Misplaced Pages

Another thing to address is +"which is a stupid made up" vandalism. So we should say "that the creator asserts..." instead.    M   00:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if we could do something like your conjunctive wording, but also add a disjunctive for "or neologism that asserts non-notability". That solves your little-known scholar problem, while not excluding a large class of admittedly non-notable neologisms. Gigs (talk) 01:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

"Is little-known slang for blah blah" - yet here, the territory might be an entire city, which seems notable to me. Or at least, not uncontestably non-notable. Perhaps we could phrase it differently to avoid this problem. What do neologisms that assert non-notability typically look like?    M   01:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• The ones I've seen generally say something like "Frookle is a word invented by Jimbob Jones, he is the awesomest" or maybe "many teens on the west side of Potatoville Idaho call a really cool car a "turlingdrome" which is better than just cool, it's super cool or even just "chazzwazzer is a new word for a geek, nerd, or even a dweeb." Sometimes they make it easy by identifying a person by name like "Jill Sternbow is a perfect example of a shizzlefuster" then you can just delete as an attack page. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but none of these assert non-notability. Some of them are borderline assertions of notability. Incidentally, none of these also assert that they were made up by the creator, so the new CSD would not apply. How about "Pages that contain nothing except the assertion that something that appears non-notable was made up by some individual or group that seems non-notable."    M   07:04, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

My fear with any criterion for "assertions of non-notability" is that people will interpret statements such as "Band X has not yet released any albums" as an assertion of non-notability, when in fact that band might be notable. It's much too subjective. Nobody writes an article that clearly says "This topic is unimportant." Likewise, with "things made up in school one day", it's not hard to imagine things made up in school one day that later became nationwide fads with significant coverage in reliable sources. How can you tell which it is? Research and AfD. There's a reason these things aren't on the list. Dcoetzee 08:18, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Right, see the earlier little-known scholar point. What's wrong with the "Pages that contain nothing except the assertion that something (which appears non-notable) was made up by some individual or group (which also seems non-notable)." This covers all cases of "X made up Y", where X and Y appear non-notable to the admin. Can you think of a case where this might lead to a false positive? "Joe Brumblestien made up Slinging Nubdibs one day in his garage" should be deleted if it seems that both of these are non-notable (a quick google check is sufficient), even if Joe is actually a little known scholar, or Nubdibs are on their way to becoming a fad. This almost falls under no-context: if there isn't sufficient uniquely describing info for either Joe or Nubdibs, kill it. (On the other hand, if it goes on to describe either of these in semi-coherent ways, this would be beyond the criteria and should go to AfD)    M   08:40, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that if we are going to go about a poll in the future, someone (and I would volunteer to do so if a few people supported the idea) should go trawl the archives and gather together the various language formulations that have been proposed in the past on NFT, post it one spot in a new thread, and we can then try to hash out some more firm language together before a new poll is opened.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd keep "A10. An article that asserts that its subject is not notable" and drop "or was made up by the article's creator" (because sometimes things invented by the article's creator are "significant"). Then, over time, we can add clarification to A10. I don't buy "This can't work because admins may misinterpret the drop-down summary"; surely, we can hold admins responsible if they don't read the part that says "See WP:CSD#A10". - Dank (push to talk) 13:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think any criterion should use the term "notable" at all. It's too easily misunderstood (like A7 is). And frankly, I don't think that we have situations often where an article says "XXX is a non-notable person/band/website". The suggestion is brief, yes, but it's also very easily subjective and misleading. Regards SoWhy 13:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Ideally, we will be able to come up with an acceptable wording for this. If not, perhaps we could make a rule that users in good standing can !vote "SNOW delete" at AfDs. They should only do this if they feel like GTBacchus when he deleted Religion against sea swimmers: "If there isn't a speedy criterion that covers this, it's just because we haven't written it down yet." If there are at least three such votes (not including the nominator), and no opposition based on policy, a SNOW close will be permitted. For PRODs, we already have a {{prod2}}; make a rule that if a user in good standing sees a prod and a prod2 and strongly agrees with the deletion (meaning, believes it falls under SNOW), they can tag it {{prod3}}, and then any admin can come and SNOW it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, NO!!! Premature closures are one of the worst problems in our deletion process, especially for pages which are tagged as hoaxes. While many of them do turn out to be hoax pages, a significant minority turn out to be poorly worded drafts about real though obscure topics. Our history here shows that as individual users, we are remarkably bad at making that distinction. As a group, however, we are remarkably good. But the group needs time to work. Premature closures shut off the process before some of the necessary controls and counter-balances have had time to kick in.
If I had my way, WP:SNOW would be deprecated as more harmful than helpful to the project. I know I can't win that fight but I will vehemently oppose any backdoor approach to escalating it into a de facto policy. Rossami (talk) 19:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Rossami. SNOW is not something that should be used at AfD. It is not needed. There is nothing gained from being impatient, and much that is lost. SilkTork * 19:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not fond of WP:SNOW being used to delete a page, but there are times when it's useful to close an obvious keep (often for a pointy nomination). Just as an example from a past April Fool's Day, IIRC someone nominated Earth for deletion because there were no sources independent of the subject. Not sure there's a gain to the encyclopedia to keep a discussion like that open for 7 full days.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

And on the very same day, someone started a second joke nomination for Earth unaware of the first which was "super speedy double secret" closed. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 12:45, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

We have Misplaced Pages:Speedy keep for such things. We looked into the issue of using WP:SNOW in AFDs and the strong consensus is that we do not use it. So it was written out of the guidelines. If you see a Snow close it would be appropriate to remind the closer to read: Misplaced Pages:AFD#How_an_AfD_discussion_is_closed. SilkTork * 11:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure, having looked at this proposal for A10, what is being covered in this request that is not covered already under the existing criteria. If it is "made up" then it is a hoax. What other sort of "made up" is the proposer thinking of? And "asserts non-notability" is a rewording of A7 and A9 but without the understanding and explanation that goes with those criteria. The notability of some topics are not immediately apparent - which is why we have AfD. SilkTork * 19:29, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Made up ≠ hoax. Made up would be "My friends and I thought that this would be a cool idea to play this cool game." It's not a hoax; it's true, just that it violates WP:NFT. And an assertion of non-notability is different from failure to assert notability. If you will see, A7/A9 are limited in scope, but A10 would apply to everything (not just people, groups, albums, etc.), because a blatant assertion of non-notability establishes non-notability better than a failure to mention it. (If you would notice, the wording has evolved from "asserts non-notability" to "asserts that the subject is not important or significant.") -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

My concern is that very few articles indeed explicitly assert that their subject is "not important or significant" - not enough to meet the frequency requirement of CSDs. The ones that implicitly assert this are too subjective for an administrator to judge without further research (is a band with no albums insignificant? is a bill that has not yet been signed into law unimportant?). This is unlikely to ever be a useful CSD, unless people begin creating articles that say "Bob is a very unimportant person." Dcoetzee 22:03, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Scratches head. Doesn't "Pages that contain nothing except the assertion that something (which appears non-notable) was made up by some individual or group (which also seems non-notable)" cover pretty much all of the objections raised including false positives, while fitting the various csd requirements, not being redundant with any other criteria, and capturing nearly all of the pages we'd want to delete under this criteria?    M   22:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

As noted in the first paragraph this is a bit of a perennial proposal and the reason it has yet to gain consensus is two fold. If the wording is vague it invites too many opportunities for false positives. A lot of things sound "made up", but actually aren't. On PROD, I routinely see articles tagged as WP:NEO that aren't actually Neologism (notable or otherwise). If an admin sees something that looks made up and deletes it, no one will really ever know and we possibly lose a notable, but poorly written article. On the other hard, if the criteria are narrowly worded (such as "article must admit to being recently invented and not assert notability") it applies to so few articles that it is rather pointless. Furthermore, having one's article deleted as "Made up" is potentially insulting and/or alienating.

In summary, the potential benefit of this category (a few less AfDs) is outweighed by the potential downside (chasing away contributors from false positives or otherwise). I would also like to point out that PROD usually works for truly made up games/words/etc. (as long as you don't tag it the second it is created at least) and that there is no real harm in waiting 7 days for deletion of this material. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Your post seems to me to ignore the part about the article itself indicating the thing is made up. Methinks that avoids the possibility of almost all false positives, and we do see many of these articles between neologisms, games, philosophies, and so on. It is surprising that so many articles do contain statements like "I made it up yesterday", or "me and my friends thought of this great new word on August 6, 2009 while bored in our basement", but they do. I guess it's human nature to want to take credit.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

No a tight wording (as currently suggested) would fall under the 2nd part of my objection: "if the criteria are narrowly worded ... it applies to so few articles that it is rather pointless." Additionally, how does the suggested wording distinguish between "Sillyball is a sport invented in America by John Smith" and "Kiiking is a sport that was invented in Estonia by Ado Kosk." Take a look a Kiiking - even in its' current form it looks pretty "made up" to me, but a Google news search reveals it is notable. This is precisely the problem with a "made up" guideline. --ThaddeusB (talk) 23:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. And while the original wording was imperfect, after a long discussion, there's actually a pretty good variant of the original wording: "Pages that contain nothing except the assertion that something (which appears non-notable) was made up by some individual or group (which also seems non-notable)". (just thought I'd mention it again in a quieter voice)   M   04:14, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not think the criterion should contain any form of the word notable, but I think we need to leave this fpor another day, to start over with a full recitation of past proposed language, and a clearer mandate and structure to any poll. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:19, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

you are probably right, though I think my wording works even without it. But yes, another day.    M   07:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I continue to object to the present wording, on the basis that a single administrator is not capable of distinguishing notable topics from non-notable topics, or notable contributors from non-notable contributors. Considering that most contributors are anonymous, such a rule would be impossible to evaluate in any case. Such a rule amounts in practice to "if you want to edit articles regarding your research, you cannot do so anonymously" - and that's not a precedent we want to set. Dcoetzee 04:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why my wording was "articles containing only the statement that someone made something up". You basically chop off the "was made up by X", and if you're left with something deletable under no-context, then goodbye. But perhaps this doesn't sufficiently cover things - someone needs to make a sample page with a bunch of these types of articles. Editors here should be on the lookout.    M   07:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

In the box at the top of the page it says that "CSD criteria need to be ... frequent". The proposal at the moment doesn't address this issue at all. If you want to change the CSD, you should first provide evidence of how big a problem it is, so we can judge whether a new CSD is the appropriate response. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

In other Wikipedias

I just went around to look at how foreign-language Wikipedias are dealing with this, in terms of whether this type of article would fall under their speedy deletion criteria:

• German: Speedy deletion criteria there are not referred to by number, but the criterion, Zweifelsfreie Irrelevanz, could be applied to blatant NFT's.
• French: The French Misplaced Pages never bothered with explicit CSD criteria, and the first item on the list, which translates as "blatantly aberrant creations made by others" seems to encompass nearly all of our own criteria.
• Polish: NFT's there would be covered by criterion 3, item artykuły całkowicie nieweryfikowalne, wholly unverifiable articles.
• Japanese: No CSD criterion there could ever be applied to NFT's.
• Italian: Item 4, sub-item voci dal contenuto palesemente non enciclopedico, could easily cover NFT's. It should be noted that Item 4 in the Italian Misplaced Pages encompasses nearly all of our A- criteria.
• Spanish: Criterion A1.3 explicitly calls WP:OR a speedy deletion criterion.
• Portuguese: Criterion 20 calls for the speedy deletion of all articles with unquestionably unencyclopedic material.
• Russian: Criterion С5 calls for the speedy deletion of all articles with unquestionably unencyclopedic material, but the commentary implies an application only equivalent to our A7.
• Swedish: Criterion A11, Artiklar som uppenbart inte uppfyller relevanskriterierna, is like our A7 but not limited to certain types of articles. NFT's could easily be covered here.
• Chinese: I could not find a speedy deletion criterion there that would encompass articles where the subject's notability is not asserted, so NFT's are clearly not speedable there.

These are just the 12 biggest Wikipedias, (the Dutch do not seem to have a CSD system - yes, they do; see below), and for the most part my analysis is based on machine translations of their CSD page. Looking at this, I'd say that implementing a new criterion to cover NFT's may not be necessary: perhaps it would be better just to amend existing criteria. A7 (no assertion of notability) and A9 (no assertion of notability - conditional) come to mind. -- Blanchardb -- timed 20:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The Dutch CSD system can be found here : nl:Misplaced Pages:Richtlijnen voor moderatoren#Een pagina direct verwijderen JoJan (talk) 13:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

If anyone wants to propose replacing most of our CSD with the wording "blatantly aberrant creations made by others", I would absolutely support it ;) On a more serious note, we might want to encourage users, in big bold letters, to go help fix one random article before creating a page. Users who don't follow this rule and "create blatant aberrations" will have them deleted. Not to impose extra restrictions on creating, but it can't get much worse than needing an account, plus they'll get some experience with actually doing some proper collaborative editing. 2cents.    M   23:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

We have carefully worded it as no "indication" of notability rather than "assertion" About 2 years ago there was a period when it was labelled "assertion", and this was being used to nominate for speedy and even sometimes to actually delete articles where the author of the article did not specifically use language equivalent to "this is notable because". I even had some canned advice to editors urging them to put such a sentence prominently in the lede of their article to prevent such nonsense. You will still see some traces of this in articles by occasional contributors who are afraid their language will not speak for itself. And then it leads to such junk as "I assert that I am notable because I am the tallest person in my class" --as if we would be more likely to keep such an article because of the word "assert". DGG ( talk ) 23:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

The CSD for no.wiki (Norwegian Bokmål) are similar to ours. The relevant criterion would be H1 (equivalent to G1), which includes anything that's "obviously just nonsense or humbug". This covers WP:MADEUP articles. The nn.wiki (Norwegian Nynorsk) does not have CSD. As far as I know, there is no deletion policy either. There is a {{deletebecause}} template which is a combination of Speedy and AfD, since tagged pages will be immediately deleted at an admin's discretion, or discussed at the talk page. decltype (talk) 16:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Is the poll truly deprecated?

I'm assuming the poll is meant to deprecated/on hold but there seems to have been some activity there since "holding" it, and it's linked directly from WP:CENT so I suspect more !voters are likely to be attracted. Should the link be removed from WP:CENT now? Or at least, the link there rewritten to make it clear that the poll is currently on hold? TheGrappler (talk) 21:53, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Deprecate G9

This isn't actionable (note lack of template), and pointlessly duplicates what's already clearly stated in WP:OFFICE. Such deletions are outside the scope of CSD, and characterizing an office action as a CSD is simply incorrect and confusing - they are almost never objective, often-seen-at-AfD, and all that. Removing this will of course have no effect on office actions, but it will cut down the number of criteria (I heard there's one trying to make room for itself 'round these parts).    M   04:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Well it isn't actionable except by the office so of course there's no template. WP:CSD tries to describe all forms of speedy deletion and as far as I know, this is one. I believe the Office does occasionally speedy delete something so I don't see it as incorrect and I don't see how it would confuse anyone. I don't think it's redundant with WP:OFFICE which is in a backwater (it's the same reason we summarize at WP:NOT many policies that have expanded autonomous pages). Since it does occur, describing it in the one place where we gather together all the forms of CSD seen appears helpful. I certainly can see the argument that it's used so rarely that if removing it actually freed up a spot to replace it with another criterion, that might be a good reason to replace it, but we've never done that because reordering the criterion would cause massive confusion, broken links, etc., which is why whenever we've actually made a criterion obsolete, we've kept its numbering inviolate. Ah, I just noticed that someone removed the speedy language from WP:OFFICE. It used to actually say something about speedying articles.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a place to list everything that might be related to CSD (instruction creep), but rather just the CSD and process. Office actions are office actions, and they are certainly not a CSD: they fail to meet all requisites for a CSD, from the top of this page: objective, uncontestable, frequent, nonredundant. The CSD do not empower office actions, and the office is not bound by the CSD process, so implying that they are is misleading. There's 0 need for it here, and these are great reasons against keeping it.    M  

Sometimes criteria are needed to exist even if they do not meet these requirements. As Fuhghettaboutit says, CSD should be descriptive as well and it's a form of deletion without discussion, which is what speedy deletion is. A number of criteria fail one or more requirements and still are essential: G5 for example is not one that is frequently used but serves as an enforcement of both WP:BAN and WP:DENY. A2 is misused often but very seldom really applies but is needed to avoid duplication of material from other wikis without translation. Same for A5. G1, which has a very limited scope if applied correctly, is failing the requirements "frequent", "objective", "uncontestable" and maybe even "nonredundant" (as G2 and G3 usually cover those pages as well). The requirements at the top of this talk page are for proposing new criteria, they are not retroactively applied to the old ones. Regards SoWhy 06:46, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

(Prod is also a form of deletion without discussion, and we don't mention it.) The main point here isn't that it fails the criteria for being a CSD, it's that it isn't a CSD (failure to meet all 4 criteria is just another indication of this). It may be taken to mean that its being listed as a CSD is what empowers office actions (which is false), or that the office is somehow bound by the CSD process (which is false). I think that removing G5 would be bad, but what makes G9's removal a bad thing?    M   07:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

The impression you mention can only happen if one reads CSD as purely prescriptive. If one assumes it to be partly descriptive (which is consensus so far I think), then it can and should also list forms of speedy deletion that are allowed by other policies. Like G5 is a product of applying WP:BAN, G9 is the result of another policy, in this case WP:OFFICE. I cannot recall a single incident in all my time here that someone believed G9 to be limiting or allowing office speedy deletions and as such, I see no indication for the risks you outline as possible. Regards SoWhy 07:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

G5 is not under the scope of WP:BAN, though, and G9 isn't something ever really executed by administrators. Again, my points about wp:office have little to do with removing or keeping, they simply show that this is clearly not a CSD - it fails all requirements, office isn't bound by the process, its basis/empowering is in wp:office, not here (if the CSD process was killed, it surely would remain alive). All of this demonstrates that it's not a CSD, so we need not list it. Unless there's a good reason to...? What do people lose if we don't describe it here? Might we link to it, but remove it as a CSD, instead?    M   08:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

G5 does stem from the blocking policy. It's evident in the very first revision of this policy page and from the language in a contemporaneous revision of the blocking policy. I still don't grok your argument. This policy is a mechanism to do work, not the result of deductions from first principles. Protonk (talk) 04:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any real point in changing this; if anything, it will raise more questions when people ask "why was this repealed"? Stifle (talk) 08:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Add a footnote. 'That's how it's been' isn't how we should respond to reducing what is essentially process creep.    M   08:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

It isn't "process creep" and it isn't listing "everything that lay be related to CSD". It's a description of an actual form of speedy deletion. You keep saying it clearly isn't a form speedy deletion without really explaining why you think that's true, other than citing to the process added at the top of this page that was placed to stop people suggesting new criterion that couldn't work, which has nothing to do with existing criterion. The Office deleting a page without any warning because of something they've been discussing with an apoplectic user and their lawyer offline to avoid a defamation lawsuit or any other possibility is indeed 'speedy and deletion based on the criterion of the OFFICE. I think maybe you are stuck on the fact that at the top of the project page we have for convenience's sake stated that the page lists "the limited places where administrators may..." which does clash, but not in a confusing way when you read G9. It is a criterion. It is speedy. It is deletion. It is informative. If you are very concerned we could discuss adding a short qualifier to the first paragraph to avoid an appearance of conflict between the opening language and the criterion, but that is no reason to get rid of an existing CSD.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

WP:CSD#G9 should stay. The office may delete things, and no one should be deleting things without discussion unless covered by a documented CSD criteria. G9 means that theory and reality don't conflict, and G9 is certainly not hurting anything otherwise. It is also useful to tell the newcomer that there is such as thing as the[REDACTED] office, and that they can do things. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:17, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• "no one should be deleting things without discussion unless covered by a documented CSD criteria" What about PROD? (and WP:OFFICE?) This is what I'm getting at with my point about people believing that CSD somehow empowers the other forms of immediate deletion. No, what we have are 3 forms of discussionless deletion: CSD, PROD, OFFICE. These should be outlined in WP:DEL, if they need to be outlined, and not outlined 'within' each other.    M   19:14, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree with Fuhghettaboutit and SmokeyJoe. G9 describes a situation in which pages are speedily deleted. It would be much less helpful to have a page headed "Criteria for speedy deletion" which listed some, but not all, of the circumstances in which material can be speedily deleted. This one is different in some ways from the others, but that is not a good reason for not listing it. JamesBWatson (talk)

Indeed. If we removed the criterion, we would have to leave a placeholder. What do you propose it should say? (also)Happy‑melon 15:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Probably "out of scope", but I've been trying to make the criteria use a cleaner layout so we simply wouldn't have to leave something there. (By the way, I recall your point about making sure the process is kept out of the policy, which I've tried to do; the cause of the layout change is that it seems the policy is getting mixed up in the process)    M   19:14, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Has "CSD G9" ever been used in a deletion summary ever? Documenting Office actions is fine, but pretending as though anyone employed by the Wikimedia Foundation would look up the criterion (or care) is a bit wild. Why not remove it as a criterion and put a note somewhere else on the page pointing to WP:OFFICE? --MZMcBride (talk) 15:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Some interesting points have been brought up here, I find myself generally in agreement with SmokeyJoe. Yes, it is different from the other criteria and does not exactly conform to the same standards, but WP:IAR very neatly gets us around that. It's a rarely used but important to retain criteria. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:07, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

This should be less a debate, I think, about what would happen if we do remove it (we can talk about whether its prudent to just leave it alone after we decide the core issue), but rather, removal aside, is G9 actually a type of speedy deletion? I think it's just a repetition of what OFFICE states. I also think that we should avoid:

• G43: Expired PROD. Any page that has had 9 days, and you checked its history, and it's never been nominated. This excludes pages that have been undeleted, except those undeleted where they were speedy deletions, and etc.

for very similar reasons. G43 isn't really a CSD, nor is G9. They just happen to be forms of undiscussed deletion that can occur immediately, which not the same thing as getting speedied.    M   19:14, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I would support deprecating (or in this case removing) G9 and leaving descriptive text in the policy that states that "the office" reserves the right to delete pages without discussion. While the net gain of doing this is probably miniscule, it is still one less entry in the list of criteria those enforcing the policy need to familiarize themselves with. decltype (talk) 14:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I have a question: how often is G9 invoked? -- Blanchardb -- timed 21:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Never. And the office never justifies its actions using CSD, since WP:OFFICE is the more appropriate policy. I don't think anyone here can imagine someone tagging a page with "I would like an office action csd executed upon this page". We don't need it, and should take it out.    M   04:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll pull it out and provide a more informative section on deletion types (office, prod, etc.) shortly.    M   18:09, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• G9 should stay in. The comparison to PROD is silly. should we take that one step further and say that AfD should have a CSD? no. CSD is for unilateral, immediate deletions. Having a deletion criteria for office action is fine. Protonk (talk) 18:27, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
• M, I hope your not serious about "pulling it out" as consensus thus far is clearly in favor of leaving it in. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:32, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
  • BRD - actually, not even BRD, just a threat of BRD ;) Several of the issues presented ('what would we leave in its place') are no longer a problem, since I cleaned up the page. Consensus shouldn't be about counting though - recently, a few editors have brought up a very important point - has G9 actually ever been used?    M   19:11, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• That question has essentially been asked and answered. It's a type of speedy deletion, whether "G9" appears in the edit summary or not. Really you are asking if there has ever been an office action that deleted an article. It seems more to me that you are just determined to get rid of at least one criteria, as you suggest with this remark: " Removing this will of course have no effect on office actions, but it will cut down the number of criteria". Beeblebrox (talk) 19:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, less redundant policy is a good thing, and every little bit helps. This "it's actually a speedy criterion because it's immediate and a deletion" line of thought is strange - it seems like pedantic categorization when what we should be concerned about is good, clear, non-redundant policy. Nobody is going to come running here after an office action, saying "oh look, it's not a CSD, you can't".    M   23:10, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

When I see a list of things I want a complete and accurate list. When someone asks "what are the ways in which speedy deletion can be done" the answer includes office actions. There's nothing redundant about it. As previously discussed, the fact that there is a dedicated page for office actions is neither here nor there. Complete information is a sanctified thing. We don't leave the Kakapo off a list of parrots because there's only 125 left in the world, nor do we say it's redundant because there's already an article dedicated to them. I see no confusion averted or simplification whatever achieved by removing this. It only would serve to reduce accuracy and completeness for no good end.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:37, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

So is a speedy deletion any deletion that's immediate? (Note that several of our CSD are not.) The best place to list deletion types is in our deletion policy. If you want to decide if it's a CSD, then ask "if the office said 'all CSD are revoked', would this include G9?" - of course not. But the best way to decide what a thing is in this case is to look at how it's used: G9 is unique in that it's never used, can't be invoked, doesn't even have templates. Lastly, a proper explanation of G9 requires a large and carefully-worded policy page.    M   04:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Technically, CSD is a subset of the deletion policy, as are PROD and XfD (and the other deletion processes). I don't think that the semantics of what is and isn't a CSD are really important here. Protonk (talk) 04:10, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree, but if the objection is that it won't be a complete list, then it seems to become an issue. Also, sufficiently strange placement might be confusing: "how do I invoke this?", "why doesn't this give any criteria for identifying pages that are office actions?"    M   04:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

(Seems to have been here a while though not as long as I would have imagined. I understand the rationale that M is offering here. The office doesn't need us to have a CSD for them to delete something. It is neither necessary nor sufficient to justify an office deletion. I also understand the point that CSD need not encompass an exhaustive list of all possible deletions not taken under other portions of the deletion policy (though there is quite a bit of discussion to be had over how significant a point that is). Where I get off the train is the why. There isn't a shortage of numbers. We have to preserve numbering, so depreciating G9 would not give us fewer general CSDs to juggle. I'm just not convinced that changing it is worth the bother. Protonk (talk) 00:52, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Policies become shorter and clearer one sentence at a time. It would give us fewer CSD, though of course the names wouldn't change. Aside from the desire to stick to tradition, is there actually a bother here? It shouldn't be a Big Deal to remove it.    M   04:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

True shorter policies are generally clearer policies, but depreciating G9 doesn't actually 'shorten' or clarify' the policy in any real sense. It removes a permutation of the policy but execution and interpretation of all other portions of the policy are practically unaffected. Protonk (talk) 04:10, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand - what do you mean by a permutation of the policy?    M   04:22, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Permutation may not be the right word. WP:CSD is executed piecemeal. I don't need to read or understand the F series to appropriately execute the A or G series. Removing one criteria is not immediately analogous to removing an extraneous sentence in Misplaced Pages:Consensus (for example]]. Protonk (talk) 04:31, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but it's an (out-of-place) substantive statement, and at the very least a reduction in words on the page. Plus, it's just weird - it doesn't even specify criteria. The more important question is, is there any reason to keep it?    M   04:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we're starting to move in circles. Consensus is against deprecation/removal.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Consensus isn't something to be declared (especially when good points start being brought up).    M   04:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe not but flogging is. I'm sorry M but that's what this appears to be. Please do continue. I've said my piece above (and this will be my last post on the topic).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:13, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Several important objections were addressed on 4 August, after which all 3 of the newly-joining editors (MZMcBride, decltype, Blanchardb) seem in favor of removing it ("Why not remove it as a criterion", "how often is G9 invoked?"). With some reluctance (and very respectfully) I disagree - I'd like the input of a few more editors.    M   15:11, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Protonk's summary of why M is, logically, correct about the criterion being unnecessary is spot on. Deletion through an office action is a process that should be described at WP:DEL, not WP:CFD. Speedy deletion could be abolished, or its criteria merged into one wider super-criterion, yet office action deletions would occur just as before. CSD does not explain the mechanism of office-action deletions, their underlying justification, or even the criteria necessary for one to be enacted. New editors who have to wade through our increasingly labyrinthine syntactopolicoguidewonkery (and frankly I have no idea how anyone new to the project copes with the complexities of wikisyntax, the MoS or even a small fraction of our underpinning policies) do not need to be presented with yet another unnecessary, confusing and best-explained elsewhere criterion on what is a particularly important page (I fear one of the first project pages that new editors are often directed to!). TheGrappler (talk) 21:44, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

R3 - why only recent?

Criterion R3 refers to "Recently created redirects from implausible typos or misnomers". I recently came across a case where someone justified rejecting use of this criterion because a pointless redirect had passed unnoticed for a while. Is there any good reason at all for not deleting the reference to "recently"? The word "recently" was introduced on 4 September 2007, with the edit summary changed wording order to match templates, but it seems to me that is letting the tail wag the dog: the template should reflect policy, not vice versa. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I have now checked when the wording was introduced to the template. It was added on 21 May 2007, with an edit summary which said add "recently-created" to match language on WP:CSD and WP:RFD; I keep finding these on redirects created in 2005. This is beautifully circular: in 2005 the CSD said "recently", so in 2007 the template was adjusted to match, even though the CSD no longer said this; so later in 2007 the CSD is adjusted back to fit the template, even though. In light of this I have decided to be bold. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted back, as searching through the archives seem to show there is consensus to keep this (see Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_30#WP:CSD.23R3_question and Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Archive_29#Why_is_R3_limited_to_.22recently_created.22.3F). Some of the reasons for this only applying to recently created redirects are: So as to keep links from external sites working, and because RfD is a much better cause of action for redirects which are not harmful (unless it's harmful, it doesn't need to be removed speedily) - Kingpin (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

{e/c) The rationale I have seen stated in the past is that if a redirect has been sitting in place for a long time it may have incoming links from the web. I do not see that as a good enough reason because if it is truly an implausible typo or misnomer, it won't have a lot of incoming links for the very reason that it is implausible. It has also been argued that we are not good at recognizing implausibility, so we should limit it to only recently created to minimize the impact of bad decisions. I don't agree with that either, which is not an actual argument against the use of recent, but against the criterion itself. In any event, I support getting rid of recent, but see past discussions, here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Fuhghettaboutit: a typo so implausible that one is unlikely to type it by error must be even less likely to be created as a link and then be allowed to remain as a link in the unlikely event that it has been created. I also accept Fuhghettaboutit's logic that the difficulty in recognising implausibility might be an argument against the criterion, but not against "recently". JamesBWatson (talk) 14:24, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that your "implausible" is my "perfectly-reasonable". It may be a foreign translation - unknown to you but common to me and readers like me. It may be a typo that's easy to make on my keyboard layout but uncommon on yours. Implausible is too subjective a term to be useful when there is a possibility of harm. And, as has already been noted, when redirects are old, there is enough of a chance that it's in use externally that community discussion at RfD is the better choice. When the redirect is brand new, there is less such risk. That said, I would support the removal of the criterion altogether and sending such redirects to RfD. The clause is misused enough that I believe we should test the burden its removal would place on RfD. Rossami (talk) 16:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

There's always the stats tool. But yes, killing a CSD if there's no burden on RfD would be great.    M   23:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I remain unconvinced regarding incoming links for a number of reasons not the least of which is that I have seen no facts cited ever showing that it's true that there are many incoming links to titles containing typos and misnomers, and that is the only basis cited for keeping in "recent". Is there any data to support this contention? It seems illogical that it would be the case. A link that has a misspelling, for example, that is used a lot, would get corrected when the people using it reach a different target. If it isn't high use, it isn't very meaningful that it becomes an offline "red link" anyway.

But let's test this apparently untested premise a bit. Barack Obama is an incredibly high traffic page. A very plausible typo and which thus has a redirect, is "Barak Obama", which gets about 400 people reaching the article through the redirect per day by searching our site for the misspelling. Yet, while there are 1,460 external links to Barack Obama (and Google is pretty damn good at this stuff), there are zero external links pointing to the functioning redirect at Barak Obama. Or take the case of cemetery, which according to this site, is one of the 100 most often misspelled words in the English language, with the misspelling being cemetary. There are 197 external links to cemetery, but just 4 to the misspelling. Now, these are both plausible typos/misnomers, so you would expect that anything one might consider an implausible typo/misnomer to a page would have a much lower likelihood of being the target of external links. So I submit, based on the evidence provided, that where highly plausible typos/misnomers to high traffic pages have almost no external links pointing to them, external links to putatively implausible typos/misnomers are as scarce as hen's teeth. Out the window goes the argument based on incoming external links.

I have also never seen any data that admins are bad at judging the implausibility of typos/misnomers. Any data for this? Regarding getting rid of R3 entirely, judging by what I see, we get about 30 articles a day with their names in quotes, and the same for articles with unnecessary disambiguators, articles with disambiguators with no space between the title and the opening parentheses and so on, all of which, if they're not moved by admins, leave redirects in their wake. Getting rid of R3 entirely and taking all these to RfD is probably better thought, though I'm not sure if you were serious.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to attempt a statistical study, then you'll need to use a more reliable methodology. We have several times conducted bench tests and shown that the Google-links search frequently misses known inbound links. A positive google-link search is evidence of existence, a negative link search is unfortunately evidence of nothing. Furthermore, google-link searches only have the potential to find links which are currently online. They have no ability to find off-line links such as citations in print materials (Misplaced Pages is frequently cited especially in journals studying the emergence of social software), bookmark lists or cross-references that users might keep in spreadsheets or other formats. And that doesn't even begin to touch the places that google chooses not to search in deference to a webpage's robots.txt file, for example.
As for the data that individual users are bad at determining plausibility, you'd have to do a study of RfD nominations where the accusation was "implausible" and was not substantiated. I am not as active at RfD as I once was but my experience then was that there were a significant minority where the nomination was rejected and the redirect kept once the plausibility was explained.
And yes I was serious about deprecating R3 and sending those to RfD. Yes, those mistaken page titles must be corrected and the page moved, but there is exactly zero gain to deleting the redirect that's automatically left behind after the move. Mistakes like that don't need to be taken to RfD because they don't need to be deleted in the first place. Rossami (talk) 14:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Negative statistical results are actually useful. They are often inconclusive and they are certainly not persuasive, but they are not "evidence of nothing". For example, if Google or any other tool misses a certain number of results, it will do so consistently, such that there is an meaningful inferences to be drawn from the negative when we see from the positive that the tool is working. Even if Google misses 90% of all inconing links, there is meaning in the inference that for "cemetary", only finding 4 means even at a 90% miss rate there are only 36 links missed, and again this is a plausible misnomer to a common misspelling. We can use inductive logic to conclude that there are far fewer external links to less common misspellings than would also be considered implausible by reasonable people. In any event, you have the burden here backwards. You are asserting that there are more than negligible incoming external links to targets editors would delete as implausible. I don't think there are. I find it highly unlikely that there are anything but negligible numbers of URLs in print journals pointing at redirects that are implausibility fodder. I think that people are far more exacting when they are inserting URLs in online documents, and especially paper documents, such that there is little correspondence between the rate a redirect get accessed when someone casually searches Misplaced Pages, verses when they are creating a link to Misplaced Pages. I think people are far more likely to soon correct a link to a redirect when the redirect is used and it is seen that the page is at a different name than the link, and that this becomes more likely when the link is high use, and that the longer in time the link exists, the higher the likelihood of its correction, such that the older the redirect, the less old incorrect links there will be to it. But the point is that I don't need to prove the negative (that there aren't lots of these incoming external links). You assert they exist in enough quantity to matter and to targets that would be deleted if R3 applied to older redirects. You, then, have the burden to show that's the case in support. I will happily consider evidence but I will discount that rationale as an untested assertion until then. Of course, if I want to crusade to remove "recent" (which I can find little passion for, but I do love a good debate) I will have the burden of showing it should be changed. Not because that's my logical burden, but because that's the way changing policy always works:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:08, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You've got several thoughts running together here. I'll try to address them in order.
Your analysis of negative results will show relative usage but can not say anything about absolute usage. I don't dispute that the incorrect spelling will in almost all cases be vastly less common. Deletion, however, must concern itself with absolute usage - is the link in use at all and what is the cost of maintaining it here. Even if there are only 36 links or even only 3, there is some small value in preserving those links and doing our part to minimize linkrot. We should delete a redirect only when doing so has some offsetting value to us or the community. If a link is in the way of a real article, out it goes. If it is actively confusing or harmful, out it goes. But if it's just sitting there, well, redirects really are that cheap. Deleting a link does not "clean up" the database and gets us no resources back.
On burden of proof, the burden at Misplaced Pages is always on those arguing for deletion. I'm not saying that's right or wrong - that's simply the Misplaced Pages way.
While it is essentially impossible to prove the assertion about offline links to any particular incorrect redirect, statistically the problem of linkrot has been well established. And while I agree that links tend to be updated in high-use, interactive sites like wikis, many other sources of hyperlinked content are not nearly so easily updated. Rossami (talk) 16:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree that speedy deletion of these redirects should be limited to those recently created and thus almost certain not to be linked anywhere. RfD should suffice for anything else; remember, CSD is supposed to be of limited application. Powers 15:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I've always thought the word odd and think it should be removed. It's inherently subjective (how recent is recent?). And if it's a totally implausible redirect, any links from outside coming in should be negligible. --Dweller (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Dweller on this. Frankly, I've tended to define "recent" in rather broad terms. I'm not too much concerned with preserving external links to nonsense or mis-spellings. A problem, may be the very broad view some eds. seem to put on what counts as implausible, but I can't see why recency matters to this. DGG (talk) 20:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Why not replace "recent" with "orphaned"? Would that work better? There is a "What links here" button. Dcoetzee 00:42, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I saw this in the CSD of the German Misplaced Pages today

"Talk page of a dynamically allocated IP user with no recent activity." Given that one may receive a warning that was intended for someone else, should we adopt something similar? Or would that be a solution in search of a problem? -- Blanchardb -- timed 18:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

We've had admins botting on their accounts to do this, (iar), but it was staunchly opposed (if I recall correctly) and the activties ceased. –xeno 19:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Solution in search of a problem. No IP user will check their talk page before the big flashy orange banner appears and if that appears, we can assume that 99% of them are capable of reading dates. Such deletions would inflate the deletion logs of the admins doing so with entries that are irrelevant (remember MZM's deletion log when he ran his script to delete those pages?) while gaining us nothing in terms of fixing a problem. If I recall correctly, MZM's activity was what lead to the deprecation of WP:OLDIP. Regards SoWhy 19:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you know where the relevant discussion is? Perhaps I'm out of step or am missing something, but it seems a fine idea to me, and I wondered why I didn't see MZM doing that anymore. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:33, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There is a bunch of discussion on that, let's see what I can find easily:

• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/MZMcBride touches the issue of polluting deletion logs with large scale amounts of such deletions
• Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 32#Deletion of old IP talk pages
• Misplaced Pages talk:User page/Archive 5#Old IP talk pages
• Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive180#Deletion of old IP talk pages
• Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 33#U4
• Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 33#Problems with the the proposed U4
• Misplaced Pages talk:User page/Archive 5#OLDIP

Have fun reading ;-) Regards SoWhy 10:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

• Ouch. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:17, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Your uum research on consensus

I'm pondering the irony that this article itself would seem to meet the criteria for speedy deletion. Lumenos (talk) 03:51, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

What would happen if I were so bold as to append the insolent "citation needed" to the opening statement? "The criteria for speedy deletion specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus support to, at their discretion, bypass deletion discussion..."? The source that I am inquiring about being the statical database containing the polling done to determine that there was broad consensus, the human samples queried, the exact questions and alternatives appearing on the polls. :) Lumenos (talk) 03:51, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Someone would (should) probably throw a ref in to one of the RfCs (I'd like to see such a link added). I encourage you to be bold and add it, 'as per talk'. We don't use polling databases to determine broad community consensus, we use RfCs.    M   04:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You can ponder the irony all your want but it would be entirely misplaced since this is not an encyclopedia article. The consensus is vast and complex and years long and covers 36 pages of archives linked to at the top of this page and stretching back through prior discussion at the Village Pump, Misplaced Pages talk:Deletion policy, and other pages. Moreover, you misunderstand the source of consensus when you ask the statistical database, etc. Consensus does not reside in and result just from the vast discussion available to you right here, but from the operational consensus of thousands of users applying the criteria every day for good effect. It is clear you have a bone to pick but I'm not sure what you seek to accomplish with misdirected insinuations.--68.160.248.210 (talk) 04:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Hum... so I guess the first thing I need to look for, is the debate... I mean harmonious conclusion... wherein we all decided that we need a reliable source for something like which Pokemon is this picture, but completely unsubstantiated (ie unsourced) original research is fine for self-serving advertisements such as that Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy (right next to this list of bureaucrats) or that everybody generally agrees about all these policies that are used to delete all kinds of useful information. Lumenos (talk) 23:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• Is there a particular criteria you think is not supported by the community, or are you suggesting the entire CSD process is unsupported? Actually it looks more like you have a bigger issue with the whole issue of consensus. Consensus is rarely perfect. Almost any issue is going to have persons who see it in varying ways. What we try to do is achieve a rough consensus and act on it. Centralized discussions, if you care to participate in them, are listed at WP:CENT. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that there would be consensus as to the issues I mentioned in my last post, but at the moment, I'm not sure anyone has claimed that the "tradition" of not citing sources on controversial claims made in policy pages, was ever decided by consensus. If there is some discussion of that issue in some archive somewhere, I would like to see it. Lumenos (talk) 04:18, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

As was mentioned above, a policy page is not an article, and not subject to WP:RS. For example, the five pillars doesn't cite any sources, and those are the core policies on which all other policy is based. If there are controversial claims on policy pages, they usually get challenged on the talk page and discussion ensues. I ask again if you have a specific criteria you are referring to, or do you have a problem with the method used to craft policies here? (hint:one of those is a proper topic for this page, and one of them is not)Beeblebrox (talk) 05:16, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh... uumm it was the ppproper one, Sir. Lumenos (talk) 22:15, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Then go find it :) Yes, it's important (I think) to provide readers with references to discussions. No, material that lacks these cannot be removed.    M   18:05, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Argument against deletion of talk pages

Please see here. Comments appreciated. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

• My opinion is that talk pages should not be deleted routinely, speedily or even at MfD. Of course, deletion is OK (even important) if there is a good reason, and when it comes to good speedy reasons, there are speedy criteria already existing that should be used. db-u1 should never be used on a talk page where other users have made significant edits. At MfD, what constitutes a good reason is up for debate (indeed, is the point of the debate). "Of no conceivable benefit for the development of the encyclopedia" plus "violations of are throughout the page" is a pretty good start for deleting any page, including a talk page. For example, this MfD is an example of a deleted talk page that I thought better not to delete, but yielded the debate on points. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:09, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I see now that the question was related to CSD#G8 talk page deletions, and my response was focused on talk pages which would not be G8 applicable (stand-alone project talk pages, talk subpages of existing articles, user_talk pages and user_talk subpages). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, you're talking about the talk page of an article that was deleted but subsequently restored to be userfied. In such a case, I see no reason why the talk page should not be undeleted at the same time as its parent page. There is nothing preventing you from requesting the undeletion/userfication of that talk page the exact same way its parent page has already been undeleted.

Other than that, I see no reason to do away with the G8 speedy criterion, since talk pages can be undeleted along with their parent pages. -- Blanchardb -- timed 02:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

• I delete talk pages when it appears as though no real info on there is important apart from as a reference to the now deleted article. To date I have found maybe 1-2 talk pages where this is the case. I have never been asked to restore a deleted talk page, but it would be pretty uncontroversial for someone to do so. My feeling is that semi-automatic deletion of talk pages a la G8 is net positive for the project. Protonk (talk) 03:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
• No user has a right to not have contributions deleted or to not have contributions deleted without their consultation. If you are a major contributor to a page then it is good manners to invite you to contribute to an XfD. However, if you are a major contributor to a G8-ed talk page, but were not a contributor to the page it depended on, then you could well be overlooked. If never heard before of someone complaining that G8 deletions were a problem. I expect that the vast majority are appropriate for deletion, as per Protonk above. If you disagree, I think that you should, be default, be entitled to have the page undeleted on request. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
• It is, isn't it, a bug of the watchlisting system that deletion of a page doesn't show up on your watchlist? Is that bug an issue here? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
• I agree that G8 deletion of talk pages for deleted pages is a problem; a possible solution would be a bot that copied certain comments from the article talk page to the talk pages of the people engaged in the conversation before the article talk page gets deleted. If we're talking about G11 deletion of user talk pages, that wouldn't work at all, user talk pages are the favorite targets of the promotional sock farms now. - Dank (push to talk) 02:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't see it as a problem in the least. G8 isn't mandatory. If an admin runs along a talk page with active commentary on it that pertains to something other than solely the article which has been deleted or contains information (e.g. link dumps) that might be used for a future userspace draft, s/he should not delete it. In most cases, where G8 is practically automatic, most admins should be open to reversing a G8 with little trouble. I agree that as a final disposition, the talk page of a deleted article isn't a good place to keep material, but I think that admins can exercise common sense in moving talk page archives to user talk space and what-not. Protonk (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

When I delete an article about which there is a protest on the talk p., I normally copy that comment over to the appropriate user talk and explain why I am deleting it despite the request. That's what the button for displaying the talk page is for. DGG ( talk ) 22:55, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• They should only be deleted when they contain no administrative information (no complaints about behavior, no deletion discussion, etc.). The article is gone from mainspace, which is 99% of what's important, so in my view deletion isn't particularly important anyway.    M   18:00, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Category for undefined speedy pages

There are oftentimes several pages that are tagged for speedy deletion with {{db}} only (no specific criterion). Since those pages only appear in the main CSD category, they sometimes stay unnoticed for a while, despite possibly being clear-cut cases. If it were possible, I personally would be interested in patrolling those articles specifically. So I think a new category, such as Category:Unclassified candidates for speedy deletion, would be useful if created. JamieS93 01:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

That would seem to be incredibly prudent, especially because it would be a great resource for users to cruise through and either give a reason if it's deserving or remove the template if it's not. I'd go for "Uncategorized," though. ~ Amory (user • talk • contribs) 01:48, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Seems a good idea. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that someone could write a bot to just take all the articles in CAT:CSD and subtract all the daughter cats. Misplaced Pages:Bot_requests should be able to handle that and set up something that can be run on demand or we can get them to write something that can be run automatically (just has to go through BAG). Protonk (talk) 02:12, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

What benefit would that have over a category? –xeno 02:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

None, but it's a simple way to do it if we can't create a category. Protonk (talk) 02:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

We could also just add a minor sortkey that would put these "unreasoned" articles at the bottom of the list of the regular CSD category. –xeno 02:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Cool. didn't know it was that easy. :) Protonk (talk) 02:30, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Thusly. Check the category at the bottom (while it lasts =). –xeno 02:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Having a category directly integrated to the {{db}} template is much more simple than having a bot go through the candidates. I, too, have noticed that there are many newpage patrollers who do not bother using the criterion-specific templates, yet the pages they are tagging are textbook CSD candidates. -- Blanchardb -- timed 02:55, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Thankfully Xeno intervened and we won't have my Rube Goldberg solution to the problem. :) Protonk (talk) 02:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Good idea, Xeno. :) My only concern is that outsiders might not understand the significance of "μ", so the extra category would probably still be helpful. Unless anyone objects, I'll probably create it soon as either "uncategorized" or "unspecified" candidates for speedy deletion. JamieS93 15:53, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

The good news is that those watching C:SD are rarely outsiders. But it is true that a new category could be implemented. -- Blanchardb -- timed 03:09, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

• I would also suggest that users who do not provide a reason be advised that it is better to provide one than not, even if you write it yourself using {{db-reason|your reason here}} Beeblebrox (talk) 05:19, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

There are often reasons that are not valid db ones, that are sentences that explain why. I think a build in cat is a good idea, for those that delete in this way. Personally I just delete of the main category, others can take care of the higher priority jobs. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:57, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

We should make a category, it costs us nothing. The trick with the micro is great until someone can fix the template, but this should be used to sort, not categorize.    M   15:21, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Y Created the category as Category:Unspecified pages for speedy deletion. I decided to opt out of "uncategorized" to avoid association with article categorization. If anybody can think of a better title, it can be suggested some place like here and we can always move if others agree. Best, JamieS93 16:49, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

C2.7

Suggest adding C2.7, sourced name change. If something for which a category is named changes names and the name change is sourced then the category should qualify for speedy renaming. For example, a company changes its name (c.f. Category:Court TV shows where Court TV is now TruTV) or the scientific community changes the taxonomy of a genus or species. It's unreasonable to expect that these would ever not be renamed so why keep inaccurately named categories for an additional seven days? Otto4711 (talk) 23:39, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Question

I have a question on G11. I often see users adding their CV to their userpages. Would this qualify for G11? Triplestop x3 02:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are referring to a Résumé. In a case like that, I usually just remove the offending content and replace it with a welcome note and/or a more specific message about the purpose of Misplaced Pages. I personally find that it's more productive than trying to get it deleted, as it gives you a chance to actually explain the problem as opposed to filling up the page with deletion messages, and can help avoid the user feeling "bitten". As recent conversations here seem to indicate, there are very few circumstances that will lead to user talk pages being speedied. --Beeblebrox (talk) 03:47, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, somehow I thought you were referring to talk pages when your question is actually specific to user pages. My bad. I would say in that case that probably it would be speedy-able but you might try talking to them about it first and seeing if they would just change it themselves. Users are given some latitude in user space, but a résumé is essentially a form of advertising, just for a person instead of an organization. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:50, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Generally, I think that deleting or blocking (inc. username blocking) for relatively innocuous promotion, is, in the end, counter-productive. Deletion and blocking is bitey, and should be reserved for blatant and wilful promotion. If you are too quick to delete and block, then you risk creating a cleverer spammer under a fresh username. If you stick to removing inappropriate content by editing, and talking to the user, then you have a better chance of swinging them round to becoming a valuable contributor. --SmokeyJoe (talk)

Just blanking the resume and giving a kind note about what Misplaced Pages is and is not is fine. If it is a page dedicated to the resume, and not the main user page, then yes I think deleting it is a good idea. Best to ask them if they want a copy e-mailed to them though in case it is their only copy. Blocking should only be done if the person is persistent about returning it after warnings. Chillum 13:44, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

A clarification on "very few talk page speedied" ... I speedy a lot of user talk pages, every day. Anyone who can find one in my deletion log that shouldn't have been speedied gets a gold star. Promoters are creating a lot of new accounts and advertising their wares on the user talk pages these days. I agreed with what you guys have said about CVs/resumes; those need something a little more personal than a quick speedy. - Dank (push to talk) 15:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I created {{uw-resume}}, does it look good? Triplestop x3 15:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice, I like it. That template looks useful, since I deal with spam/promotional material on a daily basis (especially company username accounts, or individual people, that have self-promoting contribs). JamieS93 16:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I took up Dank's challenge. He seems to be accurately identifying pages placed by people who apparently are intending to use it as a directory listing (accurately = "I agree with him"), mainly on the nomination of User:Carleton, who has good judgment also, and says he is making a project of this. -- I think many times they are honestly ignorant of the nature of Misplaced Pages, and we could perhaps find a better way of communicating with them. (And there's another question--are other people doing it without equally good judgment, which is harder to spot), DGG ( talk ) 00:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

C1 and C2

For a while at WP:CfD it has been noticed that C1 and C2 have been used to bypass WP:CFD. Various discussions with several editors have confirmed that this happens. The issue comes down to wording of the two criteria. Someone who reads the current C1 definition says, if I want to delete a category, I simply remove the contents, wait 4 days and it gets deleted. Since there are no tools to detect changes like this, an editor has a clear path to bypass established guidelines. The same applies to C2 for renames. There is a process that deals with speedy renames and the bots that process the result delete the source category after everything is moved.

So it is questionable if there is any use use for C2 by most editors. The only case where I can see it being used is at a project level where the name of the project is changed. Since there is generally many eyes on that process, I don't see that as an issue with bypassing WP:CFD, however we should include this an exception to the guidelines at CfD. I'd also say that those deletions are better listed as G6 since they are really a house keeping issue. It also turns out that the vast majority of C1 nominations are in fact related to changes in the Wikiprojects.

Based on this, I question the need for keeping C2 since the guideline for category renaming (WP:CFDS) should be followed when a rename is needed. It allows for a review, and if not contested it happens in two days. In fact the reasons listed here are the reasons listed for having a discussion at WP:CFDS.

After reviewing the C1 nominations, it appears that the vast majority of the nominations are project related and, as mentioned above, would be better nominated as G6. What would remain for C1 at that point are for the most part categories that were never used, with no good way to verify, or categories that someone emptied without a WP:CFD discussion per the established guideline.

So what to do? I suggest that C2 be eliminated using {{cfr-speedy}} instead. C1 could be restricted to only categories that were never used. That should eliminate its use by editors who don't wish to have their actions reviewed under established guidelines. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:47, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

C2 is already covered by G6 anyway, so removing it has no real effect. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:11, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll note that an admin rejected some of the above mentioned project categories since the current wording says it does not apply. They are now at full CfD. So it would be nice to agree on a direction with C1 and adjust the template wording as needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:10, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Just to note. One of the related discussions is at Misplaced Pages:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 August 17#Category:After War mobile suits were Vegaswikian claims the category was emptied "out of process," which is code for bad faith. The cat was emptied as the individual articles were merged into a list and the category was tagged several days later by another editor. However, Vegaswikian insists that the category must go through CfD instead of using the C1, assuming a tremendous about of bad faith in categories nomination. Effectively, what Vegaswikian is implying is that there is no legitimate use for the C1 criterion. If we can't use C1 as a form of cleaning up after such merging, then the criterion's usefulness must be questioned. --Farix (Talk) 19:00, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

If a category is simply no longer used, and nobody is upset about that, then there is no reason to have a CSD discussion about it. I suppose that is the reason behind C1 in the first place. Several other people have made the same point in the CSD discussion you linked. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Webkinzlover93

A little debate has emerged regarding a comment I made about an article nominated for deletion of a failed RfA candidate. The article, in total, read:

Webkinzlover93 AKA Christiane DOB removed is a age removed girl who created a webkinz youtube page with over 9000 subs and 1 millions channel views has become one of the most poplar person on youtube in over 18 month period

I called this a bad CSD because there is a claim to significance (1 million views IMO is more than one's circle of friends, you have to have significant following/interest to get there.) Is it enough to salvage it from Deletion? No, clearly not. But from CSD, I'd say yes. Two people have stated they disagree and that 1 million views is not a claim to significance. So, I open this up for discussion. The previous discussion can be seen in the link above.---Balloonman 15:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

While I wouldn't fault someone who placed a CSD tag on such an article, I'd decline it myself. I try to look at it from the page creator's perspective -- can I see this as a good faith effort to make a real encyclopedia article? If so, I call it a claim of importance. That doesn't mean that a million views by itself will make me !vote keep at AfD, but that's a different standard.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:20, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, that's a claim of notability, albeit kind of minor, so it'll probably not survive AfD. The person who tagged the page was being pretty reasonable, but I would still decline it as not being A7 material, and try to briefly clean up the page (perhaps wikify and copyedit, add a stub tag) like I do with most CSD declines. Even though it most likely wouldn't survive AfD, speedy deletion isn't meant to determine that and I think I'd personally decline it. This is really the kind of case where another admin could interpret it differently and call it an A7, though, and I wouldn't be offended either way. Although I view it as a claim of significance and would rather save it, this actually seems like a borderline case. JamieS93 16:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Just noting, but I've removed the girl's DOB and age to avoid unnecessary BLP concerns while this is being discussed. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 17:29, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

A7 notability vs importance, A7 for TV shows

Community, the following discussion does call for wider input. The topic was a request for restoration of Nature Walks with Mark Fraser which I placed with the deleting admin, the edit summary for the deletion was "A7: No indication that the article may meet guidelines for inclusion: Bill Maher's next new rule: a television show whose article fails to mention what channel it airs on is almost guaranteed to be nn.". The relevant exchange for commentary:

Bearcat,

Another user has posted a request for assistance on my user pageregarding the above. Looking it over, I noticed that you have deleted it under WP:CSD#A7, which doesn't cover TV shows. Your deletion summary is further puzzling since you cite notability concerns. The bar for A7 is "no assertion of importance", not theWP:GNG.

Without any prejudice on whether the article is delete worthy or not, I believe the article did not fit any CSD criteriae, and would like to ask you to reconsider and restore the article. Thank you. MLauba (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

The article didn't make an assertion of importance, merely one of existence. And importance and notability are the same thing.

Just to clarify: the article failed to even mention where the show airs (which is a basic piece of information that's rather critically necessary in a TV show's article), but looking at the show's website it seems that it airs only on a number of local public access channels (which doesn't make a show notable). And the article's only source was a local community newspaper (which don't meet our reliability requirements).

Bottom line: I can certainly restore it if necessary, but the article would get WP:SNOWed out on WP:AFD anyway.Bearcat (talk) 16:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned, I have no objections if this goes through AfD or PROD, but CSD is very narrow on purpose, and TV shows are not part of the eligible A7 candidates. Further, the notion that "importance and notability are the same thing" is quite disputed by precendent and overwhelming consensus at WT:CSD, but I'll be quite happy to bring this topic there for a reaffirmation of this.

That being said, thank you for the gesture of goodwill with the restoration of the article, it is appreciated. Further, if the AfD closes at delete, the article becomes eligible for G4 upon recreation, a net plus in such cases. Best, MLauba(talk) 16:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

What difference could there possibly be between importance and notability? It's impossible for something to be important but not notable, and it's impossible for something to be notable but not important — so how can they mean anything different from each other? Bearcat (talk) 16:46, 20 August 2009 (UTC)— (refactored from two different talk pages, content unaltered)

Wider input on the matter would be appreciated. Thanks, MLauba (talk) 16:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's a common misconception, since the English language terms do in fact mean nearly the same thing. As long as one remembers that "notable" means something different here, but "important/significant" has the same meaning (though with an explicitly low threshold, as stated in the criteria themselves), the confusion tends to be less. You are also correct that A7 doesn't apply to TV shows currently, though it might be worth looking at whether or not to expand it. My opinion is not to, simply because it isn't necessary. Anyway, I hope that helps. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:34, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

COMMENT: Just because this article is labelled nature walks with mark... does not mean the article is about the TV show. This article is really about Mark and how he did a one man show... still the letter from the senator and the claim to being viewed by millions are both claims to significance/importance... both are weak claims and will proabbly not be enough to salvage the article, but this is a case wherein a case MIGHT be made for the article by somebody who really cares.---Balloonman 22:06, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking the same. It's a vanity autobiography very loosely disguised as an article about a TV show. While I think this survives a literal reading of A7 via its assertions of importance, I don't think it really does so by virtue of being about a TV show, because it really isn't. ~ mazca 22:20, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

If it was about the TV show you would need to know what channel's it aired, when it aired, was a it a series/one shot, etc. None of these BASIC questions are answered... but we know where Mark grew up and all sorts of other garbage about Mark.---Balloonman 22:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion this was not subject to A7 and it's not a close call. Putting aside the issue of whether it is really a biography and thus is within A7's ambit, and putting aside the textual claims of importance or lack thereof, it is my opinion that any article that cites to putatively reliable, independent sources, as this one did at the time of deletion, is immediately rendered an invalid A7 candidate. The difference between importance and notability is that we have defined notability as meaning a bunch of different things that the dictionary does not. The swollen archives here, at WP:N and elsewhere testify to the time that has been spent coming to terms with what it means, and though we still have something of a muddle, the GNG is the main standard. Premises: 1) we have defined notability as meaning, at its most settled level, significant coverage in reliable, independent sources; 2) Importance is a lower standard than notability (as explicitly defined in A7) but has as its wellspring addressing the same base encyclopedic concern; 3) We refer to the standard of citation to reliable sources in A7 as not "even" being required to avoid deletion, thus invoking the GNG standard, even if we're not mentioning it by name. Result: the citation in an article to sources that are not on their face related to the subject, and require analysis to be found reliable or unreliable, is an implicit but absolutely fundamental "indication of importance or significance".--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)