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**D'oh! Why didn't I think of that? Thanks. —&nbsp;]&nbsp;<sup>]</sup>/<sub>]</sub> 17:15, 23 July 2012 (UTC) **D'oh! Why didn't I think of that? Thanks. —&nbsp;]&nbsp;<sup>]</sup>/<sub>]</sub> 17:15, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
***Note that G7 only applies if no one else has substantially contributed to the article, so if the requestor had actually done work on the article, it may not have been technically covered by G7 anyways. You don't say which, so I can't actually check to see if that applies, so just an abstract reminder. ] (]) 17:35, 23 July 2012 (UTC) ***Note that G7 only applies if no one else has substantially contributed to the article, so if the requestor had actually done work on the article, it may not have been technically covered by G7 anyways. You don't say which, so I can't actually check to see if that applies, so just an abstract reminder. ] (]) 17:35, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
****I recall one dispute at AN/I over a similar issue, the author wanted it deleted, and it clearly met the G7 criteria, other editors wanted it to exist. The conclusion was that the wishes of the original author get respected. (In that instance there were no other contributions other then from the author, so it was clearly G7 eligible) ]] 04:05, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Revision as of 04:05, 24 July 2012

Read this before proposing new or expanded criteria Shortcut

Contributors frequently propose new (or expansions of existing) criteria for speedy deletion. Please bear in mind that CSD criteria require careful wording, and in particular, need to be

  1. Objective: Most reasonable people should be able to agree whether a page meets the criterion. Often this requires making the criterion very specific.
  2. Uncontestable: It must be the case that almost all pages that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully.
  3. Frequent: Speedy deletion is intended primarily as a means of reducing load on other deletion methods such as Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion and Misplaced Pages:Proposed deletion. These processes are more discriminating because they treat articles case-by-case, and involve many points of view; CSD sacrifices these advantages in favor of speed and efficiency. If a situation arises only rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and fairer to delete it with one of the other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible, and avoids instruction creep.
  4. Nonredundant: If the deletion can be accomplished using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that. If this application of that rule is contested, consider discussing and/or clarifying it. New rules should be proposed only to cover situations that cannot be speedily deleted otherwise.

If you do have a proposal that you believe passes these guidelines, please feel free to propose it on this discussion page. Be prepared to offer evidence of these points and to refine your criterion if necessary. Consider explaining how it meets these criteria when you propose it. Do not, on the other hand, add it unilaterally to the CSD page.

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Alejandro Mayorkas

Please do explain how a .gov wikipedia : copyright_violations is possible.

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hopiakuta Please do sign your communiqué .~~Thank You, DonFphrnqTaub Persina. 17:00, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Seems like a mistake. Try contacting the deleting admin (User talk:Tone). Yoenit (talk) 17:56, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
I dropped the admin a note in case they want to drop by and respond. Monty845 19:10, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Huh, that was quite some time ago. Seems like a mistake from my side, yes, feel free to restore. Or I can do it. --Tone 15:07, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
While it is probably PD and thus not a copyright violation, it wasn't an encyclopedia article either (so not much harm done in deleting). I guess more sources will be needed to write one. —Kusma (t·c) 17:39, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

CSD Album for compilation albums/newly recreated speedy'd artists.

Two Questions:

1. Is there a consensus on the use of A9 for non-notable compilation albums? There are a number of albums in the "Now That's What I call Music" series, such as the newly created Now_That's_What_I_Call_a_No.1 that seem to me to have no chance of meeting the WP:GNG and which do not assert their importance (this one could also fall under CRYSTAL) but which compile songs by artists with WP entries, many of which are quite notable?
2. Can/should A9 be used for an article for a newly created album where the artist's WP entry does exist but which has been just created and has been CSD deleted in the past? Often a CSD-9 has been declined because the band article once again exists, but was deleted when the A9 was put on the album, and the band is tagged again for CSD. It seems that many of the CSD declines for albums happen because the band article is being rapidly recreated/deleted.

I know that this asks for an expansion of the CSD-A9 criterion and should be looked at closely. But if you look at Special:NewPagesFeed a high percentage of the new articles are for albums such as these. Thanks! -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

G5

This is a formal proposal to abolish or amend G5.

An issue has arisen, and now it is clear to me that G5 is not a good reason to speedily delete something. Perhaps, it is a good justification for an XFD, but not justification for a brainless automatic action. Please consider abolishing this policy, or amending it to have safeguards. It is perfectly possible for a banned user to make valid contributions. We shouldn't punish everyone for one person's actions. Furthermore, what is the moral basis of this action given WP:OWN? If we are saying that we should delete such things aren't we treating it as if the person "owns" the article? In what sense is this a punishment of that person? It seems to have all negatives, but no positives. We recently lost some valid, perhaps irreplaceable content for no good reason. Greg Bard (talk) 21:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

My own introduction to this topic was when I went to the Misplaced Pages's "Deletion log" today (for an unrelated reason), and saw dozens of pages deleted, all listing the same user (presumably the one doing the deleting? if I understand it). I went to the user's page to ask questions about it, since I didn't know why there were so many being deleted related to that user. (The user hadn't responded yet, but others did.) So I said "should dozens of a banned editor's articles and pages be deleted?? Is that similar to burning all of a heretic's works? :-D LOL. Or, Were all those added AFTER the person was banned? It would seem strange that a banned user could still be making pages, articles, or edits, especially dozens of them." (Someone suggested that all the dozens of pages deleted may have been by the same banned user. Really??) Be gentle. :) Misty MH (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
G5 does serve a purpose though, that of discouraging banned users from returning under a new username. What I do agree on is that this policy need not be applied uniformly. If quality articles are being added by a user with behavioral problems, but he is avoiding those, then the articles need not be nuked in addition to reblocking him. But certainly, if the editor was banned for serial copyright violations or serial hoax articles, then absolutely his contributions should be deleted on site. Someguy1221 (talk) 22:39, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
In answer to Misty MH's question, a banned user can always log in anonymously. Often this is very obvious. I certainly support that anon users should be allowed, as the results speak for themselves. However, I have always thought (and acted consistently) that one should be able to delete an *edit* made by an anonymous user for no other reason than its being contributed by an anonymous user. If they feel very strongly about it, they can log in or create an account. However I fail to see how this policy of speedy deletion is anything other than an institutionalization of the genetic fallacy.Greg Bard (talk) 00:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
A couple of technical points. First, it is entirely possible for a user to edit in violation of a ban. Remember that a ban is administrative rule that "you shall not" do something such as edit on a particular topic. Bans are enforced by monitoring by other users, not by technology. They are different from blocks which prevent all editing and are enforced by the software (but which can be evaded via sockpuppets).
If policy was followed in the example above, yes, all of those edits were made after the imposition of the ban or block. G5 may only be applied to those pages created "in violation of their ban or block" which, by definition, means after the ban was imposed. Pages created by a now-banned user before the ban are not eligible under CSD#G5. (Note, however, that if you are banned and create a sockpuppet account to evade the ban, everything created by the sockpuppet is in violation even if it takes weeks or months to identify and block the puppet. The ban dates back to the original violation.)
Second, specifically regarding the question of the compatability of CSD#G5 and WP:OWN, I would point you to the part of the CSD criterion which reads "and which have no substantial edits by others." If a user has edited in violation of a ban and there are no other users who have contributed to the page, then no one else's contributions will be affected by the deletion. That also is the integration point for CSD#G7. When you are the only editor to a page, the community does grant you some very limited rights about the page. You can simply decide that it was a bad idea, blank or CSD-tag it and no one will question your judgement. Once others have started editing the page, though, your limited rights are gone. So while I see your point about the philosophical tension between G5/G7 and WP:OWN, it's a carefully limited situation which acknowledges the practical reality of editing a wiki.
To the original question of "are we losing good content to G5 deletions", remember that the CSD criteria are allowed but are never required. If there truly is good content, the page will generally be left alone. And when admins make mistakes, that would be an easy argument at WP:DRV. Rossami (talk) 01:22, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
My theory is based on the same principle as one from medical research ethics. While it is obviously horrible that the Nazis experimented on people for reasearch, it would be very very stupid to throw all that data away with the notion of honoring the dead. Greg Bard (talk) 02:38, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to see some sort of additional element that requires more then the article just being created by a banned user. If there is really nothing wrong with the article, it shouldn't matter who created it. I don't want to restrict the discretion of admins to delete articles that are created by banned users, are problematic, but don't rise to the level of other CSD criteria, but there should be some restraint. What about changing it to G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates or articles with only minor problems? Monty845 04:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a banned user (Sheynhertz-Unbayg) who often creates a dozen of articles or categories in a single session (always with a new sockpuppet account, and he changes accounts whenever people attempt to contact him on his talk page). All of them are about topics that could reasonably have articles, but all of them need a lot of cleanup work. (Most are poor translations). Simply deleting the new pages and reverting all contributions is of course not as good for the encyclopedia as doing all of the cleanup necessary, but it helps to discourage the banned user from doing it again and again. Anyway, for a single article, deleting may not be the best course of action. The ability for admins to delete such articles without discussion is very useful, though, so oppose taking it away. —Kusma (t·c) 10:29, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Let's say that someone uploads a "File:Non-free image.jpg". Later, someone else uploads "File:Non-free image, better quality.jpg". "File:Non-free image, better quality.jpg" replaces "File:Non-free image.jpg" in all articles, and so "File:Non-free image.jpg" is deleted after a week per F5. Finally, someone realises that "File:Non-free image, better quality.jpg" was uploaded by a banned user, and so that file goes away per G5. This means that the article currently has no image, although the first image ("File:Non-free image.jpg") was OK. One could argue that "File:Non-free image.jpg" should be undeleted at this point, but the file might not be clearly indicated, so the administrator might not be aware of this file, so de facto the file would probably remain deleted.
It sounds as if we have a loophole: banned users can't add content, but they are perfectly able to delete content by uploading a better copy of a non-free file under a different name (at least as long as the improvements don't violate WP:NFCC#3b). The ability to delete content may be just as bad as the ability to add content. Maybe the requirements for G5 need to be more restrictive. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:08, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read the rule, but SOME kind of rule is needed. But the deleting of lots of material, hmm—I didn't see a way to even see the article after deletion, or who had written it after being banned or whatever; but I only spent a couple of minutes at the Deletion log. Personally, I think it might be good for Misplaced Pages to have a person's real name and contact info (other than email) be required for editing; though they could still have an online/screen name. I've seen some editors admit to having multiple accounts; maybe that's to avoid some kind of trouble from another editor who might otherwise keep changing, reverting, or deleting their edits? Hmm. Misty MH (talk) 20:08, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

But what prevents real-life information from being falsified? In other words, where would the buck stop? --MuZemike 20:59, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

G5 remains the only serious technique we have for discouraging socks. The primary problem we have is spotty enforcement by well-meaning individuals that attempt to preserve content. None of these sockpuppeteers have access to magic sources: if the article was truly worth having, it will be recreated by someone completely independent of the sock at some future date. In the meantime, combing through the contributions and attempting to sort the good from the bad only encourages the banned user to keep trying to add his content. In the long run, absolute ruthlessness works best.—Kww(talk) 00:46, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

So you are unclear that it doesn't, in fact, discourage socks, but rather results in repeated creation of the same articles over and over again? Greg Bard (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Kww: we can do without the articles added by people who are no longer welcome here. Misplaced Pages is large enough that there will be somebody else writing about the topic at some time. The goal of actually getting rid of a banned user is worth some mild content sacrifices in the short term. —Kusma (t·c) 07:08, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment -- I would propose that at the very least it be require that a proposer of speedy deletion using G5 should be required to read the article before proposal. This is very reasonable, and would satisfy my concerns.Greg Bard (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Greg, Would you mind if I changed the title of this section from G5 to "G5 – Formal proposal to amend G5"? Thanks! Misty MH (talk) 09:38, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment -- I would further Gregbard's comment by proposing to modify the G5 to read Pages created by banned or blocked users in violation of their ban or block, and which have no substantial edits by others, and which do not meaningfully improve the encyclopedia. G5 should not be applied to transcluded templates. Although, it is worth noting that these pages could almost certainly be deleted under G3. So, I also see the argument that that G5 is redundant. -- Selket 22:16, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

"Meaningfully" is not objective enough. Have you ever dealt with banned users? It is extremely frustrating, but really, the only way to show them they are not allowed to edit is to remove and revert all of their good edits. (That is precisely what "banned" means: you are not allowed to make good edits. Bad edits are reverted and deleted no matter if the user they originate from is banned or not, so it is really the good edits of banned users that we have to delete, or we never actually ban anyone). —Kusma (t·c) 07:08, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
I agree completely. A number of banned users come back and the main thing they do with their socks is create new articles. These should be deleted - as is said above, if they are articles that we might think should exist, they will be created sooner or later. If we don't delete them we are encouraging banned users to return again and again, because they are succeeding in evading their ban. Dougweller (talk) 16:30, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

More points to consider:

  • If articles are deleted, is the deleted text (etc.) of the article – and especially citations – still available to the REST of us, in case we as editors want to RECREATE them? If so, How? Where? (I didn't see it at the Deletion log.)
  • If not, then THAT is a modification that needs to be made pronto. Agreed?
  • OTOH, LOL, Would that make US look like we're one of the banned?
  • If the article text and citations are no longer available to even be viewed, then all that work – whatever it was! – would have to be done all over again from scratch! So, I'd like to know that valid editors here at least have the ability to get and use the deleted text and citations. Are those available after it's been deleted?
  • Now, If some NEW account has been created, you'd think that Misplaced Pages would somehow notice if a ton of new articles were being added! A bot?
  • Another, related issue: Might the policy also HINDER valid articles/text from BEING created/recreated? because, maybe someone WANTS such text to be deleted, to keep it OFF of Misplaced Pages (at least for a while), and so makes a sockpuppet to keep adding it back in; and so when someone else wants to actually, validly add it in, they might end up looking somehow connected to the original offender. And all THEIR work could end up being deleted! It seems like this could be some sneaky method for keeping text off of Misplaced Pages, like sneaky sockpuppet IDs with just IP addresses that not only come to vandalize by adding nonsense but to DELETE things that are valid contributions!
  • One other thing: Misplaced Pages is so large, and some of our contributions are so many, that it's difficult for us to remain on top of all our own contributions. So it would be hard to watch for this kind of thing, and to protect Misplaced Pages.
  • Changes/Improvements apparently need to be made. And I hope that some of these points help. :)

Misty MH (talk) 01:29, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A link to the G5 in question – and G3 is above it – so that anyone here can easily locate and read these: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:CSD#G5
Misty MH (talk) 02:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Greg, Would you mind if I changed the title of this section from G5 to "G5 – Formal proposal to amend G5"? Thanks. Misty MH (talk) 02:27, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

To All, Please see my bulleted points above. Thanks! :) Misty MH (talk) 01:36, 16 July 2012 (UTC) Misty MH (talk) 02:23, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

When a page is deleted (whether G5, some other speedy or another deletion process) it's deleted from view. The page history still exists, but viewing the history is restricted to researchers and administrators. The wikicode of each revision also still exists (unless it's been suppressed) and may be viewed by administrators, but not researchers. This is how WP:DRV is possible. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
@Misty MH. It used to be quite easy to become an admin, so a few years ago a significant proportion of our active editors would have been able to look at the deleted version and if appropriate restore it. One of the problems of adminship having become such a big deal is that the vast majority of our currently active editors are not admins and need an admin to review such deleted edits and restore them. That said if you want to write an article where something has previously been deleted you can just start, or you can always go to wp:REFUND or ask one of the active admins to check the previous article and restore it for you. Oh and yes the message that a previous article on that topic has been deleted probably does hinder the creation of new articles. But we don't have an easy way to fix that. ϢereSpielChequers 05:46, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

New criterion for redirects from Misplaced Pages space to article space

At Misplaced Pages:Redirects for discussion#Misplaced Pages:Nasirabad Govt. High School, the latest in an increasing number of redirects seen there that are from the Misplaced Pages namespace to the article namespace which arise from the new article wizard or something similar an expanded or new CSD criteria as been suggested. These pages were never meant to be in the project namespace and the redirects are always delted. While RfD isn't overloaded it does get backloged regularly and there is no reason these redirects should hang around for up to 3 weeks or occasionally longer, potentially in the way of content intended for project space. Occasionally some are speedily deleted under criterion G7 if the original author spots the error, and at least one admin has said they delete them under G6, which is a borderline fit at best imho.

I don't personally think that this would make a good expansion of R2, which deals with redirects out of (rather than into) article space and is already quite long. Accordingly I suggest a new R4, to read something like 'Redirects from the Misplaced Pages namespace to the article namespace that result from a page move and where the page content has always been intended as an article. This does NOT apply to subpages of any existing Misplaced Pages namespace page that is itself not a shortcut or redirect to the article namespace.'. It needs cleaning up a bit as we want to include pages started as userspace draft and things that were intended as articles even if the subject isn't notable etc (anything that gets deleted means the redirect is subject to G8 but we don't want to prejudice any discussion). Requested articles and similar should possibly be explicitly excluded but the subpages clause should get that I think. The 'existing' bit of the subpages clause is necessary as any title with a / in it would technically form a subpage in the Misplaced Pages namespace. If the article title has a / in it and the part before the slash corresponds to a Misplaced Pages space page won't be under this criterion, hence the 'shortcut or redirect to article space' caveat (as these won't have legitimate subpages), the resulting set are almost certain to be so infequent that trying to include them isn't worth the complexity. I'm not entirely happy with the subjective element about the intentions, but it is a clear 'I know it when I see it' and I can't think how to make it objective. A timelimit (as these are almost always very quickly spotted) for how long it was in wp-space and/or requiring 0 content edits (including citation needed, etc templates) while in wp-space might also be worth considering. Thryduulf (talk) 02:47, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a reason why such redirects should be routinely deleted unless they are in the way of a page move. If you want to replace the redirect in such a case with some other content, I think its easily within the realm of WP:BOLD, with no need for the redirect to ever be formally deleted. If there is neither a desire to use the title for another purpose, or move something into its place, I don't see how leaving the redirect will generally cause any harm, and if a few do, those can be taken to RfD. Monty845 13:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
Certainly that is the normal operating philosophy of RfD, and one to which I normally subscribe. However these are routinely deleted when they come to RfD, even by the hardline inclusionist 'does no harm' standard. Partly this is because a redirect within the same namespace often has benefits, even if slight, but these do not. They were never intended to be in project space (a normal path is a move from userspace to wikipedia space followed by a move to article space as soon as it is realised that the original move wasn't what was intended. For similar reasons to those discussed at WP:CNR there are benefits to not confusing project and encyclopaedia pages. I can't recall a discussion at RfD about such a redirect that wasn't unanimously in favour of deletion, explicitly or implicitly, and at least some more are already being speedily deleted under other criteria they are shoehorned into. Thryduulf (talk) 17:04, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
I think this kind of deletion is in the spirit of G6. You will notice that the criterion statement for G6 has intentionally been kept general, and (were I an admin) I would be happy to apply G6 to these redirects, which are supported by prior RFD consensus. — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:57, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

WP:CSD#G6 already contains the text "This also includes pages unambiguously created in error and/or in the incorrect namespace". I think this covers the redirects you mention, which are technical results of fixing such an error. —Kusma (t·c) 12:19, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Straight G6 - no need to add another darned rule, when this is clearly the kind of accidental and inappropriate item which G6 is designed to cover. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
  • If we're going to allow these as G6, then I think we should add this situation as an explicit example in the G6 description. G6 already gets bent beyond where it should be at times. Rossami (talk) 21:12, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
    • On the contrary I disagree; I think the current wording of G6 is more than sufficient to allow these deletions. The criteria are verbose enough as they are. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
      • G8 G6 applies to every random situation that we haven't thought of yet, but for which no reasonable person would object. That is exactly why we have G8 G6. We don't need to write every possible situation into G8 G6 as that would really defeat the point. -- Selket 02:31, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
        • Assuming you mean G6 rather than G8 (the latter doesn't apply here as the redirects have extant targets) then that is entirely contrary to the principles of CSD. The criteria listed on this page explicitly list the only situations in which a page may be deleted without consensus in a discussion and only because there is consensus that the pages covered by the criteria would be deleted every time. Any page that doesn't fall into one of the explicitly listed, intentionally narrowly defined categories here must gain consensus before being deleted.
          G6 was intended for technical deletions, such as deletions of redirects to make way for moves and deletions required to merge page histories. Obvious and unambiguous errors were not unreasonably added to this - there is consensus that we don't need to discuss them. However history has shown time and again that what one person thinks of as impossible for any reasonable person to object to can actually be kept by consensus when actually discussed. So like all criteria, G6 does not cover what reasonable people won't object to, it covers what it explicitly says it covers.
          It does not explicitly cover redirects created by moving a page created in or moved to an incorrect namespace (the redirect was created in the correct namespace), hence why the RfD discussions about them exist and end with delete not speedy delete. I don't object to including them under G6, but if we do we need to explicitly include them like Rossami says and like we explicitly do with G3 and redirects resulting from cleaning up page move vandalism. Yes the criteria are verbose already, but needfully so as I've just explained. If we want to make these redirects speedily deleteable (and I personally think we should) then the only options are to include them explicitly under an existing criteria or to explicitly include them under a new criterion. I don't have a strong opinion over which - there are advantages and disadvantages to both a short list of long criteria and a long list of short criteria. Thryduulf (talk) 14:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
          • Yes, yes G6, fixed. And, it says "Uncontroversial maintenance, such as..." (emphasis added). It is explicitly open ended. Moreover it explicitly includes "pages unambiguously created ... in the incorrect namespace," which I think quite clearly applies to the situation described above. -- Selket 15:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Portal criteria

Do we really need them? Deletions under WP:CSD#P1 and WP:CSD#P2 seem to be quite rare, and I haven't seen one in C:CSD for a while. I propose to remove the criteria as unnecessary (we should simplify policy as far as possible). —Kusma (t·c) 19:48, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I've not looked into the frequency of their use, but P1 could be done away with by simply stating that the article criteria also apply to portals (i.e. a portal would be deletable under A7 rather than P1) with the caveat that they go to MfD rather than AfD. P2 could in this situation be merged into A3, but whether that would achieve any net simplicity I don't know. So my gut feeling is that if P1 is seen as desirable but P2 not (or neither of them are) then simplicity is probably best served by making the A criteria cover portals. If both are considered desirable then it's probably simplest to retain the status quo. I can't imagine that it would be desirable to retain P2 but not P1, but if it is then either merging it into A3 or renaming it Ax may be the best. Whether either or both are still worth having or not I don't have an opinion about at this moment. Thryduulf (talk) 21:14, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
P1 was used 24 times in 2011, P2 was used 9 times. The P1 statistic is somewhat inflated by a deletion of 13 subpages of Portal:Biography in March. Hut 8.5 21:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
Were those pages portals (i.e. a mixture of content and navigation) or were they articles that happened to be in portal space? Articles that meet the speedy deletion criteria should be deletable in any namespace (as long as they are not obviously drafts, like many articles in user space). Anyway, the statistics you gave makes me think that the criteria are used so infrequently that they wouldn't pass our tests for new criteria at this time. —Kusma (t·c) 06:57, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
List is here if you want to have a look. Hut 8.5 10:14, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the list. I'd say that the criteria are rather infrequently used, but nothing here was remotely worth bothering MfD with. Most of the subpage deletions are easily done also under G6, but that is getting a bit too much of a catch-all. For the sake of shortening policy pages (there should be some spring cleaning of policy at least once a year), we could probably get rid of P1 and send the P2 stuff to MfD, but it probably isn't worth bothering either way. —Kusma (t·c) 07:14, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
I use P2 from time to time. I find that usually P1 can be covered by the other CSD criteria. If portals are being deleted under P1 citing A7, then surely P2 applies as well. Although the couple of P1/A10 deletions I see are interesting; perhaps reason to leave P1 alone. It is not being used that much but it still seems to have a use. — Preceding unsigned comment added by This, that and the other (talk • contribs) 11:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

A7 person: let's not

I see that A7-person get's abused a lot. Much thought has gone in to the wording, to make it clear this criteria is meant for "my uncle Bob" (sorry uncle Bob!), or "Pete who works at the Butchers'". I'm strongly in favor of speedy deleting the above examples, but more often than not it gets applied to people who are beyond this low threshold. The problem seems to be that 'no credible claim of importance' is construed subjectively, and no matter how hard we tried to get the wording right, it still gets misapplied quite often. For BLP's, we have an alternative out: BLP-Prod's. The scope of a BLP prod is slightly different from the scope of A7, and theoretically, it would be possible for a BLP to make no claim of importance, and still have a reference that would invalidate a BLP-Prod. In practice however, this is exceedingly rare (examples would be welcome, I can't remember if I have ever seen one). Therefor, I propose to drop the possibility to apply A7 to persons. The drawback here would obviously be that an article on aforementioned Pete the butchers boy would exist for 10 days. This is sub-optimal, but no big deal either, and I strongly prefer this over the masses of misapplied A7-person noms we see now. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 13:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

A7 is by far the most popular reason for deleting articles. It accounts for nearly twice as many as AFD, PROD and BLP PROD combined. Consequently any proposals to substantially restrict the scope of A7 have the potential to substantially increase the workload of these other processes. There are several categories of A7 which don't qualify for BLP PROD. For a start A7 applies to dead people, BLP PROD doesn't. BLP PROD cannot be applied to any article which cites any sort of reference at all, even a link to the subject's website, Facebook page, et cetera. Without A7, an article on an utterly insignificant 14-year-old student which bothers to link to, say, his Twitter account could not be deleted without the full 7 day deletion discussion if the creator hangs around to remove a PROD tag, which would be a complete waste of everyone's time. I don't think it would be a good idea to enact this proposal unless we have hard evidence that a significant number of A7s are inappropriate or would stand a decent chance at AfD. Hut 8.5 15:55, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I'm not going to dig for numbers at the moment, but if you honestly think that the tag is not massively mis-applied, I can get you some quick examples. If you look at CAT:CSD at any time, at least 25% (but likely more) of the A7-person tagged articles does not meet the criterium. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
Last time I looked at BLPprod a substantial proportion were being rescued during the ten days. That was a few months ago, but I hope that hasn't changed. Flooding that list of unsourced articles on mostly notable people with humongous numbers of non-notable people is only going to make it more difficult to rescue the ones worth rescuing. I'm all for slowing the process of deleting goodfaith articles to a speed that makes us less bitey, but it is worth separating the potentially rescuable from the inevitable deletions. ϢereSpielChequers 17:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
What we need is "Criteria for Speedy Userfication" tags :-) --Surturz (talk) 04:05, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
That might actually be a good idea. I'll think on that some more.

Contesting speedy deletions

Hello everyone. You may have seen some of my CSD's lying around this place waiting for admin deletion. The portion of the day that I do spend on Misplaced Pages, I almost always do patrolling. Over the past couple of month's I have found an increasing amount of user's who are not the author's removing my speedy templates with a page summary of "contested deletion". When I return to the page to see their rationale, they have not contested at all in fact they just remove my template. Now I am all for removing a template because it does not fit the criteria or is in some way flawed. But I was and am under the impression that contesting a deletion involves the hang-on tag placed on the page and a discussion brought upon the talk page, not a removal of the speedy which seems to be a declining of the speedy in the first place. Can we please have a discussion on this? I would like a bit to refer to when I come across this again. Good day to you all!Keystoneridin (speak) 04:52, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

If someone removes a speedy tag, then it is contested. You should then raise an AfD. The onus is on you to prove that the page should be deleted. My 2c --Surturz (talk) 05:59, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
What Surturz said. However, if it's really a G10, G11, or G12, feel free to readd the speedy tag and bring the matter up on ANI for action: we don't want those hanging around. Jclemens (talk) 06:12, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
This probably comes about because of Nauman Syed Ali Kazmi; see a brief discussion on my talk page. The suggestion here is that removing a CSD template should be accompanied by an explanation which isn't a bad idea were it not for the fact that sometimes (as in my late-night session last night) as many as half the CSD templates are incorrect. Mind you, Twinkle is easy and does not require the CSD nominator to make their case, and I don't see why in the other case (the protection of content) it should be more onerous. If there is anything broke with the current system it's on the nominating side, not on the contesting or deleting side. Drmies (talk) 14:38, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Though the best way to work on the nominator side is to leave the nominator a good explanation of why their CSD nomination was rejected. I would also suggest we revise the CSD decline template to encourage more personalized explanations of the reason for the decline. Monty845 17:17, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
You can encourage that all you want--but as an admin who routinely declines CSDs I think that if a burden is to be placed in this process it should be on the nominator who should explain, rather than click a button on their automated tag machine. I have left such messages, and I and others do this on talk pages and also in edit summaries. In the case I mentioned, the original rationale was "Requesting speedy deletion with rationale "Conflict of interest: Username is the same as article name"" which is of course not an existing category. The template was removed by Sigma, who said "Speedy deletion contested. The reason given is not a valid speedy deletion criterion"--seems clear enough. The original nominator followed up with "Proposing article for deletion per WP:PROD", "Author's account name is the same as article name. Appears this article is headed for self-promotion of bio." Now, if the latter, it should have been tagged as G11; if the former--yeah, that's still not a reason to PROD something. If any PROD were appropriate, it would have been BLPPROD. Anyway, the final edit is by a helpful IP, "no need to prod, there's nothing there", and they stick an A3 tag on it, which is the rationale for my deletion. In other words, there was plenty of explanation along the way, and the first (and most important) one was actually read by the original nominator. In other words, I think you'll find that there is a lot of explanation given, though what is given in edit summaries is of course lost in deletion for non-admins. But Monty, go through the categories of CSD-tagged articles, and figure out how many you would delete, and then consider writing up talk page messages for all the ones that were wrong. I think you'll quickly find that you would have lost the gumption to look at those categories in the first place. Drmies (talk) 17:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
My experience also shows that a very high proportion of CSD tags are applied in error. While there is some reasonable burden on the declining user (does not have to be an admin) to explain the error, the time it would take to both explain in an edit summary and in notes on the tagging editor's Talk page would be excessive. An edit summary is sufficient.
Administrators are volunteers, too. Tagging editors share an obligation to ask if they don't understand what they got wrong about CSD. Rossami (talk) 15:12, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
my own practice too is to rely on the edit summary unless I see a pattern. And, naturally, some people when I remove a speedy & they do not understand why come and ask for an explanation--which however hostilely they sometimes word it I see as an indication of intention to improve and I always respond in as much detail as needed. I would like to educate people more frequently and in more detail, but we must deal with the articles. DGG ( talk ) 03:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (File:Jolla-Logo.jpg)

Just received the message (see subject). But my uploaded file Jolla-Logo.jpg is not orphaned. It is being used by the company's template (Logo entry) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/Jolla_Ltd. How can this issue be addressed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sledgeas (talk • contribs) 14:52, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Talk pages

A lot of new users create valid articles on the talk page rather than the article page by mistake. These have been getting tagged with a G8 (yes, I mean G8 this time) rather than just being moved to article space. Having articles, some of which represent considerable work and would be acceptable otherwise, get suddenly deleted smells of BITE. Can we add a note somewhere that people should just move them to the correct location? I'm not sure where exactly. -- Selket 16:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

This is mostly an admin problem, so I was going to suggest Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators, but that has very little on how to deal with speedy deletion nominations. Probably nobody but new admins reads it anyway. —Kusma (t·c) 17:57, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, and I'm sure that most admins do it correctly, although a few clearly do not. Part of the problem, though, is that it takes a lot less time to tag them (or just do the move), than to un-tag, send a note, move, and remove the redir. -- Selket 18:09, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Yep. I tell you, I've run into one or two such cases, Selket, but in all those cases they were clearly A7s (may just be the luck of the draw). IP editors have a habit of creating talk pages cause they can't create articles, but all the IP cases I remember have been of the hoaxy, vandalistic, or promotional kind. I wouldn't know where to place the note that you propose, but I do hope that the passing admins who read this keep a mental note. Also, I am quite confident that my colleagues will give proper consideration to the content and move it is appropriate. Thanks for bringing it up, Drmies (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Article subject importance or significance criteria is subjective and ambiguous, while it is still subjective, we can at least remove the ambiguity

I would like to add a sentence in the important or significant criteria stating what definition is used to determine importance or significance. If the definition used is the dictionary definition, then it should be stated in the criteria that the dictionary definition is used to determine significance or importance. Otherwise it is ambiguous as to what basis importance or significance is judged by.TeeTylerToe (talk) 20:12, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. (Your comment is related to this edit to A7, which was reverted.) (1) Stating that we use the dictionary definition immediately raises the question "which dictionary?", so next we would have to deal with that. The meaning of the terms "importance" and "significance", as with many terms used in Misplaced Pages, can be understood by reaching consensus. (2) In this context, the exact definition doesn't matter anyway. If an article makes a credible claim that the subject is significant or important, then A7 does not apply. The decision doesn't really turn on the definition of "importance" and "significance"; if anything, it turns on the definition of "credible", but now I'm getting off-topic. – Wdchk (talk) 01:28, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Also, there are several possible meanings of 'significant' and 'important', depending on how each dictionary chooses to split senses, and there are several different ways that a subject can be and can assert these qualities, any combination of which are fine for passing the A7 hurdle. For example 'Ian Smith was the first English chess champion', 'Unobtaniumite is the predicted product of the high energy physics experiment being constructed in Utah', and 'The intra-vocalic low-back-rounded affrictive is a sound unique to the newly-discovered Hmmunk language' are three (fictional) stubs that assert very different reasons for significance such that you'd struggle to find a single definition that covers them all simply. Thryduulf (talk) 09:50, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Query article

Is there any way of deleting this article, which is based on a book that doesn't (yet) exist and has no refs but for a blog post? Tony (talk) 13:10, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, two ways, Prod or AFD. ϢereSpielChequers 13:14, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but the refs are available, the upcoming book caused a controversy, which was noted by reliable media, see (Techcrunch), (CNET), (Digital Trends) etc. etc. See also Category:Upcoming books. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 13:51, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
I won't delete. But it seems like way premature to have created the article. Tony (talk) 15:45, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
You may be right and I partly agree, however, others could object that the subject (a non-published book :)) meets WP:GNG, though it's rather the incident than the book itself what attracted the media. The opinions may vary. The best venue to resolve that would be probably WP:AfD. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 15:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes I wish we could abandon the fiction that we can instantly tell the flash in the pans from the enduring sparks. There are loads of articles where notability is transient, they are currently in the news but may soon be forgotten. Upcoming books and films, players signed to a squad but who haven't actually played yet. I'm sure that half of them would be uncontentious deletes if we but waited until they'd dropped from the squad without a first team appearance, or upcoming films cancelled pre-production. ϢereSpielChequers 20:27, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

G7 question

I deleted an article under G7 yesterday, and an editor other than its author has asked me to restore it so she/he can work on it. Is this an appropriate request to grant, or should I tell the editor to write a new article? — Malik Shabazz /Stalk 16:39, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

  • Ask the primary author. Restoring without the author's permission is allowed (since deleted content is still CC-BY-SA/GFDL), but a really dickish thing to do. WilyD 16:45, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
    • D'oh! Why didn't I think of that? Thanks. — Malik Shabazz /Stalk 17:15, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
      • Note that G7 only applies if no one else has substantially contributed to the article, so if the requestor had actually done work on the article, it may not have been technically covered by G7 anyways. You don't say which, so I can't actually check to see if that applies, so just an abstract reminder. Jclemens (talk) 17:35, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
        • I recall one dispute at AN/I over a similar issue, the author wanted it deleted, and it clearly met the G7 criteria, other editors wanted it to exist. The conclusion was that the wishes of the original author get respected. (In that instance there were no other contributions other then from the author, so it was clearly G7 eligible) Monty845 04:05, 24 July 2012 (UTC)