Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion

Articles that meet notability guidelines

There have been a number of articles that don't "assert" or "indicate" importance in the text, but are backed up with citations to (obviously) significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Since such articles will always survive AfD discussions, it seems senseless to permit them to be speedily deleted. There is nothing in the notability guidelines about "assertion" or "indication" of notability, just reference to the actual criteria, which relate to the subject's coverage or other fact patterns—not text in the article.

I've tweaked the text at A7 to reflect this.

^Bongo_matic 07:22, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Shame we actually have to say this, though, since the general instructions for CSD clearly support this: speedy deletion is only for things for which everyone (or everyone familiar with and understanding Wikipedia's inclusion policies, at any rate) agrees that no encyclopedia article should exist OR that there is a fatal flaw (G10-12) with what's currently there. Jclemens (talk) 07:53, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I've always thought this to be implicit in both A7 and (per Jclemens) speedy deletion policy in general but there's absolutely nothing wrong with spelling it out explicitly. Also, mentioning notability as one of two ways to cross the A7 bar should draw attention to the distinction between "notability" and "claim to significance or importance", which in my experience is lost on a number of editors. So I agree with the change. --Mkativerata (talk) 07:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I've always taken the existence of a source to be an inherent indicator or assertion. No harm in this change. GedUK  12:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

(In response to all.) I totally agree that this should be obvious, and it's a little pathetic to have to add the clarification. However, I've seen a number of speedy nominations (including a successful one today for Van Dykes—an admittedly lame stub sourced to a 6,000 word New Yorker dedicated solely to the topic) of articles that have been sourced to overwhelmingly meet the guidelines' hurdle. Moreover, the "assertion" language has crept into {{prod}} and AfD nominations, so this should help nip those in the bud. ^Bongo_matic 14:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Needs more discussion. I thought it was pretty obvious that something for which there is demonstrated notability will obviously and necessarily be of some importance or significance. However , I would not change the language in the way suggested, because the moment we accept the word "notability" into the guideline, people will list articles for speedy on the basis of not meeting WP:N, whereas the actual standard is intended to be a lot less. (That's not the real problem with deletions such as the one mentioned: the actual problem is that if there is no indication in the article, how far is the nominator or deleting admin expected to go to find one? I'd say they must at the very least look at any refs the article contains, but what if the refs do not contain any, but a cursory search would easily find them? I admit that I do not always look if there's nothing present and the situation looks borderline and I'm doubtful whether I will find anything, though I will look if I think I can find something. ) Perhaps we need a rewording, but not this one. I predict that the effect would be the exact opposite of what is intended. recall proposing a very similar change my first year here, but more experienced people explained this to me. I have consequently reverted, and I think we need some discussion first about a proper wording. As for a wording, I think the effect would be better gained with almost the exact opposite. It is not necessary to show the subject would actually meet a notability guideline. , or perhaps the more elaborate It is not necessary to show the subject would actually meet a notability guideline; merely an indication or credible assertion that there is some importance of significance or notability is sufficient. DGG ( talk ) 00:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I always considered citations to reliable sources to be very literal "assertions of significance". There's no difference to me between saying, "this band was written up in a full page article by The New Yorker", and simply linking to the article, as far as A7 is concerned. I actually prefer it, because it avoids the awkward "X is notable because" phrase you sometimes see in stubs. Someguy1221 (talk) 00:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that more discussion is needed and that the language used was worse than what we currently have. To be honest the only way I can think of that an article could demonstrate that it meets the notability guidelines without asserting importance or significance would be if it included an external link that showed it met WP:N without asserting anything in the article text. We had a very recent discussion about this, and it didn't quite reach consensus. Personally I still feel that as soon as you start needing to look at anything external to the article to text to determine whether it asserts significance or not then it clearly doesn't. Thryduulf (talk) 00:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Myself, when I look, I find enough about 25% of the time. But since I only look when I think it worthwhile, I estimate thats about 5% of the articles that would otherwise be deleted. That someone write an uncited unclear article on a notable topic is a very frequent occurance, and it doesnt't mean that it should be deleted, but used as a starting point, or at least as an indication to write something. DGG ( talk ) 02:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

DGG, I think your point on the wording is well-taken. However, your edit summary (reverting the changes, not here) suggests (whether or not intentionally) that there isn't consensus that articles that fail to assert importance—but actually demonstrate (WP) notability should not be nominated for speedy deletion. I don't think that's correct.

Thryduulf, I considered adding this topic to the discussion above, but I don't think it's relevant. I'm not referring to articles whose subject is claimed to be important by third-party sources, I'm referring to topics that are the subjects of in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources—whether or not such sources describe the topics as "important". To pass the notability guideline, a topic doesn't need to be asserted to be important at all&either in Wikipedia or in a third-party source. The notability guidelines—even the subject-specific ones—all tie back to coverage, not descriptions as "important" (indeed the second sentence of WP:N states "Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things like fame, importance, or popularity.").

Here's alternative wording to the original tweak—welcome everyone's improvements.

An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except schools), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion. In addition, this criterion does not apply to to articles that demonstrate that their subjects meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines, even articles that fail otherwise to indicate why their subjects are important. moved Note: This criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative works. This criterion does not apply to species of animals, only to individual animal(s).

Thoughts? ^Bongo_matic 01:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Far too many words. KISS.--Scott Mac 01:12, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

As the person who originally suggested "no assertion of notability" I'd resist any change in this. Firstly, guidelines are guidelines, and not policies. Personally, I don't read them - I'd rather take each article on its merits YMMMV. The point of "no assertion of notability" was that it ought (mostly) to be cut and dry - and not intended to do AFDs work for it. If the article doesn't contain any claim, which if true, would assert anything important about the person, then it may be speedied. Of course, the subject of the article might be notable, and it is just that the notability hasn't been mentioned - but that's by and by. If someone writes an artilce and can't tell us why the person is important, the onus isn't on the patroller or the reviewing admin to separate the article from the other 99 about someone's favourite uncle. The criteria has NOTHING whatsoever to do with sources - and I'd strongly resist any attempt to insert any instruction creep here. If we insert a source consideration, then we'll get it cutting both ways - because people will start deleting articles WITH unsourced assertions of notability - and retaining articles with sources but no assertion. The point about a speedy is the face of the article ought to tell you whether it qualifies, without looking at sources or guidelines. That means speedy decisions can be quickly standardised. Sure, articles with assertions of notability will get kept, even when the article fails the guidelines (that's a matter for AFD or prod, not speedy), and occasional articles lacking an assertion will notable despite that (but they can be recreated with the default remedied). No change here please.--Scott Mac 01:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree completely with this. XfD is the main deletion process for Wikipedia, not speedy deletion. The criteria for speedy deletion must be "objective", "uncontestable", "frequent" and "non-redundant". I'm struggling to see how trying to add complex rules for the infrequent occasions when articles that fail to tell us why we should have an article about that subject but would meet notability guidelines if they did meets these requirements? As soon as you are trying to evaluate a whether a source is reliable or notable in itself then you fail the objectivity clause, complex rules are often struggle to be uncontestable and I've not seen anything that shows this is a frequent occurrence. If it's unclear whether something is making an assertion of importance or significance or not, send it to PROD or AfD. Thryduulf (talk) 02:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

We have WP:REFUND and WP:DRV to challenge any deletion don't forget.

CSD needs to do two things 1) shovel a lot of shit reasonably quickly. 2) leave things which have a reasonable probability of not being shit. These aims are sometimes in tension. The minute we require shit-shovellers to stop and assess sources on every crappy article "just in case" we're tipped the balance one way. The minute we start allowing people to shit-shovel an article on the grounds the sourcing seems poor, we've tipped it the oher way. No, keep sourcing out of it.--Scott Mac 02:37, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Because notability is just about existence of sources, the inclusion of sources in an article is an assertion of notability. There is no requirement that the article has to say "This topic is notable because"; just putting in a reference to the topic of the article is a clear statement that there are sources on the topic. When I create articles, I make sure to include a source for exactly this purpose. For example, the inline citation to Kechris in Lusin's separation theorem is an assertion of notability. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

This is very logical. Unfortunately, some editors do not adhere to the view that sourcing is an assertion of notability (and nominate articles that are sufficiently sourced to establish notability). The suggestion was to clarify that very point. ^Bongo_matic 03:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

In that example I see two assertions of significance - that it has references to academic works (these are not the same (imho) as external links to random websites) and that it was proven by somebody notable enough to have a Wikipedia article. Either one gives it enough to pass the A7 bar without further investigation. Whether the references back up the claims in the article is not a matter for a patroller, if they have doubts they should tag it for AfD/PROD/bring it to the attention of a relevant wikiproject for investigation. Thryduulf (talk) 03:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. My point is that if there are even superficially plausible references, that should be enough for page patrol. It's not even necessary to look at the references - just the citation info itself can be a credible claim of importance. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I regard the above discussion can best be seen as a gloss or explanation of the traditional wording, but not a replacement for it.

But there is one point above to which i take the strongest exception. There is a difference between WP:V and WP:N. WP:V is necessary, but not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. In the other direction, the absence of immediate verification in a submitted article is not cause for rejection if there is reason to think that WP:V is possible and that there is some prospect of notability. There may be sources, and the sources may not indicate any importance. We may have any number of directory--type sources that refer to something, and establish that what is said about the person is true, but if what they indicate is true is insignificant, the person is not notable. (I can easily find a dozen such reliable sources for even the author of a self-published book I c, and some will be secondary sources. (they will, of course, be neither discriminate nor substantial).

Consider the purpose of A7: the purpose is to remove as soon as possible those articles about whom it is clear that no WP article can ever be written. There are some cases we can tell easily: a band that has yet recorded no songs, a person who is still a junior high school student, a corner grocery. Unless there is something really special, none of these have a chance of having notability , not by the GNG, not by any other guideline, not by common sense--and anyone nominating for speedy and any admin looking at it will surely agree. These are what A7 is for. The current rule works very well for removing them. And for any notable band or business or person it will work very well for keeping them, because it it not possible that they can be notable and yet unimportant. There are two problems: one is that the article might because of ignorance or carelessness not give an indication, but there may be evidence to be found if one looks; how to handle this will always depend upon how much work we are willing to do. . The other is that in some cases it may not be at all clear whether what is indicated is possibly important: the model is an article asserting someone won a local amateur championship: the person may think it important, but we know that Wikipedia at present will not consider it important. It's a good faith assertion of notability , and might even be sourced--but the chances of a sustainable article is zero. Where to draw the line here will always be a matter of judgement. The guideline at present works very well if usedf properly. No guideline works if used as some use it, to mean "I don't think it's notable." The present wording is the proper balance. Our job is to get people to follow it. And frankly, I see few errors made with A7, except when the article is judged to early on. The errors are with G11, which has no firm criteria at all, for it depends how much rewriting one thinks is reasonable.

It is never a good idea to base a change in the speedy guidelines on a single isolated case--the multiplies and complicates rules, which are best kept simply. There is only one thing that must be made clear: what is needed to pass A7 is much less than notability, just something to tell us that an article might be possible. DGG ( talk ) 04:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

DGG, the proposal is not based on an isolated case—it has occurred on multiple occasions. Moreover, the language here has insinuate its way into numerous AfD discussions, and (if my recollection is correct) even held some sway. If the confusion were limited only to speedy deletions—which can generally be undone quickly—I would concede the point. But it's not. ^Bongo_matic 04:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There is an argument in favour of the status quo (requiring an assertion of notability): it promotes the writing of better stubs. The author presumably has in their mind some idea of why their subject is important or significant: A7 as it stands should encourage them to write at least a sentence or two to share that idea with readers. JohnCD (talk) 18:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I generally try to find a reason to keep an article, and I have found the existing wording of A7 sufficient to do so. The borderline cases that this might address are where something of importance to the person is indicated, but it is totally clear that it would not be of encyclopedic significance. The goal then is to avoid harm to the encyclopedia , and also avoid embarrassment to the editor or to the subject (actually, most of the times where this is relevant, the editor is the subject & it is particularly necessary to not hurt his feelings: Do No Harm applies in dealing with living people at every level, and in every process). The editor needs a careful personal explanation, and the deletion accomplished without embarrassment. I normally use the concept of "encyclopedic importance", by which I mean, is it something that a sensible person who has some idea of the nature of Wikipedia, could reasonably think might be suitable for inclusion? If it's not, I use speedy. If so, I Prod, and advise the person to withdraw the article--usually they do, once they're told in a sympathetic way that it's outside our scope. People of good will recognize that we do have a limited scope, and that if they inadvertently write an article that does not fall within it, it will not be kept. If they are stubborn about it and remove the Prod, they'll have to face AfD--there's no help for it.

The problem isn't the wording, it's admins who look for every possible reason to delete an article. No change in wording will deal with that problem. DGG ( talk ) 01:30, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of css and js user pages

If this Help Desk post by Intelligentsium (talk · contribs) is correct, can it be added as a note at "U1" on this page, and in the documentation for {{db-u1}} itself? It's something that gets asked about from time to time. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather recommend we add a note like "To request deletion of subpages where templates cannot be used (like .css and .js pages), add {{adminhelp}} to your talk page with the request instead." It's easier than adding a category to those pages and less confusing, because admins might wonder why such pages appear in the category if there was no template on them. Regards SoWhy 09:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't simply blanking these pages have the same effect as deleting them? The only reason deletion might be needed is because some users create .css or .js pages because it's the only way a non-admin can create a page that can't be edited by other non-admins. I believe Timotheus Canens did this for kissle permissions before he became an admin. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 14:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone who changed their mind about the Edit counter tool would need to delete, not blank, their EditCounterOptIn.js. I have added SoWhy's suggestion to the project page. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Why would you not just put the CSD template on the talk page, like we do for all other deletion templates where the main page cannot be edited for whatever reason? Happy‑melon 01:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that templates do transclude on .js pages, but don't display properly. I remember having some odd behavior in a script that was resolved by escaping the templates' braces. I searched the WP:Village pump (technical) archives, but I didn't find anything. Flatscan (talk) 05:12, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

db-u1 will properly categorize a .js or .css page into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user. –xeno^talk 14:38, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming, Xeno. I've revised the note to explain the behavior. Flatscan (talk) 05:25, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I forget what this is

Let's say I copy the entire contents of Solar system and put it on a page like "John Smith." What's the appropriate tag here? I think it should be included under test pages. It's not a duplicate (because the title is unrelated to the existing article). Thoughts — Timneu22 · talk 00:36, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Assuming the person has not attributed the edit to the article is came from (which I've never seen), it is technically a blatant copyright violation, but tagging it as a G12 is not what I think you should do here, and I agree that A10, while having a surface appearance of fitting, isn't quite a right fit. It's not obviously a test page either (in my opinion way overused for pages where people have no clue whether a person is testing or not). There's two reasons these happen in my experience (usually which one is clear by context): A person wants to use the other page as an example article that they're now going to tailor to the topic, or a person who is attempting to make what I call a homemade redirect (with obviously no understanding of page histories). Were I to tag this, I would always use {{db | g6 with contextual explanation}} and then a tailored note on the user's talk page. I'm not sure you were suggesting we add anything to address these, but if you were, I don't think they come up often enough to warrant a change or addition to the criteria.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:45, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I have seen this with some frequency, like once a week. In most instances, it's a copy of something that's mildly related, but yesterday it was the exact example I discuss here: solar system being copied to an article with a person's name as the title. I have to go with G2; we can't claim copyright problems within the same encyclopedia, can we? I guess G6 could be right, too. — Timneu22 · talk 10:54, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Again, I don't think it's the right action to take in this situation at all, but we can indeed claim "copyright problems". If me and you collaborate on an article, we own the copyright, not Wikipedia. Where that content is used without compliance with the attribution requirements of its licenses, there is no legal difference between that content being posted under a new title here violating our copyright, or the infringement occurring at some other site. Anyway, back to the topic. Why would you use G2? What makes you think the person's intent was to test? Unless there's something inherent in posting an article in this manner, tagging it as a test is a stab in the dark as to whether it's correct. As I said above, I've typically seen where a person is using another article as a template for a new one, or making a homemade redirect, neither of which are test actions at all. We shouldn't use G2 as a catchall even when we have no idea whether it actually fits.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

It might be templating but in my experience it's more often forking and is generally (though not always) evidence of bad-faith. If it's a POV-fork, that is, a fork with the intent to create a variant article pushing a particular point of view, it's definitely bad faith but speedy-deletion rarely stops the problem. Redirecting the new page back to the original article, however, does tend to nip that behavior in the bud. If it's a fork to a truly frivilous new title (like a person's name), I'd consider that probably vandalism and speedy-deletable as such (G3) but I'd want to cross-check the user's other contributions to confirm the pattern. I've seen some apparently silly changes that turned out to be true but either obscure, historical or related to some fictional context that I didn't know about. And, of course, sometimes forking is good-faith if, for example, it's the first step to splitting an overly-long article or drafting a drill-down page.
Copyright would not be an actionable cause for forking since the attribution requirement of GFDL is met at the project level and not necessarily required at the page-level. You do not, for example, have to copy an entire page's history when moving a paragraph from one page to another and while it's courteous to note the content move in the edit summary, it is not required. I also agree that G2 would be a poor choice unless there was something specific in the edit summary or the user's other contribution history to support that hypothesis. Rossami (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Usually what I see is not quite so extreme a mis-titling, but an intention to fork, or use one article as a template for another. Deleting via copyright in any case is absurd, since the copyright violation can be immediately cured by a suitable reference on the bottom of the article with a link to the original. The relevant rule is NOT BURO, and we should try to figure out the intent & proceed accordingly. (But when I think it's playing around, but not malicious enough to be called vandalism, I do use G2, test page interpreting it as an attempt to test what we do here. Most vandals don't deserve the satisfaction, & I generally try to use the mildest reason possible as a way of squelching them--I think they generally get the point . ) DGG ( talk ) 06:17, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Rewording G10

It seems from [1] and [2] that we as a community want G10 to be broader than it is. How would people feel about removing the word "entirely" from the phrase "entirely negative in tone and unsourced" ? JoshuaZ (talk) 04:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Considering WP:BLP, "entirely" is not necessary. Corvus cornix_talk 05:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

• Disagree. If there is non-attack content to be preserved, the content can be deleted, and even revdeleted as necessary. There's no need to remove the word entirely from this because CSD criteria should always be interpretted as narrowly as possible, and broadening this criterion only makes it more ambiguous as to when it should be appropriate. Leave it as it is; if an article contains a mix of attack text and good text, excise the bad and leave the good. --Jayron32 05:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Remember that the long text of G10 is just an amplification of the short criterion ("Pages that disparage or threaten their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose"). The examples given are just that - examples, not restrictions on what can be deleted under G10. The real issue here is article content that would be acceptable (assuming notability) in a sourced article, but is an attack when found in a completely unsourced one. I know what my opinion of that is - unsourced biographical articles should go, full stop - but given that the community has a spectrum of opinions on this, the question is whether such articles can exist in a state where they are waiting for sources that may not arrive. I'm not sure this fits squarely under the present G10 criterion, and so I opined in the relevant AfD that it didn't seem to apply, technically. I would like to see such things made deletable under some criterion. — Gavia immer (talk) 05:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

If we're still talking in the hyperspecific here, about the "porn actor" example, the issue with that specifically is that porn actor isn't an unambiguous attack, in the was that say "murderer" would be. Everyone considers murder a crime. There are, however, varying opinions on whether performing sexual acts for money is, of itself, something which carries necessarily negative connotations. I'm not sure that it does. That someone thinks it is disparaging of the subject is obvious; however I doubt that everyone would think that. As such, I don't think changing the language of this criterion merely because we can't all agree on whether or not pornography is unambiguously a negative thing to be associated with is really a great course of action. It's usually a bad idea to make systemic changes based on small, inconsequential ambiguities like this. --Jayron32 05:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Also, I think WP:BLPPROD can handle such articles in most cases for exactly the same reason. If it's really clearly disparaging, G10 covers it. If only parts are, it doesn't, because you can remove those parts instead. No need to change the criterion though. In this case policy was simply not applied correctly and now there is a perceived need to change policy - there isn't. I just read the article in question and most of it was not defamatory or negative in tone. The correct way would have been to remove those parts perceived as such and tag the rest as WP:BLPPROD or A7. Regards SoWhy 10:45, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

That's really splitting hairs though. If I removed all BLP-violating content from this revision, I have essentially blanked the article. If I then delete it per WP:CSD#A3, isn't that gaming the purpose of A3? And what then is the difference between that and immediate deletion per WP:CSD#G10? NW (Talk) 14:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps I am missing something, but as far as I can see, the revision would still contain a claim to significance and a filmography, enough to make the page pass all the speedy deletion criteria. decltype (talk) 15:44, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think that qualifies as an A3 deletion. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 15:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we need to change G10's wording. There's IAR, there's BLP, and there's common sense. If someone removes a speedy tag from a potentially libelous BLP without bothering to remove the offensive material, then I say restore the tag, remove the content, and trout the removing user. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 16:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Or block him if truly egregious or repeated issues arise. Jclemens (talk) 03:09, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Proposed new criterion A11

Tacking this onto CSD G10 isn't a good idea, since it invites endless disputation concerning whether unsourced claims of participation in the production of adult entertainment constitute "attacks", and similar issues. At the same time, extreme BLP violations clearly merit speedy deletion. As this is a frequently recurring problem, the propriety of such deletions should be codified in the CSD. Recourse to IAR should be limited to uncommon circumstances which policies cannot anticipate, or where the policy violation is trivial, which isn't relevant here, since deletion is a big deal. A possible wording:

A11: An article in which every page revision is comprised entirely of unsourced, unreliably sourced, or original research controversial material directly relating to specific living people, or could be speedily deleted under another criterion after removal of the same. Chester Markel (talk) 01:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Redundant: If it could be deleted under another criteria then why the new criteria?!? We already have WP:BLPPROD and the other CSD criteria. Which articles which should unambiguously be deleted speedily would this criterion cause to be deleted which would not under existing criteria? --Jayron32 02:04, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

While one could, in principle, remove the BLP violations in an article, then immediately delete it under CSD A7 or a similar criterion, this is likely to be seen as a form of gaming, especially since the CSD are generally only used when every revision of an article meets the criterion. In most cases, an admin blanking an article in its entirety, then immediately deleting it per CSD A3, would have to contend with many disgruntled editors. In any event, the removal of serious BLP violations should not be made contingent upon an admin jumping through procedural hoops of editing an article to render it more deletable. The matter is of sufficient importance that it should be a simple, straightforward application of the CSD. BLPPROD isn't an adequate remedy, since such deletions can only be performed ten days after tagging the article. Unsourced articles making controversial claims about living people should be removed yesterday. The language "could be speedily deleted under another criterion after removal" of the BLP violations is necessary to avoid end runs around the CSD, by inserting trivialities into the article so that it isn't comprised entirely of unsourced controversial material. Chester Markel (talk) 03:03, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of articles where this deletion criteria would be useful, as I requested above? This looks surprisingly like a solution in search of a problem. I'd like to see some data, some actual articles which would not have been speedily deleted under another criteria, but could under this one, where such a speedy deletion would be unambiguously needed. That is, show everyone the actual need for this crtierion. I am not opposed to new criterions where evidence shows they are needed. But I am opposed to new criterions just for the sake of dealing with hypothetical problems which may or may not be actual problems... In other words, I would be perfectly willing to support this idea if you can show (rather than tell) where it is needed. --Jayron32 03:16, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The former article on "Tina Mai" clearly required immediate deletion, fits my proposed criterion precisely, and was not effectively handled by the present CSD: the article was tagged for G10 speedy deletion, untagged, and eventually deleted only after an extended discussion over whether and how it could be speedied. Chester Markel (talk) 04:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

No, it didn't. Simply saying so does not make it true. The problematic material could have been removed (WP:REVDEL anybody?) and the rest tagged with WP:BLPPROD, couldn't it? Once the material deemed problematic is gone, the need to remove the article immediately vanishes as well. Regards SoWhy 07:39, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps in some alternate universe, in which all controversial material which violates WP:BLP because of poor or non-existent sourcing could be revision deleted. However, on this Wikipedia, revision deletion criterion 2 only covers the subset of BLP violations that are also "Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material". (Some limitation on the scope of BLP violations that can be revision deleted is fairly obvious, since overzealous administrators might otherwise start blowing away article revisions which they found to give undue weight to sourced negative material, etc.) We'd have the debate linked at AN/I all over again, except this time, instead of debating whether an unsourced claim of participation in the production of adult entertainment constituted an "attack", we have would have an argument over whether the same material was sufficiently "grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive" to be the sort of BLP violation that could be revision deleted. Opinions would vary as a function of the discussion participants' views on adult content itself. Chester Markel (talk) 03:42, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternate proposal: Modify A7

After examining my own arguments and the discussion above, I think the "attack page" nomenclature is a diversion from the real issue. We can crystallize the major point as follows: when a new article contains assertions of importance that are also BLP violations ("contentious unsourced material"), then the BLP violations should be removed. It's clear enough from various discussions that referring to such articles as "attack pages" in the general case tends to be controversial - but material that violates BLP should still be removed. That can lead to a situation where BLP surgery leaves an article that meets the letter of A7 or even A3, but only "artificially" - it can be clear that the creator of the article meant for there to be an assertion of importance, but that assertion of importance was removed for violating other content policies that don't necessarily mandate deletion of the article. The fix would seem to be to cut the Gordian knot and simply declare that BLP-violating "contentious unsourced material" is not acceptable as an A7 "assertion of importance" even while it is contained in the article.

For reference, here's the current text of the second part of A7 (a footnote distinguishing A7 "importance" from "notability" is omitted):

...The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.

I propose that this be changed as follows (removed text struck through, added text bolded):

...he criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The criterion does apply if the claim of significance or importance given is not credible. If the claim's credibility is unclear, you can improve the article yourself, propose deletion, or list the article at articles for deletion.

With the exception of articles on living people,

T

t

For articles on living people, any material that would be removable from the article under the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy is not a sufficient assertion of importance, but negative material which meets that policy can be a sufficient assertion of importance.

This would not prevent the theoretical creation of a new article on, say Jared Loughner, because the claim of importance would be contentious but sourced. Likewise it wouldn't allow A7 deletion of an article like "Joe Blow is an award-winning journalist who personally shot and killed John F. Kennedy", regardless of whether such a new article should be deletable, because if you removed the BLP-violating material you would still have a claim of importance that meets A7. It would allow articles like the one that started this discussion to be deleted, because the only claims of importance were unsourced contentious material, and the only material that didn't violate BLP amounted to "so-and-so is a person", which doesn't meet A7.

It will be noted as an objection to this proposal that it amounts in practice to speedy deleting articles simply for not having sources, since sourced material wouldn't violate BLP, and we have never required sources in new articles in order to avoid immediate deletion. To that objection, I will simply note that we do require sources in new BLP articles; articles that don't have them can be deleted via sticky prod. This proposal would allow a narrow subset of articles eligible for the BLP prod to be deleted sooner rather than later, but it would not suddenly make them more subject to deletion, since they already are.

It will also be noted that this would make A7 dependent on a separate policy page that could change - but WP:BLP is a mature core policy that is unlikely to change dramatically. Everyone knows what is actually meant by that policy; it just happens to be too long to repeat it in its entirety inside the A7 criterion. An attempt to manipulate BLP policy in order to manipulate A7 would be noticed immediately if it actually resulted in a change in how A7 was applied. Moreover, there is broad support for deleting BLP-violating material regardless; all this proposal does is avoid a current collision between two policies related to deletion of material.

Any thoughts? — Gavia immer (talk) 06:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I have to re-state what Jayron stated above. This seems like a solution to a non-existing problem and it's a solution that the community (for very good reasons!) rejected multiple times. The last time we had this discussion, WP:BLPPROD was created to address those articles. A solution, that satisfied most people, both supporting and opposing a radical deletion of unsourced BLPs and thus gained consensus. If you propose a change that effectively nullifies this consensus with respect to such articles, then you need to also show why the current mechanisms in place to deal with such articles are insufficient. Moreover, your example proves my point. As I stated above, the article that started this discussion, could have been handled perfectly well with the existing processes: Remove the contentious material (possibly revdelete it) and tag the article with a sticky PROD (since there is sufficient reason to believe that sources possibly exist and thus A7 should not be used). So where exactly is the need for a change? In fact, if one were to change A7, I would suggest to add a simple sentence like "Use BLPPROD instead if the claim of importance has been removed as an unsourced claim that violated WP:BLP". Regards SoWhy 07:33, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

BLPPROD is nice, but what of articles that are very barely sourced (IMDB, perhaps a sentence or two is sourced) enough so that BLPPROD doesn't apply. And what of the articles created before March 2010, to which BLPPROD isn't allowed to be used on? NW (Talk) 21:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

For the small number of articles that are that poorly sourced which are neither speedy deletion candidates nor suitable for BLPPROD there is an apparently little valued process by the name of "AfD" that is perfectly set up to handle the cases that fall between the cracks of other processes. Thryduulf (talk) 21:46, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, you mean a process that will unnecssarily take (a) week(s) to handle a straightforward case? I think I'll just be citing BLP in any further deletions I make where G10 doesn't fully apply, and people shall be free to request undeletion if they are willing to immediately improve the article. NW (Talk) 22:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

You know I like you, NW, but that's simply the wrong way to do it. If G10 does not apply, you should not use it, not as a tagger and certainly not as an admin. A number of users and admins, as this discussion shows, have, in their belief that speedy deletion should handle content problems, started a trend to request changes to perfectly fine working policies for reasons they cannot adequately explain. Take your example for instance: As an article, all content policies and guidelines apply to it. It's sourced to IMDB? Remove the source and the contentious material sourced to it - WP:V allows you to do so and has always done so. Then tag the rest, that now does not contain material harmful to a living person, as BLPPROD. If it's an older article, use regular PROD or AFD, as Thryduulf points out correctly. If an article exists for a year and longer (pre-March 2010), then another week will not change much. But it might allow people to rescue the article when they see it discussed for deletion, thus potentially saving us valuable information. The problem imho is that a low but significant number of users and admins has come to the conclusion that CSD is a regular deletion process - it's not. Community consensus, for as long as Wikipedia exists, was and is that deletion discussions are the regular way to handle deletions. No admin should ignore this consensus (and the policy that describes it) just because they think it's "unnecessary" or because they think it's a "straightforward case". We had plenty of examples where "straightforward cases" turned out to be problematic and in need of discussion. Which is also the reason why we have to criterion that says "Admins can delete stuff if they think discussion is unnecessary". As such (TLDR): Use G10 when it fits but when it doesn't, use the tools in place to handle such articles. There is neither need nor justification to ignore the restrictions of the speedy deletion policy (especially not this policy where any subjective reasoning by admins will reflect badly on the project as a whole) when existing policy covers the problem just fine. Regards SoWhy 00:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I have yet to come across an article that needs speedy deletion that could not be appropriately deleted under the existing criteria. Whether the statement that a person is notable as a porn actor is disparaging depends on the context. If no indication is given that the person is in fact in that line of work, the only safe assumption is that it might be intended as disparagement; it is the sort of thing that ill mannered people say of their friends or enemies, and we must always delete it. If there were literally no other context, I'd use A1, as we have no real idea of the person indicated. It's very easy to see on Google if there is some evidence that the person is involved in porn--and in that case, it's a credible non-disparaging statement. The BLP policy is sufficient to delete any questionably BLP, and I think we generally do just that already. Those that get by do so because they're not looked at carefully, not the lack of rules to remove them DGG ( talk ) 01:36, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Surely you jest. In this discussion there was an extended argument over whether a statement that a person is notable as a porn actor, not backed up by reliable sources and with no RS available via a straightforward web search, constituted an "attack". The offending article was eventually deleted as a BLP violation, but only after the deletion tag had been removed, and a debate over whether the page could be speedily deleted, and, if so, under what criterion. Above, editors are still arguing that the article didn't require speedy deletion at all. There clearly is an active dispute over whether articles can be speedily deleted because they violate WP:BLP by including unsourced (and, in the case referenced above, probably unsourceable) controversial material about living people. Chester Markel (talk) 03:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

If there is an active debate about whether something is eligible for speedy deletion or not then it isn't. Speedy deletion is only for cases where deletion it is non-controversial and everybody agrees that it would be deleted at AfD regardless of the individual details. The existence of a debate about whether it should be deleted or not proves that this is not the case. 09:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thryduulf (talk • contribs)

Exactly. And while you keep on saying that they should be speedy deleted, you have so far failed to show why removing the offending material instead wouldn't work. Regards SoWhy 14:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I have, and you've ignored it. While speedy deletions are generally uncontroversial, arbcom recognizes that administrators such as yourself seek to include articles founded with BLP-violating inadequately sourced material about living people in Wikipedia, for at least seven days until AFD discussions are concluded. Additionally, WP:BLP itself provides that "If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion" at deletion review. Codification of the legitimacy of such deletions in the CSD simply encourages more admins to step up to the plate, and avoids the need to continually warn other administrators that they may be desysopped for unilaterally restoring controversial material removed for a violation of BLP source requirements. Chester Markel (talk) 04:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Erm, is this not exactly what WP:CSD#G10 is for? If removing the offending material would not leave a viable article and there is no version of the article that is suitable for Wikipedia it can be speedily deleted under G10. If there is a previous version of the article that is not a BLP violation or removing the information would leave an article that is viable then the offending material can be removed/reverted (along with revision deletion if necessary) and the article can be discussed at AfD/BLPPRODded without causing any BLP issues. Thryduulf (talk) 11:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Your argument above (which I meant to reply to, sorry for forgetting) basically was "The community does not allow a single revision with such content to be deleted, that's why we need a way to delete the whole page instead". As this (slightly pointy) summary shows, you made your argument just weaker, not stronger. If there is no consensus to delete a single revision of a page, why should there be consensus to delete the whole page including non-violating revisions? As Thryduulf points out, there is no discrepancy between WP:BLP and speedy deletion criteria. The page can already be deleted if it completely violates WP:BLP and if it doesn't, even WP:BLP says that [p]age deletion is normally a last resort. If a dispute centers around a page's inclusion (e.g., because of questionable notability or where the subject has requested deletion), this is addressed via deletion discussions rather than by summary deletion. Summary deletion is appropriate when the page contains unsourced negative material or is written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be rewritten or restored to an earlier version of an acceptable standard. (emphasis added) There simply is no justification in WP:BLP to speedy delete a BLP-article when all the contentious material has been removed and as said above, there is no need for it as well. Regards SoWhy 15:21, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The revision deletion criteria are understandably designed for use on articles which should not be immediately deleted in their entirety, and therefore contain an explanation of the subject's notability without any inadequately sourced controversial information concerning living people. In such a context, there is little motivation for readers to go digging through the page histories to determine what the articles are "really" about, and no need to delete every BLP-violating revision. The situation presented by an article which has been rewritten in essentially empty form to remove a BLP violation, because editors can't agree whether the unsourced controversial information is also negative or an attack, is quite different. "John Doe is a person.[citation needed]" is such a ridiculous parody of an acceptable article that any reader with even a minimal level of wiki-sophistication will review the page history, and determine the actual subject. For this reason page blanking as a method of deletion has been unequivocally rejected by the community, and is only an acceptable method of removing articles with fundamental violations of the BLP source requirements for controversial material if BLP itself is deemed to be of little importance. Chester Markel (talk) 14:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Templates, Deletion, and utter laziness

I don't know about other admins, but one of the checks I do when looking at a Candidate for Speedy Deletion is to check the history. If I want the deletion rationale to be pulled from the template, I have to click back to the article. Is there a way for the "Delete" function to pull the rationale from the template even if I'm coming straight from the history - Or from the Edit Page, for that matter? No idea if we've discussed this before, but it seems like a simple solution. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 14:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I usually use the middle mouse button (thumb one at home) in Firefox to open the history in a new tab. That way, you can simply close the history with a shortcut (or, lazy people like me, using a mouse gesture) and end back on the tagged page. And if you use CSDHelper or Twinkle, you don't even have to open the delete page. Just an idea of course. I don't know of any solution that works the way you describe it but maybe it can be integrated into CSDHelper/Twinkle if you ask the developer(s)? Regards SoWhy 23:12, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Empty categories for deletion

The following categories have been empty for over a week but have not been deleted as yet:
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from August 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from December 2006
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from December 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from January 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from February 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from July 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from June 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from March 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from May 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from November 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from October 2007
Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating from September 2007
I'm not sure if there's a fault somewhere that has meant they haven't been listed anywhere. Hugahoody (talk) 17:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Not sure what's going on there. I'd assume there's some sort of issue with either {{Monthly clean-up category}} or somewhere in {{db-g6}}, but I can't spot it quickly. Anyway, I whacked 'em for good measure. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:30, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Hugahoody (talk) 14:52, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

I have a few more:
Category:Articles with trivia sections from September 2007
Category:Articles with trivia sections from January 2008
Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from February 2009
Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from January 2008
Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from June 2008
Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from May 2008
Category:Articles slanted towards recent events from September 2008
Category:Articles with sections that need to be turned into prose from February 2007
Category:Dead-end pages from December 2010
Category:Dead-end pages from November 2010
Category:Dead-end pages from September 2010
Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup from April 2009

Hugahoody (talk) 22:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

At a guess, the templates are sticking these in C:SD properly, because they were all nuked when I first saw this about twenty minutes after you posted it. Cheers. lifebaka++ 23:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Propose expansion of A9

Why is CSD#A9 limited only to music? Why not creative works in general?

I frequently see articles (recent example: Canadian Dream) about a film, book, video, etc. that should be candidates for speedy deletion but aren't because A9 is too specific. ~Amatulić (talk) 07:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Part of the reason is that the consensus regarding authors/books and musical artists/musical works is different. For example, it is not uncommon for notable books to be written by non-nontable authors, but one of the thresholds for notabability of a musical recording is that the artist has an article. For this reason the criteria for musical recordings are not suitable for books. I suspect that it would not work for films/video either as these are not tied to a single person in the way books/musical records are.

This is not to say that speedy deletion criteria could not be written for these subjects (I have no idea either way about the necessity), but it would be one or more new criteria not an expansion of A9. Thryduulf (talk) 09:44, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

A9 serves to get rid of articles that were created for A7 bands - an album by a MySpace-band for example. Unlike those subjects, articles about other creative works are not created often enough to justify speedy deletion and as Thryduulf says, there is not the same link between those subjects and their creators and such subjects may well be significant when their creators are not but it's much harder for a single admin to be able to judge this correctly. PROD and AFD can handle those subjects quite well. Regards SoWhy 14:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know PROD and AFD are alternatives. I come across articles that I am 99.9% certain would be deleted anyway in an AfD discussion, but I don't delete them because there isn't an "official" rationale available. AfD is already overloaded; one reason that speedy deletion exists, I thought, was to reduce the burden on AfD.

I guess A9 could be expanded to include anything that requires an article to exist on the subject of the creating entity or work. Fictional characters come to mind as one thing that could fit in A9. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:54, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

How many such articles go through AfD on any given day, though? lifebaka++ 18:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Fictional characters and similar subjects were proposed in the past and rejected every time. With most of those subjects, redirecting or merging are usually preferable anyway. Those where redirecting or merging does not work are the minority and can be handled by AFD just fine. Regards SoWhy 20:06, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, fictional characters that have no article to merge into can be handled by prods or AfD just fine. I am wondering why the burden of AfD is acceptable for articles that clearly wouldn't stand a chance. You might answer, "the numbers are so small!" Well yes. But for an AfD, someone has to nominate it, others have to respond, someone has to close the discussion, and by the time the article is deleted, probably a collective hour or two of human life has been expended on something that could have been dealt with right up front. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:08, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

You're looking at it the wrong way. AfD is the norm and there has to be a good reason why it is not required for certain narrowly defined scenarios. If you can come up with a narrowly defined criteria that is objective, specific, not redundant and wont generate false positives; and show some evidence that such a criteria is actually needed then by all means propose it. I'd recommend though looking for some of these past discussions and seeing what the arguments against were. They will almost certainly be brought up again, and if you have no answer as to how or why they are not relevant to this proposal, otherwise it will fail and you'll be wasting your time. Thryduulf (talk) 03:36, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately, there's always criterion G13. Like any application of this criterion, it should be applied sparingly and when in doubt discussion should be defaulted to. But really, it doesn't take a week to say that a turd is a turd and needs flushing, even when it doesn't meet rule ABC6582959. If you don't want your articles quickly flushed, don't write a turd. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:53, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:IAR should never be used as the reason to speedily delete anything. The reason for this is that WP:CSD (and WP:OFFICE) list every circumstance in which there is consensus that a page may be speedily deleted. Thus when you use WP:IAR to delete something speedily, by definition your actions are not supported by consensus and are thus not eligible for either speedy deletion (where actions must be uncontroverisal) nor IAR (as actions taken with this justification must improve Wikipedia, and deleting something without consensus does not improve, and indeed harms, Wikipedia). If something is harming Wikipedia then it can be speeidly deleted by one of the existing criteria, if something is not harming Wikipedia there is no need to speedily delete it. Using WP:IAR as a reason to speedily delete something allows any admin to delete anything they want deleted at any time (the entire reason we have deletion discussions and speedy deletion criteria is to stop this). Thryduulf (talk) 11:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Thryduulf beat me to it but I will say it as well. An appeal to IAR is a sure sign that the speedy-deletion was invalid and that one of the other processes should have been used instead. Allowing IAR as a speedy-criterion puts far too much power in the hands of one person and, to be blunt, our own history has repeatedly demonstrated that as individuals, we are remarkably bad at identifying "turds". (That's why, for example, apparent hoaxes are not speedy-deletable.) As a group, we are much more effective at sorting the wheat from the chaff but that process takes time. Hence, the VfD process (now XfD).
Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy but Process is important. Consistent application of our own processes and self-imposed controls is an important part of maintaining the credibility of the project and also as a continuing sign that we welcome the donated hours of our volunteer editors. Rossami (talk) 14:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with those statements. Speedy deletion was never meant to replace deletion discussions entirely and admins were never appointed with the power to delete anything they think should be deleted. As Rossami says, many admins have abused IAR to delete what they thought were "turds" when there was never consensus for them to do so. That said, I would not be as definitive as Thryduulf is. While there had been no example where speedy deletion was required but not allowed by WP:CSD yet, we cannot rule this possibility out completely. There might be an example one day which has to be deleted immediately but where none of the criteria fit and in that case, IAR would be valid. Those cases Seraphimblade mentions are no such examples though, in fact, they are the opposite: The community has explicitly considered allowing such speedy deletions and then decided against it. If you use IAR in such cases, you abuse it. Regards SoWhy 15:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Although I started this thread, I have to agree that invoking IAR is a bit over the top for speedy deletions. I don't recall having to invoke it for any other reason yet, either. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

With what we have currently, such examples are indeed rare (and applications of IAR should be rare, if you're invoking it all the time, it means either the rule is wrong or you are, and that either the rule or what you're doing needs a change). I don't think I've ever actually done an IAR speedy, and I may well never come across an occasion to do so. But I wouldn't go so far as to say they'd never occur. Before we included animals in A7, for example, I'd see some examples of people deleting articles on someone's pet dog and the like. There's no chance of that surviving, and there's no purpose in tying up AfD with such an obvious case. Now, yes, we ultimately realized the underlying rule needed an addition, and made that addition. But I wouldn't say that those who made the obvious call before it was technically codified were somehow "wrong". Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 05:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say that those using IAR as a reason to speedily delete anything were wrong, because I stand by my statement that it is never appropriate. In the specific example cited, there was at the time no consensus that articles about pets should be speedy deleted, and no consensus regarding where the line between notable and not-notable lay - the existence of Category:United States Presidential pets suggests some can be notable and even when a criterion exists interpretation of it can vary (I'm reminded about the "biscuit deletions" following the introduction of G11). It would have been far better for the project to have prodded them or nominated them at AfD. Repeated SNOW closures in the same direction would provide clear evidence that is required for a speedy deletion criterion to be added or modified. Something being IAR speedied, no matter how frequently, is not evidence of their being any consensus that it should be speedy deletable. I should perhaps make it clear that I fully support the use of IAR in almost all scenarios that are not speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 15:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, I can think of a couple instances where I'd tag something per IAR. If I came across an article titled "How to hack into Xbox Live accounts", I'd tag that; it doesn't meet any of our CSD requirements, but it's instructions on how to do something that is obviously illegal. Not that I'm advocating using IAR a lot, but there are a very few situations where it makes sense. As to the expansion of A9; I'd like to (I trust our admin corps to handle it), but I don't think it will happen because many people are not as optimistic as I am. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I think any tutorial on how to do something that is considered illegal everywhere is a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia" because there is no way the creator can (in good faith) assume that such material should be included. Thus G3 could handle it. But "illegal" is another problematic term since not everything is illegal everywhere and Wikipedia is a global project. For example, it's illegal in certain countries to depict the prophet Mohammed. Does that mean we have to delete pictures of him? Of course not. Things that are posted that are clearly universally illegal (child pornography, cracking instructions etc.) can be handled by G3 as clear vandalism. But the rest should be handled by XFD. As for your optimism: It might sound bleak but the pessimism many share here is well-founded because some admins have "taken the law in their own hands" far too often to leave any room for interpretation in policies. Regards SoWhy 10:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I meant illegal as in "illegal in the US state of Florida", I should have made that clearer. I suppose G3 would work just fine for that sort of thing. As to my optimism; I've only been around here for just under (at the time of writing) a year, so I haven't seen as much. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:18, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

A small expansion of G8

Last night, I came across List of Rural banks in Ghana, a list article consisting entirely of non-notable banks that don't, and never will have, articles. G6 already provides for deletion of disambiguation pages that are completely redlinked; should we expand G8 to include entirely redlinked lists? My proposed wording (in bold) would be something like; "Such as talk pages with no corresponding subject page; subpages with no parent page; image pages without a corresponding image; redirects to invalid targets, such as nonexistent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles; list articles where none of the articles it lists exist or have ever existed; and categories populated by deleted or retargeted templates." That's just a rough draft, and can absolutely be tweaked. Thoughts? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:11, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Works for me. – ukexpat (talk) 18:17, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

This proposal could create GFDL problems. It's related to a scenario that comes up on RfD with some regularity. While I agree that we ought not to have a list of non-notable anything, the fact is that these lists are frequently created and sometimes they become the source material for a few examples which are later copied into a more comprehensive article. Deleting the page destroys the pagehistory and obscures the attribution of the original content.
A better solution in my opinion is to simply be bold and overwrite the list with a redirect. (In the example above, the target might be Financial Services in Ghana or, since that page does not yet exist, Economy of Ghana.) The attribution history is preserved, the list is removed from view and, most importantly, the redirect and its history serve as a continuing notice to future editors that we don't want such a list and quietly preempt its re-creation. Best of all, it's a resolution that does not require admin intervention - it can be executed by any editor. Rossami (talk) 18:46, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

In this instance, the page has no useful history, there's nothing even remotely useful for an article, and it's an unrealistic redirect. I'm not seeing how GFDL comes into play on this, any more than it would on a redlinked disambiguation page. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 18:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I do not think that this specific instance is a sufficient example for the general principle. It's too simple a case since, as noted above, Financial Services in Ghana does not yet exist. Mining in Ghana, on the other hand, does exist and includes a number of references to specific companies. The attribution history of that page does not make clear where the content came from but it's plausible that at least some content was first in a parallel "list of" page. (Maybe GSE All-Share Index?) We've seen similar editing patterns in the merger and later redirection of "list of songs by XYZ" pages, "list of supporters of political candidate ABC", "list of glossary terms", etc. Fictional topics seem especially prone to this kind of pattern.
It's theoretically possible to have the same problem with a redlinked disambiguation page but I can think of no examples where the editing followed that pattern on a page marked as a disambiguation page. Again, this is not a defense of this specific page above - just a concern that the example does not generalize to a universal rule. Rossami (talk) 19:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary. AfD and PROD can easily handle the load, there's no need to speedy articles such as this. Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:07, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Also, I do not think a single admin is able to determine whether no articles can be created from those red links. After all, per WP:REDLINK such links should serve to instigate users to create those articles. So speedy deletion is probably neither appropriate nor needed to handle those article. Regards SoWhy 00:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate and agree with the intent behind this proposed changes, but this is not a very common occurrence and therefore outside the scope of speedy deletion. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

T4 proposal

To reduce the load at TfD, I propose a T4 criterion for unused templates. Templates must meet these criteria:

• Must not be transcluded on any non-userpage.
• Must not be orphaned via process (TfD). (just like C1)
• Must not be orphaned through the use of substitution on more than one page.
• Must be over 1 month old
• Must not be a template designed for use by substitution.
• Must not be an administrative template that becomes orphaned by nature.
• Creator must be notified, anyone can object by using the template and removing the tag.
• Template must be tagged for a week
• Any user can request restoration, provided that he/she state what page it is to be used on.

I know this sounds a lot like a template PROD, but unless a complete new process is created, I believe it belongs under CSD. WP:DOT can remain with some changes, as there still needs to be a system to identify which templates shouldn't be used anymore. What do you think? — Train2104 (talk • contribs • count) 20:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I do see a couple of templates this would cover over in TfD at the moment. I'm not 100% convinced it's necessary, but neither do I see how a criterion with this intent could hurt all that much.

One little change I would like to make is in the first requirement. Rather than requiring that the template is not transcluded on any non-user page, I would prefer that it not be transcluded on any page. There are templates which are designed solely for use on user pages, which we want to keep (such as {{userpage}}), and I would prefer not to make a criterion like this easy to be misused. Any templates currently residing in the templatespace with userspace transclusions, which shouldn't be in the templatespace, should be moved rather than deleted. Cheers. lifebaka++ 20:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

This criteria is way too complex for CSD. However the combination of a 7 day process and anyone being able to request restoration makes this a prod not a CSD. So I'd suggest you make this a template prod proposal. ϢereSpielChequers 02:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

A7 and sources

I have a question about the relationship between GNG (and other "multiple reliable sources" notability criteria, such as that in BAND), on the one hand, and A7 on the other. A7 says, in pertinent part:

An article ... that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. ... The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines.(Emphasis added.)

My question is about articles which unquestionably make no claim of significance or importance in the text of the article, but which:

• Clearly meet GNG by having multiple reliable sources, or
• (and this is the main point of my inquiry:) Have one, but only one, reliable source, or
• Have multiple sources which if they were reliable would be good sources, but which are all clearly unreliable, or
• Have multiple sources which are of unevaluated or questionable reliability.

To turn this into a question: If an article makes no claim of significance or importance in its text but cites a bunch of sources, some of which are (or may be) reliable and relevant, does that save it from A7 tagging and deletion? By saying, "This is distinct from verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability," A7 may say that it does not.

My personal feeling is that in light of the "if in doubt, don't delete" nature of CSD:

• a single clearly–reliable third-party cited source, or
• two or more third-party sources which are of questionable reliability but which are not clearly unreliable, or
• satisfaction of GNG

ought to constitute a credible claim of significance or importance that ought to disqualify the article for speedy deletion even if no such claim is made in the text of the article, provided that such sources are on relevant, significant points. (By the latter I mean, for example, that if the article is about XYZ, a company in the widget industry, the sources must be about XYZ, not about widgets or the widget industry, and must say something about XYZ other than its basic information, existence, goals, mission, etc.)

I've seen articles from which I'd like to remove the CSD tag with an edit summary saying,

• "Removed A7 speedy tag; having a single reliable source indicates significance or importance" or
• "Removed A7 speedy tag; multiple potentially-reliable sources indicates significance or importance",

but I've been reluctant to do so. Should I be?

Best regards, and thanks, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 17:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I've declined A7 on things that have sources, but my gut feel is that things which have clear sourcing aren't tagged for A7 too often at all. Remember, anyone who in good faith doesn't think a speedy deletion criterion applies can remove the tag, so you would have been entirely within your rights to remove those A7s. The reason I don't do that more often is that I don't do speedy deletions as often as I used to. Jclemens (talk) 17:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Imho, having one or more possibly reliable sources is an indication of importance/significance. Nowhere in A7 it says that the claim has to be in the text after all. As such, I have often declined such taggings in the past. I agree with you that it would be against the spirit of speedy deletion to delete a page just because the claim was not made in the text itself. Regards SoWhy 17:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

it depends what the source is and what it says. If someone gives a few cites from local papers from G News for a band and it turns out they are one line mentions of performances, it does not show any plausible possibility of notability. I would speedy such an article without hesitation if it claimed nothing more, but of course after checking myself that there was nothing more. A reference is always a reason to check, rather than react instantaneously. I think the wording should better be "having a single substantial reliable source" . It is also correct to remove a speedy with the reason "references suggest it might possibly be significant or important." which is the wording I use when necessary; actually, no reason is necessary, but it always helps to give one and I always do--it will give the nominator some reason to check before going immediately to AfD . But as Jclemens says, it is rare to find reliable references on articles otherwise speediable for A7. I think we would do better not to complicate the criterion. When I became an admin here 3 years ago, there seemed to be about 20% incorrect speedy nominations and 10% incorrect actual speedy deletions; I think the number now is more like 10% and 5%, which is still too many, but it may not be practical to reduce the error rate much further in a system like ours. Most people do recognize that a claim or indication of any reasonable sort is sufficient. The exceptions seem to be often pointy, and no wording will discourage them. At this point, I'm more concerned with what the NPP misses than what it incorrectly tags. We can catch the incorrect tags, but we may never notice the misses. DGG ( talk ) 17:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Just FYI, here's an example of one that I didn't think made an acceptable indication in the text but which did have one reliable source. Thanks to all of you for your comments, they are very helpful, indeed. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 18:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

For totally missing the "Articles that meet notability guidelines" discussion above on this page (!!!) before posting this question and response. I award myself a self-whack!. File:Blush.png Cluelessly, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 21:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

No automatic reason?

I notice that the reason for speedy deletion is no longer appearing automatically when I click "delete". Can anyone tell me why, or figure out how to get it back? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably one of the updates to the software broke the related admin.js. You might want to ask the guys watching WP:VPT, they usually know how to fix such Script-related problems. Alternatively, you could use a script to handle speedy deletion for you, like CSDHelper or Twinkle. They still work fine. Regards SoWhy 06:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Works fine for me in Chrome. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 06:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Could be browser related as well, true. I had a problem with scripts not loading in Firefox 4b11 but a force-reload (Ctrl-Shift-R) solved that. Regards SoWhy 17:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Working as normal for me using Safari. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

On a related note, I'm using Twinkle and the pages aren't being marked as patrolled when I tag them. Am I the only one with this problem? (I use Firefox for editing) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Which version of Firefox do you use? Regards SoWhy 13:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

3.6. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I thought it might be related to the changed JS engine in Firefox 4. You could try using the Firefox 4 beta instead maybe. Or of course you can bug the folks at WT:TW. ;-) Regard SoWhy 21:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

• I don't know what the problem was or how it was fixed, but the problem does appear to have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who had suggestions. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

New speedy deletion criterion R4

I propose to implement a new criterion for the speedy deletion of certain redirects, namely orphaned redirects in the file namespace that match MediaWiki:Titleblacklist and that have at maximum one incoming link that is not a file link. I've seen a couple of administrators already trying to justify this criterion with one way or another, but I don't think that much of their deletion summaries are transparent enough to the rest of us or follow correct policy or process. For example, this file was deleted with the summary "unused redirect", a somewhat dubious criterion for speedy, and this one simply included a loose interpretation of criteria G6 (Housekeeping and non-controversial cleanup). Therefore, to ease this process and hopefully avoid any possible conflicts, we should simply add a new criterion to this page. I've requested a database report compiled here that lists possible candidates for such a criterion, should it be implemented. The reason these candidates are only regarded as possible is because they may have one file link, and speedy deletion would just mess up the formatting of the image placed on its respective article. I've also included the "at maximum one incoming link" clause because in the Special:WhatLinksHere for these files links may be introduced that are found in the database report itself or those compiled independently in user subpages, and do not need to be corrected.

Please share your thoughts on this new speedy deletion criterion proposal. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 06:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I take it the intention is that these are files that were moved because of a bad title, and then have to be cleaned up? In that case, G6 is exactly right; there's no need for some hyperspecific criterion just to avoid it. — Gavia immer (talk) 06:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree, G6 covers this. Jclemens (talk) 06:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

This seems excessively specific; at best this could be done with a clarification to G6. Happy‑melon 14:10, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Based on the first example given, no new speedy-deletion criterion is necessary. The truly offensive ones (random long strings of characters, profanities, etc, that is, most of the redirects that would match MediaWiki:Titleblacklist) are either direct vandalism or cleanup of vandalism and speedy-deletable as such.
The second example, though, and some of the redirects at the front of the database report are more problematic. They appear to be good faith uploads of useful pictures and files which were simply uploaded with default filenames (probably numbers generated by the camera) and then moved to a correct location. Those redirects might not even be regular-deletable much less speedy candidates.
The "unused redirect" justification, however, was patently incorrect and is not and never should be a speedy-deletion criterion. Remember that in a perfect world, all redirects would be orphans yet they are still helpful to the project. Rossami (talk) 02:01, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Speedy Deletion Chemicals

How about making a Speedy deletion category about Chemicals?

~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 14:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I highly doubt such a criterion would come up often enough to be relevant or be uncontroversial enough to ever have consensus. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

But what would happen with an chemical that absolutely has no applications?

~~Awsome EBE123~~(talk | Contribs) 17:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Use articles for deletion? Remember, speedy deletion is the exception to the rule that deletions are the result of deletion discussions. Regards SoWhy 17:15, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say no to this, as the average new page patroller and admin will not have much in depth knowledge on chemicals to make a speedy decision. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

In any case, a WP:PROD is a viable alternative. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 19:42, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Why should a chemical "that absolutely has no applications" be necessarily excluded from an encyclopedia? Jclemens (talk) 20:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

SP:EF, SP:AF, and R2

These soft redirects from the article namespace to the Special: namespace violate the letter of R2. Are the soft redirects wrong or is the policy wrong? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 15:24, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion is only for clearly uncontroversial cases. I suggest taking these to XfD. Cheers. lifebaka++ 15:33, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

In that case, just talk to the creator and if necessary, use WP:RFD. As Lifebaka says, those are probably too controversial for speedy deletion but in general R2 applies to soft redirects as well, so where could anything be "wrong"? Regards SoWhy 16:22, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The way R2 is worded as of right now, these soft redirects would be subject to speedy deletion because they're technically in mainspace albeit in a pseudo-namespace, and all redirects from mainspace to namespaces other than main, Category:, Template:, Wikipedia:, Help: and Portal: are subject to speedy deletion. I hereby propose adding the following clarification to R2: "However, an occasional soft redirect to special pages from a shortcut in a pseudo-namespace may be useful." --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that shortcuts from any pseudo-namespace title to any page not in the article namespace should be subject to R2, except where they are both clearly implausible and recently created. I say this because there are so many exceptions to any general rules about them that RfD seems the only appropriate venue. "Implausible" and "recently created" are already used in the R3 criterion so it isn't introducing any new standards. Thryduulf (talk) 23:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Another possible wording, a bit more general: "This criterion does not apply to shortcut redirects in a pseudo-namespace." So we agree that shortcuts are too controversial to speedy, but I just want to have the consensus and wording spot-on before I go edit the policy to reflect this understanding. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been mulling this over as well, and I think that keeping it simple is the way to go - make all shortcuts ineligible for R2 per your suggestion, and make recently created implausible ones speediable under a new R4, "Shortcut redirects in pseudo-namespaces that are both implausible and recently created.". Doing it this way also allows one to pass and the other to fail. Thryduulf (talk) 03:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Or like, you could take it to RFD for those five cases a year. We don't need instruction creep to deal with a non-issue. Yoenit (talk) 07:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The "implausible" part of the existing wording of CSD#R3 is some of the most abused and misunderstood on the page. RfD discussions all too frequently start with an allegation that a redirect is implausible but then quickly discovered to be entirely plausible (though not in the way the nominator first thought). I would be extremely uncomfortable with expanding what I now consider to be failed wording. "Implausible" is too subjective a judgment to be a valid CSD criterion. Rossami (talk) 16:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, but that's no reason to not implement the "shortcuts from pseudo-namespaces are not eligible for R2" suggestion. Do you have any opinions on that? Thryduulf (talk) 13:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

If it's too subjective, what could possibly be wrong with adding an example of what is not eligible for deletion under this criterion? Restricting criteria really isn't instruction creep. Nyttend (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

My comment about instruction creep referred to the proposed R4 criterium. I have no objections to adding that text to the R2 criterium. Yoenit (talk) 22:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

{{edit protected}} Can we get an administrator to sign off on the wording that I hereby propose in the subpage Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/R2 and shortcuts? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 16:34, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay there seems to be consensus for this change.  Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:19, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

simplying {{hangon}} tags

I have seen a lot of newbies who don't understand how {{hangon}} is supposed to work and end up posting the rationale on the page itself, no rationale at all, no hangon tag or making other mistakes. Can't we simplify this by simply making a big "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" button in the speedy deletion? I am no expert in templates, but I imagine it would be possible to have a link to a create a new preformatted section on the talkpage (containing only some hidden instructions, nothing which will break the template if it is removed) and than have the speedy template transclude this section if it exists? Yoenit (talk) 10:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm equally no template expert but this sounds like a good idea to me. It might be easier to detect the existence or otherwise of a talk subpage (e.g. Talk:Example/Hangon) for transclusion purposes - at the very least a human can tell the difference between a red link and a blue link if nothing more sophisticated is possible. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea! Now if someone more skilled than the three of us would support the idea...Nyttend (talk) 21:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I have posted over at {{hang on}}, hoping we can get some more people here and at least one tech savvy editor who can actually make a test template. Yoenit (talk) 22:52, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought this was a great idea and it's done. If you want to test it out, here's the link as it now appears in {{Hangon}}: Click here to contest this speedy deletion. Figuring out the URL coding had me tearing out my hair for a while. Here's the code:

<span class=plainlinks>'''[{{fullurl:{{TALKPAGENAME}}|action=edit&section=new&preload=Template:Hangon_preload&preloadtitle=This+article+should+not+be+speedy+deleted+because...+}} Click here to contest this speedy deletion]'''.</span>

If you want to edit this, there are two parts to know. First, the new section headline comes directly from the URL above (the parts with plus signs in between) that was added to hangon. If you want to change the preloaded explanatory text that's placed in the edit box however, you need to edit {{Hangon preload}}. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! What I was thinking about was placing this link directly in {{db}}, so the whole hang on template could be retired. Would this be possible? Yoenit (talk) 08:26, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I played around a bit with {{db-meta}} in the sandbox and got the transclusion working. You can play with it here It is very rough, but seems to be functional. I did notice one problem: The idea behind Hangon tags is that people are given time to write a rationale, which is lost with this template. Do admins encounter hangon tags where the editor takes a long time (say >2 minutes) to write his rationale after he tagged it with Hang on? Yoenit (talk) 10:02, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

to illustrate why hang on needs some work, I just went through contested speedies category (16 articles) and found the following:

• 3 pages where hangon was properly used
• 1 page where hangon was added after the rationale
• 3 pages with hangon tags which were not being speedy deleted.
• 1 page with hangon tags on both article and talkpage
• 4 pages with hangon but no rationale (for several hours)
• 2 pages with the rationale in the article itself
• 1 page with 2 hangon tags
• 1 page where hangon was placed on the talkpage~

I did notice it took around 5-10 minutes to a rationale for some editors, but I wonder how much time could be saved with a simpler system. Yoenit (talk) 10:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree on the merits of a clear way to do this properly, but I think all admins take cognizance of a hangon tag wherever it appears, or a message indicate opposition regardless of how it is expressed, and, even if there is no argument given, take it to mean we should be extra careful that there might be a justification for keeping the article. It should also be seen as ensuring we explain further to any good faith ed. if we do delete the article. DGG ( talk ) 00:00, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

That only 3 out of 16 users managed to contest a speedy completely according to procedure shows the procedure is too complicated. How many users tried to contest a speedy deletion but never managed to place the hangon tag itself? 1? 5? 10? 20? Nobody knows. Yoenit (talk) 21:35, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

This really does come under WP:Competence is required. The instructions for including a hangon tag are painfully simple. There just isn't anything complicated about them. Admins tend to be pretty tolerant of misplaced hangons because we know we are dealing with newbies, but if an editor can't even get the tag someplace, there isn't much to be done. All told, the tag is pretty useless in the first place: the admin still has to review the article and determine whether it meets the criteria. The presence or absence of a hangon tag doesn't factor heavily in that decision.—Kww(talk) 16:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Kww is right; the hangon tag should have no actual impact on the admin's decision. All it does it give the creator (or whoever) a chance to say they're going to argue the case on the talk page (or wherever, if it's in the article, I'll just clean it up if I decline), but they can use the talk page without a hangon. The hangon should just highlight that for the patrolling admin. GedUK  17:14, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, are you opposed to integrating hangon with the db templates as shown here? I was thinking of launching an RFC on this, but I would like some more opinions before I do so. Yoenit (talk) 17:27, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Lukewarm. I know the changes to "simplify edit semi-protected" that worked similarly didn't do much but make me deal with more edit semi-protected requests that I declined anyway. I doubt that an increase in the number of correctly placed hangon tags would actually impact the number of speedy deletions one way or the other.—Kww(talk) 20:04, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to it, just not sure it's worth the effort, but it's not my effort, so I'm not going to complain. GedUK  20:49, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

There's little effort left to do. The work's already been done with the code and template I put together and Yoenit's testing of its transclusion in Db-meta/sandbox. At this point I can't really think of any good reason not to deprecate Hangon tags. They are an unnecessary complicator that forces users into a two step process of placement and protesting on the talk page when the first step is superflous. All admins know or should know to check the talk page before deleting so a direct link to the talk page in the db- tags, with a preformatted header and instructions, just gets rid of a level of complexity and increases the likelihood of users posting in the right place. Competence is certainly necessary but this is far from a targeted method for its testing. Sure, most speedy deletion protests are inapposite and therefore ineffective but there are occasional successes. I've seen the equivalent of "I forgot to mention he won the Nobel Prize; here's a reference" on tagged articles' talk pages, though I'm exaggerating a bit with that example. Many users get the false impression from the hangon placement hurdle that the act of placing the hangon tag itself has some ability to stop speedy deletion. Placing this button in the db tag, with the preformatted text, tells users directly that they will have to provide a proper basis in order to avoid deletion. If nothing else, it will avoid drama (and thus time wasted) on the "I couldn't-figure-it-out" front, even if it will only avoid deletion in one out of a thousand cases.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:05, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

My intentions behind this proposal were not to affect the number of succesful contested deletions, they were to simplify an unnecessarily complicated process so new users have a better idea of whats going on. Given nobody seems to object to this proposal I will start an RFC and list it at {{cent}} later today. Yoenit (talk) 10:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It's going to be quite a technical challenge to have one link that both adds a template to the article and adds text to the talk page. I'm not sure that's possible without adding some global javascript. --Selket ^Talk 07:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no reason to add a template to the article. The way the sandbox version works now is by checking for the existence of talk:Foo/hang on and if it exists it will show the speedy as contested. The worst that can happen is false positives when succesfully contested speedies are later renominated, but I think that would actually be a net positive. Yoenit (talk) 09:49, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Comment-I'm not sure that hangon (or contesting) is acuually needed, who would want their article deleted anyway, the administrater who deletes the page should check the talk page and any other place before they delete it anyway. Lavalamp from Mars (talk) 08:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Although I do thing simplifying them would be a good idea for the reasons given above. Lavalamp from Mars (talk) 08:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

F7 question

I have a question about criterion F7, which reads: "Non-free images or media from a commercial source (e.g., Associated Press, Getty), where the file itself is not the subject of sourced commentary, are considered an invalid claim of fair use and fail the strict requirements of WP:NFCC; and may be deleted immediately." How and why did we arrive at this? Nowhere does WP:NFCC require that the unfree content itself needs to be "the subject of sourced commentary".  Sandstein  21:40, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The image use policy that lays out the foundation: Fair use - Unauthorized use of copyrighted material under an invalid claim of fair use constitutes copyright infringement and is illegal. Media which are mistagged as fair use or are a flagrant copyright violation can be removed on sight. The idea was further expanded upon at the Non-free content criteria, namely number two - Respect for commercial opportunities. Non-free content is not used in a manner that is likely to replace the original market role of the original copyrighted media. The guidelines lays out a very plain English examples at Unacepptable uses - Images - 7. A photo from a press agency (e.g., AP), unless the photo itself is the subject of sourced commentary in the article. It is also in tags such as {{Non-free historic image}} (must only be used in a transformative nature, when the image itself is the subject of commentary rather than the event it depicts (which is the original market role, and is not allowed per policy)) and was broken down in The Signpost. (Example that fails: An image of a current event authored by a press agency. Certain press agencies market photographs to media companies to facilitate illustration of relevant commentary. Hosting the image on Wikipedia would impair the market role (derivation of revenue), as publications (such as Wikipedia) would normally need to pay for the opportunity to utilize the image) Soundvisions1 (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but that still does not explain how we get from NFCC to the requirement that content must itself be the subject of critical commentary. If the point is to protect commercial opportunities (as NFCC requires only to the limited extent that fair use content must not be "likely to replace the original market role"), then surely it does not matter whether critical commentary is present or not. And if the point is to prevent fair use content from replacing the original market role, then it also does not matter whether the work is from a press agency or elsewhere.  Sandstein  22:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

What part is not clear? Not being ironic - being serious. Wikipedia bases the Non-free content criteria policy on real world fair use however it is understood, and stated in various locations, that Wikipedia policy is far more stringent than real world use requirements. The "critical commentary" element is what drives the Wikipedia policy on non-free content and it *is* required for all non-free material. (Usually discussed in relation to criteria number 8: "Contextual significance" - would there be any need to use *any* non-free material in an article if there were no mention [sourced commentary", "critical commentary", et al.] of the non free content) For material taken from a commercial content provider Hosting the image on Wikipedia would impair the market role (derivation of revenue) because they are in the business of charging license fess for use of their material to websites such as Wikipedia. The only exception would be when the image itself is the subject of commentary rather than the event it depicts. See The Falling Man as one example. Not sure if that helps you more or not. Soundvisions1 (talk) 22:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Seriously, I still don't get it. Nowhere in WP:NFCC do the words "critical commentary" appear. So I don't see why you say that this is the element that "drives the Wikipedia policy on non-free content". In particular, the "contextual significance" requirement is worded without reference to any comemntary. And on that basis the F7 criterion appears to misstate the NFCC policy to the extent that it claims that the lack of critical commentary is an automatic NFCC violation.  Sandstein  22:34, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It might help to read the guidelines that lay out a lot of plain English explanations at Non-free content - Guideline examples. If you read that you may get a better feeling for what the policy means. Reading The Signpost from September 22, 2008 might help as well. Soundvisions1 (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost essay does state "A "non-free" image is not expected to be contributing significantly to a reader's understanding in the absence of related commentary (i.e. an image should not be used as mere "eye candy")." But not only do we not find this assumption in the actual policy, I also believe it to be mistaken. Take for instance photographs of dead persons. An image is normally essential to the reader's understanding of the subject, because "a picture tells a thousand words"; being visual creatures, we instinctively feel that an image is part and parcel of a complete description of a person, and expect a serious reference work to provide an image. In that instance, any critical commentary about the image itself is completely immaterial to the understanding of the person (rather than the image) that the reader gains by way of the image. I still do not see, therefore, how one can make the claim, as criterion F7 does, that the absence of critical commentary automatically implies a WP:NFCC violation. If the requirement of critical commentary is indeed that essential, why is it not part of the policy itself?  Sandstein  00:12, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe a tangible example would help. (Please correct this example if I've oversimplified.)

• Execution is an encyclopedic topic and belongs in Wikipedia.
• The photo of the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém is connected to the general concept of executions and arguably belongs on the page.
• Unfortunately for us, the photo is copyrighted which means that publishers (and Wikipedia is a publisher in the legal sense) must pay the copyright owner to include that photo in their own work. Photographers have a right to earn a living off their work.
• Wikipedia is not set up to pay royalties. Now as a non-profit, we may not have to pay but we also release our work to be freely used by for-profit entities. (See GFDL and CC-BY-SA 3.0 for specifics.) Neither of those release rules allow the pass-through of copyrighted content because it puts too much burden on the subsequent user. (We might have a loophole if no free pictures of executions existed but that's not the case.) Therefore, we can not use that photo to illustrate the general concept of executions on Wikipedia.
• The photo itself, however, had a significant social impact, was discussed in other publications and became independently notable (all of which is a long-winded way of saying "critical commentary"). An article about the photo would be encyclopedic.
• The photo would be an appropriate illustration in an article that synopsizes that critical commentary and explains the social impact of the photo itself. This is said in different words in NFCC #5 and 8. Use of the photo in that specific context qualifies as Fair Use and is exempt from the requirement to pay royalties to the copyright holder. The specific wording in US law is "fair use ... for purposes such as criticism [or] comment ... is not an infringement of copyright". And, in fact, that photo is in the Nguyễn Ngọc Loan article in the section which discusses the impact of the photo on the general's career.
• If we did not have the specific and planned use of that photo in an allowable article about it's own social impact (and an unambiguous example of that would be when no such critical commentary exists) then merely holding the photo on our servers crosses the line to copyright violation - or at least gets so dangerously close that deletion is appropriate.

In other words, if there is no critical commentary about the photo in the outside world, then there is no realistic chance of qualifying for Fair Use and the project has determined that we are better off speedy-deleting the file than baiting new users to include it in inappropriate places. Hope that helps. Rossami (talk) 00:37, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a note - it isn't fully about "royalties", it is about actual usage payment. Most commercial content providers charge a usage fee, also know an a licensing fee. Royalties are more of a consideration for music, books, television and radio. It does relate to our policy if we are discussing things such as music use or if we were to use music videos and/or commercials (actors in commercial often get royalties based on spots and how often they air) the concept would come back into play as well. Even in the real world, one of the considerations for "fair use" is the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Other than that you are pretty much on the mark. Soundvisions1 (talk)

RE to Sandstein - I am not 100% sure but it may be you are not really reading, or perhaps not understanding what you are reading. You said The Signpost essay does state "A "non-free" image is not expected to be contributing significantly to a reader's understanding in the absence of related commentary (i.e. an image should not be used as mere "eye candy")." But not only do we not find this assumption in the actual policy, I also believe it to be mistaken. and prior to that you have stated (and in a related discussion now as well) that there is nothing that implies any sort of "critical commentary" is needed for using non-free material in the policy. If you go back and re-read the Signpost I linked you will see plain English explanations of the policy wording. So do the Guideline examples. Beyond that the first thing to understand is that our NFCC are stricter than the requirements of the law so that Wikipedia's Mission can be pursued worldwide. The Signpost article is pretty explicit that "Respect for commercial opportunities" is part of the Wikipedia-wide criteria and (Bold added) These criteria are generally self-explanatory and typically not open to interpretation or subject to disagreement. Already addressed above but worth repeating because it is a "Wikipedia-wide criteria" that is "generally self-explanatory and typically not open to interpretation or subject to disagreement" - When content comes from a commercial content provider Hosting the image on Wikipedia would impair the market role (derivation of revenue), as publications (such as Wikipedia) would normally need to pay for the opportunity to utilize the image

Also note:

• 9. Restrictions on location. - In relation to criteria 8 ("contextual significance") (Bold added) this criterion has logical ties to Criterion 8. A "non-free" image is not expected to be able to make a significant contribution to a reader's understanding if it is not used in the context of critical commentary.

"Article-specific criteria", as *all* non-free content would be subject to -

• 8. Contextual significance. - Consideration - Pertinent discussion: (bold and underline added) A "non-free" image is not expected to be contributing significantly to a reader's understanding in the absence of related commentary (i.e. an image should not be used as mere "eye candy") Any image that *is* being used simply as "eye candy" will not likely be making a significant contribution in the absence of actual, critical discussion (i.e. not just a mere mention).

If you have an overall policy issue it needs to go, first, to a talk page discussion at the guiding policy - in this case Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria, and the related Guideline examples. If you truly feel there is no "commentary" requirement for any non-free content usage it needs to be changed at the source first. This policy, these deletion criteria, are in place to enforce existing policy - not to draft a new policy that is inconsistent with the guiding policy. Soundvisions1 (talk) 03:23, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

A Signpost article is not policy, it's only an essay, and an unconvincing one in this case. I agree that these deletion criteria are in place to enforce existing policy - not to draft a new policy that is inconsistent with the guiding policy. But that's what I believe what criterion F7 does by imposing a "critical commentary" requirement that does not exist in policy. That's why I am discussing it here: I don't have a problem with the NFCC policy, but with this deletion criterion that misrepresents it.  Sandstein  07:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

So Wikipedia:Non-free content also must "misrepresent" policy too - far greater than the Signpost article I would guess, but because it is not the actual policy you will see no need to discuss the issue there either. Soundvisions1 (talk) 11:56, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The Wikipedia policy page does impose a "critical commentary" requirement in NFCC 5 and 8. It just uses slightly different words. If you think we're wrong, though, I'm going to ask for a counter-example. Can you point to a document whether inside or outside of Wikipedia that would meet the requirements of WP:NFCC but would still be speedy-deletable under the "critical commentary" wording of CSDF7? Rossami (talk) 14:12, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, two from today:

• File:Velupillai Prabhakaran.jpg, dead notable person, propaganda image distributed to (and then by) press agencies, nominated for speedy deletion per F7 solely on the basis that it was sourced to an agency without regard to the actual fair use case. This seemingly weird nomination alerted me to this issue.
• File:Zhao.jpg, image of a historic event made by an agency photographer, speedily deleted per F7 without regard to the arguments advanced that it meets NFCC.

These cases illustrate that F7 has led to a de facto severe additional restriction – one not envisioned in NFCC – on the legitimate and necessary fair use of images in Wikipedia. We're not talking album covers or pop stars or toys or any such fluff here, but images of bona fide historic events and people that an encyclopedia is expected to illustrate.  Sandstein  18:44, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

In the case of File:Velupillai Prabhakaran.jpg, this was incorrectly attributed to a press agency. If the image had been created by such agency then using it on Wikipedia would not be fair use, but as it wasn't this is not relevant. This demonstrates nothing regarding how good or bad F7 is - cases where policies have been wrongly applied (or the wrong policy has been applied) do not mean the policy needs changing. I've not looked into File:Zhao.jpg so make no comment regarding it. Thryduulf (talk) 20:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Nomen Nudum as a speedy deletion criteria

I'm a bit puzzled by a deletion. This deletion occurred over a month ago, and the article has since been restored, so certainly no harm done, but still. Since I don't want to turn this into a criticism of a specific admin, I won't link to the article itself.

The article was tagged {{delete}} with the reason "This article is about a taxon that has not yet been published, and so perpetuates a nomen nudum, to the possible detriment of the taxon authors. The journal was in error in posting the in-press article on its web-site as an accepted manuscript, and has now removed it. Please likewise remove this page. The paper will be properly published soon. (I am the lead author of the paper.)"

The useful online reference Wikipedia has a handy article on what Nomen nudum means, for ill-educated engineers like me.

I have to admit that if I came across such a speedy deletion candidate I'd very probably remove the tag, since it doesn't seem to match any of the actual criteria for speedy deletion, however broadly construed. At worst the article might be considered unsourced, which is no reason for speedy deletion. But I'm questioning my judgement a little. Maybe this was a valid application of WP:IAR? I'd love to hear some other opinions.

Thparkth (talk) 04:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Based on what you said it is not a valid speedy deletion, but if the person who nominated for deletion was the Wikipedia author then it would be a valid G7. But if the admin believed that the original writer of the journal article would be harmed by the Wikipedia article, then IAR could be invoked. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:41, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds to me like a violation of WP:CRYSTALBALL which would be grounds for deletion but emphatically not for speedy-deletion. Graeme is correct that self-nomination might still be a valid grounds for speedy. Or a speedy could be justified if the creation was part of a pattern of vandalism. But if the page was created in good-faith, then it should have gone to XfD. As was recently discussed above, an appeal to WP:IAR is a sure sign that speedy-deletion is inappropriate. Rossami (talk) 05:13, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

A5 question

Forgive me if this has been asked before ad nauseam, but I didn't see it on this page or the last two archives. A5 seems to apply only to articles created in the mainspace here, then transwikied. What about the case when an article on another Wiki is transwikied here? Can we use A5 here in that case (edit to add: when the article here is identical to that on the other wiki)? Thanks. --NellieBly (talk) 01:48, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

No. Articles are transwikied only when they are not suitable for the wiki they were created on and so once the transwiki has been verified it will be deleted or majorly edited as soon as the processes on the originating wiki allow. Articles are transwikied to here because the community on the originating wiki believed that it was an encyclopaedia article written in English. If it isn't suitable for the English Wikipeida then nominate it for deletion if it meets no speedy deletion criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 08:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 17:34, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Files that are Commons duplicates

I undid a recent change by SlimVirgin (talk · contribs) that was completely undiscussed regarding local files that are redundant to Commons files. Kelly ^hi! 04:19, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Considering that SlimVirgin's edit summary comment was "these seem to have been removed", that would indicate that there once was a time when these were previously part of the policy. I looked back over revisions going as far back as two years ago, and I couldn't find anything. That would indicate to me that either an editor is trying to unilaterally make policy changes (not a good thing), or that the aforementioned clause, if it ever existed, was removed more than two years ago (which, to me, makes any discussion to initially include it quite stale). In any case, we would need to have new discussion and come to a new consensus on whether the wording change should be added to the policy or not, and I for one will strongly oppose the addition of such language as being contrary to the spirit of WP:OWN. SchuminWeb (Talk) 05:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Can someone please explain what's at issue here? I can't recall the subject ever being raised here in the past year, though it's entirely possible I may have missed it. A link to a past discussion would suffice. ScottyBerg (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the idea - we are unable to locate one, and I researched back two years. We can't find one, which to me indicates that the person who recently added the passage did so unilaterally without discussion. Now we're kind of trying to have that discussion, to see if consensus would even exist to allow such a policy change. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, then there needs to be a discussion of this. There shouldn't be edit warring over policy. ScottyBerg (talk) 18:28, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

You are correct on both counts. SlimVirgin has been referred to this discussion, and they have not yet responded. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Since CSD criteria are supposed to describe uncontroversial deletions, and {{Keeplocal}} indicates there might be some controversy, seems like it should be mentioned in the policy.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

It also goes against WP:OWN, as well as every other transwiki process we have. As User:Kelly said on my talk page, "If someone created an article about quotes of Mark Twain, and it was moved out to Wikiquote, would we keep a local copy because the author wanted to? If someone created an article on a neologism that was moved to Wiktionary, would we keep it here? If someone created a news article that was a duplicate of soemthing on Wikinews, would be keep it here?" If we move an image to Commons, why should we keep it here? SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:47, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikiquote and Wiktionary content does not show up as part of our articles: Commons content does. A deletion tag on Commons, though, will not show up here unless someone makes the effort to copy it over. Therefore, it makes sense for there to be some mechanism to tag content that might not be acceptable there, but is here. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

This was removed by Kelly in July 2008 after little discussion, though the templates were in use, and attempts to have them deleted had failed. So this looked like an attempt to bypass deletion debates. I first noticed the change to the policy at the beginning of this month, so I restored that where a free image is marked with KeepLocal or NoCommons it should not be speedied. [3]

Schuminweb nominated KeepLocal again for deletion on Feb 20, and the strong consensus was to keep it. When he saw the discussion hadn't gone his way, he tried today to close it as "withdrawn," rather than "keep," [4] reverting twice when challenged. [5] [6] At the same time Kelly and Schuminweb came here to remove reference to the templates from the policy. [7] [8] [9]

If these templates are being used, and if the consensus is to keep them, that means free images tagged with them should not be speedy deleted. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:48, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Schuminweb, you and Kelly are taking it upon yourselves to decide that the English Wikipedia is no longer allowed to host free images. You've tried to introduce this without discussion, edit warring when people challenge you, and arguably misusing the tools when these images are speedied. It's out of order when consensus is so clearly against what you're doing. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:01, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Kelly followed what is fairly standard practice, making a proposal, and then, seeing no negative response, changed it. You were trying to unilaterally change it without discussion. SchuminWeb (Talk) 21:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• Evidently "keeplocal" is used on only rare occasions. I don't see any great issue with retaining this as an exception. ScottyBerg (talk) 19:32, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• • According to this, the template is transcluded 815 times. This isn't "rare". SchuminWeb (Talk) 21:16, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Additionally, per this, similar template {{nocommons}} has been transcluded 806 times. This is also not "rare", especially when combined with the former. SchuminWeb (Talk) 21:21, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• But the point is that consensus in these debates keeps going against you. People want to be allowed to use the templates, and want them to be respected. You can't keep creating these forest fires of discussions, ignoring them when they don't go your way, then starting another as though the previous one didn't happen. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Would you like to discuss policy, like how these changes may or may not be grounded in said policy, or would you just like to continue to make personal attacks against those who oppose your viewpoint? I am here to discuss policy, since the TFD was not the right venue to start in vs. a policy page (and then using the TFD as the final step to clean up after a policy change). SchuminWeb (Talk) 21:45, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

There are no personal attacks. The issue is that when a discussion goes against you, you say it doesn't count, and you continue as before. Or you start a discussion in a new place, hoping to get a different answer.

The only points that matters are these: (a) the templates are being used; (b) every attempt to have them deleted has failed; (c) as recently as yesterday people have continued to say they want the templates to remain and be respected; and therefore (d) you can't speedy free images that display these templates, because to do so would be contentious, and speedy deletion is for non-contentious deletion. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:18, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

This smacks of forum shopping to me. Having lost the debate at TFD (for the second time) a new debate is opened here. I would also point out that the debate that removed the contentious line, that SlimVirgin is trying to restore, had some opposers with only Kelly arguing for deletion. That makes it at least no consensus in my book, if not an outright keep. It is unlikely that many of the editors interested in using this procedure were aware that that debate was occuring since this page is mostly the concern of those interested in speedy deletion. On the grounds that there was no consensus to make this change in the first place, and that CSD is meant to be strictly non-contentious, and that the CSD talk page is an unsuitable backwater venue to make policy changes, I am going to restore SlimVirgin's edit. SpinningSpark 00:09, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The latest attempt to delete the KeepLocal template has just been closed as keep, and there was no consensus to remove it from this policy in the first place. So if Kelly or Schuminweb want to remove it, please seek consensus by opening a neutrally worded RfC, and making sure people know about it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:28, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm rather embarrassed to have to protect this. I can't believe that experienced admins are edit warring over a policy discussion. I have no opinion on the best place to sort it out, but I know for certain that it isn't by edit warring on the policy page itself. I've kept it a short protection as hopefully it can get sorted. GedUK  13:32, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is embarassing. Personally I don't like the template but consensus per the recent TFD is quite clear. The template is kept and the sentence in this policy should be restored, try an RFC is you want to address it again. Garion96 (talk) 14:52, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

• Question - how long do these tags remain on the images? There's no policy covering their use. For example. Irpen (talk · contribs) and Redvers (talk · contribs) were prolific users of these templates. But they are now absent. Is it all right to just remove the templates from their images? What if an uploader appends the templates to the images and later changes their mind about Commons? Kelly ^hi! 01:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• Did someone set up that RfC? I've had an issue with these templates before. The lack of any clear policy with community wide consensus on them is a little alarming. But the real reason I'm here is because I've had an issue with people (well bots too) moving fair use items to commons. Closing a CSD:F8 as keep with a do not move fair use images to commons template would be useful but none of the current templates seems to do that. I was thinking of creating one and updating the instructions, but wanted to get feedback first, especially with all the heated discussion going on here. Any objections? --Selket ^Talk 02:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

• No objection from me. I've noticed the same problem. You could either create a new template, or just modify the wording of {{Do not move to Commons}}. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Would it not be possible/better to add the note about not moving fair use files to Commons to the fair use licence templates that are already on the articles? This doesn't do anything for files that should not be on Commons for reasons other than fair use, but I'd be surprised if fair use images were not the vast majority of such images. Thryduulf (talk) 02:52, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not just fair use images. It's anything that will permanently violate a commons rule. I think I'll probably tweak {{Do not move to Commons}} and update some documentation. --Selket ^Talk 03:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

It turns out I can't fix {{do not move to commons}} since that's really just {{pd-us}} now. I don't know why it was implemented like that, but I can solve this without walking off the end of that dock. I'm going to tweak {{Not moved to Commons}} instead. --Selket ^Talk 18:58, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Courtesy notice

Hello, this is a courtesy notice that {{db-a10}} has been nominated for deletion here. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:56, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• That's because if there is a duplicate, then the duplicating article can just simpily be merged/redirected to the existing article, therefore this template is not needed. Japanese knotweed (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Speedy kept, editor pointed here for further discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2011 (UTC)
    • Looking at the discussion that has been provided by User:Soundvisions1 at the tfd supports that this is not needed and is harmfull, especially the 2009 discussion. Japanese knotweed (talk) 22:49, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

The point was that I searched for a discussion and there has been no recent discussion of that magnitude on the criteria. I also pointed out that in 2009 it was obvious that there is no consensus whatsoever to repeal A10 at this time; I therefore close this discussion as a formality to acknowledge the adoption of A10. The correct process would have been to open a discussion here before making an attempt to delete a policy template. Soundvisions1 (talk) 14:32, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Your nomination of the template made no sense at all. First of all, the template is just a methodology of applying the existing criterion which was put in place after discussion. The only way you could ever be successful in having the template deleted is if you started a broad discussion here and achieved consensus to deprecate the criterion first. This is plain to all of us here; the nomination was a non-starter and was speedy closed. You don't appear to have read the criterion or understood what it is for, which is seen from your rationale above based on that duplicated articles "can just simpily [sic] be merged/redirected to the existing article". If you read the criterion you'll see that it is explicitly not applicable "where the title is not a plausible redirect... or that contains referenced, mergeable material", so your stated basis is completely irrelevant.

I hope you will slow down a bit knotweed, explore less technical areas to gain some experience; participate in XfD discussions before jumping to many nominations. You are a very new user but you appear to be focusing on areas that require a lot of experience. In addition to this page, you nominated a userpage for deletion today at MfD that was snow closed (by me) after unanimous consensus it was totally off base and bitey; you took a page to MfD that should have instead been tagged as a blatant attack page using {{db-attack}}; you tagged Sergei Prokopovich and Halldór Guðmundsson for speedy deletion under CSD A7 when the criterion was patently inapplicable, and after the latter was declined, took the article to AfD without doing any WP:BEFORE due diligence, when a simple Google books or news search would have immediately shown the topic to be patently notable and therefore one that should not have taken up any community time with a nomination that could not succeed. The list is longer but I'll stop there. Please take a breath. The enthusiasm to jump in is great, but you skipped right over the shallow end of the pool. Learn how our processes work and our policies and guidelines are applied in application first.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:13, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

• But why is there a problem with whether a redirect is plausible or not, we're not on rations. Japanese knotweed (talk) 09:01, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

  Wow, did you read the comment immediately above yours? Is there some reason to think that ignoring that advice would lead to a good outcome? Johnuniq (talk) 09:10, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Fuhghettaboutit. Well said. Soundvisions1 (talk) 14:32, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The reason why there is "a problem with whether a redirect is plausible or not" is that we want to keep plausible redirects as they are likely to be useful, and redirects are cheap so it is more efficient to tolerate all plausible redirects rather than workout how often they might be used. Implausible redirects are different, at best they are needless clutter, at worst an implausible redirect for one article could cause confusion by misdirecting people who are looking for something completely different. Your proposal to delete {{A10}} is in effect a proposal to keep implausible redirects, and I'm not sure why you want us to do that. ϢereSpielChequers 11:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Redirects

R2 is for redirects from the main namespace but what about redirects to the main namespace? McLerristarr | Mclay1 17:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you would want one, but I don't really see what the harm is either. --Selket ^Talk 19:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

And where would be the need to speedy delete them when you could just use WP:RFD? Regards SoWhy 20:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Not only are they explicitly not speedy-deletion candidates but many are not even regular deletion candidates. This CSD criterion was created in response to a specific problem. Briefly, we tolerate content in the userspace that we would not accept in the main article space. It may be a draft or an interim copy or just a user subpage. The problem came when malicious users began creating intentionally misleading content in their userspace then creating redirects which automatically shifted readers to those unpatrolled pages. If a reader wasn't watching the header of the page carefully, it was easy to be misled. For a while, it was happening with such regularity that a redirect from mainspace to userspace was presumed to be malicious and eligible for speedy-deletion. That logic does not apply to other redirects out of the mainspace (hence the exclusions about the Wikipedia-space, etc.) and it very definitely does not apply to redirects going the other way. There is not the same potential for confusion on the part of our readers. Rossami (talk) 20:39, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

NoCommons

I am proposing to merge {{NoCommons}} into {{keep local}}. I created a discussion at Template_talk:NoCommons#Misleading_Name. I am, in this proposal taking no position on whether either of these templates should serve as an exemption to F8, but there is no reason to have two templates. --Selket ^Talk 19:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

G12 and claims of permission

Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/Advice_for_admins#Checking_for_permission says that admins should wait 7 days before deleting an article based on a G12 tag if the page creator makes a credible claim of having permission to use the copyrighted material. Such a claim can be made on the article's talk page, in edit summaries, or on the user talk page or should be implied "if the contributor's username suggests an affiliation with the suspected source". I've seen many a case in which this delay did not happen even though there was a clear claim of permission made in response to the G12 tag. One way of implementing this would to be to add to G12 a sentence which repeats the foregoing requirement and which says that if there is a credible claim of permission that the article should not be deleted under the G12 nomination, but the instructions set out at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#Suspected_or_complicated_infringement should be followed instead, since listings on that noticeboard are always there for 7 days. The current language about "dubious claims of permission" doesn't get us there even if it applies at all to this situation, which is not at all clear. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 21:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The AfA page is just a practical how to guide Moonriddengirl wrote up, not policy or something. Current system is fine, we can always undelete a page if permission arrives. (Also, in 9 out of 10 cases the page is also applicable for deletion under G11 and A7, so nothing is solved by obtaining permission.) Yoenit (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

A7 question

Does A7 cover those things that are fictional? For example, an article that only states "X is a fictional company from the book Y. It is really evil." I don't see why it shouldn't apply, but just thought I'd make sure. Swarm ^X 01:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

No, it does not. However, if you want to, there's nothing to stop you from redirecting the fictional element which doesn't assert notability to the work in which it appears. Jclemens (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. Swarm ^X 02:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

But of course, if it meets another criteria (with those sorts of pages, I find G3, G10, and G12 sometimes apply) you can use that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Another Q

Regarding G4, why does the wording explicitly refer to pages that were "deleted per a deletion discussion"? Doesn't/shouldn't it apply to speedy deletions also? If an article is deleted per a CSD, and it's recreated identically, surely G4 covers this. Why doesn't the wording reflect this? Now, the original CSD tag would still apply of course, but G4 would work all the same, wouldn't it? Swarm ^X 07:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

If it was A7 before, and is created identically, A7 still applies. G4 is only for things where a deletion discussion has established that community consensus is that the article doesn't belong, and it doesn't apply if the article's ever been kept at an XfD or if it's not substantially the same article as was deleted in the discussion. Again, anything that doesn't fit those narrow criteria can go through the normal AfD process, and it will be deleted again if there's nothing substantially different. I've seen G4's used as an excuse to inappropriately delete articles that were good faith efforts to address the issues in an XfD. Jclemens (talk) 07:20, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Got it, thanks for your replies. I've done a reasonable bit of NPP before but for some reason these questions are occurring to me now. The rule to live by is 'adhere strictly to the CSD wording', I guess. :P Swarm ^X 07:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The reason the CSD criteria are so narrow is that enthusiastic NPP'ers (and I did a LOT of NPP/RCP'ing myself in 2008-09) can sometimes start seeing everything as vandalism. Automated tools make pouncing and BITEing a single-mouseclick operation, and Wikipedia has sometimes suffered the loss of good contributors because their first encounter with feedback was a big warning template. While there are plenty of returning vandals and sockpuppets, it's better to let some of their nonsense stew in the regular deletion process than to too-quickly alienate real yet inept attempts at actually improving the encyclopedia. Jclemens (talk) 07:28, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's perfectly reasonable. If you or someone wouldn't mind humoring me for one more question, I would appreciate it. What's the rule on non-admins reviewing and removing CSD tags? Is this allowed in any circumstance? The page says other editors should use the {{hangon}} tag, yet I've noticed a user has been removing CSD tags (see User talk:Porchcrop#Speedy deletions) Swarm ^X 09:07, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Any experienced editor can remove a speedy deletion tag that they think is not within policy and if they do, it's usually a sign that this specific article is not uncontroversial enough to be speedy deleted. Of course, when it's done without reasoning or in bad faith, one can replace the tag but usually a good faith, explained removal of a tag is okay even when done by a non-admin. The {{hangon}} template is only for the page creator, they are not allowed to remove the tag. Regards SoWhy 09:16, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I realize I misread, I tried to refactor my comment but I got an edit conflict. I still don't see how that's constructive, but whatever. A non-admin closes and AfD as 'no consensus' and everyone freaks out as if the world is ending, yet any non-admin is completely allowed to decline speedy deletion requests. It's beyond me. Swarm ^X 09:22, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll try to explain. Almost all of the criteria for speedy deletion are based on the assumption that the deletion will be uncontroversial, right? So if you, as a non-admin, come across a page you think does not fit the criteria and you remove the tag, it indicates that you do not agree that speedy deletion is the correct way to go. As such, you create a potential for controversy, by indicating that one of the main requirements ("uncontroversial") for speedy deleting articles is not met in this case. It's not a "decline" as such, since it does not create a decision that admins should respect (although, sadly, some admins will ignore even declines) but it usually will make an admin consider not to speedy delete an article if the reasoning you had for removing the tag makes sense. For example, if Barack Obama is tagged (in good faith) as {{db-person}}, you don't have to be an admin to remove the tagging as obviously incorrect, do you? Hope that made sense. Regards SoWhy 09:40, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I guess my problem with it is the potential for a single editor to create controversy by removing a CSD tag even if they're in the wrong. I guess in the grand scheme of things once it goes to the community the right decision will prevail (hopefully) and removing tags might be an inconvenience but it's really not a big deal. Swarm ^X 09:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

That potential exists everywhere of course but the benefits of having clearly incorrect tags reviewed by more people far outweigh the potential problems that might be caused by it. :-) I take it all your questions are answered now? ;-) Regards SoWhy 10:43, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Ha, yeah, I think my overly-excessive question spree has reached its end. Thanks for putting up with me. :P Best, Swarm ^X 11:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

You are of course welcome. :-) If you need anything else, you know where to find me / us. ;-) Regards SoWhy 15:02, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

On a related note; every once in a while, after I tag a page for speedy deletion, some user's first edit (not the creator, just some other user) is to remove the tag. Generally, I restore the tag because I find it highly improbable that it's coincidence; is this a problem? I know it says if anyone but the creator removes it, it should be PRODded or sent to AfD, but on the occasions this happens I retag it per IAR. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Depends on why the remove the tag really. If the tag was obviously incorrect, the removal is fine. If the tag was correct, it depends on why they removed the tag. If they specified a reason, it's usually better to PROD/AFD instead. If they did not provide any reasoning, re-tagging once is okay but you should notify the user and ask them to explain. That's just how I interpret it of course. Regards SoWhy 22:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

In every case so far, it's just been an unexplained removal of an A7 tag for a MySpace band or album. What you've said is basically what I've been doing; thanks. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC) The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

A7

Why is CSD A7 restricted to certain types of articles? It is logical that any article, regardless of subject matter, should be able to qualify under this criteria. Whats the logic behind this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sephiroth storm (talk • contribs)

CSDs are limited to known problem areas--if something is to be speedy deleted there has to be 1) strong consensus on what is or is not acceptable for an article, and 2) sufficient frequency that it's a benefit to the community to have those types of articles summarily executed. Jclemens (talk) 06:45, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Theres no known problem with other articles that are not notable, and have no claim of notability? How many articles outside of the A7 categories are successfully PROD'ed on the basis of notability? Any article that is not clearly notable, as established by policy and verified through multiple reliable sources, and makes no claim of such should be speedily deleted. Sephiroth storm (talk) 12:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

No consensus has been established for what you propose. The criteria for speedy deletion are cases where there is a clear consensus that the article can be deleted without discussion or delay. Because this bypasses "due process" almost entirely, it is a deliberately-small and tightly-defined list. Of course consensus can change, but there has historically been a lot of resistance to expanding the range of A7. Thparkth (talk) 13:10, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Why does A7 only apply to a real person, individual animal, organisation and web content?

I'm sure there's a valid rationale behind this one, but, for example, I see no reason why the article now at afd should not be deleted because it does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. Under the current policy, it would not fall into this criterion, since this criterion applies only to articles about web content and to articles about people, organizations, and individual animals themselves, not to articles about their books, albums, software, or other creative work. Any thoughts? Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 12:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

One reason is because those we have identified as within A7's ambit come up with regularity. If you read the banner at the top of this page you'll see a section that says "Read this before proposing new criteria". 3 says: Frequent: speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I realize this doesn't directly address your question. In the particular case you cite, at least one editor (the one who declined the prod, not the article creator) believes there are sufficient sources to demonstrate notability. That's a textbook example of a scenario where speedy deletion under A7 would have been inappropriate. Thparkth (talk) 13:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply guys. In reply to Fuhghettaboutit, I am pretty sure that articles which are about the products of the various companies, software, books, etc are very plentiful themselves (I'm not sure of the exact statistics on Wikipedia, so I'm not going to try and claim that there are slightly more, or slightly less). So surely this is not necessarily a reason why real people, individual animals, organisations and web content can be CSDed and other things can't be per A7. If they take up the same workload, or at least a significant amount, and when they are of no significance are taking time up at AfD, surely CSD is going to be a better option? As for Thparkth, I can understand that in this particular case CSD would not have been appropriate because another editor disputes the fact that the article is significant. However, surely this could have happened just as easily with a person, organisation, or some web content? Besides, we do have system with dealing with CSDs which people dispute: use the {{hang on}} template. Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 14:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Really the only reason other classes of article aren't covered by A7 is that nobody has gained a consensus for including them. I think most people are opposed to expanding A7 because it already covers the most common scenarios, and even with its current narrow scope it is quite often misused. As far as disputing CSDs goes, the proper procedure for an editor (other than the article creator) who disagrees with a CSD tag is not to use {{hangon}} but rather to simply remove the CSD tag. That's easy enough, but by the nature of speedy deletion they may only have minutes to do so before some admin deletes the page. Thparkth (talk) 14:09, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to include the fact that users other than the creator of the article can simply remove the tag - a fact which I am aware of. I can see your problem with CSDing things, the counterargument being on that front that the admin in question would check to see if the CSD was legitimate, and so if an editor was about to remove the template but then did not have time even though his side of the story was the right one, then the admin would probably make the same decision and not CSD the page anyhow. But surely if the issue is that CSD doesn't give responsible editors enough time to remove the template correctly, then the whole of A7 should be scrapped? Either that, or why should articles which are not organisations, people, and web content not fall into the category? As you said, it's probably quite simply because a consensus hasn't been reached. But why not? Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 14:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) When removing a CSD tag it is best to include the reason why in your edit summary or on the talk page (and noting so in your edit summary). If you want to contest he speedy deletion of something that has already been deleted, then the first step is to put a note about it on the talk page of the admin who deleted it explaining why you think the deletion was in error. Thryduulf (talk) 14:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

And that sort of sums up why A7 is legitimate. It does still beg the question, however, why only for orgs, people, and web content? There are many, many other types of articles which certainly increase the work load at AfD: why do these not feature? Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 14:34, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Because they are simply not frequent enough so that PROD and AFD cannot handle it. Remember, speedy deletion is not a way to decrease the workload to AFD, it's a way to keep AFD from breaking completely and that exception was made narrow because deletions should be made by consensus, not by administrative decisions. Speedy deletion is thus not a regular process, is an exception and because of that, it's as narrow as possible. Also, for some subjects (like products, software etc.) there were additional concerns that it's impossible to include them in an objective way, since it's hard for admin's to know everything that might constitute a claim to importance. If you do a search in the archives of this talk page, you will find countless discussions about it. Regards SoWhy 15:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, SoWhy . That makes a lot of sense. Essentially the category of articles which are the most numerous and the easiest for admins to make deletion decisions, have been selected in A7 so that AFD doesn't break. Got it. Cheers. Jay _{Σεβαστός}^discuss 15:56, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Notifying the auther

Would it not be good if when you add a speedy tag onto a page, if when you could click on where is reads ("Please consider placing the template ...... on the talk page of the author"), if it automatically added the template to the auther's talk page, rather that having to coppy and paste the template if you don't use Twinkle. Lavalamp from Mars (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)