The Speedy Deletion criteria page definitely says that the criteria apply to all namespaces. Now, Wikipedia:talk is one of these namespaces. It also states that before an article is speedily deleted one should "consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way". Hiding it in the Afc may be "some other way", but the policy doesn't mention it specifically, so it looks like each reviewer is handling this according to his or her own opinion. I can see that there are two sides of this, editors who feel that all spam should be deleted right away, thereby improving Wikipedia and saving time and effort, and other editors who feel that information in every article should be saved and turned into something useful, thereby improving Wikipedia in a different way. The first group is appalled at the spammy stuff laying around the Afc; the second group is appalled at the disappearance of articles that they were hoping would be improved. If the Afc is going to be a permanent part of Wikipedia (as I assume it will be), it wouldn't hurt to have a little clarification in the deletions criteria. For example, "Wikipedia:talk" could be added to the bracketed list of namespaces to encourage G11 there, or "decline at Afc" could be added to the list of "considerations" to discourage the use of G11 in Afc, whichever was the intent when the policy was drafted. It would certainly help users such as nonsenseferret above in their efforts to create a consensus at the Afc in the way the policies are applied.—Anne Delong (talk) 19:12, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose universal blind application of G11 to WP:AFC. From near the top of WP:SPEEDY:

    Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion.

    The very fact that we are discussing this, plus the fact that many AFC reviewers choose not to use G11 even though they presumably know it technically applies to Wikipedia Talk: space means that in at least some cases G11 will be controversial and therefore should not be speedy. I'll cite this lack of a consensus to enforce this policy by AFC reviewers as grounds to exempt WP:AFC from G11 as a policy, while allowing G11 to be used in WT:AFC/ space when it is clearly going to be non-controversial, particularly among WP:AFC reviewers and administrators who would make the call delete or decline to delete a G11-tagged article. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:26, 17 May 2013 (UTC) Update/clarify in light of DGG's comment below - by "blind application" I am referring to AFC submissions which, if they had been created in article space, would have easily and un-controversially qualified as G11. I favor a much weaker standard for AFC: If it's not copyvio/attack/other-legal-issue, then if there is any reasonable hope the submission can be edited to the point of acceptability and it's not obviously abandoned, it should not be deleted simply because it is blatantly promotional. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:40, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
I do not think anyone is proposing universal blind deletion of promotional afcs. Obviously deleting everything someone had tagged as promotional without looking at it is absurdly wrong, just as deleting everything over 6 months old without looking at it is absurdly wrong. Some deletions will be uncontroversial, some otherwise. Each one has to be seen on its own merits. That's what admins are for.that why except in the most obvious circumstances it should take two of them . Even for the rather obvious ones I brought here for discussion I wouldn't have done it single handed. DGG ( talk ) 01:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
"any hope"" is a little too inclusive even for me; better, any reasonable possibility. But the wording is not the key issue. I think what is necessary is agreement that, on the one hand , that G11 for AfC or for that matter in user space is more limited than it is in article space, but still applies. We've always applied a considerable tolerance for articles under construction, and rightly so, for if it can be improved, it might be. But it does not help the user to encourage retention of the hopeless. and we need to very strongly discourage the attempted use of WP for promotion. It's not just a matter of what can be searched on Google. I'm being to see pages for commercial and non commercial organizations and products link to a WP article" even when it is not an article, but an AfC or a user subpage. There are people who deliberately collect and immortalize our deleted articles--the responsible ones do remove copyvios, but they do not remove promotionalism. After all, they do have the right to do so--the license is not revocable. The only way to prevent this is to very strongly discourage the submission of advertising, and our best defense is very rapid removal. If I thought we could do it accurately by an edit filter or a bot, I'd support it, but it takes a human. DGG ( talk ) 04:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
>If I thought we could do it accurately by an edit filter or a bot
Special:Abusefilter/354. There are some terms in there that are a bit iffy, but there are others (e.g. "our products") that get it right essentially all of the time. MER-C 05:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
they catch some of it. But they indicate as much copyvio as promotionalism. And they do not show whether if one removes a paragraph the rest would be viable. DGG ( talk ) 18:13, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Bad faith spam (e.g. dumps of "about us" pages, first person prose, SEO garbage) should be deleted immediately with prejudice regardless of namespace. If it's in good faith, then don't delete it. Of the five AFCs mentioned in the OP, Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Kneading Touch Massage and Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cliffside Malibu are potentially salvageable but the rest, which have first person prose, should be deleted on sight and their creators blocked for abusing Wikipedia for advertising. MER-C 06:25, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    Note that Kneading Touch Massage is a G12. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:55, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    Not necessarily: the web site is no later than April 12. the AFC submission is April 5. It is possible the Wikipedia AFC submission came first. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:29, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    Cliffside mannor is composed of bits and pieces from the website, and all their refs are pure PR, including Forbes. -if there has been a usable third party source I would have advised rewriting. If anyone can rescue this one, I'd be surprised., but some perfectly valid G11s do, after deletion, get subsequently rewritten and resubmitted and make articles. About 1 in 100, but it does happen. In the meantime we have the benefit of not carrying the advertising version.
    What everyone is saying, is be careful I agree completely. I decline about 20% of the G11 speedys I look at, some even from good admins, and a few of mine have gotten declined also. But over the last few years my balance has shifted: three years ago,I was declining maybe 40% of the G11 speedies I looked at, The extent of promotionalism here is increasing greatly, and has become a hazard to our credibility and needs stricter controls that I would have advocated. DGG ( talk ) 18:13, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse Most of the worst spam efforts are copy and paste anyway - they write what they think is selling material and want to keep to the same everywhere. (Mostly puts me off doing business with them, but that's another matter...) Even though AfC is non-indexed, they don't know that. The disappearance of pure promo stuff might tell them something more than a polite decline. I'm talking about the real PR Dept stuff, the completely unsalvageable promo "chock full o' buzz words!". G11 is a G criterion. It should apply everywhere. Sandboxes and AfC and user page. They're not going to become regular editors. In five years in the deletion area, I've seen one become a regular. Not so regular that I can remember his name, though. As DGG points out, it shouldn't be a one editor delete. One tagger, one deleter. However, I reckon that the copies in user space and the user's sandbox don't need separate tags. if they're the same junk, one tag does the lot. Peridon (talk) 18:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the AFC process is a great thing and am generally supportive of it. However, there seems to be an increasing trend to view it as some sort of sacred walled garden where the normal rules don't apply. (we're also seeing this at WP:UAA, where some admins feel spammers who unambiguously violate WP:CORPNAME are exempt if their only edits are to AFC submissions) I don't think that is logical or reasonable. There is no acceptable way to spam Wikipedia. The people who spam in article space aren't acting in any worse faith than those who use AFC, most of them are acting out of ignorance, not bad faith. They simply don't realize we don't stand for being spammed here. Using AFC to do your spamming should in no way grant a free pass to blatantly propmotional material. Let it be deleted and they can start over like everyobdy else who spams. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose to applying G11 in AFC for the following reasons:
  • AFC is to help and educate new editors on the Wikipedia policies.
  • We already have a decline criteria via the AFC process for spam.
  • Any declined, pending, or not submitted article is considered a draft.
  • An AFC is given the same leeway as a user's sandbox -- in fact many editors build their AFC submissions there.
  • G11 for drafts is not in the interest of WP:CHANCE.
  • We will lose new editors that are not familiar with WP:RS and WP:SPAM.
  • Having their 'draft' articles deleted will only cause them to skip the article wizard and create the articles in the main space.
Cheers, Mkdwtalk 06:36, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse, G11 should be valid for AfC space. The idea of G11 is that the content is so promotional, nothing there can be used as a base for an article, it is entirely promotional. If it is, it doesn't matter if it is in AfC space, it has to be completely rewritten regardless. If we assume good faith, it doesn't help the article writer to just reject it, because they have to completely re-write it anyway. Just rejecting it gives out the signal "this still needs work", rather than "this is completely worthless to Wikipedia", which G11 - or any speedy criterium - should always be. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:10, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse. G11, like all of the General criteria, applies everywhere. We are talking about "Unambiguous advertising or promotion" that is "exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten", not just an "unduly promotional tone" that needs a rewrite. By all means try to be gentle in explaining to newcomers why they would need to start from scratch, but by all means delete all spam everywhere without exception. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:10, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Endorse Per DGG's original rational as well as Martijn Hoekstra and Ningauble right up above. G11 applies everywhere and this broad application is necessary to preserve our integrity and ideals. ThemFromSpace 17:14, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

"7-day speedy" in article-creation space

"7-day speedy" in article-creation space - Proposal

General These apply to all namespaces (and so apply to articles, redirects, user pages, talk pages, files, etc.) unless specified otherwise:

G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion. Applies tp all pages except where G14 applies.

G14: Unambiguous advertising or promotion in draft articles in recognized "draft article spaces" such articles created through Articles for creation and User-sub-pages.

See G11 for the definition of Unambiguous advertising or promotion.

Promotional content on draft articles in recognized "draft article spaces" may be removed ("blanked") at any time if a page has not been edited in the past few hours (excluding administrative edits). A polite, welcoming message should be left on the User's talk page with instructions to get back to the previous edit and a link to the editor's contributions. An article tagged with {{db-g14}} may be deleted after seven days.

This criteria does not apply to pages in which all significant editor are made by editors who received a previous warning for violating Wikipedia's spam, no promotional use, or similar guidelines under any account more than a very short time prior to the adding of the promotional content and/or who are temporarily or permanently banned and whose ban is highly unlikely end within 7 days. Note: A block is not the same as a ban.

"7-day speedy" in article-creation space - Discussion

  • I very much like the idea. I don't know if this would be easier understood as a CSD or another variant of PROD/BLPPROD, but that question doesn't limit my support for the general flavor of it. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:21, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I still say that seven days isn't speedy. It's PROD. All speedy tags come into the CSD list - are we supposed to open them all to find which are ready for cooking and which aren't yet ripe? Or are the developers to set up something that separates them out and then sends them along after the seven days? Peridon (talk) 20:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Many of the File: speedy deletions are 7 days. That's where I got the idea from. I'm okay with a PROD as long as it's a special PROD that cannot be removed until the issue is addressed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
  • This seems like a very helpful and promising idea which addresses many of the concerns noted, hopefully this could be implemented in as straightforward and efficient a manner as possible for reviewers to understand what they need to be doing when they encounter an article that seems promotional, but I don't at the moment forsee too many issues with that. 7-days seems like a reasonable period to allow submitters of articles to work out what is what. Good job! --nonsense ferret 21:32, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
    • This is a singularly bad idea, and before we weaken G11 in any respect I would expect project wide consensus. We are in a very desperate situation , actually, with the increase in promotional editing, and the only effective defense is to remove it completely and immediately. (I do not use the word "desperate" very lightly--I cannot remember ever using it before in an argument here ) I can think of nothing in the time I have been here quite so threatening to the concept of an encyclopedia as its use for advertising). The problem will only increase, as WP becomes more prominent. People who contribute advertising need to find out unambiguously that the material will be removed immediately without the need for discussion. It's the only thing that has effect on them. Companies and individuals will advertise here if they think they can get away with it. and the only thing that will stop them is when they see it is impossible. it should be as impossible as it can be. almost always this material is also copyvio, almost always the material is not going to get fixed, almost always the contributor has no intentions of writing an encyclopedic article. A sticky prod doesn't help here. With BLP prod, it is trivial to see if a reasonable reference pertinent to the material claimed has been added. With promotionalism, people will change a word or two, and remove it. For someone who does intend to work on the article and improve it, 7 days doesn't help much--the good-faith newcomers are rarely that persistent. The only people that insistent on resubmitting articles are the spammers.
I really urge everybody supporting it to think again. With the existing method as applied to new articles, it already takes a second administrator, which is enough of a check. (I'm thinking of the most overzealous admin in deleting borderline G11 I know--who happens to be a wikifriend, tho we disagree on a great deal. About 10% of his G11s are wrong, I;m thinking of the typical really imperceptive newcomer to reviewing: they might make as much as 30% errors in spotting promotion, but its almost always on the side of under-tagging--say it was 20% overtagging, which is the worst I've seen on this problem. Even if it were in these two in a row, the error to 2%, at the very most, which is as good as we are likely to get in any process.)
i'm really amazed at the different feeling here and at the top of this same page where we are discussing those afcs older than 6 months. Up there, people seem to want to delete everything without time for even screening. There isn't that much difference between old and recent afcs -- an afc older than a month or so is not likely to be improved, and there are as many bad reviews and mistaggings on the newer ones as on the older ones.
I think we should be looking for ways to strengthen the fight against promotionalism, not weaken it. DGG ( talk ) 22:58, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
(digression) I think you overestimate the "reward" to having promotional material in "noindex" spaces like Wikipedia talk:. Perhaps they submit articles through AFC not knowing that the page isn't indexed by search engines, or perhaps they want the teeny tiny value of having their content show up in Google as hosted on some obscure Japanese web site (example), but basically "drive-by spammers" hoping for search engine optimization are wasting their time and ours with basically nothing to show for it. Now, User subpages and User: pages used for promotion that do get picked up by major search engines, that's an issue to focus on if your goal is to balance the "rewards" of spamming with "deterrence/punishment."
Should we do everything possible to discourage spam from getting into the main encyclopedia? Absolutely. Should we take reasonable steps to discourage spammers from abusing indexed pages like User: pages? Yes. Should we hyper-focus on eliminating spam from every corner of the project when doing so won't improve Wikipedia's image / when they won't make Wikipedia look "less spam-filled" in search engines? Not if it means distracting us from other, higher priorities. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:04, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
You may be underestimating the reward. The real threat is not from people spamming their own companies, it is from the many unscrupulous paid editors that get paid as long as an article stays here for a fixed period of time. Not forever, just until the check clears. Not all paid editors are this way, but SPI stays flooded with many of them. The only way to deal with that kind of editor is with swift action, even swifter than we can flush them out at SPI, which often takes days. Leaving them even an unnecessarily short time benefits them for a variety of reasons. These people can create and recreate articles faster than we can speedy delete them as it is, and they are the most prolific of the COI editors by a few factors. Slowing the process down isn't going to shift the odds in our favor, but will instead empower the editor motivated only by profit. AFC shouldn't be hobbled by excluding or watering down one of the few tools we have that has checks and balances, yet is swift. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 01:38, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
Would blanking during the 7 days address your concerns? (That is, make it a sticky, PROD-like, blanking tag placed at the time the article is marked as promotional....) Per beans, I'm happy to take a yes/no answer rather than a longer explanation. --j⚛e deckertalk 06:07, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
I have over 7000 pages on my watchlist, and adding one that I would have to watch for the purpose of making sure someone doesn't revert doesn't appeal to the practical side of me, honestly. If someone really feels the article is worth salvaging, they can always ask for a refund or userification. There is a flood of G11 qualifying articles. The marginal benefit gained by very few of these pales in comparison to the inconvenience and likely abuse of the system that would happen if we wait 7 days. I can now envision the socks being created solely to revert these speedy deletes, and if the names don't match, and they don't get noticed, then the whole process is undermined using only the effort it takes to create a free account here. The delay allows them to abuse the system at their leisure. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 14:10, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
I take your point, the removal of "sticky" tags is problem enough at BLPPROD, and for promotional material, the stakes are quite different. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:28, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comments regarding spammers My concern is that we may be scaring away the new editor who happens to have a zeal for a topic and whose first edit happens to be something that reads like ad-copy if we treat him the same way as we would treat a known spammer who is coming in with his 100th account trying to collect his 100th check. There has to be a middle ground. If the spam problem really is that bad (and I'm not seeing it that bad in AFC) and it really does boil down to people collecting paychecks, then perhaps a totally new approach is needed, such as bot-blanking the user-submitted part of all submissions shortly after they are made, and make it part of the reviewer's job to decide if they will be un-blanked when they are declined. It won't stop spammers from just "not submitting" pages until the check clears but at least it's a start. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:54, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
    I don't think anything needs to be changed regarding the rules or procedures, only the implementation of them. I have a fairly high standard for G11 — after all, it requires unambiguous advertising or promotion — and I think many new page patrollers are being overzealous and so I decline their G11 tags. Some editors see a page of unwikified content about a company and slap a G11 on it without even bothering to read the article. What we need is to just be more careful and know when to assume good faith. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
    Deleting articles is not necessarily a bite-y action, if it is properly accompanied. We have to keep on assuming good faith - though an easily identified spammer is an easily identified spammer, and we don't need to go out of our way to facilitate their welcome in Wikipedia: it is an endevour that has no reward. We will never get a constructive contributor out of them. A frank but friendly note "the article you wrote is not on, in fact, it is really just spam and we have zero tolerance for that here. Because it had to be completely re-written anyway I have deleted it/requested deletion for it" followed by either a request not to recreate the article if you think it clearly fails the notability guidelines, or some actually helpful advice for the creators situation will be infinitely better against both spammers and good faith newbies than not deleting it and templating them because we might scare them off with a deletion. The only way to be more welcoming to newcomers is to communicate more clearly with them, rather than giving them leeway. Can we have a WP:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to avoid biting newcomers now please? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 08:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per DGG and per my comment somewhere above (but not in the heavens...). Most of the unambiguous spam is PR Dept stuff, pro or am doesn't matter. They're never going to become regular editors of anything except their own stuff. One or two do appeal for help (as opposed to telling us how their buzzword loaded crap fits Wikipedia's rules perfectly, and if it doesn't, the rules should be changed) and those can be helped - if there is notability to be found. In very many cases, the article submission at AfC would be an obvious A7 in article space, and stands no chance of passing even with help. I agree that the spam tag is getting misused, and from tomorrow I'm going to have a bit of a campaign about that. Cynical? Maybe. Working in CSD for five years on both sides of the mop bucket gives one a good idea of how much unusable stuff gets posted. If some of the paid editors (and who in their right mind would pay some of them I don't know...) are discouraged, all to the good. Peridon (talk) 18:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose this nonsense. Speedy deletion criteria are for articles that should go right now and have no possible merit at all. There is no reason to allow that category of articles any leeway, regardless of its namespace, since they have no possible merit at all. If they do have any possible merit, they should not be viable for speedy deletion. I'm getting the impression that that last part is not universally accepted anymore, but it most certainly should. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. If there is any doubt about whether a speedy deletion criterion applies to a given page, it does not apply. Therefore only pages that are unambiguously advertising or promotion qualify for speedy deletion. There is no reason to keep such pages, so they should be speedily deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 20:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Obvious spam must be deleted in all spaces: user, talk, 'article creation': Camel's nose clause: absolutely no encouragement of attempts for turning wikipedia into a billboard. Well-meaning writers may always ask for help and get it. The criterion is very simple: if cleaned of PR fluff, the article has no content, then it is to be deleted. Period. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:09, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per DGG who sums it up perfectly. There should be zero tolerance for promotional articles and the more that are created, the quicker and more efficiently they should be removed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Singularly confusing criteria. DGG and KOH sum up my sentiments Pol430 talk to me 22:23, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose Wikipedia is not a place for advertising. Delete it quickly. --Dede2008 (talk) 11:53, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose No offense, but this is a bad idea for several reasons:
  1. Why do we apply this to spam in particular? It makes no sense.
  2. This is SPEEDY deletion--not 7-day deletion. We already have PROD for 7-day deletions.
  3. G11 is for material that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be spam. If there's any reasonable doubt, speedy deletion is inappropriate, and PROD or even XfD should be used instead.
  4. Obvious spam should be deleted ASAP--not after 7 days--to discourage spammers and prevent even more spam from infesting Wikipedia.

Once again, I fully assume good faith and do not mean any offense. However, G14 is misguided and should not be written into policy. ChromaNebula (talk) 02:29, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

status

I have nominated Burger Baker, Diamond Bond, and M Models for CSD G11. Another admin will judge in the usual way. I have not yet decided what if anything to do about the other 2. As there was some disagreement, I probably will use MfD, which is a better place to get a community consensus on individual items than here. I am continuing to use G11 otherwise on the oldest items as I come across them, that would also fit into G13 by any possible way we might implement it. Anything conceivably doubtful I'm nominating so another person can judge, just as I judge those other people nominate. I imagine I will hear about it if there are any objections. DGG ( talk ) 00:14, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a good plan. Gigs (talk) 18:56, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Accreditation and A7

Does an 'educational establishment' have to be accredited to benefit from the exclusion clause in A7? This has just come up in the case of International Metaphysical University which I declined A7 on, and promptly took to AfD. Without commenting on the standing of IMU, I do see some very tacky looking 'educational establishments' that are fairly obviously a suite of rooms over a restaurant and a launderette belonging to the owner, sorry, the principal, (and on the third floor at that). Often, they fall under G12 anyway. For those that don't, do they fall under A7 or not? Peridon (talk) 11:03, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

No. If they claim to be an educational establishment then they don't come under A7 because it's difficult to draw the line between a non-notable suite of rooms and a suite of rooms that is affiliated to something notable and may warrant merging or redirecting. Accreditation takes many different forms in different countries and so it is not useful on its own as a determiner of anything. A claim of accreditation is an assertion of importance though, not that that matters. Thryduulf (talk) 12:37, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree, that is why AFD is the better venue, to allow time to dig and discuss. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 12:40, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Thank you Peridon, for asking here. I'm the one with the A7 for an Educational Institution. Asking for the consensus, what Peridon did, is best, anyway. Although, I miss a bit the aspect that this is about an 'Online University' for crackpot esoteric metaphysics teaching that has a potential for being a fraud/scam. It's not about having different systems for accreditation in different cultures. Iäm aware of this. That's just to place my POV for future diskussions. --Ben Ben (talk) 21:17, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
I would say they have to credibly be a school. A mail-order diploma service that offers education "in name only." A diploma mill that sold $19.95 Ph.D. degrees where the only "education" was a "text" that said "The first American President is George Washington" and a "final exam" consisting of "Who was the first President of the United States: A) George Washington B) automobile" would not qualify as a school in my book. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:40, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
Determining that is normally takes more investigation than is appropriate for speedy deletion though, especially as some can be notable for being just degree mill (e.g. due to controversy). Better to let AfD handle it. Thryduulf (talk) 01:47, 23 May 2013 (UTC)
This has come up in various contexts: tutoring establishments, language schools, and trade schools, for example. In both cases there can be some need for discussion what the nature of the organization is, so it might be better to go to AfD. It's simpler than trying to make a rule. My personal view has been that an educational establishment in the sense of A7 means a degree-granting establishment, and I personally have been quite satisfied applying A7 to others, but my use has been challenged, and I agree that it never makes sense to argue such things. AfD can deal with it. (I point out, though, that many articles of proprietary establishments will be G11, G12, or both, & can be be best dealt with in that manner. Those two criteria do apply to schools of all sorts, as well as everything else in Wikipedia.) DGG ( talk ) 17:49, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Possibly a bit of language split there - to me in the UK, a school doesn't grant degrees, but it's an educational establishment. Degrees are the job of universities only. But high schools (equals secondary schools here) are considered inherently notable. Or are they? That seems to change every so often. Peridon (talk) 15:40, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
From my experience, high schools or schools that included grades 9-12 are given a free pass, primary education institutions have to demonstrate notability or end up redirected to the school district that serves them, or lacking that, to the city where the school exists. I support that interpretation as well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ - © - @ - Join WER 12:40, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Updated G13

Per the discussion at WT:AFC, G13 now applies to redirects to created pages in AfC space provided all incoming links are fixed. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 18:14, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Not objecting to the change, but this should really be discussed (or at least mentioned) here. Hut 8.5 20:58, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
This closure was, in my opinion, rather premature given both the scale of the proposal and the fact that the discussion had been open for barely 24 hours. Clear consensus, not least that which requires the re-wording of a speedy deletion criterion, is nearly impossible to gauge in such a short period of time.
On a side note, at some point in the near future Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as rejected AfC submissions will need to be renamed to reflect the widening of G13's scope. It may be better to put off a WP:CfD discussion until after the formal description of the new criterion has been fixed. SuperMarioMan 00:45, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I object. The discussion was not well advertised. It was too short. On first glance, I think I would be likely to oppose as of no benefit to anyone and of some harm to the original authors (they remember editing there, but now it is gone). — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs) 00:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Alright then, a new discussion is below. --Nathan2055talk - contribs 20:06, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
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