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Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 74

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Latest comment: 4 years ago by 114.124.238.243 in topic Request for comment: Merge P1 and P2
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Proposal: Expand G5 to include undisclosed paid editing

Latest comment: 5 years ago137 comments52 people in discussion
All other proposals other than Option 2 (Cryptic's proposal) and Python Coder's have been rejected. As to those two, (even discounting some weak or misplaced arguments), I don't see any consensus; valid concerns have been raised as to the objectivity of the proposal and whether it's a good idea at all to make this a subset of G5.∯WBGconverse 19:03, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

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

Main proposal

Currently G5 is actionable for articles created by editors violating a block or ban. This is a personal block or ban: "To qualify, the edit must be a violation of the user's specific block or ban."

Well, an undisclosed paid editor is "banned" from editing, not by Wikipedia policy but by the WMF's Terms of Use. This ban isn't directed at any specific editor, but editing without disclosing payment is blockable.

A discussion on the OTRS mailing list suggests that it would make sense, as an additional deterrent, to treat articles created by such editors as any other G5 article, but the wording of G5 would need to change.

We have the Terms of Use, and we have G5, and the purpose of G5 seems like a good fit for enforcing the Terms of Use ban on undisclosed paid editing.

I suggest adding after the bullet list in G5:

"In addition, because undisclosed paid editing is prohibited by Wikimedia Foundation policy, articles created by undisclosed paid editors are candidates for speedy deletion under G5."

Or an alternative suggested by Cryptic below:

"In addition, because undisclosed paid editing is prohibited by Wikimedia Foundation policy, articles created by editors who have been indef-blocked for undisclosed paid editing are candidates for speedy deletion under G5."

What say everyone? ~Anachronist (talk) 22:59, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Anachronist: I like the idea... My question becomes how do you determine that the user IS an undisclosed paid editor? I've personally accused someone of being a paid editor to later find out it was a high school kid who was just really excited about the product. Page certainly needed to be reworked, but didn't really qualify for CSD. I would argue this sort of article really needs to go through WP:AFD so that the paid editor status can be proven/flushed out... Now, if on the other hand, the editor in question is blocked as a result of paid editing, that is another story. Just some food for thought. I like the idea. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 23:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support.
Can't support deletion because the criterion is not object, per User:Thryduulf. (we've been here before). However, something' has to be done. Counter proposal is to Quarantine suspected UPE product. --SmokeyJoe (talk)
Support toughening the current rules to better than toothless. Consistent, or even prerequisite of this, is that at WP:COI most of the occurrences of the toothless "should" are changed to "must".
COI editors MUST NOT edit articles directly; instead they may make requests and suggestions on the talk page.
COI editors MUST NOT create articles; instead they may use WP:AfC.
UPE editors are a worse-problem subset of COI editors, and the boundary is indistinct. Where a page is the sole product, ignoring minor edits, of a UPE editor or editors, an admin may delete it per WP:CSD#G5(UPE).
Post deletion of UPE product, if the editor later sufficiently declares and complies, the deleted page should not be WP:REFUNDed, instead, the COI editor may start again, ensuring that all COI editing has links back to a declaration older than the edits. To comply conservatively with attribution requirements, if they request an emailed version, email only the references (there is no creative content in a reference list).
I would like to go further, and require paid editors to use a special alternative account, named with the suffix "(paid)". Eg. User:Example (paid). This account must be a fully declared alternative account, linking to & from all other accounts controlled by the same person. The right to privacy is compromised by engaging in paid editing. Paid editing accounts must not be allowed to vanish leaving their product live in mainspace.
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't support excluding Wikipedians in Residence or WMF employees. If they are making edits for which they are paid to make, they should use similar declared alt. accounts and suffixed usernames: User:Example (WiR), and User:Example (WMF). Not because they are problem editors, but to set the example for best practice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:47, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Just as I support banning any form of paid editing (except WIR) and deleting their contributions. Making money out of the work of the volunteers who create and maintain this encyclopedia is dishonorable and unethical. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support as a straightforward and long overdue extension of WP:DENY. The only snag I can foresee is that proving UPE is hard, and it wouldn't be in the spirit of speedy deletion to use it when there's merely a suspicion. I'd suggest restricting the new G5 subcriterion to articles created by users who have subsequently been indefinitely blocked/banned for UPE. – Joe (talk) 00:21, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Very strong oppose. In order for this to meet the requirements 1 and 2 for a new or expanded criterion (i.e. only applying to things that it should) it would need to be restricted to pages created by confirmed (not just suspected) undisclosed paid editors, for pay (i.e. not other articles they have created) who knew at the time of page creation that they needed to disclose and have not, after a reasonable opportunity to do so, disclosed in an appropriate location that they were/are paid to edit, and the creation was not otherwise permitted by the ToU. Given that it would be impossible for a single admin to verify even half of this it is not remotely suitable for CSD. Even if it were, almost all the actually problematic content would be suitable for speedy deletion under an existing criterion anyway (failing requirement 4 with the remainder probably failing requirement 3 also). Thryduulf (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Actually, Thryduulf makes an important point. It would be fine to G5 known UPE product, but nearly always, it is a mere suspicion, at best a DUCK test. That is why I proposed: Wikipedia:Quarantine promotional Undeclared Paid Editor product. Quarantine suspected UPE, blanked so that it looks not there, subpages so that "Quarantine" is in the title, but available for the author to defend themselves. Note that the proposal is rough with serious comments on altering the details, on its talk page. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:52, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
      • @Thryduulf: How about modifying the proposal to delete articles created by editors who have already been blocked for undisclosed paid editing? Often these are checkuser blocks. ~Anachronist (talk) 02:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
        • @SmokeyJoe: See SoWhy's point below - I would support this only if it applies only to pages that were created in violation of the ToU, which is not necessarily all of them. Thryduulf (talk) 09:52, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
          • Thryduulf, I appreciate that principle, you want to discriminate between UPE-TOU violators and other pedestrian COI editors, but how can you tell the difference if you don’t ask? And if you ask, how can you expect an answer with neither stick nor carrot? And why not chase the pedestrian COI editors to answer a few little questions? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
            • If you can't tell the difference between UPE and other COI editors then that is another reason why this cannot work - I oppose in the strongest possible terms penalising editors for breaching the ToU when they have done no such thing. If the article is non-neutral then fix it or delete it - you can do this already. If the article is neutral then there isn't a problem that requires deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:48, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
              • Thryduulf. How do you tell the difference between a UPE and another COI editor? Suppose both are newish accounts, all they have done is written a draft on WP:CORP-borderline company&products, a couple OK sources, a half dozen non-independent PR sources, and another half dozen mere-mention sources. This is typical. I don't think I can tell the difference without a little free form discussion. The problem is, most do not even answer. I suspect most are UPEs, but there is no proof. What would you do in this situation? Give the suspect UPEs the benefit of the doubt, and let them through?
                Do you have a problem with OK articles in mainspace when they are the product of undisclosed paid editing? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:17, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
                • If there is no proof that an editor has broken the ToU then it is completely inappropriate for us to be treating them if they have. If there is a neutral, BLP-compliant article about a notable topic in the main namespace then the encyclopaedia would be harmed by deleting it (assuming it's not a copyvio) - why does it matter who wrote it? If the Foundation want editors to rigorously enforce the TOU prohibition on UPE then they need to (a) explicitly ask us and (b) give us the tools to do so reliably. Thryduulf (talk) 11:28, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
                  • That is logical. I think, for an editor that does not self-declare, given the privacy policy, there can never be proof. Are people getting hyped up about UPE for no good reason? Is there evidence of a problem? Beyond NPP and AfC thinking they have to worry about it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:48, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
                    • I've never seen any evidence that content written by (suspected) paid editors presents any problems that content of the same standard written by other editors does. If an article is irredeemably spammy it should be deleted, if an article is good quality it should not - who wrote it ins't relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 11:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
                      • I have never seen content written by an undisclosed paid editor that was any good. Often it looks superficially accurate but when you start looking at the refs they are typically poor and many often do not support the content they are placed behind. Paid editing is trying to mislead our readers and thus it harms our encyclopedia and our reputation. Those doing it are not interested in becoming editors who contribute high quality content but simple want to promote those who pay them and will try anything to continue to do so. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
                        • "I have never seen content written by an undisclosed paid editor that was any good." in which case it can and should be fixed or deleted like any other bad content - that the author was (or might have been) paid is irrelevant. However, I actually suspect that there is good content produced by UPE that doesn't get noticed because it's good and doesn't actually cause any problems. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Paid editing on Wikipedia is reaching crisis-level proportions and we need to deal with it as such. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 01:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Please explain how your suggestion relates to the previous RFC. --Izno (talk) 02:10, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    I'm still waiting on an explanation of why we think the prior consensus has changed... would anyone care to let those persons know, also? --Izno (talk) 19:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Over half of AfC submissions are likely UPE or COI edits. This could really cut down the AfC workload. Legacypac (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • The way to make this criterion objective is to foist the uncertainty off on another process. To wit: the content should only be speedyable if its creator has already been indefinitely blocked as a paid editor. —Cryptic 02:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Option 2 as it is clear cut easy to see. I'm going to suggest we try to feed a notice about COI and UPE to every submitter of content at AfC that someone might pay for. Maybe a bot can do that. Even if it get posted to editors that are writing historic topics etc who cares because it will raise awareness without accusing them. Legacypac (talk) 03:51, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose particularly at AFC. It is difficult to determine whether the writer is paid or has made a disclosure. So this is not suitable for a speedy deletion. At AFC pages will be examined to see if they are promotional or not. It gives a UPE editor a chance to learn they need to disclose. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm suggesting a notification system to encourage disclosure. We would only speedy drafts at AfC created by blocked UPE users. Often these drafts get worked on by sock after sock so flushing them from the system would be a good thing. Why waste my volunteer time to ensure the UPE gets his/her paycheck? Why make it easy for them to violate our rules? Legacypac (talk) 05:47, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose How do you tell that something was created for undisclosed payments? Idle speculation and "I think so" is not clear enough. Besides, G11 is a thing for spammy articles. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 06:30, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • G11 only catches the product of the most inept UPEs. Granted, there are lots of them, but they are noisy inept UPEs that will learn how to avoid G11, and G11 leaves no record for the non-admin reviewers to refer to when they try again, and again, and again. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:41, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
* The suspected UPE page can't be deleted, because the reviewer rarely can know it is UPE objectively enough for any acceptable CSD.
* It is not worth a community discussion for every suspected UPE creation, NPP and AfC reviewers have to be trusted on this to do something.
* The page has to be blanked, so that the UPE is not recognized for the work in progress.
* The page and every version of it has to have the ugly title, including "Quarantined", so that the UPE can't even send the sponsor a version link. (Achieved by the page move)
* if the author can declare, or explain that the are not a UPE, then the reviewer can move the page back, no admin functions required.
The quarantine proposal talk page has productive input on details. I think the concept is the only viable action I've seen. A CSD based on the unknowable author=UPE condition is not workable. A CSD requiring the author to be blocked will miss 99% of the problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Short answer on that proposal - too complex and too much work for reviewers. A blank in place for drafts might work with a message about UPE/COI much like we do with suspected copyvio. We could make it a CSD with a delayed deletion, it only shows up in the CSD pending list after X days. That can be programmed right into the CSD template. Give the user time to disclose and remove the CSD. Otherwise bye bye. Legacypac (talk) 07:04, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
It is not meant to be work for the reviewer. It is meant to be less work than giving a reviewing comment. If the concept is agreed to, everything is easily scripted.
You can't have a CSD for suspected UPE. Anachronist's proposal is doomed for this reason, just like the previous one last time. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Possibly support #2 delayed. I could entertain supporting some kind of UPE-PROD which gives these editors the chance to disclose per Legacypac above or dispute the UPE and a block based on that. After all, just because an admin has decided to block someone for UPE does not mean they are an UPE. However, I do see the problem that in most cases, such a deletion mechanism will fail due to the uncertainties surrounding UPE and how to prove it. Regards SoWhy 08:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 2 While I agree that suspicions of UPE are not sufficient for the deletion of a page (that's why we have the {{undisclosed paid}} template), if it is confirmed that a user has been editing in violation of Wikipedia's TOU, that's a good reason for deletion. As a comparative analogy, if a user is blocked for copyright violations, we delete pages they have created which are violating copyright, and we do so regardless of whether they were created before or after the block. In this scenario, we are blocking a user for violating the TOU, and the pages that they created prior to being blocked are part of that violation - they should, therefore, be deleted. Yunshui 雲水 08:37, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think that analogy is apt. If we block an editor for repeated copyright violations, we still have to check whether all their creations really fit G12 because just because they violated copyright in some cases does not mean they did so in all cases. Similarly, someone blocked for UPE does not mean all their articles were created because they were paid for it. Regards SoWhy 08:50, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    Having dealt with some large cases of copyright issues, after finding copyright violations in 10 random edits from a single user, yes large scale rollback becomes a perfectly reasonable option and one I have carried out. At this point instances that do not look like copyright violations from this individual might just mean that the source they copied from is no longer easily avaliable online rather than the content being "okay". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:17, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support (option 2) - Articles written by confirmed UPEs should be speedily deleted for two reasons: 1) there is a high probability that the articles were also paid for, and 2) deleting all article created by the UPE would have the same disincentivising effect as it does for socks of blocked/banned users.- MrX 🖋 11:25, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Very strong support of both options plus suggestions by User:SmokeyJoe. When a family of 3 plus socks are blocked and all the articles created by these socks are 1) promotional 2) barely / not notable 3) each sock makes a dozen small edits, waits a week, and then creates a perfect article in a single edit. It does not take a rocket scientist (or AI specialist) to identify this as undisclosed paid editing (and by accounts of a prior blocked user). I currently delete these articles as they are created by previously blocked users (we do not need to bury our heads in the sand). In fact all articles that follow this pattern could really be simple deleted. User:SmokeyJoe suggestions are excellent and are definitely required if we are going to allowed paid "promotional" editing to continue at all. My issue with paid editing in the type were those doing the paying have a COI regarding the subject matter in question (ie someone paying for an article about themselves or their business). The NIH/CDC paying someone to help improve articles about hearing loss for example is not an issue as the NIH/CDC do not have a COI with respect to the topic in question. They of course should not and do not work on content about the NIH or CDC itself. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:16, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • If a family of socks are blocked then their contributions can already be deleted under G5 - why they were socking is irrelevant. The latter part of your comment just proves that paid editing (disclosed or otherwise), COI editing and promotional editing are three different issues - they are overlapping sets but all combinations of 0, 1, 2 and all 3 of them exist. If the content is bad it should be (and can be) fixed or deleted using existing processes so there is no need for this proposal; if the content is good then there is no need to delete it so there is no need for this proposal. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Proposal 2 - I also believe it is unjust and immensely unwise to block articles because they are believed to be from PAIDCOI editors. However I'm all for scrapping the work of confirmed paid editors. While we might actually do some collateral damage this way, it should make it much harder for the paid editor to keep doing his action as a number of his clients suddenly become grumpy. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:35, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support proposal 2 with a caveat that it is not very retrospective and only includes arrticles created from March 2018 because many upe articles that have been around for a few years have a lot of contributions from legitimate editors and the G5 criteria in practice is applied very unevenly so that some articles will be deleted no matter whether the other legitimate contributions are substantial and significant, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 15:53, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Proposal 2, as it would include all pages they created, even those they were not paid to create. That, to me, is overreaching and suggests if an editor was paid to create one page and created 99 good pages without payment, all 100 pages are eligible for speedy deletion. That's not productive. Neutral for now on Proposal 1. Smartyllama (talk) 18:07, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @Smartyllama: Both proposals would include all pages UPE created. The only difference is which users are covered, in proposal one it's everybody suspected to be an undisclosed paid editor (whether this is proven or not), in proposal 2 only those people who have been indefinitely blocked for undisclosed paid editing (whether proven or not). Thryduulf (talk) 18:32, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
      • In that case, Oppose Both but Support a potential third option which only includes pages the editor was actually paid to create, as those were the only edits in violation of WMF policy. Smartyllama (talk) 18:43, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. UPEs have long been alleged to be socks at SPI. I don't know the stats, but certainly frequently they are not socks. I have no objection to some sort of proposal to add a G code for UPEs, but expanding G5 in this way would be very messy. As it is, many editors tag articles incorrectly, and there are admins that either don't understand the language of G5 or who IAR-go along with it. I suspect a new G code just for UPEs would also be messy, but let's at least keep our messes separate.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Thryduulf and Bbb23. Additionally, the only valid reason for a UPE's contribs to be speedy deleted is already covered by WP:G11. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 19:24, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose unless it is limited to cases where the article "is the sole product, ignoring minor edits, of a [blocked] UPE editor or editors", per SmokeyJoe. I've seen plenty of blatently promotional articles rescued by uninvolved editors, and we wouldn't want to throw those babies out with the bathwater. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 19:44, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I support the general idea but this version does not restrict itself to articles created for pay. If I accept a commission to write a paid article tomorrow and don't disclose it then any article I've ever written could be deleted under this. Hut 8.5 20:42, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
part of the point of this is to discourage people from doing just that. It wouldn't conceivably apply to you, because an editor with skill and experience and knowledge of WP, would know to declare. DGG ( talk ) 21:33, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Sure, I have no desire to take up paid editing but the same principle applies. If an editor gets banned then G5 isn't used to delete everything they have ever written, even though that would be a deterrent to doing something ban-worthy. Hut 8.5 21:56, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 2. with the same understanding as for other G5s, that if a good-faith editor has edited it substantially, it does not apply. I have in the past tried to rescue articles of importance and clear notability even for UPEs, and this will make it more difficult, but considering the threat that they pose, it is necessary. I do point out that by adopting it we eliminate the possibility of a UPE reforming and declaring their earlier work. But this is not that much of a change, because even now they would have to declare their earlier work, tho it would not get speedy deleted. -- several such editors have contacted me, and they are not willing to declare earlier work regardless, claiming confidentiality. I would suggest proceeding very slowly withe earlier ones. DGG ( talk ) 21:21, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
    • @DGG: What is the actual "threat" here that is not posed by unpaid COI edits? Why does this require speedy deletion of every article created someone we suspect of engaging in UPE - regardless of whether we are right, and regardless of whether that article was created for pay? Thryduulf (talk) 00:58, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Unpaid COI editors are normally friends or associates or fans of the subject. They can, at best, be educated about our standards and will try to meet them and sometimes even go on to editing properly; at worst, they will quickly leave. We need to be flexible and open to potential good faith contributors. (If they're the subject in person, then it's a different problem--their sense of self-importance is involved, and they will generally become so obnoxious about it that we can quickly remove them.) Paid COI editors, the ones who are undeclared especially, almost never can be educated about our standards; they can be stopped at a particular article, but many of them seem to return indefinitely. They have no interest in being good faith editors. . (I'm usingCOI in the sense of specific interest in having a particular article , not contributing with a COI to WP generally) DGG ( talk ) 01:45, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Another consideration is that COI editors are often in a better place to find sources to support an edit on the topic, given that they are connected to it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 06:34, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Broken windows theory applies to promotional articles because newbies justify their existence with WP:OSE. There's also cases where articles - they don't have to be spam, mind you - were created for pitching to potential clients (who are not necessarily the subject of the article) or business development purposes. Even though these articles are not created explicitly for pay, they still need to be nuked - perhaps more urgently. MER-C 18:34, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 2. The only way to rid ourselves of this menace is to deny the spammers their product. They are not here to improve Wikipedia and we shouldn't expend more than the bare minimum of time needed to dealing with them - they can just overwhelm us with cheap labor. AFD doesn't scale very well and many UPE articles are specifically created to frustrate the notability evaluation process (e.g. by WP:REFBOMBing). Whether they are explicitly sockpuppets or not is irrelevant - many UPE operations are sophisticated enough to evade CU and/or farm out the actual page creations to low wage/third world/freelance meatpuppets with instructions on evading detection. Quarantine should be used when UPE is merely suspected. The analogy with copyright violations is correct - it is policy that contributions of repeat infringers can be presumed to be copyvios and removed indiscriminately. MER-C 18:51, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose any version of this. I am as strongly opposed to undisclosed paid editing, and paid editing in general, as anyone. However, no version has been proposed that is Objective and Uncontestable. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support.   — Jeff G. ツ 23:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Jo-Jo Eumerus. How many of you supporters are familiar with the big box at the top of the page? Look under Read this before proposing new criteria if you're not. This proposal is neither objective nor uncontestable, especially as it's quite plausible that an article potentially deletable under this proposed criterion is beneficial to Wikipedia. We shouldn't go deleting good content merely because the creator got paid to create it: we should delete it if the content's demonstrably bad or if the situation's ambiguous, but this proposal would have us delete all paid-edit content, even when it's demonstrably good. Nyttend (talk) 02:50, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Unless an editor discloses that they are a paid editor, how can it objectively be known that they are? — Godsy (TALKCONT) 03:46, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Content should be evaluated by its own merits, not those of its creator. Benjamin (talk) 06:27, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Thryduulf and Nyttend raise good points. It's impossible to quickly verify whether the article meets the proposed criteria. And if it's not quick, it's not speedy deletion. feminist (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • A wonderful, impractical dream. A criterion that, if it could be objectively and speedily enforced, would make Wikipedia a better place. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 05:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose both. As drafted, both proposals are overly broad, capturing work that have substantial contributions by others, weren't written while blocked, weren't written for pay, and combinations thereof. It couldn't work as an extension of G5, which is specifically for pages created in violation of a user's specific block w/o substantial contributions by others. A more narrower and objective CSD criteria could work, or some PROD or quasi-PROD process might be better. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 20:53, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Undeclared paid editing is not even agreed to be a deletion reason. The place for this discussion is Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Undeclared Paid Editor (UPE) product; only if UPE AfDs consistently result in SNOW deleted should this be considered as a CSD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:32, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Thryduulf and Nyttend are right again with this one. --Bsherr (talk) 15:13, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as per WP:BITE. Some newcomers may not know about declaring paid editing. I know the best wiki (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Thryduulf's valid point. It's literally impossible to tell whether the article was a COI creation, which would ruin the point of speedy deletion. --GN-z11 ☎ ★ 18:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, mostly per Thryduulf, though I like SmokeyJoe's idea.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose If the article isn't bad enough to delete G11, there should be a discussion about it, not a speedy deletion based on the author. Monty845 05:03, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:FOC. Andrew D. (talk) 12:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above. Should be done on a case by case basis with community input, not summarily by admins. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 01:03, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Benjamin: "Content should be evaluated by its own merits, not those of its creator." As well, one editor with 99 good articles shouldn't have those all deleted over one undisclosed-paid one. ɱ (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose For so many of the reasons listed above that it would take too long to list them all. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:33, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - For all the reasons already stated. If it doesn't qualify under G11, then not only should it get a discussion, there should be even less confidence in the identity of the supposedly conflicted creator. MarginalCost (talk) 01:22, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Outright deletion of content, except as already defined per CSD. UPE is unethical but there is absolutely no basis to say that the content produced as a product of UPE cannot be salvaged at all. Instead of going on a crusade against UPE, if we all improved Wikipedia (by improving UPE bs, for example) we'd be better off. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 18:07, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Alternative proposal (3)

To remedy some of the opposers’ concerns, I propose that the following be added to the G5 bullet list in lieu of any of the above:

In addition, because undisclosed paid editing is prohibited by Wikimedia Foundation policy, articles created for pay by editors who have been indef-blocked for undisclosed paid editing, with no substantial edits by other users, are candidates for speedy deletion under G5.

(Changes from proposal 2 marked in red.) — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:47, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Support as proposer. — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:47, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose because these conditions are impossible for a single admin reviewing a CSD nomination to determine. Also, it fails to address other problems noted above - principally lack of need and not being restricted to proven cases. Thryduulf (talk) 00:58, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It may be hard to tell if the article was created for pay, but if it is obvious, then this should be possible to enforce with a speedy deletion. However if other good standing editors have adopted the page or removed the speedy delete tag, then this should not be foreced, and AFD considered instead. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
    • "It may be hard to tell" and "sometimes it's obvious" (without any indication of who gets to decide, using what criteria, or anything remotely objective) is exactly why this subjective assessment is has no business being anywhere near a CSD criterion. Thryduulf (talk) 10:35, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as written, but would support if "with no substantial edits by other users" were added to keep it in line with the rest of G5. Smartyllama (talk) 11:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • This would already be a required step because it's part of the G5 requirements, but I have inserted it above for clarity. — pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 12:02, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support current version as my concerns above have been addressed. Smartyllama (talk) 12:28, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, although in practice, we won't know which articles have been written for pay. But I guess we'll assume the article about a company CEO was written for pay and the one about an obscure 18th century poet wasn't, and we'll get it right most of the time. —Kusma (t·c) 11:46, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but whether we "get it right most of the time" is unknowable and even if it were it wouldn't be good enough. Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support this too, though prefer proposal 2. MER-C 18:52, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as above. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, this one looks like has been ironed out enough. I think I would prefer a separate number for this per Bbb23's concern above, but I understand why it's bundled with G5. -- Tavix (talk) 21:32, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support.   — Jeff G. ツ 23:11, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support' along with proposals 1 & 2 (with preference reflected in the proposal number). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:01, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support as this is clear and can be decided by only examining a few pages (history and user log). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • How? Yes it's easy to tell whether the editor is indef blocked, and not difficult to tell whether there have been significant contributions from others but how do you propose to reliably and objectively tell whether any given article was created for pay? Note that simply suspecting that it might have been is insufficient. Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Thryduulf. feminist (talk) 10:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Just leave G5 alone, it's fine as is for quickly cleaning up ban violations, which is what it's meant for. For suspected paid editors, make a proposal to modify G11, or propose a new criterion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:38, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Ivanvector: The idea here is that undisclosed paid editors are already "banned" by default. Therefore, wouldn't it be appropriate to use G5 to clean up these ban violations also? Remember, the proposal in this section applies only to contributions of editors who have already been blocked for undisclosed paid editing, and often those blocks are by checkusers. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, that's a common view (that undisclosed paid editors are violating an implied ban) and one I share, but it's not universal, and so it doesn't meet the "objective" requirement for new criteria. For socks of editors who are already banned by a community process, G5 already applies. As a side note, we were explicitly warned in orientation that suspicion of commercial editing is not a valid rationale on its own for the use of Checkuser - if a user is Checkuser-blocked, you can presume it's not because of undisclosed paid editing but because of some violation of policy related to multiple account abuse. They don't go hand-in-hand as often as people like to think. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Better than the above but still too subjective per Thryduulf. If this does get consensus, it should be a new criterion not under G5, which is for very clear cut violations of the user's original block/ban. If this must be under G5, then it should be restricted to very clear cut cases where someone is blocked for socking (e.g. explicitly mentioned in the block, link to SPI, Checkuserblock) after their first account was blocked for UPE. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 21:08, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as not objective. Instead, to move forwards on this, introduce a tracking category on UPE AfDs, to provide evidence on what normally happens. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:25, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy#Undeclared Paid Editor (UPE) product. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:30, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per Thryduulf. --Bsherr (talk) 15:19, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support as the person who originally started all this. I like this better than my option 2 in the section above. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Thryduulf again. This is closer, but it's not there yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This would allow adaptive block rationales to make pages deletable, which is an abhorrent notion. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 19:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Same as main proposal, if the article isn't bad enough to delete G11, it should go to a discussion, not be deleted due to the author. Monty845 05:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:FOC. Andrew D. (talk) 12:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak support. I hate G5, but paid-for spam needs to be dealt with better than it is right now. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - If paid editors can easily continue to create new articles with new accounts, they will not stop. We need to do more to actually deter paid editing before it happens. We must make it clear that if you break our rules about paid editing you cannot get away with it. Meszzy2 (talk) 18:10, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Another alternative (4) (or possibly, an addition)

Articles written by UPE can be brought to AfD, and if the consensus is that they were written by a blocked UPE, this will be a sufficient reason for deletion, regardless of considerations of possible notability and promotionalism

This way no one person gets to decide, and there is a possibility of making exceptions. The disadvantage of this is having a large number of inconclusive AfD debates, so I'm not sure of this. I'm suggesting it only as a possible alternative to see what people think. (And, of course, it is't actually just one person in Speedy. Good practice is for one person to nominate, and then a second person who is an admin to decide.) DGG ( talk ) 01:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
This sounds reasonable, but AFD would always have been an option. I suppose that the deletion policy is what gets changed by thgis proposal. We shouuld make it clear that in this case it is the UPE that is the only substantial contributor, to avoid the case where pre-existing articles get edited by the paid editor. (in which case ubndoing edits would be appropriate). Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:57, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Additional possibility: remove the word blocked. If we are going by consensus the consensus can decide. (There will be an additional proposal to revise blocking policy. We now often presume any upe is likely to have socked, butit would bemuch more straightforward for UPE should be stated explicitly as a reason for blocking. DGG ( talk ) 04:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

  • AfD can delete any article for any reason per the consensus established in the AfD discussion. User:Thryduulf has provided a fundamental challenge. Who says ToU violation is a deletion reason? Did the WMF? Did editors decide? Links? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:28, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
We can decide. (though the discussion would have to take place at WP:Deletion Policy). We make our own policy. It would add to the list at WP:DEL-REASON. Though we can delete for any other reason also, reasons not on that list are in practice usually strongly challenged. Leaving it to individual AfDs would repeat this discussion each time, whether UPE is an acceptable reason. We need some uniformity of practice in dealing with COI contributors. DGG ( talk ) 14:17, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedians can decide, right. But not on this page. It is not even a WP:DEL-REASON, so it is not even conceivable that it should be a CSD. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Any article can be brought to AfD for any reason by any editor at any time. This proposal adds nothing to that. Thryduulf (talk) 10:37, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
of course it would need to be discussed at DelPolicy. And it I think ought to be viewed as a supplement to the discussion here which might use narrower criteria. For example, CSD would be blocked, AfD would be any UPE even if not yet blocked. The reasons given for deletion at DELPOLICY already overlap. It adds clarity to be specific. , whith something that can be quoted at the AfD. We do not want to add confusion to what many new users see as an already complicated and confusing process. DGG ( talk ) 14:30, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose as above. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose AfD can choose to delete an article under existing policy for promotionalism. This just muddies the waters. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:59, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
AfD can only delete under promotionalism if it reaches the level that would justify a WP:G11 deletion anyway. Paid Editing might cause the same problem, but it is not the same reasoning.
actually, based on the last few years of decisions at AfD, Deletion for promotionalism it is interpreted more broadly. This is justified by WP:DEL4, " Advertising or other spam without any relevant or encyclopedic content )" The CSD criterion for G11, WP:G11 is "Unambiguous advertising or promotion: ... This applies to pages that are exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to conform with Wikipedia:NOTFORPROMOTION " The difference, as for all speedy criteria, is that is has to be unambiguous. Situations that are debatable need to be debated at AfD, and promotionalism there can be and is interpreted however the consensus decides. Many is the promotional page where I have declined G11, nominated for AfD as promotional, and seen deleted by consensus. DGG ( talk ) 17:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
Support with Bartlett's amendment, - This is a different case to those above, and I think it is a reasonable one. It handles comments that it either isn't appropriate for a CSD standard time scale, or doesn't belong because it's too long for CSD (a somewhat tricky double argument!). Given the significant opposition primarily focused on being discussion in this forum, @DGG:, closing this here, moving to Del Policy while both leaving a forwarding and pinging each participant in this proposal would be reasonable/wise. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
I agree with closing this here,. The discussion has moved on. DGG ( talk ) 17:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Wrong forum per above. UPE should obviously be a factor to consider at AFD that would militate towards deletion barring exceptionally good other factors (e.g. substantial, transformative contributions by others, very high quality material explicitly endorsed by other editors, etc.) but implementing changes to AFD is outside the scope of this page. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 21:14, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose in favor a restarting at WT:DEL, should UPE be a WP:DEL#REASON? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Barkeep49, et al. This isn't a CSD proposal so is off-topic here, and it's not necessary since AfD can already delete such pages as hopelessly promotional.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose If the AFD discussion on the merits results in a keep consensus, the identity of the author should not override that. Monty845 05:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:FOC. Andrew D. (talk) 12:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Alternative wording (5)

Here's my concept for this new criterion:

"In addition, any articles confirmed to have been created by a confirmed undisclosed paid editor, are promotional, and have no substantial edits by others, are subject to this criterion due to violating Wikipedia terms of service."

Since other proposals were said to be too broad (not counting the wrong venue proposal), I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring with this potential wording of the new criterion for G5.

Hopefully this is short but concise enough to do. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 00:56, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Support as proposer. Kirbanzo (userpage - talk - contribs) 00:56, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose If the article is problematically promotional, it can already be deleted G11. If it isn't bad enough for G11, its worth discussing at AFD. Monty845 05:12, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Monty845. It also doesn't distinguish articles created for pay from articles created by someone who was paid to create other articles. Thryduulf (talk) 09:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP and WP:FOC. Andrew D. (talk) 12:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)


Alternative proposal 6

I think that this would be a good reason for speedy deletion, but I think that G5 is the wrong criterion. I think that we should, in stead, add this to G11 (spam), which is directly related to the issue of undisclosed payed editing. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • @Od Mishehu: Please could you be specific about the wording you are proposing as there are several different formulations above "this" could refer to (and the exact wording matters at speedy deletion). However, unless your proposal addresses the reasons for opposition that are unrelated to it being part of G5 (which I think is most of them) it is very unlikely to gain consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 19:11, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. There are too many half-baked proposals now and this is vexatious. No deal is better than a bad deal, eh? Andrew D. (talk) 12:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Update P2 proposed

Latest comment: 5 years ago47 comments24 people in discussion

Currently P2 says "Any portal based on a topic for which there is only a stub header article or fewer than three non-stub articles detailing subject matter that would be appropriate to present under the title of that portal."

However even WikiProject Portals has 20 articles as the minimum to support a portal, something that many other editors think is too low. We are now finding many portals that lack 20 articles created by various users. To save a lot of wasted MfD time let's move the 3 to 20 in this criteria. Legacypac (talk) 02:01, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose, because speedy deletion is intended for content that blatantly violates CSD standards, and as presently worded, the criteria is sufficient. For example, a portal with nineteen selected articles could then be speedily deleted simply because it hasn't been updated to include new content. Makes it too easy to quickly throw away the work of other editors from simply counting articles, essentially qualifying deletion via bureaucratic bean counting. Per this "nineteen article" example, such and similar portal examples would be better discussed and assessed on a case-by-case basis at WP:MFD. North America1000 03:54, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, but prefer a threshold of 10 non-stub articles pending a wider consensus. I have some sympathy with North's "nineteen article" example, and setting the limit at half that gives plenty of room for the occasional lapse, while still satisfying Legacypac's well-justified concern that too much effort is being wasted on portals with 3–10 articles.
However, that "nineteen article" example is problematic. The minimum of 20 is a target set by the create-squillions-of-pointless-portals brigade at WP:WPPORT, and I believe that community consensus would set a radically higher threshold. Insofar as that threshold of 20 is upheld, it should be regarded as the absolute rock-bottom bare minimum for a portal to survive, so editors should be aware that creating a portal without a significantly higher number of articles is placing the portal at real risk of deletion if the numbers slip.
So while, I'd refer ten, I'd support a threshold of 20 if other editors back it ... but either way, this proposal is just an intermediate step to ease the burden of cleaning up the flood of portalspam. It should all be revisited as part of a wider discussion on what size and number and type of portals the community will support. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:32, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per NorthAmerica. This would be a good reason to discuss the portal at MfD but the higher the number the greater the chance that there will be disagreement about whether an article does fall within a topic area or not so it needs discussion. Given that there is no draft space for portals and editors who dislike the idea of portals so much that they are desperately trying everything they can think of to get as many of them deleted as they humanly can, it is very important that we take extra care not to speedy delete something that would be better merged for example. Thryduulf (talk) 11:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • This isn't unreasonable. It is, however, premature. We should first find a wider consensus on how many articles are truly needed to support a portal - and I strongly suspect it will be multiple orders of magnitude higher than what the WPPORT echo chamber would like - and only then set a CSD threshold at some percentage of that. —Cryptic 12:15, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Not yet. The breadth threshold for portals is already being debated in several forums. I am disappointed that those discussions have not yet reached a conclusion, but producing yet another competing standard would not help. Certes (talk) 12:42, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    20 is the number the Portal fans set a long time ago. Precious few topics on Wikipedia are notable enough to have a page yet are unreleated to less than four other pages. Therefore P2 is pretty much pointless as written. Legacypac (talk) 18:44, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Legacypac, CoolSkittle, BrownHairedGirl, Pythoncoder, and Cryptic: As Espresso Addict notes below, it is not going to be possible for a single admin to objectively determine whether a threshold above a small number (certainly less than 10) is met. This means it is inherently unsuitable for speedy deletion. It would be a good metric for a deletion discussion though, but per Certes it is important that if we have a threshold that we have only one, so it should be discussed at a single appropriate venue (which is not this discussion). Thryduulf (talk) 09:52, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Thryduulf, I think you misunderstand the issues here.
    This discussion is about criteria for speedy deletion. It is quite common (even routine) to have content guidelines which set thresholds higher than the speedy deletion criteria, so there is no reason why there should be only one criterion. All that matters is that the speedy criterion extends no higher than the lower limit of the general guideline. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:05, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) @BrownHairedGirl: I agree that two thresholds are common, but that's not my point. I was making two spearate points - First that many of the thresholds proposed here for speedy deletion (10, 20, etc) cannot be assessed objectively by a single admin and so cannot work as a speedy deletion criterion. Secondly I was pointing out that discussions of a non-CSD threshold (which some commenters seem to be unclear is different) should be discussed elsewhere. Thryduulf (talk) 10:12, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    Paging through the list of portals-actually-deleted-as-P2 that I generated below, it's clear that even "3" has been entirely ignored in practice. —Cryptic 10:10, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    @Cryptic: Do you mean that portals with more than three non-stub articles are being deleted or that ones with fewer are not being? If the criterion is being routinely abused then that deserves a separate discussion about how to resolve that - e.g. is it only one admin or multiple admins? If it's not being used, then we need to look at why (again probably a separate discussion). Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
    I meant the former, but the latter's probably true too. There hasn't been a year with more than 10 correct P2 speedies since 2007. Its original purpose - to prevent Portal:My meaningless little company and/or website - was obsolesced by the introduction of criterion G11. —Cryptic 10:38, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support with a threshold of 10 for now per BrownHairedGirl. CoolSkittle (talk) 14:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support 10 or 20 per BrownHairedGirl — if 20 is what the biggest portal fans (and thus people who want the lowest number of portals deleted) on this site want, it should definitely be the minimum standard for portals. This would help get rid of some of the useless nanoportals that aren't eligible for X3. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 19:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think this could be quite difficult for an admin to quickly assess in practice. Take, for example, the late unlamented Portal:Spaghetti. In addition to an adequate main article, there's Spaghetti alla chitarra, ~7 clear non-stubs under the subcat Dishes plus ~3 other borderline stub/start. I was surprised not to find that English school meal staple 'spag bog', but it's under Bolognese sauce, which apparently traditionally should be cooked with flat pasta, but does talk about the spaghetti dish. Also Tomato sauce, which has a classic spaghetti dish highlighted in the infobox. Also spaghetti sandwich, mysteriously not categorised. There could well be many other uncategorised articles that relate to spaghetti that might be findable by search, or just by meandering through the main article & the other found articles. Then you've got peripheral (but categorised) content such as Spaghetti-tree hoax, Flying Spaghetti Monster & 3 related articles, plus 16 pages of metaphors relating to spaghetti. There are ingredients (well, flour). There might well be books on spaghetti, well-known manufacturers, chefs, restaurants &c. Then you've got the notion that articles in Italian might be translated or mined to expand the stubs. Does the admin press delete or not? Unless >=9/10 admins would agree, it isn't going to be viable as a speedy category. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:15, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Can anyone tell how many deletions happen under P2 in the last X months or years? Legacypac (talk) 07:32, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • The current P2 is essentially useless and unused, and could be abolished with little harm. In more than ten years of CSD patrol, I have not used it once. I can, however, imagine a good portal that navigates through only 10 pages and a gazillion images. While I support a very low bar for deletion of autogenerated crap portals, that is a different issue than the number of articles covered by a portal. —Kusma (t·c) 10:20, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. I like the effort to make P2 actually useable and would prefer an expansion of P2 over the X3 option that currently floating around. I'm also fine with 10—I could go either way. -- Tavix (talk) 21:27, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support 10, 20 or any number up to 100. I'd also support expanding P2 to apply to semi-automatically created portals with fewer than 100 pages, or portals with fewer than 100 notable topics under their scope, if either suggestion would garner more support. This threshold is still tiny and the vast majority of useless portals we have would not fail it. Given how incredibly low readership is for portals, and given that Wikipedia is written for readers, there's no point in us hosting portals on topics with so few pages under their scope. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 22:32, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
No one has been arguing it is impossible to quickly, reliably and objectively deturmine if 3 related articles exist. 10 or 20 is just a slightly higher number. If you believe the entire CSD is unworkable and has been that way for years make that point instead. This CSD should be used to clear the most crappy narrow portals. If there are not 20 bird species in a family for the Portal, Portal fails the test. If a writer has a head article article and articles on two books, writer fails the test. It's not that hard. Most of us can count to 10 or 20 and the Admin who feels incapable of making the assessment can leave it for an Admin who is more capable. Legacypac (talk) 15:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Example: new Portal:Skunks which stinks. There are only 12 kinds of skunks so would fail P2=20. The 12 species are linked from the nav box and the portal and easy to count. The portal, complete with a contextless unlabeled chemical bond chart, adds nothing to skunks, it is just a detour from the useful article. Even more clear cut, a portal on Western spotted skunk would have zero other articles and fail P2 as written now. Legacypac (talk) 16:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, it is almost always going to be easy to find (or not find) three articles that objectively fall within a portal's scope, however this is not the case infinitely and so a cut-off has to be drawn somewhere at a point that it will be possible to determine objectively in all cases. Taking your skunks example, there are 12 types of skunk, but there are also list of fictional skunks, Enchantimals, Pepé Le Pew, Pogo (comic strip), Punky Skunk, Stinkor, Skunks as pets, Mephitis (genus) and Brachyprotoma obtusata, meaning there are 21 articles at least. Now you might argue that some of those shouldn't count - but that's the point, e.g. whether fictional skunks count as within the scope of a portal on Skunks is subjective (meaning the criteria fails the objectivity requirement). In this case though I would suggest that Portal:Skunks be merged into a Portal:Mephitidae or Portal:Musteloidea (meaning the criteria fails the incontestable requirement). Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
This, I think, is the crux of the thing. Once you get past a limit of a few (say, for example, three), it becomes time consuming and subjective, which makes for a bad CSD criterion. Once something becomes slow, subjective, or complicated enough that the typical sysop might not be guaranteed to do the same thing every time, it's better to use a more deliberative process like XfD where these cases can be discussed. The problem here is not with P2, but rather with the recent spate of portal creation. We can deal with that without complicating P2. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:39, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
The portal links to Category:Skunks and Category:Fictional skunks, which in total contain 31 articles. This is an objective criterion that could be used. And if a category doesn't exist for a topic then we certainly don't need a portal on it. — Bilorv (he/him) (talk) 20:21, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
And Portal:Skunks shows no evidence of including fictional skunks in the scope so that is a big stretch. The lede article does not mention fictional skunks. Legacypac (talk) 21:35, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
You're making my point for me: There is no consensus whether the portal does or should include fictional skunks, therefore it is not objectively and uncontestably determinable how many articles are within the scope and so it is unsuitable for speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Support portals usually link to at least one category to establish the scope of the portal, so it should usually be fairly unambiguous how many articles are in scope. If there is no category then there aren't likely to be many articles in scope. The ambiguity argument doesn't seem to have prevented P2 from working up to now either. Three articles is far too small a scope for an effective portal and is below even the standard used by the relevant Wikiproject. Hut 8.5 21:50, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    Sure, but the CSD criteria aren't designed to catch everything for deletion, only the most obvious/egregious/clear-cut cases. A3 or A7, for example, don't set a low a bar for an effective article because they don't define what makes a good article, just an obvious example of something that doesn't. Similarly, a portal relating to 4 or 11 or 21 articles may well be deleted just as so many articles that do no qualify for A3 or A7. Setting an overly strict standard to ensure the community has their say doesn't mean the criteria are ineffective, it's by design. At any rate, I'm open to the idea that three is too few to be make a valuable criterion, but I continue to think the real issue will be slowing down reviewers. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:58, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    Not only are categories useful for gauging the scope of portals, they are required portal items. If there is no category, then the portal shouldn't have been created in the first place because it can't contain all the items required for a portal. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
User:Amorymeltzer what reviewers? Do you mean portal creators? I'm happy with a low bar but obviously 1:1 Portal:Article is too low. 1:3 is also effectively meaningless. Many of the past P2 tags look like blank pages or tests so could have been speedy deleted G2 or other ways. Legacypac (talk) 00:39, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Sorry; I meant reviewers as in people reviewing the CSD itself aka sysops. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:57, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Per Northamerica1000 and Thryduulf. I concur that increasing the availability of speedy deletion will be at the expense of the alternatives to deletion that can be considered at MfD. --Bsherr (talk) 15:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, but expand PROD to include portals so that these uncontroversial cases of deletion can be made via the PROD process. feminist (talk) 01:38, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Northamerica1000, et al. Also, there is no evidence that MfD is failing to get the job done, including with mass nominations. Extant process is sufficient.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:08, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the group. 3 is a reasonable objective threshold. There is a significant range of grey area above that level in which portals are unlikely to be kept after a discussion to evaluate their merits, but each one should be evaluated in a discussion, not deleted or not deleted under the selective evaluation of individual administrators. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:17, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, three is reasonable. I also want to point out to all commenters here that Legacypac is also simultaneously trying to delete portals with well over 20 articles inside here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Alhambra, California. These two discussions are inherently related, and should have been disclosed together. ɱ (talk) 17:13, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
Says the editor who claims portal guidelines don't apply to his portal and he does not need to follow them. Follow his link. Legacypac (talk) 21:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per User:Ɱ. Also, there is no need to speedy delete a portal with less than 20 articles. Making the threshold that high would lead to speedy deletion for portals currently under construction. 3 to 20 is a good range for grey area that should not result in simple speedy deletion. Speedy deletion is not means to address grey area portals. PointsofNoReturn (talk) 19:16, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
No it would not. The number of articles within the scope exists before someone even starts a portal. If a portal has only 5 or 10 articles within the scope it should not be created or exist. See WP:POG. This is not a gray area. Legacypac (talk) 22:34, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
While it is probable that such portals will be deleted it is not certain as it is not always clear exactly which articles are in scope and which are not - see for example the difference of opinion regarding whether fictional badgers are within scope of the badgers portal - and adjusting the scope is an alternative to deletion that will be appropriate in some cases - e.g. a portal about Brian May is unlikely to have enough articles in scope but a portal about Queen (band) is more likely to be, but then are articles related to May's scientific career within scope? These are questions that cannot be answered by a single administrator acting alone. Thryduulf (talk) 13:34, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Northamerica1000 and others above. Could lead to unwarranted deletions. There are valid alternatives. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 20:25, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose An "underpopulated" portal is akin to a stub article. Everything has to start somewhere, and the requirement that everything has to be a fully complete, finished, product before it can be published is completely opposite to how Wikipedia works. WaggersTALK 11:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment the discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Andy Gibb, a portal with 19 articles at the time of nomination, has attracted good-faith recommendations to keep, further demonstrating that expanding P2 to cover portals with fewer than 20 articles fails the uncontestable requirement for speedy deletion criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 12:03, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support any number up to 100, per Bilorv, nom, and basically all other supporters above. I would also support a PROD. I would support both a CSD expansion and a PROD. Leviv ich 19:15, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Expand A3 to all namespaces except draftspace (A3 -> G15)

Latest comment: 5 years ago13 comments10 people in discussion
WITHDRAWN
InvalidOStalk 15:34, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

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

I believe A3 can apply to things like a template that looks like this:

Obviously, this would be deleted per G1, but if it weren't nonsense, it couldn't be deleted, as A3 doesn't apply to templates at the moment. I also have a potential template here. InvalidOStalk 17:41, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Support An empty page is still an empty page but I don't expect it will be used much though since new users rarely create pages in other namespaces. I'm assuming you also exclude user space. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:44, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • A3 should apply to all name spaces except Userspace. Mostly this would simplify how we deal with Drafts. We see a lot of pages in Draft, including many but not all pages found in Category:AfC submissions declined as a test, Category:AfC submissions declined as lacking context, and Category:AfC submissions declined as blank that meet A3. Usually a G2 test CSD is accepted by Admins for the blank pages but that is not a fully intuitive application of G2. A3 is clearer and this change would bring consistency. Legacypac (talk) 18:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Patent nonsense is already G1, test pages are already G2 and G7 covers pages blanked by the author, which would seem to cover most of these cases (fails the "non-redundant requirement of WP:NEWCSD). Lack of context is not a reason to delete a draft - this can be added. There is no evidence presented that there is any reason why these drafts need to be deleted before they're eligible for G13 and there is no evidence presented that problematic pages in other namespaces are overwhelming normal deletion processes (fails the "frequent" requirement). Simply expanding A3 to other namespaces would catch a lot pages in user, template, Wikipedia and portal namespaces that have no content of the type the criterion mentions but are nevertheless useful pages - including most noticeboards, reference desks, the help desk TOC templates, navboxes, template testcases, etc, etc, (stupendous failure of the "uncontestable" requirement). Thryduulf (talk) 19:25, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Your opinons on CSDs such as X3 show you lack the ability to present factual or logical points around CSDs. This is no better. Legacypac (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for the unnecessary ad hominem. Would you now like to address the actual points I made or would you rather stick with personal attacks? Thryduulf (talk) 19:57, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how WP:A3 applies really to that template (if it were less nonsense it could be a valid navbox template); I'd think WP:G3 would cover it. (WP:G1 may not even really apply since there are portions of the template that are understandable) Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:01, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - G1 wouldn't apply because that's clearly intended to be a template (exempted per "if you know what it is, G1 doesn't apply") but it is G3 obvious vandalism, and if not then it's G6 "this is obviously going to be deleted"/WP:IAR, and interestingly this might have been a use case for the long-deprecated T1. I would also strongly consider blocking the creator and then deleting this per G5, but that's specific to this particular example. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:07, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't really get it. WP:A3 is for lack of content. The example you give has content. So why would it be covered by a G-A3 criterion? Also, what Thryduulf said. Regards SoWhy 21:35, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'd have thought many perfectly legitimate article talk pages would fall into the scope of such an A3. Here is one I created: Talk:Dudley Wolfe. Now, I know most people nominate for CSD appropriately but some do not and a couple of administrators delete all CSD nominations they come across on the basis that they'll later restore any that are shown to be wrong. It's quicker like that. This would be disruptive and overwhelmingly unsuitable as a changed CSD criterion. Thincat (talk) 21:49, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - something like this is already covered under existing CSD criteria (G2 or G3 usually, but depending on circumstance other criteria like G5 or G10 would apply) and a lack of content on the page is to be expected for userpages that have been blanked (courtesy or otherwise). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 22:10, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, far too wide-reaching, and no obvious flood of pages that MfD/TfD can't delete quickly enough. I probably don't need User:Kusma/AJH anymore, but it was a useful page containing only external links that once helped me write an article. Why should pages like that (many of them exist in user space, as a WikiProject subpage, as a Portal subpage, probably in many other places) suddenly become speedy-deletable? If they are not in article space, they do not cause embarrassment and may actually be helpful for writing an encyclopaedia. —Kusma (t·c) 21:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have created an RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions that proposes amending Wikipedia:General sanctions#Community sanctions to say that deletions under community general sanctions that bypass deletion discussion must meet the requirements for speedy deletion and be reviewable at deletion review. A related previous discussion about this: Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 71#Discussion of speedy deletion under WP:GS/Crypto at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 July 9#Universa Blockchain Protocol. Cunard (talk) 09:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Petition to amend the arbitration policy: discretionary sanctions and deletions

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I created a petition at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Petition to amend the arbitration policy: discretionary sanctions and deletions that proposes amending Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy to say that the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions must not authorise the deletion, undeletion, moving, blanking, or redirection of pages in any namespace. The petition part of the arbitration policy amendment process requires a petition signed by at least one hundred editors in good standing. The ratification process then begins and requires majority support with at least one hundred editors voting in support.

There is a parallel RfC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RfC: community general sanctions and deletions that should not be confused with this one about the Arbitration Committee's discretionary sanctions. Cunard (talk) 07:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

G2 in user space

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Question: why does G2 not apply in user space? Specifically, I came across User:Xiong Zhoucheng (Wiki Ed), which I tagged for deletion as U2. But, I think that G2 would have also applied here. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:User pages, "User pages are mainly for interpersonal discussion, notices, testing and drafts (see: Sandboxes), and, if desired, limited autobiographical and personal content." (emphasis added). We can't very well tell editors that they can use user space for testing and then speedily delete test pages in user space. -- Whpq (talk) 02:38, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
It was 1 user testing by creating a page for a non-existent account, with the content being patent nonsense (something like "bfbfbfbfbfbfb“, but as a non-admin I can't be sure) so I was wondering. --DannyS712 (talk) 02:47, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
The actual content of the page, before it was tagged, was 
jnjnwjcnbwjcbwjcbjwobcwj
If this had been in many other namespaces (such as article, project, file, template, help, category, portal or any talk space) and the page had previously not existed, it would have been a valid G1 speedy. But in user space we allow most things: WP:UPYES explicitly permits experimentation, and moreover WP:UPNOT does not prohibit complete nonsense. But since Xiong Zhoucheng (Wiki Ed) (talk · contribs) is not registered, U2 was a valid criterion. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:43, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Userspace is for testing. G2 is for testing in the wrong place. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:51, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Is X2 obsolete now?

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Arguably it could be deprecated.—S Marshall T/C 21:05, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd agree. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:33, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
We've clearly reached a point where very little (no?) additional work is being done on the backlog. We should deprecate the criterion and either 1) walk away and accept that it's over, or 2) Draftify all outstanding items in the cleanup with no prejudice about editors coming back and putting individual articles back in mainspace. Personally, I'd lean towards option 2, and I think we got consensus to do that about a year back, but it was never seen through. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:54, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
I decided to be WP:BOLD and removed X2 from the CSD. Appears to be agreement that there is no longer a need for X2. funplussmart (talk) 12:16, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

R2 portal

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

On WP:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 May 1#Andrew_McClinton R2 recently popped up for a potentially harmful (wrt BLP "do no harm") redirect to Portal:Current events. Why is the portal namespace excluded from R2, and could you please add wikilinks to reasons for all excluded namespaces? I tried to find R2 in the archives here, but the oldest entry in 2011 already had "portal" as excluded. –84.46.53.51 (talk) 23:04, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

The change was made with this edit based on this discussion in February 2009. For future reference, you can use WikiBlame to find when something was added. Regards SoWhy 07:18, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Basically article → Portal redirects are excluded because there has never been a consensus that they should always be deleted. Specific (potentially) harmful examples do not mean that all redirects are necessarily harmful. Thryduulf (talk) 15:13, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for info, and while I vaguely recall Happy-melon and MZMcBride from 2006 I completely missed almost everything related to the Portal namespace (apart from its number, and adding {{portal|FOSS}} where it made sense.) IOW, I don't get why there were or maybe still are too many XNRs to Portal for R2 or some RFD-default delete  rule. Well, have fun: –84.46.52.77 (talk) 01:41, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

NOTWEBHOST should apply to all namespaces

Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion

pages that violate NOTWEBHOST do not only exist in userspace, there are many in draftspace too. I see no reason to limit this speedy deletion criterion to only userpace. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:46, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

  • Can you give some examples of pages that violate NOTWEBHOST that are not in userspace, do not meet an existing speedy deletion criterion, need to be deleted quicker than can be done at XfD and for which no alternative to deletion applies? Thryduulf (talk) 14:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
    • I had one "Draft:Timothy payne", where the user posted his date of birth (under 16), the name of his school, and other personal details. I thought we had a deletion tag for children posting all there personal contact information. I tried to have it deleted faster by moving it to userspace and tagging it. my deletion tag was removed, and it was moved back to draft space. but, eventually it was deleted as "housekeeping" which seems like a very general criteria. Frietjes (talk) 21:45, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
      I have come across many drafts like the one mentioned above. There needs to be a speedy criterion for stuff like that. CoolSkittle (talk) 01:51, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
      If you see anything like that (apparent minor self-disclosing) remove the information with a neutral edit summary and alert the oversight team (WP:OVERSIGHT) as it needs redacting. Moving a page to a different namespace just so it can be speedily deleted is never an appropriate action. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
      Any specific speedy deletion criteria for this sort of stuff would be a big red flag, telling those looking for this information (for good or bad purposes) where to find it, which is exactly the opposite of what we want - see Streisand effect. Thryduulf (talk) 10:50, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
      Frietjes, as a side note, in future it's probably better not to tag anything with suppressible information with CSD or any other deletion tag. Those are being automatically archived on Wayback by someone (no idea who). The using !oversight ping and waiting for PM on #wikipedia-en-revdel (freenode IRC) or the email form are the fastest ways to get personal information of children redacted. If it clearly doesn't meet WP:OSPOL but does meet WP:CRD just posting the page to the IRC channel or emailing a willing administrator is what's suggested by WP:REVDELREQUEST. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:54, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
    • FYI, see this recent RfC. Frietjes (talk) 21:46, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
      • Isn't there a list of frequently proposed CSD criteria somewhere? Thryduulf (talk) 11:04, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion: Don't delete draft pages after 6 months due to historical reasons.

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Hello.

I suggest to keep draft pages beyond 6 Months because of historical reasons and also because someone in future might find it and work on it.

Keeping those articles does not harm or disrupt Wikipedia at all, therefore I suggest draft articles to be kept indefinitely, or be put into a draft archive after 6 months instead of full deletion. Someone might find the article in the draft archive and work on it.

--Chanc20190325 (talk) 09:21, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

@Chanc20190325: What about the spam, web hosting, vandalism, hoaxes, testing, CoI/paid work, attacks, copyright violations, personal information, nonsense etc hidden among the abandoned pages in draft space? Anyone can resurrected an abandoned draft article by going to WP:REFUND. Also see the G13-related proposal above before making a new one. CoolSkittle (talk) 18:23, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
@CoolSkittle: Good point. And thanks for the response. --Chanc20190325 (talk) 22:29, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Clarification of R3 seems needed

Latest comment: 4 years ago23 comments11 people in discussion

Given some of the comments at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2019 May 16#Badnam Song it seems there is misunderstanding of what R3 is for. I think the best way to solve this is to add a short note that simply being incorrect is not the same thing as being implausible (in a similar manner to how the difference between significance and notability is stressed at A7). I'm not sure how best to word this though. Thryduulf (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I saw that discussion and I don't think any clarification is needed. Everyone knows just what the criterion says and means but they just don't like things like that. In my experience for other widely misused criteria such as WP:G13 (survived its most recent deletion discussion) and WP:G4 (not substantially identical) people just deny what the words say even when the exact wording is pointed out and explained. Thincat (talk) 13:28, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
@Thincat: so what can be done to stop this abuse of CSD? Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Consequent reporting of admins who do so to ANI? Regards SoWhy 17:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I also think R3 needs clarifying, but not in the way I believe Thryduulf means. I would add something saying that it applies to any redirect which is strictly a mechanical alteration of the title based on punctuation, word order, or upper/lower case, since all of those are already handled by any reasonable search engine (including our own). The "recently created" clause should still apply in these cases, to avoid breaking external links. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:02, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with Roy. I'd be happy to have someone justify why such newly created redirects are helpful, but I don't see a need right now. I can see an argument that getting the wording correct may not be as clear-cut as we generally like for CSD. But I'm not seeing a use for these at this point of search-engine prowess Hobit (talk) 20:41, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
    • Because going via the search engine is always going to be a significantly inferior experience for the reader to a direct link. Unless the search term is ambiguous or unintelligible to the point we don't know what the searcher is looking for or we don't have any relevant content to take them to, we should always take people directly to the content they are looking for as quickly as possible. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
      • The people who write the big search engines put a mind-boggling amount of effort/money/brainpower into figuring out what page a person is looking for when they enter a search term. The idea that you or I can do a better job of that by guessing which redirects to create is just absurd.

        Let's for the moment assume that this redirect makes sense. Then, the logical extension of that would be to create the similar redirect for every other "...(song)" title. Which, by my count is just shy of 30,000. Are you suggesting we do that? Because, if we don't, then we'll have inconsistent results for different titles. badnam song will get you directly to that page, but gorilla song will get you to a search results page. Inconsistent behavior is confusing for the user. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:57, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

        • That's a fair argument for RfD but because not every redirect of the type "foo thing" → "foo (thing)" and vice versa should be deleted it is not a reason for speedy deletion - see WP:NEWCSD point 2. Thryduulf (talk) 23:24, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
  • R3 has two criteria: "recently created" and "implausible". Both must be satisfied: it is not enough that it be recently created, it also needs to be implausible. If I were to create two redirects: Donnald Trump and That guy with the hair, both going to the same article, the second one would be implausible but the first would not. So only the second one would be speedy-R3-able.
    Now to a real example (BTW: Maproom, Ritchie333: this is the case that I mentioned on Sunday 19 May). About a year ago, I wanted to find the page about an MP who had spoken on some or other political TV prog. I heard her name on the audio, but didn't see an on-screen caption. So I tried typing in her name as I had heard it ("Annalise Dodds"), with no joy; similarly when I tried about four spelling variations on that before giving up. But her constituency was mentioned in the broadcast, so I went in that way: typing in "Oxford Eas" was sufficient to yield exactly one suggestion, Oxford East (UK Parliament constituency). From that I followed the link to Anneliese Dodds, which is not (to me) an obvious spelling. In order to prevent other people having the same problems as myself, I created these redirs. They are all plausible, to my mind. The result of this is that you can now type in "Annalise D", get Annalise Dodds suggested, and that will take you to the properly-spelled page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:55, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
    • That's a good example from Redrose64, although I suspect my suggestion of "the one in Oxford who's not Layla Moran" is probably a step too far. In general, the only time I would consider R3 if it contained formatting errors (eg: "Lore Ipsum (singer") completely nonsensical typos (eg: "Thereeeeeeesa May"), or blatantly offensive (use your imagination). As with all CSD criteria, it must be so obvious to any reasonable editor that you should be confident there will be no objections. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:05, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
    • I apologize for introducing a tangent, but R3 and A10 specify "recently created", and I was wondering if there's any clear agreement on what that means. A day? A week? A month? Three months? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
      • In the case of R3, less than two weeks is uncontroversially recent, more than a month will almost never get consensus that it's recent. In between the two it varies - if it's extremely implausible (e.g. "Cahrles Dickens" → "Boeing") then people are more forgiving on the recency than if it's not (e.g. "Cahrles Dickens" → "Charles Dickens"). Thryduulf (talk) 23:29, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
        • The point of the "recent" restriction is to make it unlikely that external sites have already linked to the URL. It would be more useful to turn this into a search for such links (which the various search engines support with their own syntaxes). Our own web servers can also tell if a page has been linked to by looking at the HTTP Referrer headers, but I don't know if that information is available to users. If a redirect has existed for 5 minutes and external sites have already picked it up, then we should keep it. If it's existed for a year and nobody's linked to it, then there's no need. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
          • That information is not available to anyone (except possibly developers, and if they do I have no idea if they have the tools to easily analyse it). It also cannot tell whether a page has been linked, only whether links from sites that choose pass on correct refer information have been followed. It also cannot tell whether search engines have indexed it, nor whether it has been bookmarked or added to a hard copy document or other offline resource. The recency of creation is a crude method of determining the likelihood of such links, but it's the only one we have. I know getting access to the http refer information has been discussed before, I only have a vague memory of that but I think it was deemed that making such information public would violate the Foundation's privacy policy. I also vaguely recall some concerns about manipulation, spamming, or something like that. One final point is that even some redirects that seem implausible to a random editor can turn out to actually be very useful when someone with relevant subject knowledge fills in context. The longer ago a redirect was created, the less likely such a person will be around to spot the nomination and the more likely that the context will be discoverable by non-experts. Not the best example of this, but Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 May 16#Gut bath is one of the most recent cases. Thryduulf (talk) 23:22, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
          • It has just occurred to me that if there is a privacy concern then aggregated and anonymised statistics might not (e.g. 20 hits today, 8 were from the English Wikipedia, 8 were from other websites, 4 were from other or unknown sources) but (a) I don't know if it would be allowed, and (b) I don't know who/where to ask to get the answer, but MusikAnimal maintains the pageviews analys tool and so might be able to help. Thryduulf (talk) 23:29, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
  • The extended lengthy discussion at DRV over a particularly unimportant redirect and the exact definition of scope of R3 is a monumental waste of time for the importance of the question. There is no information being deleted, it is just a cheap redirect. I think a better option than a tighter wording for R3, is explicit wording that in the case of an good-faith objection to a speedy deletion by any editor in good standing, and the lack of a good reason not to (generically G10 and G12 cases), the deletion should be listed at XfD. Discussion of the merits of a particular case belongs at XfD, not DRV. In this case, RHaworth has again being quick to accept a CSD request for an unimportant page(redirect). Just send it to RfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:01, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
    • Whether a page (redirect or otherwise) is "important" is something that can only be determined at XfD. I agree that any reasonable objection to a speedy deletion should result in the deleting admin speedily listing it at XfD (with evidence that it might not be a copyvio in the case of G12, for G10 I'd probably want a couple more opinions if it was borderline). That does not mean though that getting CSDs right first time is somehow unimportant or that it doesn't really matter if someone makes a lot of mistakes if they're happy to correct them afterwards when challenged. Incorrect speedy deletions are one of the most harmful things an administrator can do. Thryduulf (talk) 01:15, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
      • I think that admins should be allowed a reasonable error rate in accepting others' CSD taggings. In this case, did User:RHaworth unilaterally delete, or did someone else tag it? I think that is an important distinction, if someone wants to criticize the admin. This case is pretty trivial. Taking it to DRV without talking to deleting admin is poor protocol. DRV seems to need WP:CSD to say something to encouraging speedy listing at XfD disputed trivial deletions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
        • Badnam Song was tagged by user:CptViraj. A deleting admin should be personally verifying that every CSD tag they encounter is correct, and it is the admin that carries the responsibility for the deletion. An error rate is inevitable as we're dealing with humans, but that does not mean that the errors themselves are anything other than significant, and the absolute number of errors is equally important to the error rate (10 incorrect speedy deletions out of 100 are equally important as 10 incorrect deletions out of 1000; and both rates are unacceptably high). No speedy deletions are trivial. Some G6 deletions (specifically: obvious errors that were quickly corrected, empty maintenance categories, redirects with trivial history in the way of page moves) and some G7 and U1 deletions (specifically: those with a trivial history and no significant current content) have a low potential for harm but even they are not trivial. Thryduulf (talk) 10:13, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I found it totally incredible that the deletion review should grow to such length. A redirect such as Badnam Song would only come to my attention because it had a speedy tag on it (or was closely connected to another speedy candidate). In this case the relevant edits for Badnam Song are:
  • 2019-05-16T07:04:49 . . CptViraj 80 bytes ({{Db|Wrong Redirect! Not Useful!}})
  • 2019-05-16T01:44:05 . . Meatsgains 44 bytes (Meatsgains moved page Badnam Song to Badnam (song))
The ones for Badnaam Song are effectively identical: same mover and same speedy tagger.
But in this case, I totally deny doing anything "wrong": it was simply a normal editorial dispute. Instead of starting the discussion, the person who objected to my deletion could have simply re-instated either or both redirects with an edit summary of "RHaworth, I think this should be kept". I would have taken no further action. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:21, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, well, like it or not people are gunning for you now so it might be wise to be super pedantic about crossing every t and dotting every i for a while. Reyk YO! 10:55, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

A10 in user space

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Is A10 valid in the user space? I've seen this happen a lot, e.g. User:AsumConnect is a substantial copy of Dave (rapper). Or would U5 be applicable, or simply blanking it per WP:FAKEARTICLE? --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 19:12, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

@Drm310: A10 only applies to articles. U5 does not apply to stuff that would look like an article. I asked the user on their talk page. Feel free to blank or MfD it. CoolSkittle (talk) 19:20, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
A10 is meant for cases when someone accidentally creates an article on a topic that already exists, not if someone copies an article and gives it a different name. Such cases are often either 1) people using a previous article as a template for their draft, 2) test edits or 3) cases of U5. The best approach is probably simply asking the user why they did so and explaining to them how drafts are supposed to work. Regards SoWhy 19:20, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Absolutely not. User space may only be tagged with G and U criteria; the A criteria apply only to article (main) space. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:22, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Edits welcome to new post-CSD notices

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

As mentioned last month at AN, I'm (slowly) working on adding to Twinkle the ability for sysops to automatically notify users upon CSD deletion. I've created the corresponding templates, and wanted to make folks aware of them so it's not just me writing them. They were all created based on their corresponding "db-criterion-notice"(with minimal tweaks) and are named similarly, as "db-criterion-deleted." You can find them all at Template:Speedy deletion deleted, but I've included a table below for convenience, which includes each new template alongside its corresponding original notice (and any related templates). Also included are diff links to compare the two, so you can see what I changed.

Template table
Speedy deletion post-deletion
General criteria
G1{{db-nonsense-deleted}} {{Nonsense-warn-deletion}}
G2{{db-test-deleted}}
G3{{db-vandalism-deleted}}
G4{{db-repost-deleted}}
G5{{db-gs-deleted}}
G6{{db-copypaste-deleted}}
G10{{db-attack-deleted}} {{db-negublp-deleted}}
G11{{db-spam-deleted}} {{db-spamuser-deleted}} {{spam-warn-deletion}}
G12{{db-copyvio-deleted}} {{nothanks-warn-deletion}}
G13{{db-draft-deleted}}
G14{{db-disambig-deleted}}
Articles
A1{{db-nocontext-deleted}}
A2{{db-foreign-deleted}}
A3{{db-nocontent-deleted}}
A7{{db-notability-deleted}} {{db-bio-deleted}} {{db-band-deleted}} {{db-club-deleted}} {{db-inc-deleted}} {{db-web-deleted}} {{db-animal-deleted}} {{db-event-deleted}} {{nn-warn-deletion}} {{bio-warn-deletion}}
A9{{db-a9-deleted}}
A10{{db-a10-deleted}}
A11{{db-invented-deleted}} {{empty-warn-deletion}}
Redirects
R2{{db-rediruser-deleted}}
R3{{db-redirtypo-deleted}}
R4{{db-redircom-deleted}}
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F1{{db-redundantimage-deleted}}
F2{{db-noimage-deleted}}
F3{{db-noncom-deleted}}
F7{{db-badfairuse-deleted}}
F9{{db-imgcopyvio-deleted}}
Categories
C1{{db-catempty-deleted}}
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U5{{db-notwebhost-deleted}}
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{{db-reason-deleted}} {{db-deleted-multiple}} {{CSD-deleted}}
Criterion New "Deleted" template Notice and related templates
G1 {{db-nonsense-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-nonsense-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Nonsense-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
G2 {{db-test-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-test-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Test-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
G3 {{db-vandalism-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-vandalism-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Db-hoax-notice(edit talk links history)
G4 {{db-repost-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-repost-notice(edit talk links history)
G6 {{db-copypaste-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-copypaste-notice(edit talk links history)
G10 {{db-attack-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-attack-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-negublp-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-negublp-notice(edit talk links history)
G11 {{db-spam-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-spam-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Spam-warn(edit talk links history) Template:Spam-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
{{db-spamuser-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-spamuser-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Spam-warn-userpage(edit talk links history)
G12 {{db-copyvio-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-copyvio-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Nothanks-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
G13 {{db-draft-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-draft-notice(edit talk links history)
G14 {{db-disambig-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-disambig-notice(edit talk links history)
A1 {{db-nocontext-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-nocontext-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Empty-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
A2 {{db-foreign-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-foreign-notice(edit talk links history)
A3 {{db-nocontent-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-nocontent-notice(edit talk links history)
A5 {{db-transwiki-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-transwiki-notice(edit talk links history)
A7 {{db-notability-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-notability-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Nn-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
{{db-bio-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-bio-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Bio-warn-deletion(edit talk links history)
{{db-band-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-band-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-club-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-club-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-inc-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-inc-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-web-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-web-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-animal-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-animal-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-event-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-event-notice(edit talk links history)
A9 {{db-a9-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-a9-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Db-song-notice(edit talk links history)
A10 {{db-a10-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-a10-notice(edit talk links history)
A11 {{db-invented-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-invented-notice(edit talk links history)
R2 {{db-rediruser-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-rediruser-notice(edit talk links history)
R3 {{db-redirtypo-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-redirtypo-notice(edit talk links history)
R4 {{db-redircom-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-redircom-notice(edit talk links history)
F1 {{db-redundantimage-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-redundantimage-notice(edit talk links history)
F2 {{db-noimage-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-noimage-notice(edit talk links history)
F3 {{db-noncom-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-noncom-notice(edit talk links history)
F7 {{db-badfairuse-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-badfairuse-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Di-replaceable fair use-notice(edit talk links history) Template:Di-disputed fair use rationale-notice(edit talk links history)
F9 {{db-imgcopyvio-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-imgcopyvio-notice(edit talk links history)
F10 {{db-badfiletype-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-badfiletype-notice(edit talk links history)
C1 {{db-catempty-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-catempty-notice(edit talk links history)
U3 {{db-gallery-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-gallery-notice(edit talk links history)
U5 {{db-notwebhost-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-notwebhost-notice(edit talk links history)
T2 {{db-policy-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-policy-notice(edit talk links history)
T3 {{db-t3-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-t3-notice(edit talk links history)
P1 {{db-p1-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-p1-notice(edit talk links history)
P2 {{db-emptyportal-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-emptyportal-notice(edit talk links history)
Other {{db-reason-deleted}} - diff Template:Db-reason-notice(edit talk links history)
{{db-deleted-multiple}} - diff Template:Db-notice-multiple(edit talk links history)
{{Db-csd-deleted-custom}} - diff Template:Db-csd-notice-custom(edit talk links history)
{{CSD-deleted}} - diff Template:CSD-warn(edit talk links history)

A good portion of the language is handled by {{db-deleted}} and {{db-deleted-multiple}}, a la {{db-notice}} and {{db-notice-multiple}}, respectively, so those should certainly be edited to your heart's content. One particular area I was unsure of was the language around contacting the deleting administrator. I've written it to be neutral, to match the language in the notice templates, as well as since in the future these needn't necessarily be placed by the individual deleting the page in question, but would welcome feedback on that front. The notice for G6 copypaste merely redirects to Template:Db-copypaste-notice, which is itself mostly a wrapper for {{uw-c&pmove}}.

Additionally, Twinkle tagging and notification for F4, F5, F6, and F11 is handled by the di module, not the csd. As such, my intent is not to provide deletion notices for those criteria. F4, F6, and F11 specifically state that deletion may be seven days after notification, so there seems no need for duplicate notifications. F5 does have an "immediate" option, but {{db-f5}} was only recently created​ and there is no corresponding -notice template (i.e. {{db-f5-notice}} redirects to {{Di-orphaned fair use-notice}}). I did create versions of these templates, though, in case reviewing language would help decide (F4, F5, F6, F11). ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:49, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: Apply a 7-day hold to G13

Latest comment: 4 years ago56 comments25 people in discussion

There are currently 1508 drafts eligible for G13 listed at Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts, and the number continues to rise. With the current workflow, clearing this backlog requires going through each of the drafts, checking them for notability/potential usefulness, and tagging them for speedy deletion. Then a closing admin will need to go through each of them again, verify it meets the G13 criteria, and delete.

This may happen quickly enough that the author of the draft, any reviewers who thought the draft might have potential, or other interested editors who may have the draft watchlisted, may not receive any warning or notification until the draft is already deleted. Admins can view and restore the deleted version, the original creator should hopefully remember what the draft was about and request a REFUND, but others have no ability to save the draft or even remember if it was useful.

I believe there is simpler and better way. Tag each stale draft as G13, with an appropriate notification for the creator of the draft. After 7 days, if no one has contested the deletion, an admin will delete it. If someone has contested it but does not improve the draft, the process repeats in six months. By applying a 7-day hold, the entire community could review the existing stale drafts and act to save them. Compare that to the current system, where no action results in the draft being saved, and editors need to act to delete them.

If we make this change we should be able to do a better job of clearing out old drafts, while working together to save the good ones. – bradv🍁 03:54, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Unless you have people who keep constant eyes on G13's category that aren't bots and who actually give a damn enough to find sources (as that's generally the main issue with drafts that languish that long) then this is just kicking the can down the road indefinitely, since to stall the process out an editor could either challenge the G13 or make a null edit to the draft (thus negating the G13 entirely). Another thing worth bearing in mind is that for many of these drafts, sources just might not exist at present (a problem for biographies in particular). —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 04:06, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    Jéské Couriano, but the current system is that the draft languishes indefinitely until someone chooses to nominate it. And then no one chips in to fix it, it just gets deleted without a second look. This proposal provides a more collaborative approach. – bradv🍁 04:10, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    A more collaborative approach doesn't mean much if the only sources available are ones that we don't consider useful, and this is, again, doubly so for biopgrapbies. A big reason many of these drafts languish is because the sourcing is not up to scratch. Indeed, a decent amount of the drafts we see in -en-help have serious issues with both the sources that are used and the sources that are even available in the first place, with the editor in question defaulting to "what-about-this-article" arguments as opposed to putting in the work to look for more useful sources, online or off. (Most of these editors are also mercenaries but that is largely irrelevant here except to explain their behaviour.) —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 09:52, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
I don't see a scenario where someone is astute enough to make a null editor but not request a refund. By putting a hold someone could verify that deletion is in the interests of promoting encyclopedic knowledge. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:12, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Don't have much of an opinion here, but It's amusing to me to note that the first sentence seems to imply that we need a faster G13 process, not a slower one. ansh666 05:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    Ansh666, the idea is to tag stale drafts somewhat indiscriminately and then review them, rather than check each item on the list for notability before they are tagged. Then if anyone thinks they might be notable, the tag can be removed. So yes, this should actually speed up the process, while hopefully getting more eyes on the drafts before deleting them. – bradv🍁 05:31, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • To clarify, the idea here if this is implemented is to then indiscriminately nominate all G13 eligible pages at some sensible rate? Tazerdadog (talk) 06:05, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what to think. On the one hand, a week-long hold akin to some C- and F-criteria to allow others time to rescue it from deletion seems like a good idea. On the other hand, changing the process so that taggers no longer have to think about the consequences of tagging something useful for deletion is imho a no-go because G13 is just a possibility, not a necessary step to take. Just a thought but can't the draft template be modified to list drafts that have not been edited for say 5 months in a category like Category:Drafts that are eligible for G13 in a month or something? A bot could also notify editors that their draft becomes eligible for G13 in a month if abandoned. That way, there is no need to add a hold to G13 while simultaneously speeding up the process by removing drafts that are still worked on before they become eligible for G13. NB, I oppose G13 altogether but if the community wants it, it should at least be done right. Regards SoWhy 07:22, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    As it is, a bot notifies a user if a draft they worked on is at or approaching the six-month threshold. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 09:41, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    Jéské Couriano, HasteurBot used to notify them and then automatically tag them for deletion, but it's been decommissioned. Stale drafts are now deleted manually without notification. – bradv🍁 14:01, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    • AFC tagged drafts have this already (meaning the rest of draft-space does not): Category:AfC_G13_eligible_soon_submissions. --Izno (talk) 12:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
      Thanks for the info, I didn't know that. Then I'm definitely opposed to making such a change, seeing as that information about G13able drafts is already available and editors get notified that their draft is at risk. Further holding seems unnecessary then. Regards SoWhy 12:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
SoWhy I disagree with you that "further holding seems unnecessary" and this is a personal gripe as I've several times had the experience of having my draft deleted within minutes to an hour of it being tagged and my draft has never been submitted to AFC (and imo, should be ineligible for g13) or was wrongly submitted to AFC and moved from my userspace without my doing so (yeah yeah, I know WP:OWN.) I think the issue with G13 is a bit deeper than we're going to get into in this proposal but I disagree entirely with the deletion of something just because it's old and I find this to be a problem also with administrators not actually evaluating the merit of the draft when reviewing for deletion (and I wonder if some G13 mass deleters actually look at the suitability of the content before doing so.) Praxidicae (talk) 14:21, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
@Praxidicae: As I said, further holding seems unnecessary if editors are notified anyway. Bradv has afterwards clarified that the bot in question no longer works. Reinstating a bot to notify you and any other editors that a draft will soon be eligible for G13 seems like a better idea because it allows notice before deletion is requested. Regards SoWhy 15:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
SoWhy, the bot didn't notify any other editors though, it only notified the creator of the draft. In order to also notify other interested editors we would need to also put a tag on the draft so it shows up on watchlists. This would be a much more complicated solution than the one I am proposing, as the stale draft database report would have to somehow ignore the application of the tag in the edit history. – bradv🍁 15:25, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per perennial opposition to G13. Also oppose in this case because speedy criteria are meant to be objective and uncontestable; adding a 7-day hold acknowledges that the criterion fails those two conditions. If we want to create a DRAFTPROD then let's just do that, and toss the six months requirement. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:33, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
    Ivanvector, I agree that stale drafts need more review before deleting, not less, which is why I proposed this. – bradv🍁 14:07, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes I know, it's a more reasonable approach than what I've seen proposed on stale drafts in recent memory. I'm mostly only opposed to this being defined as a speedy criterion, and in general (my ongoing protest) I dislike that we have a class of pages that can be deleted just because they're old. If they're old, and they're unsuitable for mainspace and nobody wants to improve them, well then fine, clean them out, but I think that's a PROD more than a CSD. Speedy criteria should be for pages that can be deleted at the moment they are tagged, for unresolvable issues. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:13, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Ivanvector, in principle I agree with you entirely, and I think this is a step in the right direction. I'm fine with calling this a PROD rather than a CSD. – bradv🍁 14:16, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
I like the idea of a draft-prod without a 6-month requirement, but under current prod rules, something can't be re-prodded if it's been prodded in the past. That would mean that rather than getting a 6-month extension when someone removes a G13, these drafts would languish around forever once someone removes one. Natureium (talk) 17:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
MfD would be the place to handle drafts where a prod has been removed so they would only languish until improved enough for mainspace or nominated at MfD. Another solution would be a draft-only rule that drafts may be re-prodded after a given time (eg: after six months of inactivity if G13 procedures are to be imported). -- Tavix (talk) 17:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
As I understand the proposal, it is PROD-like but is not actually using PROD. If deletion of an abandoned draft is contested, it would be eligible again for deletion through this process after 6 more months of inactivity. ~Kvng (talk) 21:02, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Whether we end up calling this G13 or a PROD is up for discussion, but I agree that drafts should be eligible again after 6 months of inactivity, regardless of whether they've been tagged in the past. – bradv🍁 21:06, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Correct, it would be PROD-like, in the way that WP:BLPPROD is "PROD-like" but is a separate process. I would think that the one-time PROD convention would not be a problem here: if something has been de-PRODded and is still not improved, run it to MfD. The idea is for there to have been a genuine opportunity for the creator to re-stake their claim or for someone else to take it over, not the current nominal "your stale draft is about to be dele ... oh never mind, an admin already got it" that we basically have now with this being a speedy criterion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:09, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Strong support In the absence of any other reasonable changes to removing stale drafts. I find mass g13 deletions to be one of the more disruptive aspects of Wikipedia. I'll clarify a bit more in detail later but I don't see any harm in keeping stale drafts provided they don't meet some other deletion criteria. Praxidicae (talk) 14:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Adding a seven-day review would effectively make G13 a draft PROD process with a couple extra rules, so let's call it what it is and move the process to PROD if/when something like this passes. -- Tavix (talk) 14:21, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support I am in agreement with those who note it's no longer a speedy deletion but becomes a new kind of PROD. To that I say GREAT (and have indeed left a message on that talk page). Most G13 are incredibly uncontroversial. These will be unaffected by this change - G13 could already be removed by anyone including article creator (unlike some other CSDs). But this adds time for any interested editor to ensure that, given our lack of deadline encyclopedic content can be created and developed - which is not the kind of content referred to in WP:WEBHOST and thus not applicable. Indeed this tag would allow any who are interested to look through possible deletions and find an article they wish to improve and get ready for mainspace. We're here to build an encyclopedia and drafts are one way we do this. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:49, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - Authors are currently receiving little or no notice before their drafts are deleted. I have watched WP:PROD closely and I think this process works well and would work when applied, in the modified form proposed, to our G13 candidates. ~Kvng (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support plenty of people go to WP:REFUND to request restoration of drafts which were deleted only days ago, which is rather pointless. If there is an active editor who cares about the draft enough to contest deletion then it isn't abandoned. I don't see any inconsistency with a speedy deletion criterion having a waiting period, lots of the file criteria have waiting periods (e.g. F4, F5, F6, F7). Hut 8.5 21:18, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Isn't the more straightforward solution to pressgang someone into reviving the bot, so that users are notified at month 5 and then pages are auto-tagged at month 6? Seems like a good task for a bot, and a particularly pointless task for humans. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:43, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    I support this option. Natureium (talk) 00:46, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    I'd be willing. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:49, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Without a doubt. —A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 05:25, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Amorymeltzer This is fine for the article creator but what about any watchers? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:51, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    The bot could do a dummy edit to the draft with a suitable edit summary to alert watchers. Johnuniq (talk) 03:57, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    That would reset the clock on the G13. – bradv🍁 03:59, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Nah, bot edits don't count for G13. I think it's likely probably overkill, given how few watchers there are for most things, but you make a good point below about not being able to review. At any rate, such a "dummy edit" would be well suited to the talkpage; it'd be trivial for (insertBotName) to place a similarly-worded notification on the talkpage at the same time as notifying the creator, if desired, thus alerting anyone watching. That'd also make it trivial to categorize every draft into a G13 soon category, which should make review (or at least finding them) easier. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:41, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    I think the idea of the hypothetical bot posting on the talk page and alerting the creator is a great idea in lieu of this - where we can automate repetitive tasks like this, that's ideal. It sounds like JJMC89 might be willing to take this from hypothetical to actual bot? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:13, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Sure, adding draft talk notices to go out with the user talk notices would be easy. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:25, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
    Amorymeltzer, HasteurBot indiscriminately tagged drafts for deletion once they had reached six months with no edits, and admins routinely mass-deleted entire categories of drafts. No one was actively reviewing these drafts, as the only ones who were notified were the original creators. It never was the best solution, as it led to thousands of potentially useful articles deleted without review. Every day there are several deleted drafts on my watchlist – I can't see them any more to see if any of them have potential, and I usually don't remember why I was watching them in the first place. Admins have the ability to view deleted drafts, but for most AfC reviewers and editors this is a big issue. How would bringing back HasteurBot help with this?
    Secondly, the current situation is that there are 1500 stale drafts that need to be either rescued or deleted. I propose we nominate them a handful at a time until the backlog is cleared, and allow 7 days for editors to review each of them. If you object to this proposal, what do you recommend we do with these drafts? – bradv🍁 05:42, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    That sort of is the point though, no? You make a fair point about watchers and reviewers, not to mention there not being a complete category (that is, only AfC drafts have the "soon" category, not all drafts) for the community to peruse a la WP:ARS, but the difference between what you're proposing and a bot is 6 months + 7 day review versus 5 months + 1 month review. I'd feel much better with either process, truth be told — I'd be much happier deleting something knowing that folks have been explicitly given the chance to return to the content — but I don't see an appreciable difference in result aside from complexity, and I don't foresee an appreciable difference in behavior aside from easier cleanup. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:48, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Amorymeltzer, the change we're proposing would only require a change to the {{db-g13}} template so it behaves like other timed deletion templates, like {{Di-no source}}. That's a fair bit simpler than bringing back HasteurBot with the changes we discussed here, isn't it? – bradv🍁 14:34, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, however the real issue is that pages are being drafitied (usually without any attempt at improving the article beforehand) for reasons that would never get a page deleted at AFD, then they're abandoned as the creator gives up or leaves Wikipedia, and then the page is G13'd after 6 months without anyone checking to see if the page could have been saved. Hopefully this change limits those kind of deletions, but I'd prefer a change so that any pages that have been draftified should be mainspaced or AFD'd instead of being subject to G13. Iffy★Chat -- 10:09, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
    Generally, I move a page into draftspace in responce to a helpee in -en-help asking how to submit their already-in-mainspace article, and the page itself is not ready for mainspace yet. When I explain why I am moving it back (in IRC, of course), I get castigated by them. It's as if they only care that it shows up on Google.—A little blue Bori v^_^v Bori! 20:24, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - This defeats the purpose of CSD. It's called speedy deletion for a reason. If you would like to allow the draft author to have some time before the draft is deleted, you can just use PROD as an alternative, with something like {{subst:proposed deletion|concern=Stale draft, remove this if you plan to work on it}} InvalidOS (talk) 11:38, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
No, you can't because PROD cannot be used in draftspace. Praxidicae (talk) 15:33, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose G13 is a bad idea anyway and indiscriminate deletions would A: delete tons of useful content and B: create even more backlog than before. PrussianOwl (talk) 17:53, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
    PrussianOwl How would this proposal cause more deletions? I think by instituting a waiting time it would cause for less deletions since people could decline deletion more feasibly. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:25, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree that G13 needs a fundamental reform as it's not currently working in a way that is compatible with the best interests o the encyclopaedia (deletion without review, biting new users, etc), but I'm torn about whether to support this as a first step on the way to that goal or oppose it as it as delaying that reform. Thryduulf (talk) 14:12, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I always tag G13 drafts with Twinkle which notifies the creator. But I don't know if this is common practice. I think some of the "deleting admins" (that's my term) might delete G13s straight away without notifying the original editor. Whether they examine the drafts for their potential, I'm unsure. But the rate at which some admins delete pages, I kind of doubt that they could spend more than a minute looking at the draft. But that's just my impression from looking at deletion logs. Liz Read! Talk! 00:59, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak Support - More or less agree with Ivanvector and some others -- G13 should just turn into DRAFT PROD. This sort of kind of does that. It shouldn't be under CSD, but while it is ... meh. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 02:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:CREEP. The stale drafts are now empty; the entire basis for this proposal was flawed, because the large number of stale drafts at the time of the proposal was due solely to a TfD six months prior that led to a large number of bot edits all on the same date. We can expect this to recur, on a six-month delay, whenever a TfD or CfD affects the draftspace, but it is only a temporary issue that resolves as soon as editors work throught the resulting blip in stale drafts. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:22, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
    How many of those stale drafts were contested or improved and moved to mainspace? Do we have any idea? Or were they all deleted without a second look? – bradv🍁 16:54, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above and per WP:CREEP. Reeks of solution in search of a problem -FASTILY 23:12, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose, even if a draft is deleted under G13, they're restored just for the asking. And there is already, after all, a full six month delay. If you think the draft ought to be retained, just make an edit to it any time during that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:30, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Draft tests

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Can junk drafts be speedied? These were created by 75.97.183.77 (talk · contribs).

What about {{db-test}}, or should they just be left for six months? Johnuniq (talk) 08:05, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:CSD#G2 (test pages) doesn't exclude draft space, but before applying it there you need to determine why deleting it sooner than G13 allows will benefit the encyclopaedia. In this case, the pages seem harmless so I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be left for G13. Thryduulf (talk) 11:48, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
OK although my feeling about junk is that it accumulates and it would better to remove it on sight. However, I agree that arguments about whether a particular draft is or is not junk would probably be unproductive. No doubt some other reason to delete a draft could be found if someone kept adding meaningless stuff to the above. Johnuniq (talk) 05:16, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
If you think there is a reason and benefit to deleting any page in draft space sooner than G13 allows then nominate it at MfD. Thryduulf (talk) 07:40, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Ambiguity in G11

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Current version of the page has this sentence in criteria G11 If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text written from a neutral point of view, this is preferable to deletion.

Seems to me that the word "this" is ambiguous, and it would be better to replace the fragment this is preferable to deletion with rewriting would be preferable to deletion. Banana Republic (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm neutral about "this" vs "rewriting" but "is" is significantly better than "would be". Thryduulf (talk) 15:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
It's just grammar. Because this phrase is inside a conditional statement (the sentence begins with "if"), "would be" is more appropriate than "is". Additionally, the word "preferable" already implies that the action is not mandatory, so it is not compatible with the word "is", which does make it sound mandatory. Banana Republic (talk) 15:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
It's not about mandatory/not mandatory (although it is very strongly preferable) it's about tense. It is preferable in the present tense, not would be preferable in the future tense. Thryduulf (talk) 17:37, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
The verb "be" is present tense. Therefore "would be" is present tense. See this reference, for additional details. Banana Republic (talk) 23:33, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Agree "this" is ambiguous, and conditionals are usually "If..., then..." types. "This" should be changed to "that", as in "If a subject is notable and the content could plausibly be replaced with text written from a neutral point of view, then that is preferable to deletion." Paine Ellsworth, ed. put'r there  08:42, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Tightening G8 with respect to redirects

Latest comment: 4 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

The bullet point for G8 regarding redirects currently reads: "redirects to invalid targets, such as non-existent targets, redirect loops, and bad titles". I propose changing that to just "redirects to non-existent targets" as the others are not needed. The section above also shows that these are currently causing confusion.

Redirect loops can mean either:

  • A page redirecting to itself - these will almost always be pages created in error (G6), test pages (G2) or vandalism (revert or G3). In the few remaining cases it is probably someone trying to create a valid redirect and RfD is the place to determine where it should point if the correct target is not obvious.
  • A page redirecting to a page that redirects back to it (A → B → A) - these are usually going to be the result of a page move and the correct solution is almost always not deletion but retargetting to where the content now is (i.e. retargetting A and B to point to C). If this is not obvious then again RfD is the place to discuss them. It's also possible that some could be the result of errors (if they can't be fixed then they can be deleted under G6 already).

"Bad title" is very ambiguous:

  • Many, perhaps most, titles that are "bad" (i.e. are incorrect or do not conform to naming conventions) are actually good redirects and so should not be deleted.
  • Redirects to titles that don't or can't exist are already covered by "redirects to non-existent targets".
  • Some redirects do not work (e.g. to special pages, see User:Thryduulf/R to special) and function as soft redirects, the consensus regarding these is that they should be either left as is or changed to be explicit soft redirects not deleted.
  • A proposed as a CSD criterion for redirects to foreign language projects was rejected so these should not be speedily deleted. T
  • Anything else should be discussed at RfD (e.g. there was a redirect discussed not too long ago with a title that worked only in some circumstances - I can't immediately remember the details but I believe it was kept).

"Invalid targets" is also ambiguous so if there are any instances not covered by "non-existent targets", G2, G3 or G6 where deletion is always required they should be explicitly added to an existing criteria or a new criteria created that meets the WP:NEWCSD requirements. Thryduulf (talk) 21:21, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Seems to jive well with Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Header, so it has my support. Paine Ellsworth, ed. put'r there  15:30, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support proposed reduction in scope. As well reasoned by Thryduulf, redirect loops are most likely fixable.
    To be honest, I don't think I even understand what does it mean to redirect to a "bad title". A page can be redirected to either an appropriate existing page, an inappropriate exiting page, or to a non-existing page. If a page is redirected to an existing page, and other speedy deletion criteria specific to redirects are not met, then it should be discussed whether the redirect is appropriate. I do want to note that this discussion is mostly academic. Since redirects are easy to create, if a redirect is erroneously speedily deleted, it's not very difficult to re-create the redirect. Creating a redirect takes less than a minute. Banana Republic (talk) 15:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
  •   Done after a week with two supports and no objections I've made this change.[1] Thryduulf (talk) 18:46, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Deletion of redundant (disambiguation) redirects

Latest comment: 4 years ago19 comments8 people in discussion

I have been tagging as G8 a number of "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects where they target a page that is not a disambiguation page. They exist, for instance, where the second entry at a two-entry disambiguation page at the base name has been deleted, and the other use is moved to the base name, but without the (disambiguation) redirect having been deleted. It's really a housekeeping exercise: these pages are orphans, useless, and not controversial (I would not nominate a "controversial" redirect from, for instance "Foo (disambiguation)" to "Foo (name)").

Some admins are happy to delete these redirects (@Anthony Bradbury:, @Nabla:, @RHaworth:, @Michael Greiner: thank you, by the way), although sometimes they're actually deleted as G6 or G14. One @Smjg: has suggested G6 is a better classification. One (@Jo-Jo Eumerus:) has removed the speedy tag and suggested RfD. Whether they're deleted as G6, G8, or G14 is a diversion: what's important is that they're deleted. The redirects are, using the language of G8, "redirects to invalid targets".

Can I please suggest an additional explanatory bullet at G8 "Examples include":

  • Orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as name SIAs or lists).

Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 09:31, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

After looking after some of these deletions, perhaps it should be deleted under WP:CSD#G6; that's the normal route for maintenance deletions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:40, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Agree Holsworthy (disambiguation) was declined with R3 (which I though included such redirects that point to non-DAB pages). Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:13, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree (has my 2 deletions say :-). It should be clear that if and only if the target is not a disambiguation in any (broad) away then it is a good speedy delete candidate. I think the proposed tet makes it clear. I think G8 is more logic, but G6 is not bad either. - Nabla (talk) 21:21, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If a redirect targets a page that exists then it is not a G8 candidate under any circumstances. The only speedy deletion criterion that applies to unnecessary disambiguation pages is G14 - if it isn't covered by that criterion then it should not be speedy deleted. Thryduulf (talk) 18:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I would support that bullet point added under G6 because it's a housekeeping deletion and I think it would nicely fit with the other bullet points currently there. I'd also support G14 if we want to keep all disambiguation-related deletions together. R5 would even work. G8 is more of a stretch because the target page does exist (G8's redirects to invalid targets might need tightening if that's the argument). -- Tavix (talk) 20:01, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    I think it falls under G6 (and indeed per Thryduulf not G8) but I suppose it could indeed be bundled with G14 (or R3). Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:09, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    It definitely would not fall under R3 because (disambiugation) redirects are almost always not recently created, so that would be either too much of a restriction or too different from the criterion definition to fit. -- Tavix (talk) 20:17, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    R3 could specifically have (disambiugation) redirects that target non dab pages regardless of age but I'd agree that G6 would be better. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:20, 10 June 2019 (UTC)
    G6 is already overloaded so we really shouldn't be adding more stuff to it (it's part of why G14 and R4 were split off recently). Adding it to R3 wouldn't make sense as "recently created" is the fundamental part of that. If we need to speedy delete any of these redirects that don't already fall under G14 then we should be either expanding G14 slightly or adding a new criterion for them, but either way we need to exclude cases where there is a (different) target that is a dab page or something similar (e.g. set index). As for tightening the invalid targets section of G8, yes I'm all for that. Thryduulf (talk) 20:39, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Modified proposal

Given the comments above that G6 is overloaded and G8 may not be appropriate, but no objections so far to the principle, may I suggest an addition to G14: "G14 also applies to orphan "Foo (disambiguation)" redirects that target pages that are not disambiguation pages or pages that perform a disambiguation-like function (such as name SIAs or lists)." Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Support per the above. -- Tavix (talk) 14:11, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Note that I have deleted hundreds if not thousands of these historically using G6, though I stopped when I noticed some objection to deleting them via an RfD, I forget which. As I said then, the vast majority of these redirects are created by bots, and will never be used by a human. —Xezbeth (talk) 14:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, although I'd prefer "set index articles" or "set indexes" to "SIAs" and I don't get why it's restricted to just name set indexes? Thryduulf (talk) 15:02, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Question: Is this a proposal to allow speedy deletion of pages that end with the word "disambiguation" and are not acting as disambiguation pages? If that's the case, then I would support the proposal, but the verbiage needs to be cleaned up, because I personally do not understand the meaning of the proposed verbiage (hence I began this comment with the word "question", as opposed to either the word "support" or "oppose"). Banana Republic (talk) 15:48, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
    • @Banana Republic: G14 as it currently exists allows for the speedy deletion of pages are not disambiguating anything in two circumstances. It does not currently apply to redirects at all. This proposal is to allow speedy deletion of redirects with titles ending "(disambiguation)" that redirect to pages that are not disambiguation pages or similar to disambiguation pages, e.g. if Foo (disambiguation) redirected to Association Football then it could be deleted under the proposal. If Foo (disambiguation) redirected to List of ships named HMS Victory it could not be speedily deleted under this criterion as set indexes perform a disambiguation-like function. Thryduulf (talk) 18:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Sounds to me like this proposal should be listed as an R5, rather than a G14, as it is specific to redirects. Banana Republic (talk) 19:13, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
It could fit as R5 but as it's entirely complimentary to G14 (disambiguation pages that don't disambiguate) it also fits as part of G14. I have no preference between the two. Thryduulf (talk) 20:53, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

  Done. Thanks everyone. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Exception to rule G8

Latest comment: 4 years ago6 comments6 people in discussion

Hello. I suggest an exception to rule G8 for potential future articles, see: Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#Talk:Epidemic_Sound. Chanc20190325 (talk) 10:11, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Strong Oppose This leads to a collection of randoms conversations, with no value to an Encyclopedia. If there are things that make it a possible article worth inclusion in the Encyclopedia then start an article in the Draft space. There is no need for orphaned talkpages as they are meant to discuss things in an active article not one that may or may not ever be made. McMatter (talk)/(contrib) 13:49, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Just put {{G8-exempt}} at the top of the talk page? This should stop hasty admins from deleting it, though we should be careful not to keep pages for articles that aren't going to be created. And if you're starting to work on an article, and you plan to be ready with it within a month or two, then the draft namespace is probably a better place to work on it. – Uanfala (talk) 14:33, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
    Exactly, we have sandboxes and draft space, where any potentially useful information like a sources list could be moved to, if necessary. —PaleoNeonate – 15:18, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • The contents of this page wasn't an article draft, a collection of sources which might be useful for writing an article, or anything like that. If it was then the normal action would be to move it somewhere else. Instead it was a couple of notes about the naming of soundtracks produced by the subject (a company which produces soundtracks). Even if the article existed I don't think it would be the sort of thing we would normally allow on an article talk page. Hut 8.5 15:45, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Orphaned talk pages that are useful to Wikipedia are already exempt from G8 - just place {{G8-exempt}} at the top of the page. If others disagree that it is useful then they can nominate it at MfD. Speedy deletion is explicitly only for uncontroversial cases, and if someone believes in good faith that a particular page does not meet the criteria then it does not. Thryduulf (talk) 07:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Flexibility needs to be increased in Wikipedia

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Speedy deletion must not be a priority, not just for my subject, but also for those who will be sharing their articles in future. Talks must be meant for improvement of articles. It should be claimed with references by highlighting the text material. May be volunteers must have some more patience to accommodate new contributors. Moreover A local level Volunterism must be delegated for localisation and proper verification of articles. Justifying articles on the basis of resource available on net cannot justify the work of grassroot field workers, who hardly comply with internet savyness.

Regards

--Jaspal Singh Naol (Jal) (talk) 08:47, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Well speedy delete can be speedy. Since people volunteer here they assign priority as they wish. So some prioritize tagging and deleting. However I do support the idea of fast speedy deletion of attack pages, advertisements and copyright violations. Some of the other criteria are not so urgent to action. If you want more time to write you can use the Draft: space. Then you might escape an A7 delete within minutes. I will also note that many "new people" here are being paid to promote companies, people or products. These should not be encouraged in order to write advertisements but instead should work on things nothing to do with their pay. When you are involved in something it is difficult to write in the correct tone for an encyclopedia. It seems that is what has happened with some articles you wrote. "We are a group of ..." "Our basic way of working is ..." are examples of writing that could appear on a web site of the organisation but not in an encyclopedia. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:24, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for uncontroversial speedy deletion

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

I'm not sure what is up with this category. Currently, the CSD box shows that there are 75 pages in this category but when I open up the category, there are no pages listed. And it is like that all of the time. I believe it has something to do with hidden categories but I have altered my Preferences to show hidden categories.

Recently, I came across a page that was tagged with this criteria...but it had been tagged in 2018! I have checked "What links here" to the template but that results in hundreds of pages. Any ideas on why pages with this CSD tag don't appear when you look at the category? Liz Read! Talk! 17:14, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and I have tried purging the category page but this has no effect on what appears as its contents. Liz Read! Talk! 17:26, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I think I remember something over at WP:VPT about the category counters not working correctly due to a bug... Regards SoWhy 17:32, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Yup, it's been a problem for a while now, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 174#Category:Candidates for uncontroversial speedy deletion with links to the old discussions and phab. Regards SoWhy 17:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks so much for the information, SoWhy. I knew this issue has been discussed but a link to it really helps. At least I know it's a problem with the system and not my preferences (as has happened with me in the past). Liz Read! Talk! 22:59, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

A11 and drafts

Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments7 people in discussion

Can some article criteria be applied to pages in draft space as well? For example I think A3 and A11 should. There's no point keeping empty draft pages or encouraging people to fill draft space with in-jokes and other rubbish. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:39, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

We had this debate 6 months ago with no obvious consensus to do anything. If G3 doesn't apply, then just wait for G13 to delete the draft or MFD it instead. Iffy★Chat -- 10:44, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I’ve supported A11 for drafts previously. Since then the AFCH option to REJECT was implemented, and I guess it suffices. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:47, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Agreed. When we last had the discussion, no one really could prove that this is a large enough problem to warrant expanding speedy deletion to such drafts. I am doubtful that something has changed but as I said back then, I'm willing to keep an open mind. But if it's just a few such drafts, rejecting and G13ing them seems like a better (and far less error-prone) way to handle it. Regards SoWhy 13:17, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
AFC reviewing with AFCH has neologism as one of the reasons for rejection, also web hosting U5, advertising/self-promotion G11; and there is always the stop sign (is not notable), and eventually MFD if it is tendentiously resubmitted. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 17:29, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd oppose this. The point of draft space is that people can work on content without having to bring it up to certain minimal standards straightaway to avoid deletion. Both A3 and A11 can be addressed through editing. In the case of A11 it does not apply if the article indicates the subject is significant, and the author may add a qualifying claim of significance while improving the draft. There shouldn't be any rush to delete drafts, they will be deleted under G13 eventually if not moved to mainspace. Hut 8.5 18:59, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Like Hut 8.5 I'm opposed to this. In the unlikely event there is any reason why it cannot wait for G13 then nominate it at MfD, but the whole purpose of draft space is to allow an article to be worked on without requiring immediate compliance with all notability policies and guidelines. Thryduulf (talk) 09:55, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Obvious CV but not in user space

Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

What's the most appropriate CSD criterion for Draft:Zohra Amreen? It's an obvious WP:NOTRESUME, but is not in userspace so {{db-u5}} cannot apply. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:32, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

None. Put through MFD. -- Whpq (talk) 18:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment: Merge F9 with G12

Latest comment: 4 years ago12 comments11 people in discussion

F9 is obviously the exact same as G12. It says copyvio in both. I rememberdd A6 and T1 got merged with G10, and A8 got merged with G12. And now this should be merged with G12 114.124.234.199 (talk) 03:44, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes technically it's the same. In practice, it's different because one is article content and the other is images, and dealing with one is different than dealing with the other. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:39, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
The major difference is that F9 includes a part about stock photo agencies and press agencies. If an uploaded image is found to come from one of these then we are much stricter about deleting it. F9 could be merged with G12 but this part would have to be included in G12, along with the text detailing what to do in non-blatant cases. This would make G12 rather long. Hut 8.5 06:53, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
I think we should make a deal whether to include those in G12. 222.165.194.254 (talk) 09:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
For files, a claim of fair use can sometimes be made or the uploader might be the copyright holder but forgot to release it under a free license. That requires different tags and warnings, as evidences by {{db-f9}} and {{subst:db-imgcopyvio-notice}}. I'm all for making things easier but not at the expense of clearness and in this case it really seems that having two different criteria that have the same foundation makes some sense. Regards SoWhy 10:36, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Retain - Image copyvio is usually done by the wiki-adept in any case (not always the case with G12s) - I'd say any confusion saved by slightly shrinking the CSD list would be outweighed by those seeing (particularly receiving) the extended G12 text. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:38, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Image and text copyvios are, of necessity, dealt with very differently on Wikipedia - just see how different the details of the criteria are. Our choice here is between one long and complicated criterion with multiple significantly different aspects, or two simple criteria that are focused on ohe thing only. The latter is significantly better in this case, especially as copyright in the digital age is as complicated subject to start with. Thryduulf (talk) 15:45, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment I seem to remember suggesting this quite some time ago. Adam9007 (talk) 16:32, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
    • And there are some good explanations in that section about why F9 and G12 are not the same. Thryduulf (talk) 18:36, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Merge Good reasons to not merge would be:
  • There are CSD files under G12 that are not under F9
  • There's any difference between the two that's not simply implicit in the namespace. (Yes, there are differences, but none I can see that aren't just the same as for a G12 on File:)
  • Thryduulf's point, that it would make the combined G12 criteria too long.
I can't see any of these. The most likely is the problem of G12 becoming over-complex, and splitting (as at present) being the best way to deal with that. Happy to keep on that basis, if that's what most think. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • No change. We deal with image copyright problems and text copyright problems in different ways, making a separation useful. If you think we have too many CSDs, the obvious thing to do would be to get rid of P1 and P2, which are virtually unused. —Kusma (t·c) 14:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

DASHBot cleanup

Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

I recently stumbled upon Category:WikiProject UBLP lists; this consists of pages that were created by and are dependant on DASHBot which was indefinitely blocked way back in 2013, and are at least partially under the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons which itself has been redirected due to inactivity. Most of these pages appear to be empty and those that aren't will be woefully outdated. This should all fall under WP:G6 or WP:G8, but what's the best way of handling 800+ pages? PC78 (talk) 00:55, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

@PC78: either a mass MfD, a mass tagging for speedy deletion, or a mass speedy deletion (likely by an admin bot - Anomie may want to chime in about using the applicability of Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT III 2) --DannyS712 (talk) 03:49, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Either an MfD or strong consensus elsewhere would be needed for that task to apply. Anomie⚔ 15:52, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I suspect it could be done with TWINKLE's batch deletion tool. I'd be happy to have a go if people here are happy with speedy deletion being used. Hut 8.5 16:02, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I oppose the use of batch speedy deletion on hundreds of pages without an explicit consensus that the pages need to be speedy deleted. I'd suggest 2 or 3 MfDs of small batches (no more than 20 pages at absolute most) and if there is a strong consensus for the deletion of all the pages in all those batches, then propose speedy deleting the rest or a single MfD for the rest. Thryduulf (talk) 10:00, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • This should go through MFD. I don't really see a point in deleting these. Why not leave them alone? —Kusma (t·c) 12:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • These should not be deleted. User:PC78, the thing that might make the most sense is changing the template to merge in a bit of {{historical}}, so that people can figure out why they existed. Those were the lists used by many groups to find unreferenced BLPs when the community introduced the sticky prod system for deleting BLPs with no citations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:01, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Adding {{historical}} to {{User:DASHBot/WIKIMSG}} would require admin assistance but should otherwise be fairly trivial. I'm not at all sold on the notion that these pages have any genuine historical value and "should not be deleted", but I also don't feel like pressing the issue. PC78 (talk) 14:51, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment: Merge P1 and P2

Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

See above. It's becoming useless these days with the portal criteria. 125.161.139.86 (talk) 04:40, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Just being uncommonly used is not a valid reason to remove a speedy deletion criteria entirely. Even if there are too many criteria (disputable), cutting down on them is better done by merging than outright deletion. Geolodus (talk) 07:28, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. You need to show there is no need for these criteria, not just that they are uncommonly used. The portal criteria are still in flux and there is no ongoing obvious consensus regarding them in the last discussion I saw, so cannot be used as justification for or against these criteria. I also disagree with Geolodius that merging criteria is necessarily a good thing (a long list of short, simple, focused criteria is easier and clearler than a short list of long, complicated multi-faceted ones). Thryduulf (talk) 11:27, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose there is no point in merging two criteria unless they should be treated as special cases of the same more general criterion. P1 and P2 are completely different. Sure, we could merge them, just as we could merge all the criteria into one massive criterion, but it wouldn't do us any good if we did. Hut 8.5 20:58, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Merging them makes no sense. However, I don't think we would approve them as new criteria now (being a very non-frequent occurance, somewhere around 1 in 10000 speedy deletions) and should abolish them. MFD can easily handle the load, and there is no urgency unless also some G criteria are met. —Kusma (t·c) 06:16, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
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