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Hoaxes

I've noticed a lot of edits for minor wording in G1 concerning hoaxes. As far as I can tell, though, G1 has never covered hoaxes of any sort; G1 is for articles which have absolutely no coherent content whatsoever--either no meaningful words, words that do not combine into meaningful sentences, or sentences that plainly can't be resolved into any meaningful whole. As noted in the non-criteria on them, obviously ridiculous hoaxes can sometimes be deleted as silly vandalism under G3, but G1 was never intended to apply. (This distinction is more than just legalise; the important thing here is that the hoax needs to be so obvious that there is no question but that the entire article is a work of pure vandalism. If the article isn't bad enough to immediately send the creator a vandalism warning over, it isn't subject to G3.) --Aquillion 08:41, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

  • I agree that hoaxes aren't covered by G1, nor are claims that the article is entirely factually false. Those go to prod or Afd, even when the vandal creating serial hoaxes is uncovered. From my recent experience, they tend to get deleted at Afd faster via WP:SNOW with a lot less drama. Carlossuarez46 18:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
Nevertheless, AfD is slow and requires effort on the part of the person who discovers the hoax article. I have been wondering if a new category for blatant hoaxes might be in order. For example, consider the text below:
Dave Brookman was a scientist from Basingstoke. A former Olympian swimmer, he won golds in seven events before returning to his studies to become a brain surgeon. Upon graduation from Yale University, he instead turned his hand to cosmology, pausing only to invent the toothbrush. He married the famous model Eva Hott in 1984, before dying in unspecified circumstances the following month.
Now, there is no question that that text constitutes a blatant hoax, and Wikipedia looks silly for every minute that it is up. It is a nuisance to have to take such a thing to an AfD, which can take 5-10 minutes to create. Yet, so far as I can see, it does not fit under any of the currently accepted criteria of WP:CSD: it is not patent, unreadable nonsense (G1), neither is it an editing test (G2), nor vandalism (G3). It doesn't fit the criteria of A7, since a claim of notability is made -- it's just it's clearly fake.
I recently took an article to this AfD, for these same reasons. The claim to notability was of the same order as the text above, yet no WP:CSD criterion seemed to fit. An admin closed it as "speedy delete, patent nonsense". I'm fine with that, but I would prefer that either the text of G1 was amended to clearly cover such an article, or (my preferred option) that we have a CSD category that fits it. The hoax, must of course, be blatant, and there are many hoax articles which are not. — BillC talk 21:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 21#Expansion of G1. This was defeated last month. BigNate37(T) 21:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for that. Disappointing, but at least I know I'm not alone. — BillC talk 21:59, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I've posted about CSD and hoaxes before, can't find the specific reference (undoubtedly archived by now), but I have been a strong proponent of the idea that obviously silly hoaxes are covered by G3 (I think that point is mentioned at the top of this section). And to me, the Dave Brookman example qualifies as G3 pure vandalism, in that no reasonable person could possibly believe the assertions in the quoted paragraph, taken as a whole. (It's the toothbrush that puts it over the top, I think; without that, hmmm, it probably would have to go to PROD/AfD.) --MCB 22:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I've G3'd blatant hoaxes before, and never been questioned a bit over it. If it's really that obvious of garbage, no one's going to argue with you over it (except maybe the vandal, if they feel like engaging in a bit of trolling along with their hoaxing). If it's just highly questionable, though, but I can't be 100% sure, I'll prod or send to AfD. Usually the more blatant examples get snowed on in less than a day anyway. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Then is there any mileage in trying to reword G3 to clearly cover such self-evident cases of garbage? In the case of Adriel george, I was 100% sure, but was uncomfortable with labelling it with any of the CSD, since none seemed to match. So I spent some time putting together the AfD, only to see it speedied. Chimp Chapman seems to have been similar. — BillC talk 23:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Allow redirects to empty template talk pages, from template doc talk pages

I would like to add to the "redirects" section, point 1, " Redirects to deleted pages and to nonexistent pages" the following exception:

  • (excepting the talk page of a template documentation page, redirected to the as-yet nonexistent main talk page for that template)

Anyone object? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 21:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

    • Any template with a documentation page. Note that sometimes discussion starts on the documentation talk page, and that discussion should be moved to the template talk page before installing a redirect. My feeling is that if you create a documentation page for a template and neither the template or the documentation page have a talk page, just create them both (with the latter being a redirect) and make a note to start the talk page. With some complex templates, it might be useful to keep the documentation talk page separate for discussions just about the documentation and how best to word it. I also feel that rather than note an exception here, we encourage people, when creating the redirect, to check what they are redirecting to exists, and if it doesn't, to create the talk page to make the redirect work. Carcharoth 15:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
  • My browsing found the following:
  • (1) Many, many template.../doc pages lack talk pages, let alone redirects to the template talk page.
  • (2) Some /doc pages do have their own talk page, separate from the template talk page.
  • (3) Only the most obscure templates have no talk page.
  • I found Template:Thread retitled, with its doc page at Template:Thread retitled/doc. It looks quite useful, but is uncategorised and only used on 11 pages at the moment. Template talk:Thread retitled does not exist. I've now created Template talk:Thread retitled/doc (redirect page) as the type of redirect Andy Mabbett is talking about. Clicking the blue link takes you the redirect page, which is useless for inexperience editors, and surprising for experienced editors. This exception might prevent people creating a /doc talk page that no-one looks at, but I still think it should be incumbent upon the template creator/documenter to create a talk page for the template, if only to say "I've created a documentation subpage". Carcharoth 15:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Reject - following the above discussion, I say reject this exception and encourage template documenters to create non-existent talk pages and redirects to channel discussion to the correct location. Carcharoth 15:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Just to update this, the example redirect I created above Template talk:Thread retitled/doc has been picked up (glad to see the system works!) and nominated for speedy deletion. As there has been no further addition to this discussion, I'm happy to let the example be deleted. Carcharoth 08:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

One more point - the example redirect I created above was picked up by User:SXT-404Bot, a bot that detects broken redirects. I've invited the bot owner to add to this discussion, and renotified previous participants. See here, here and here. Carcharoth

Housekeeping for talk page redirects

Hi, just checking in. I am speedy deleting talk page redirects (if there is nothing linking to them) as I come along them. They are just not needed (usually resulting from page moves) and I believe it falls under "housekeeping" criteria. Wrong? Renata 05:14, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't do it if the article page is still a redirect. -- Ned Scott 05:16, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd call it valid housekeeping. They're not really harming anything, though. >Radiant< 07:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Previous discussion: Blank talk pages (and corresponding template {{db-blanktalk}})
As i noted there, the main rationale for clearing/deleting talk page redirects is to avoid:

  • comments ending up on the wrong talk page (i've seen several users not that familiar with redirects be confused by this)
  • misleading blue "discussion" links when viewing the corresponding article/redirect

(What's really called for, i think, is a page move option to avoid creating the talk page redirect in the first place, for when you know you're just going to delete it after the move anyway.) —Piet Delport 2007-08-08 09:43

What I do in cases when I move a page, and then go back again to turn the redirect into a disambiguation page, is change the "redirect left after the move" into a note saying "Original page was moved here. This page has now been turned into a disambiguation page." I find this cleaner, quicker, and easier, than asking for the page to be deleted. I know it is technically not needed, as the records are in the page logs and history, but I think this is an adequate solution, and helps readers and editors who don't know to look in page logs, to understand the previous history of the page. Carcharoth 10:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Delport has a point... perhaps we should submit that to WP:BUG to see what the devs think. It would be trivial to code, I think. >Radiant< 10:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Um. The option is already there! You just untick the box saying "move talk page", and then you can go back and delete it if it is not needed. If, on the other hand, there is content that is there and is needed and it is moved over with the page you are moving, then the redirect should be created, because it is not always clear whether the redirect is needed or not. If, on the other hand, you are saying that all moves of pages with talk pages should (a) move the article and talk page to the new location and (b) leave an article page redirect behind and a redlink for the original talk page - is that what you mean? The argument against that, as Renata pointed out at the beginning, is that you first have to check to see if there are any links pointing towards the talk page you intend to delete. If there are, then the redirect is needed until those links are tidied up. So I think all this needs more discussion. Carcharoth 12:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I believe the request was for "move the article and the talk page, but do not create a redirect for the talk page". >Radiant< 12:54, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
        • So what happens to old links pointing at the original talk page? This is not a problem when cleaning up page move vandalism, but when carrying out ordinary moves where talk page have content, then you would need to check that no-one had linked to that talk page. Carcharoth 13:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
          • Right, same as with existing moves. —Piet Delport 2007-08-09 15:30
            • No. That is what redirects are for. When you carry out a move, the redirect is left behind so you don't have to tidy up the existing links to the page you have just moved (whether it be a talk page or an article page or whatever). But maybe I'm still unclear on exactly what you mean. See my other comment below. Carcharoth 16:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
              • What i meant was that this feature does not remove the need to judge whether a talk page redirect is appropriate or not: that remains the user's responsibility. All it does is obviate the tedious create+delete cycle currently imposed on unwanted redirects. —Piet Delport 2007-08-09 20:37
Hmm, i checked and found bug 1062, which is almost the same feature, but for admin use and not just for the talk page redirect. Allowing users to avoid the talk page redirect only should be a very easy variation of that. —Piet Delport 2007-08-09 12:05
This feature could be abused by page move vandals. That is why the proposed feature at that bug report is only for admins. Non-admins will have to carry out moves and then ask for redirects to be deleted. But I don't think things are as simple as people are making it out here. There are cases where talk page redirects are needed. Specifically when wanting to direct people towards the correct place to hold discussions, and to redirect people following old links. I think the features described may make it harder for people to follow old links and harder for people to trace histories back through several generations of page moves. I think the feature described at the bug report are mainly to aid in cleaning up page move vandalism. The reasons you give for the feature need further discussion. Carcharoth 13:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Nobody is suggesting that this be used for all moves, or that talk page redirects go away. There are of course many cases where they're useful and desired; this is only about the cases where they're not, to streamline existing practice.
I don't see how the feature could be abused by vandals any more than the existing page move features. You're not giving them any extra ability over the article space, or noticeably affecting the existing cost of vandalism cleanup. —Piet Delport 2007-08-09 15:20
As I said above, I'm clearly not understanding you here. It would probably help if you restate exactly the type of moves that you think it would be useful to have the option of not leaving a redirect behind. I'm still concerned that unless the software checks for links to the page and alerts people "THERE ARE 500 INCOMING LINKS THAT NEED TO BE REDIRECTED, SUGGEST YOU DO NOT SUPPRESS THE CREATION OF A REDIRECT", then inexperienced, tired, careless, users and admins will use the feature when it shouldn't be used. Carcharoth 16:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Moves whose talk page redirects will just be speedily deleted, as per the above discussion.
The impact of misusing the feature is low, and easy to fix (just create the redirect). It's not really much different than the current talk page move option, which inexperienced/tired/careless users and admins can misuse just as well (and repair just as well, by moving the talk page directly). —Piet Delport 2007-08-09 20:21
I'm not convinced, but then everyone else seems to have lost interest in this discussion. If this feature gets implemented, I'll be interested to see how long it lasts. Carcharoth 01:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Discrepancy between I6 and I7

In the section #Simplification of criterion I7, Wikidemo highlighted a discrepancy between criteria I6 and I7.

  • CSD I6: "If a use rationale is provided but disputed, use Images and media for deletion instead" of speedy deletion.
  • CSD I7: "Non-free images or media that fail any part of the non-free content criteria may be tagged for review [and] ... deleted after seven days if not corrected."

So, which is it? — Black Falcon (Talk) 15:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I suppose the distinction is that if there is a dispute over if it meets the non-free content criteria it needs a discussion. Until(1 == 2) 16:38, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
If that is the case, then I7 should be kind of like proposed deletion, where the deletion tag can be removed. However, Template:Di-replaceable fair use contains the instruction to "not remove this tag". Is ccorrecting the discrepancy simply a matter of modifying the tag? — Black Falcon (Talk) 16:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
"Template:Di-replaceable fair use" says that it should not be removed, and instead "Template:Di-replaceable fair use disputed" should be added. We've had this for quite a while. I imagine it was instituted at first because there were so many easily replaceable non-free images of living people, that we needed a more lightweight process than IfD. (But I don't know of the relevant discussion off of the top of my head.) Thing is, we still get quite a bit of those. And less-clearly replaceable fair use images are often discussed at IfD. I think the process works fine. --Iamunknown 19:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Given the issues raised here, particularly the revelation that the Foundation never meant for us to require a non-free media rationale in the first place, we should scrap CSD I6 and NFCC #10c entirely. Wikidemo 17:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
That the Foundation does not require explicit fair use rationales does not necessarily mean that we should scrap them or the relevant criterion for speedy deletion. Any EDP can be stricter, but not less strict, than that required by the Foundation. That, however, is a debate for WT:NFCC. --Iamunknown 19:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The discussion about policy is indeed happening, although there is room for discussion here about just how we implement the policy. Unfortunately, every debate on the subject since the resolution was passed has been tainted by a misperception about what the Foundation wanted, and people who were advocating for parameterized or categorized rationales, much less implicit ones, were told their position lacked merit or that this was not a matter for consensus. It would be hasty to speedily delete any images, particularly legacy ones, based on shortcomings in their rationale before we sort out just what the policy should be on rationales.Wikidemo 19:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that suspension of the relevant CSD (that's I6) would be appropriate until the matter has received wider community attention. Specifically, regarding the line "The boilerplate copyright tags setting out fair use criteria do not constitute a use rationale." Kat's e-mail referenced at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#A rational change (pun intended) seems to directly contradict this. To quote part of her e-mail directly, "The rationale doesn't actually need to be stated explicitly, and boilerplate is perfectly fine if it is actually used correctly and applies to the particular media in the particular situation." [1] That should be reason enough to suspend CSD I6 pending further discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, at which point we can decide what speedy deletion criteria would be appropriate for non-free content based on whatever changes are made to policy. BigNate37(T) 19:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Do not remove the part that says "Non-free images or media that fail any part of the non-free content criteria and were uploaded after 13 July 2006 may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader." This was added as a part of WP:NFCC#Non-compliance and applies to all parts of NFCC, not just use rationales. -- Ned Scott 23:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
The NFCC policy determines when it is appropriate to remove fair use media and images. This policy deals with how such media and images should be removed. Each should have primacy in its respective field. I'm not sure what you mean by "applies to all parts of NFCC", but it's unnecessary bureaucracy to have different wait periods depending on the date of upload. — Black Falcon (Talk) 23:40, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
That might be how you feel, but it is currently policy. -- Ned Scott 00:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
WP:CSD is policy too. In any case, this is a wiki and policy can change. The proposal to modify I7 was initiated here, but a message was posted to Wikipedia talk:Non-free content and the response to the proposal was, on the whole, positive (see #Simplification of criterion I7). So, is the issue inconsistency between policies? If so, where (aside from here, obviously) does the change need to be implemented in order to be consistent across Wikipedia? — Black Falcon (Talk) 01:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
There is no issue of conflicting policy... If someone uploads an image, and it fails any part of WP:NFCC, someone can notify the uploader that they have 48 hours till the image qualifies for deletion. They can do so even if we don't note it here on CSD, but that would cause more confusion. If you wish to change I7 then Non-compliance still needs to be noted. -- Ned Scott 01:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
So if I understand you correctly, then it is acceptable to fix a time limit for deletion of 7 days after tagging as long as the exception of 48 hours after notification of the uploaded must still be noted. Is that correct? Your comment above seems to suggest that the 48-hour rule is a foundation policy rather than a project-level policy like CSD. Is that correct? Thanks, Black Falcon (Talk) 02:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand your first sentence. If the uploader is not notified then the image defaults to a 7 day waiting period. I don't know why you say that this is a foundation rule, or what significance that has at all. Non-compliance was decided here on en.wiki. -- Ned Scott 02:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
If the 48-hour rule for non-compliance was decided on en.wiki, that means we can change it. I assumed that the unanimous response at the discussion above was enough to change the deletion policy. If what you're saying is that I should seek consensus at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria, then what about the fact that the discussion was cross-posted to Wikipedia talk:Non-free content? — Black Falcon (Talk) 02:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
For starters, a one day discussion is not enough. Second, you guys are saying there is a discrepancy, which there isn't. Third, it is very clear that you guys didn't understand why Non-compliance was added, or that it applied to more than FURs. You can't develop a consensus based on a misunderstanding. -- Ned Scott 02:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
And incase it's not clear, you guys were discussing FURs, and I'm trying to point out that Non-compliance was more than just FURs, but was placed in I7 because we didn't know where else to put it, at the time. So you have not actually discussed Non-compliance yet. -- Ned Scott 02:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
For example, this covers images without sources or that don't attribute who holds the copyright, etc. It's far more than FURs. -- Ned Scott 02:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

We've decided on a change to the policy. If WP:NFCC says otherwise, then go ahead and change WP:NFCC to the extent necessary to implement the decision. Simple. Wikidemo 02:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Wrong, you discussed FUR deletion times, without understanding the point of Non-compliance. Non-compliance was not discussed at all, and from what I can tell, there has only been a two day discussion. That is not a valid consensus. -- Ned Scott 03:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I believe people discussed FUR deletion times and came to a conclusion. If you don't like the conclusion or think they reasoned incorrectly, why not add your voice in opposition rather than trying to single-handedly veto it? Wikidemo 03:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
It's very inappropriate to make such a change after only two days, and anyone is within their right to revert a premature change. We do not make substantial changes to policy lightly. The change itself isn't bad, but it removed Non-compliance, which was not discussed, and was misunderstood, as it applies to all points of NFCC and not just FURs. If we make a change then we must note Non-compliance somewhere. -- Ned Scott 04:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
How much time is enough time and who gets to decide? Over at NFCC you had objected to a four-day consensus that dragged on to eight days, twenty-seven days, etc., until people just lost interest. Meanwhile, I can show you significant changes to the ten NFCC criteria enacted despite controversy after one-day discussions. This is a very minor, procedural change to enforcement, not substance of the policy: give people seven days in all cases rather than two in some and seven in others.
While we are at it we also ought to clarify when immediate deletion or image removal is appropriate, and which cases should be IFD. If we're drawing lines between zero-notice, seven-day (or two, if we keep that) CSD, and indefinite IFD, I think we ought to make the distinction based on severity / gravity / obviousness of the violation, and whether we're talking about established versus freshly-uploaded images, rather than which of the ten NFCC criteria the image happens to break. Wikidemo 04:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Removing Non-compliance is a very substantial change. I do not think the removal was intentional, but was the result of a misunderstanding. No where was it noted that the 48 hours was related to WP:NFCC, or that it was only added to a FUR CSD because it seemed to work there, but was about more than just FURs. Non-compliance was well advertised for a long time (at least three months, IIRC), and was to enforce our policy when it was being badly abused. Non-compliance was added to deal specifically with freshly uploaded images, and the date was determined by when Non-compliance became active. -- Ned Scott 04:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. What do you think about the change if we can draw a distinction between the issues being discussed and non-compliance more generally, and change the wording to distinguish whether a "fair use claim" referring to the copyright tag versus a non-free use rationale? All of these things (no written use rationale or bad use rationale) are indeed a form of non-compliance with NFCC so they would have to be a carve-out, or a decision that even though the policy allows 2-day deletions, in practice the CSD procedure will only be done on a 7-day timeframe. BTW, by "fresh" I had in mind a rolling schedule by which you either have to catch people in the act of uploading a bad image or, if you let the matter slide for a long time (a week, a month, a year?) it's too late to fast-track. There's not so much punishment / incentive / clean-up value to extra fast deletions if you let them sit around for a whole year before taking action. Wikidemo 05:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Non-compliance, from what I take, is more for the clear issues. As in, if there is no attempt at a FUR at all, for example. -- Ned Scott 05:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarify G4

I think we need to clarify G4 to exclude user pages, and user talk pages. I wasn't aware it doesnt apply to them, so it would help having it clarified on this page. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 21:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Substantially identical copies of userpages certainly qualify under G4. The kind of recreation which doesn't qualify is not substantially identical by any reasonable definition, meaning that it doesn't apply already. Or did someone sneak out that wording again? -Amarkov moo! 01:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
If a user page was MfD'd then G4 should apply. Until(1 == 2) 01:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I think he's talking about things that are userfied. -- Ned Scott 01:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, G4 seems to make it pretty clear that userfications aren't to be speedied under it. SamBC(talk) 02:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe I've ever seen a userfication speedied under G4. I have seen some articles which were deleted and then posted as effectively spam to a user's userpage deleted under it, but that could as easily be done under G11. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD T2

I've added a line on speedily deleting templates that misrepresent policy. We frequently get people who make a "speedy delete" template (akin to the {{db}} series) for things that aren't speedy deletion criteria (the most recent example being Template:Db-pov), and we frequently get "disclaimer" templates (akin to "this article may contain offensive content") violating our policy that Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors, the most recent example being Template:Swear. This is objective, arises frequently, always gets the expected outcome, and not listed here yet. Since in general we already delete such templates with varying degrees of speediness and unanimous or near-unanimous support, it makes sense to clarify that here. >Radiant< 08:46, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Sounds like a useful criteria. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 08:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Agreed, this is a good idea. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I certainly agree with this, however I've changed the wording to "blatant misrepresentations of policy" - a template could be percieved by one editor as contradicting a policy, but unless it's blatant, like the examples given, it should still be taken to TfD. As an example, {{db-shoutout}} has been recently nominated, with the nominator's rationale stating that it cites WP:NOT as a reason for speedy deletion, which contradicts CSD policy, however this shouldn't be speedy deletable as it's not entirely clear, and otherwise just a variation on the A7 template. - Zeibura (Talk) 14:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Given that policy is descriptive of practice, not prescriptive, I think that any deletion of "policy violating templates" should be done through AfD. Consensus can still determine where if anywhere it is placed, and the state of the template while the AfD goes on. A simple short term consensus can place a tag that marks it as depreciated can be placed on it during the AfD if it is deemed appropriate. But just deleting it on sight is not such a good idea. Until(1 == 2) 14:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Please look at this debate. Do you really think that we needed to have a TfD "debate" over this? It is extremely clear: WP:NDT is official policy and says "no disclaimers in articles". This was an explicit disclaimer intended to be used in articles. Why can't we speedy these? This criterion is objective (blatant contradictions of policy get speedied), uncontestable (templates like this are almost always deleted with an overwhelming consensus), nonredundant (there is no other criterion under which you could delete these), and it arises reasonably frequently as Radiant! pointed out. Melsaran 13:03, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I object strongly to this new T2, and I am going to delete it from the policy page until/unless it gains something much closer to a consensus here, and indeed in a wider forum as well. Whether a template "misrepresents policy" is a judgement call that I think should not be left up to one person. I also don't think we get enough of these to overburden TfD, so i see no pressing need for an additional speedy that might be prone to misuse. And I do not think additional CSDs should be added without discussion first. DES (talk) 15:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • You may think so, but in fact templates as described on the page here occur almost weekly, always end up on TFD, and always end up with near-unanimous (or speedy) deletions. This is not anything new, this is merely writing down what already happens. I suggest you check out the TFD archives for discussion and consensus about this. The point is that such misrepresenting templates are actively harmful to the project while they exist. For instance, the mere existence of {{db-pov}} miseducates users to think that POV concerns are grounds for deletion. >Radiant< 15:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • This is why I added "blatant", to make it less of a judgment call. I seem to remember you once pointed out to me the difference between deleting something as "advertising" and "blatant advertising"; this is a similar issue. Questionable ones should be sent to TfD, yes, but {{db-pov}} could hardly be interpreted in any other way. When a speedy template cites a reason which is not a speedy criterion, it should be deleted. As Radiant says, these are potentially harmful to the project. - Zeibura (Talk) 15:55, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment: I've put a neutral note at Wikipedia talk:Templates for deletion#Proposed expansion of WP:CSD#T2 to bring in participants in the TFD process. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

This suggested addition seems redundant to CSD G6. A template that blatantly misrepresents policy, especially a deletion template, can usually be speedied as "housekeeping". After all, the speedy deletion criteria are narrowly defined, and speedy deletion templates should match those narrow definitions. It also doesn't seem like something that arises frequently enough (maybe 2-3 times a week?) to merit a separate criterion. — Black Falcon (Talk) 18:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that this classifies as housekeeping. G6 is too often abused for any uncontroversial deletion, but it should only be for things like merging page histories, moving a page, deleting old temporary templates that have long ago been forgotten, etc. Deleting vandalism is also uncontroversial, yet still we have a separate criterion for it (G3), so it is not housekeeping.
And T2 doesn't really arise frequently, but neither does G5 (created by a banned user while they were banned); if someone creates a perfect article, nothing wrong with it, and a few months later it is discovered that the creator was a sock of a banned user, the article isn't going to be deleted because it is encyclopaedic. Deletions for G5 that couldn't be carried out under another criterion arise even less frequently than T2, I think. Melsaran 18:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree; T2 is/would be useful, and I can't see that it's 'housekeeping'. SamBC(talk) 19:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
"Uncontroversial" surely means the creator of the page would clearly have no issues with it being deleted. If someone creates an attack page, the decision to delete it is hardly controversial, yet the creator might not like it being deleted because they wanted to abuse Wikipedia by writing about how John Q. Doe is an imbecile, even though it violates policy. Similarly, the creator of {{db-pov}} obviously made that page because he wanted POV violations to be speedy deletable, even though it misrepresents policy. If "uncontroversial" means "uncontroversial amongst established Wikipedia editors and administrators", then essentially all speedy criteria are uncontroversial housekeeping tasks - the decision to delete a page is not controversial amongst wikipedia editors, and therefore no discussion is needed. In the context of G6 it must mean something different. - Zeibura (Talk) 19:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I believe that, in cases like this, frequency of occurrence is something of a red herring — things like this need not to exist, and need to exist for as short a time as possible when they do exist. If something like this is discovered, it should be dealt with quickly. At present, it might be seen as acceptable to speedy quoting WP:SNOW or WP:IAR, but it's better to acknowledge that it's a problem and deal with it. Just today, I came across a crazy "editors for deletion" thing that some user had cooked up and represented as policy. I'm sure it's a joke, but it will confuse people and may easily cause problems. Getting rid of the templates for it seems like a sensible reaction. SamBC(talk) 19:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
The template at the top of that page clearly says it's a joke.. - Zeibura (Talk) 19:39, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
It was the use of the EFD templates that I was actually arguing against, and I'm not terrifically bothered about it, just using it as an example. SamBC(talk) 19:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I would support a strictly limited T2 for frequently occurring bad templates such as the "may contain offensive material" ones, or others that come up on TfD a lot with consistent near-unanimous deletes, but "blatant violations of policy" is far too subjective and wide in scope and could easily include many cases you may never have conceived of, such as speedying any template that's speculative (per not a crystal ball), or other things that aren't clearly urgently harmful. Let's be more specific. Dcoetzee 19:43, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
T1 ("divisive and inflammatory") is far, far more subjective than T2. As long as we keep it limited to blatant policy violations, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. Melsaran 19:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
How about saying that they misrepresent policy or imply the existence of a policy/guidelines that does not, in fact, exist? SamBC(talk) 19:50, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's a far better idea! Not violations of policy, but misrepresentations. That's what this criterion was intended for. Melsaran 19:52, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure it said misrepresentations last time I checked... - Zeibura (Talk) 19:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it did, we must've gotten confused at some point... I would, however, change the wording for "particular speedy delete templates..." to "including speedy delete templates...". If a criterion applies, it applies, it can't apply particularly to some things more than others. SamBC(talk) 20:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
(ec) As we recently established in some discussions over A7, speedy criteria can't all be completely objective. We already have G1 (whether to assume no intelligent person could make no sense of something is subjective) G3 (whether to assume good faith is subjective), G11 (pretty much the same kind of wording as T2), G10 with images is pretty subjective, A7 as I said, R3 (assuming something is "implausible" is subjective especially if someone has typed it into the search box) and T1 as Melsaran states above. We can't turn CSD into completely objective prose, as long as it would be clear to all experienced editors what should be deleted, then if it arises frequently enough, it should be added. - Zeibura (Talk) 19:58, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Responses: 1. Yes, T1 is far more subjective, and I have many times motioned for its repeal on this basis, along with A7 and G11. 2. I'm not going for completely objective here, just something that we can reasonably anticipate the uses of. 3. As remarked below, frequently a misrepresentation of policy is something better corrected through editing - or moving - than deletion. For example, "db-pov" could be converted into a cleanup tag like {{new-pov}}, in the style of "This is a new article that may not conform to NPOV policy", the validity of which is more debatable. It seems like we want to capture the sort of things that appear repeatedly as a result of ignorance of policy and precedent, and which couldn't be stripped of their misrepresentation, but I'm not sure how to word this. Dcoetzee 21:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, in the specific case of {{db-pov}}, converting it into "This is a new article that may not conform to NPOV policy" makes no sense as we use the same tags for new and old articles (we don't have a new-cleanup tag either), and the resulting redirect from db-pov would still have to be deleted. This isn't really a valid objection against a new speedy criterion, or you could say things like "we don't need CSD U1, because the user can also redirect the subpages to his main user page". Melsaran 22:05, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Breadth of use Another criterion to consider is how many articles use the template. In most cases this will be a small number, but we do want to discourage people from speedy deleting a template that is no longer consistent with a newly revised policy ... perhaps a template transcluded on hundreds or thousands of articles ... rather than contributing a productive edit to revise the template. Thus, a template should only be deleted via T2 if the number of uses by transclusion is small, say <20; if the template is in broader use, it should be taken to TFD. Does anyone know how broadly the Template:Swear was in use before it was brought up for deletion? According to the TFD, it was not used in any articles (0). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:47, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Well, just because we can delete such templates doesn't mean we should in all cases. It is a general principle that if something can be improved or fixed rather than deleted, the former is preferable. Of course, if we change a policy it makes sense to also change the templates using that policy; I don't think people would seriously delete those. >Radiant< 11:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I changed it into "established policy" to prevent misuse of this criterion. For example, someone may say "okay we're abandoning spoiler warnings", adjust WP:SPOILER accordingly, and then mark {{spoiler}} for CSD T2. We should have these templates speedied only when the policy is stable, and not when it changes every few days. Melsaran 09:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Template proposal

Proposed a speedy template here, feel free to improve on it. Melsaran 10:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

  • I did not find anything major that I would change with the wording of the template. I added a reference to this discussion on the talk page ... I've disliked not seeing origin and discussion references on templates that provide some reasoning and context for their existence and current form. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:22, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Elaboration of CSD-I2: "Corrupt or empty image"

This change results from the discovery of some images that contained copyright infringing material that was ignored by our image renderers. Users of external websites had apparently begun to exploit Wikipedia as a means of storing large amounts of data, not visible to the Wiki engine and thus not under our oversight and control. Basically they were concealing possibly copyright-infringing material, without our knowledge, in image files which were then uploaded to our wiki. In some cases the volume of data concealed exceeded the size of the image by a ratio of 10:1.

This expansion of the wording is intended to permit exceptions to be discovered, documented and defined. For instance some images contain quite substantial metadata related to the original image and the decision on whether to permit such information to be propagated can be decided on an image-by-image basis.

However it's obviousl not in our interests to offer Wikipedia on the market as a free host for arbitrary amounts of data. If such data were to be uploaded to an article, a userpage, of any other page, it would be deleted simply because it isn't what we're here for. This change is intended to close a loophole that has been exploited, exposing us to potential ill repute and compromising our integrity as a free encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 01:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Necessary addition to CSD. People are clearly taking advantage of us as a hosting service for content that could be problematic if we fail to exercise due diligence. Admins should be on the look-out for images that are far larger than the number of pixels it contains. The wording can be tightened up with time if necessary, but our policy needs to enable a proactive stance in dealing with this. WjBscribe 01:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
As a recent example, see Image:Electrophobia.jpg. --Tony Sidaway 01:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Notes for those wanting background: AN/Ibookchan (source of problem)conversation on Durova's talkpage. ~Kylu (u|t) 02:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Although it appears to me that is probably a good expansion, I am somewhat technically naive. Is it possible for someone to upload an image that is larger than the number of pixels would warrent by accident. In other words do some imaging software programs create larger files than others? Dsmdgold 04:18, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
A bot could make a list of images that have an unlikely pixel to size ratio. Until(1 == 2) 04:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Until(1 == 2): Actually, it's easier to have the server just do it in sql. Our good developer friend, in fact, searched for them this way.
Dsmdgold: Small amounts of overage are both usual and expected. ICC profiles, for instance, can take up ridiculous amounts of space. Many of our "suspect images" did, in fact, have several bloated ICC profiles. There's a possibility of stripping ICC data out as images are uploaded, but at some point "acceptable" becomes "unacceptable" and that point we have not yet defined.
There are other options available to the developers, but it's best to let them worry about the software side and let us worry about writing the encyclopedia. :) ~Kylu (u|t) 06:25, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
When this first came up, I looked into having OrphanBot watch for this sort of thing as part of its upload-tagging work. I found that it is not practical to spot these images just by looking at image sizes: the least-bloated of the problem images had a bits-per-pixel ratio much lower than many honest uploads of the same filetype. The best thing to do would be to have a Wikipedia-internal tool (to cut down on bandwidth usage) checking images to see if they've got a great deal of data that isn't image data. --Carnildo 01:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
This seems like an issue for IfD, if only because putting it in CSD will probably cause a lot of DRV's. IMO, FWIW, etc. — The Storm Surfer 21:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
As long as the requirement is that the metadata pertains to the image, rather than some strict size ratio, I think this CSD is in the green. Dcoetzee 22:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Basically there is a limited range of extraneous information that could be expected in an image as legitimate metadata. We could probably sit down and catalog them to aid those who want to write bots to autodetect abuses of the image upload process and tag the bad sheep for deletion. --Tony Sidaway 22:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:BEANS, anyone? If you find one of these images, strip the metadata and contact an admin to delete the old version. I don't object to adding it to CSD, but it just seems kind of silly. -- Ned Scott 23:37, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes but the old version would still be speedied, not put through IfD. bd2412 T 23:54, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Poster Children for CFSD

Please see: IfD for No bush.JPG and George-W-BushXX.JPG and IfD for No Karl Marx.jpg. This practice of photoshopping images with an "X" to turn an image into an opinion (a statement of opposition what the image represents) is, I would think, a clear violation of WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:VER, WP:Reliable sources, WP:Notability, etc.-- in short, a violation of all the basic policies of WP. Pehaps such images belong on the Commons, perhaps not. But as to WP, they quite plainly are original statements of personal POV. I'd be interested in hearing why the CFSD hasn't addressed this sort of thing. Or has this sort of thing already been considered? ... Kenosis 13:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

These are not, IMO, over POV, but over WP:NOT and all the basics of what WP is and is not. Whatever WP is, it is most certainly not a blog, not a forum for personal POVs, not a forum for jokes, original material, etc., etc. The practice of taking an image and simply turning into a statement of "No [what's on the image]", it seems to me, ought be a simple policy matter-- unless it can be shown that the image was already notable as, say, part of an already established campaign of some kind. .... Kenosis 13:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, I see your point, but the IFD is far from unanimous on that. Please see the checklist at the top of this talk page with respect to proposing new speedy criteria. >Radiant< 14:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

db-web

What does "web content" mean? is a web-based email or spreadsheet program, web content? --Fredrick day 16:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

See {{db-web}} for more info. — xaosflux Talk 00:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I've seen it thanks, I'm use it on a regular basis - that's why I'm asking - "web content" seems pretty vague. --Fredrick day 00:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it does say "web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, online game, or similar web content": that is, stuff published on the web.
Web applications are borderline, between web content, software, and (in many cases) companies. —Piet Delport 2007-08-14 01:57
It refers to content that is accessible via the web. All that you need to define "web content" is to define "content". In my opinion, web applications do not fall under this, just as regular applications do not. GracenotesT § 02:05, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I1 question

Is I1 applicable if the two images have different licensing terms. E.g., Image:Rahula-college-crest.jpg (noncommercial and educational license) is requested to be deleted in favor of Image:Rcm-logo.jpg (fair use rationale)? Carlossuarez46 05:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Page archives

I was referencing a discussion held last month at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 20, and I noticed it wasn't listed in the archive nav box on this page. Now, looking at Archive 20's history and content, this archive contains discussion for the period (roughly) 20 June 2007 — 20 July 2007. Since Archive 19 (history) is listed as May 2007 (indeed, it ends at 30 May 2007), I began to wonder where June 2007's archive is. Can anyone offer some insight? BigNate37(T) 21:58, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive20? (note the missing space)
I've been wondering what's up with the archives; looking at the history and prefix index, the above seems to be an accident. —Piet Delport 2007-08-10 12:33

It's all good now. See User talk:Misza13#With respect to MiszaBot II. BigNate37(T) 17:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A7 and schools

I do not think that Non-criteria should be used to exempt specific categories or subjects of articles from speedy deletion. The section, from all the other things in it, plainly lists things that people mistakenly take to be criteria that are not--and, more importantly, there's really only one criteria, A7, that "cares" about the subject of the article. One editor indicated, though, that schools are occasionally being mistakenly tagged under A7, and occasionally even deleted. Given the touchiness of the subject, should A7 itself be reworded to clarify that it does not apply to educational institutions? It seems to me that that would be the more appropriate place on the page to deal with the issue, in any case... although it should probably only be clarified if it really is an issue. --Aquillion 00:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

School deletions are controversial and (at least used to) attract a lot of sporters as well as detracters. Consequently they are not clear enough for speedy deletion. 00:43, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand here, I've A7'd schools. I'll take a pretty tight line on it (if there's even a hint of an assertion, I won't), but schools are an organization and are subject to those requirements. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
While I think that schools should be subject to the same criteria as any other organisation, there is a substantial body of opinion that all secondary/high schools (and above) are inherently notable, and this means that all such deletions are contentious. This is less of an issue for primary/elementary and middle/junior high schools. Not sure how it could ever be worded though. Personally, I think it's high time there was some sort of consensus-based guideline for educational establishment notability, but I believe this has failed miserably in the past. SamBC(talk) 02:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Exception for talk pages

I restored an exception for speedying of talk pages: "It contains deletion discussion that is not logged elsewhere". In such a case it should not be speedied (best solution would be some 'move and archive by a bot').-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  23:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Where is the discussion that led to the removal of this exception in the first place? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
None. It was only very briefly absent when Radiant was "deverbosifying" the wording. See here. I'm sure this was an honest mistake by Radiant. Kudos to Piotr for spotting that this had happened. Carcharoth 01:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree, an honest mistake. Thanks. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:35, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, yes, but it seemed like an unnecessary clause to me. The reason it's there is, to my knowledge, because three or four years ago there was no centralized AFD forum yet for deletions. I can't think of any examples where this clause would apply; nowadays every deletion discussion is logged at the xFDs. >Radiant< 11:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
    • It happens frequently with speedy deletions. After all, the speedy deletion directions state that if the author disagrees with the speedy tag, they should apply a hangon tag and explain why on the talk page. -- JLaTondre 11:36, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
      • But that's not "deletion discussion", it's not the reason this clause exists, and it does not help us to retain that. Educating novice users about our processes is best done at their talk page. A deleted page with a talk page saying "this should not haev been deleeted because it was graet!" doesn't help anyone. >Radiant< 12:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
        • Not every such discussion is like that. I have actually seen some (copyvio & notability) that have substantive discussion. Also, there still exist some old xFD discussions on such talk pages. If you want to argue we don't need to keep them, that's fine (I am actually not that concerned whether they're kept or not), but arguing that we can get rid of this clause because no substantive deletion discussions exist on talk pages is simply wrong. -- JLaTondre 12:32, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Um, there is also the fact that the old discussion on talk pages has not all been deleted. In fact, some of the old orphaned talk pages with VfD discussion copied over there, got deleted by careless admins. See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Old deletion debates being deleted?. Admittedly, the people that did those deletions probably didn't even read the clause here at CSD, but the clause here will stop some people making the same mistake. See Wikipedia:Archived_delete_debates/2003 for a longer list of sometimes orphaned talk pages with VfD discussion. See here for one of a series of edits made by Fuhghettaboutit to try and prevent this in the future. I think the CSD clause should remain. It does no harm, but should probably have a footnote explaining that this is mainly for historical reasons. Carcharoth 09:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

G11

Why is G11 a general criterion? Why isn't it listed at Articles? It would seem to me that there's no other namespace that frequently contains advertising/spam pages than the article namespace. It's the same with non-notable bios etc (A7). Melsaran 16:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess it could be found on pages from other name spaces, but you do bring to comment an interesting point. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 16:08, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Userpages often get deleted under G11, and any user has the potential to go into any namespace and post blatant advertising. The wording on the template is just a bit misleading where it says "would require a substantial rewrite to become an encyclopedia article". I've been thinking for a while that there should be a parser function on that sentence so that it only comes up when the template's placed on article pages. - Zeibura (Talk) 16:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Or we could use an {{{article}}} parameter... -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 16:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I've seen plenty of G11-level content in userspace. It could also conceivably be used to speedy any images used in a G11 article (though they'd potentially be speediable under G6 anyway). EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:25, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
How would a parser function work anyway, in this situation? It would have to determine what is an article is and what it isnt. i have some knowledge of the pfs, but I'm not sure if this can be applied.... -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 16:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
That would be very easy, actually. Just use {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}||would require a substantial rewrite to become an encyclopedia article}}. There are many examples of this simple mechanism, e.g. Template:Unverified (becomes {{nosource}} when it's placed on an image, else {{unreferenced}}). Melsaran 17:59, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
EVula, well, I guess that most promotional images are logos etc (fair use), and are therefore deleted when they're orphaned for seven days. And it's true that many advertisements are placed in userspace, but I have also seen a lot of non-notable MySpace bands that got deleted in the article namespace and were recreated in someone's userspace. Melsaran 17:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Nonnotable != blatant advertising, though. As you observe, A7 can only apply to articles, as notability guidelines only apply to articles. Blatant advertising could appear anywhere, though, this is content like "Get Free RingTones Now At www.spywareulike.org!!!!!!", which should not be in any namespace. Additionally articles which only contain prose like "We are a company who strives to offer the best service to its customers"... can also be deleted under G11.
As for parser functions, I'm not sure how it'd work, but I've seen some templates like {{uncategorized}} where the namespace name changes depending on where it's placed. - Zeibura (Talk) 17:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the image could be deleted via the normal unused Fair Use methods, but (a) it has to sit around for seven days, and (b) someone has to tag it before the seven day period begins (either the deleting admin has to tag it, adding one more thing to do, or wait for a bot to find it, meaning that it could conceivably be around for several weeks after its parent article was deleted).
We're not a bureaucracy; if an image is only being used for a spam article, just delete it and move on, no point in following process for the sake of following process. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't really see the need for G11 outside of articles. In the instances mentioned, it is individual content on pages, not pages themselves, and deltion of the offending content is appropriate, not deletion of the page. Subpages devoted only to advertising do occur, but they usually would require a discussion, or be speedy-deletable on other grounds. Other cases occur, but not that frequently. I have yet to see an image that is necessarily only advertising--it would depend on the use. DGG (talk) 01:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I do, these show up in categories, rarely templates, occasionally in images, and often on user pages. A user page is given a lot of leeway but your user page is not your advertising space either, user pages that are nothing more than a description of the products available from a place with links on how to get them or a link to your ebay auctions is properly G11. Carlossuarez46 18:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I've happily deleted userpages that the user was treating as a billboard (and often they either have no other edits or their only other edits were to try and spam it into mainspace first). I also have seen advertisements and the like posted as images, though that's probably not as common. It's even conceivable that a category could be used as an ad, though granted that's much less likely and I've never seen it, but if someone gets the idea it still needs to get nuked posthaste. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
An advertisement anywhere needs to be deleted right away, it does not matter which namespace it is in. ((1 == 2) ? (('Stop') : ('Go')) 13:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
which is why it needs to stay in the G categories. Carlossuarez46 22:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of schools

this was posted simultaneously with the preceding section by coincidence
A section of the CSD policy was removed recently regarding the inappropriate use of CSD for school articles. I have restored the section (removal diff — restoration diff). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

As I noted above--I can see a clarification on A7 (which I've replaced the section with), but I don't think there's any consensus to exempt schools from any speedy criterion aside from A7. In any case, please discuss it before re-adding the section... it was added and then re-added without discussion. Clarifying A7 is trivial (since I don't think it's ever been intended to apply to schools), but exempting any class of articles from G4 in particular is extremely controversial, since it would effectively make them impossible to delete under any circumstances so long as a single editor objects. --Aquillion 00:42, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree somewhat - in that the language used before was much too strong and did not make specific reference to A7 - but when it comes to emphasizing that A7 shouldn't be applied to things it doesn't specifically list, it bears repeating. Dcoetzee 01:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
It is completely unacceptable, Aquillion, for you to exercise WP:BOLD on Wikipedia policy as you have here. I would ask that you restore the policy page to its original form until a consensus is reached here on what the wording should be altered to. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've had the use of WP:BRD advocated to me by admins and other established editors on policy pages many times. Removal of the exception doesn't seem to be bold, because as far as anyone seems to be able to tell, it was added boldly in the first place. So, be bold, see it get reverted, then discuss. Or see someone being bold, revert it (if you disagree), then discuss. SamBC(talk) 03:26, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, Ceyockey, you're misinterpreting events. Look at the logs; the section I removed was added without discussion just a few days ago, by an editor who noted that he was being WP:BOLD when he added it. I almost immediately reverted, since it was a major change and I had the objections noted above and in my edit summary. It didn't occur to me that anyone would be reckless enough to re-insert such a major change again with no discussion, after someone had objected to it; but when I noticed it had been put back in a second time, I removed it again, starting a discussion on talk and suggesting what I think is a reasonable compromise. It is the addition of this section that was bold; I was the one restoring the page to its original state, while you have been boldly pushing in a new section that has never had any discussion until now. If you insist, I will remove the edit I made to A7, but it was the addition of the new school exception that was bold, not its removal, and I certainly don't think that should be put in a fourth time until there's been at least some discussion and sign of consensus. Again, exempting any class of articles wholesale from G4 is a major change, one that could undermine the entire AFD system by effectively making AFD results nonbinding... I don't really see the need to address schools specifically for any of the criteria except A7. --Aquillion 03:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Removed again. I've often seen schools deleted under A7 in practice, and have very rarely seen such a decision DRV'd (much less successfully so), which really doesn't lead me to believe there's consensus for any such restriction. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:04, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
First of all, the non-criteria section is supposed to be non-normative, not policy, so there's no need to edit war over it. Second, A7 does not apply to schools - regardless of how it's misapplied. But schools can still be deleted under lots of other criteria. This is the state of things and we shouldn't misrepresent it. If you want to add schools to A7 (like enough people have attempted to do recently) that's another matter. Dcoetzee 06:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Groups and organizations have always fallen under A7, including nonprofit and governmental organizations. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I suppose that's interpretation - is a school a "group"? I didn't think so but I can see how you might. Dcoetzee 06:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Back when CSD A7 was first expanded to cover more than just individual people, the proposed wording of the expansion was "small groups of people" — the idea being that if Jack the high-school kid was speediable, then Jack the high-school kid and his brother Joe or Jack's group of high-school friends should not require the full AfD treatment either. Of course, A7 has been further expanded since then, so I don't really know if this expansion of the meaning of "groups" has actually been discussed and agreed upon, or whether it has just gradually crept in. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:57, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
  • It is hardly "completely inappropriate" to edit a policy page (if it were, we would permanently protect all of those). I don't think there's actual grounds for giving schools, or any other class of article, some kind of "exemption" status to speedy deletion, and I doubt that this is what actually happens in practice. >Radiant< 13:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I would agree. The only claim I have heard widely against speedy (or other) deletion of schools is for secondary/high schools, or for colleges/unis if you're using the North American meaning of school, and that's that there's a presumption of notability. This isn't a matter of consensus either way, of course, and is regularly debated seriously, if lightly, at AfD. I'd support it for unis etc, personally. History seems to suggest, though, that any sort of notability consensus for schools (not colleges/unis) is virtually impossible. SamBC(talk) 13:38, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
      • If there is no consensus on notability then to avoid uneven results in this case we should not speedily delete. Nearly every school and college in the US will have some notable graduates who are, or could validly be, profiled in Wikipedia biographical articles: future business leaders, sports personalities, entertainers, criminals, politicians, what have you. As the social networking sites demonstrate, people are extremely interested in this information. Even a small school will over time graduate thousands if not tens of thousands of students. That is no small group of people. It is sad but likely true that schools in poor areas with high minority populations generally have fewer famous graduates. But their educational mission, function, composition of people is the same. Who is to tell those people that their school is less notable than a school in the rich part of town? That seems uneven and unfair. If you must be deleting something to clean up Wikipedia, for heaven's sake don't go after the schools! Wikidemo 17:22, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Quick Question

What's the official process when an editor attempts to circumvent CSD? Long story short; I created a userbox ages ago. I moved it to my userspace per WP:UM and had the original template deleted. An editor has recreated the original userbox (at a slightly different url). I tagged it with the appropriate speedy-delete header and informed the editor. The editor removed the template and continued to edit the template. I've warned the editor for this behaviour but given that the editor is carrying out this practice for a number of related userboxes against the advice & warnings of other editors I don't believe he/she is inclined to listen or stop. Is this something to take directly to WP:ANI? Thanks AulaTPN 22:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Upon further investigation, this user is way more disruptive than I had previously thought. Have referred straight to WP:ANI. AulaTPN 23:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD I8

During a WP:ANI discussion of a bot function that is being tested at the moment: User:Betacommand/Commons, see User talk:Betacommand/Commons, the question of I8 came up. Some people argued that images on en-wiki should be kept in parallel with the Commons images. One comment was:

"When an image is deleted from here, editors can no longer include it on their English Wikipedia watchlist and administrators can no longer protect it. Changes to the image obviously affect our product but aren't in our recent changes list, aren't in our administrative logs. If we find recent changes, watchlists, protection, etc. to be useful features, why are we systematically destroying them in regard to free images? Deleting the image also introduces confusion about what is the proper place to discuss the image with regard to its inclusion in this encyclopedia: at the commons talk page or at the talk page of the deleted image page here? Commons isn't helped in any way by deleting the image from Wikipedia, so the effort we put into deleting images that have been moved to Commons is pretty counterproductive. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)" [2]

So what are the arguments against this? Apologies if this has been discussed before, but the points raised seem quite valid. Carcharoth 09:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

If we keep local copies of images on Commons, many of them will inevitably end up outdated as new revisions are uploaded to Commons. Or, worse yet, some editors from en.wikipedia may not realize that there's a copy on Commons, and thus only upload their changes here, leaving the version used by all the other projects outdated. Or both may even happen to the same image, causing the local and Commons versions grow increasingly out of sync.
By retaining local copies of Commons images, we're essentially creating unnecessary forks, with all the problems those tend to cause. We're also cutting ourselves off from any improvements that people on other projects might make to the Commons versions. Of course, this matters less for images that are pretty much finished and unlikely to change, such as most high-quality photographs. It's more relevant for things like SVG illustrations, where multiple editors can and often will make gradual improvements.
In any case, the fact that changes to Commons images don't show up on local watchlists is a technical limitation, and one which ought to be fixed. In the mean time, I don't see this minor inconvenience as sufficient to justify the creation of what amount to local content forks. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I've also heard Commons offers those free account things too, complete with watchlist. Get 'em while they're hot! Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:19, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
You have only hypothetical disadvantages, and possible fixes, to be weighed against actual disadvantages. Even allowing that the hypothetical disadvantages to this project are real, there seems to be no reason why we could not monitor commons, and download improved versions of duplicates. All we need to do that is a way to flag duplicates and a bot or two to mark the ones needing updating. That sounds like less work than the current system. As for the commonsised ones, well, everyone uses deletion summaries, so undeleting them would be easy enough. Regarding those free accounts on Commons, they also give away free admin buttons with every 200 edits, or so it says at Commons:Administrators#What_is_expected_from_an_administrator?. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:24, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
The propagation across all project of any change made on Commons is described as a feature but in my view it's pretty undesirable. The effect is to put a large volume of changes to the English Wikipedia outside the administrative structure and policies of the English Wikipedia. It's true that we ensure that any improvements will be applied here, but we also ensure that any deterioration is applied here. This project has more than sufficient critical mass to maintain its integrity and act as a monolithic unit, rather than depend on another project that respects neither our policy or our community consensus. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Just throwing this out there, but it seems like a good technical solution would be to have "meta-image" pages here that fulfil all the roles of pages in the image: namespace apart from holding the image, or some subset thereof, but refer to the image on the commons. Just a thought. SamBC(talk) 18:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Could the solution be: disable all image uploads to enwiki? This would save litres of admin time, ensure that all images were free and everyone would always have the latest revision. The discussion location would also be clear. That some fair use images would subsequently be excluded appears to be decreasing in importance as the Foundation becomes more <....> about them. Splash - tk 20:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Commons admins are generally okay about undeleting images that were incorrectly deleted or are appropriate free images and were somehow deleted. Why not just keep a gallery of images uploaded here so that, even if they are uploaded to Commons and subsequently deleted, you will be aware of the deletion? --Iamunknown 21:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Commons admins

Here's a radical idea. I think what is needed is for commons to be administrated by admins from all the projects, rather than have its own administrators. It makes no sense to share the pictures, but to have separate bureaucracies. In other words, Commons bureaucracy should be a meta-bureacracy. Any admin on any project using Commons images would have admin rights on Commons. Would that have a bat's chance in hell of flying? Carcharoth 00:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It would probably not have a chance of flying. Recent policy decisions at Commons have strengthened the idea of "adminship for active editors"; administrators of other projects are not necessarily active at Commons. --Iamunknown 02:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I doubt it would go over either. Many admins on many projects really never deal with images, copyright issues, and so on, I don't think Commons would be comfortable with them being able to just jump in anytime they want with admin privileges. Commons also has different policies and practices than many other projects, so admins from others may not even know what's going on there. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Not likely to pass. As it is, administrators can be shared between projects (I'm an admin both here and on Commons), but it should not be an instant switchover of permissions, just as being an administrator on another edition of Wikipedia means that they can be an administrator here. If someone wants to administer Commons, they should invest the time to get involved there. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Of course that's not quite analogous, given that no part of the English Wikipedia currently resides in another language Wikipedia. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
It isn't the language part that is supposed to be analogous. It's the fact that each site, even if they're in the same project (ie: the English Wikipedia compared to the German Wikipedia, or Spanish Wikinews compared to Greek Wikinews, etc.) is different from the others, and experience on each individual project is needed before becoming an administrator there. Commons is no different in that regard; just because you're an administrator on an edition of Wikipedia doesn't mean that you're qualified to be an administrator on Commons. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The point is that different editions of Wikipedia don't overlap, whereas many parts of Commons are also parts of the English Wikipedia. I wouldn't expect to be able to protect a page on the German Wikipedia; I'm not an admin there. But I might expect, as an English Wikipedia admin, to be able to protect images included in this encyclopedia, such as [3]. The broader point is that, to the extent that Commons is an independent project, it becomes less useful as a warehouse for the other projects. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but if you have interest in administering Commons, why don't you actually participate there? :P That's my point, really; if an admin here can't be bothered to actually edit there enough to successfully achieve the admin bit, they obviously don't have the need for it. Me? I have the need, and so I put in my time there to become an admin. Easy breezy. The requirement is 200 edits; it's enough to show that, yes, you are active on Commons, and serves to acclimate you to the differences between the way Commons operates and the way Wikipedia operates (keep in mind that Commons is used by more than just Wikipedia; Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikisource come to mind, and the differences between those five projects are significant). EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't have an interest in administering Commons; I just want to protect [this picture which appears in Apple. (Or block people who are edit warring over it, etc.) It's part of the English Wikipedia; the fact that it sits in Commons should be irrelevant. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The image you're talking about, Image:Koeh-108.jpg, hasn't had anything happen on it since the 29th of January. There's no reason to protect it, and "just because you want to" isn't a valid argument (ironically, that bit about protection is common to both Wikipedia and Commons. Nothing quite as fun as shooting holes in my own argument...) EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I thought it was rather obvious that I was speaking hypothetically, but perhaps not. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I figured you were, but it's largely irrelevant (in my mind, at least). If you want to be an admin on Commons, become active there. Being an admin on another project is very different from being an admin on Commons, and to just automatically grant adminship has just as much potential for harm as the existing system. The fact that Wikipedia uses Commons is irrelevant. Pretty much any vandalism on Commons can be reverted without the admin bit, and non-admins are welcome to use the existing systems to request protection or report repeat offenders. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The fact that Wikipedia uses Commons is quite relevant -- the fact that en.wp policies and administrative rules aren't applied to the images we move to Commons is what makes Commons such a poor provider of services. As the editorial standards and policies of the two project continue to drift apart, that will become an increasing problem. My overall point is that maintaining this one-way relationship is not worth our trouble. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
What policies and administrative rules aren't applied? The same rules about free images apply there (even more stringently, actually) as they do here.
I think you've got a rather limited outlook on the "one-way relationship" itself; Commons shares its images with all the Wikimedia projects. Allowing any admin from any project to do whatever they please there is not particularly constructive; too many cooks in the kitchen, shall we say.
A similar situation exists with Meta-Wiki; all of our Help-namespace pages come from there, making us dependent on Meta's content (not to the extent that we depend on Commons, but it's still comparable, and both are multi-language projects). Should en.wiki admins automatically be administrators there so that we can preemptively resolve any content disputes on Meta, despite the vast differences between the projects (both the scope and the structural organization)? EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Possible examples of advatanges and disadvantages of Commons

I was doing some image-related work today: see Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article#Images in TFA archives (redux). While there, I found some examples of images that were moved from here to Commons, and later deleted, and examples of images that were deleted on Commons. Because many of the links were in protected TFA subpages, they weren't removed by the Commons delinker, which was unfortunate. Some may also be examples of Commons enforcing its more strict policies. Some may be examples of Commons picking up problems that Wikipedia did not. I didn't have time to research them fully, but here are the examples in case anyone wants to investigate further and pronounce a verdict on whether moving the images to Commons without keeping a copy here was ultimately helpful or not. Carcharoth 21:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The only ones above that I would really query are: [13] - "no source" (I wonder how similar this is to the later Image:Milgram Experiment.png?) and [14] - where the deletion log simply says "deleted". That latter case has to be possible the single most unhelpful deletion log summary I have ever seen. It's a deletion log. I know the image has been deleted. What the deletion log summary should be saying is why the image was deleted! (Using 'what links here' reveals Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Image:1anschluss.gif). Carcharoth 21:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

  • I believe that the (high traffic) talk page of "speedy deletion policy" is not a useful place for discussing this, and suggest that you start this thread elsewhere. >Radiant< 12:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Media in unacceptable file formats

Do files not in a format specified by WP:IUP#Format fall under one of the criteria? Would it be I2? --- RockMFR 07:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Depends on how easily they can be converted to a useful format. If it's something really obscure, it would qualify as an illegible format because it's practically impossible to tell the difference (and note the recent fad of using Wikipedia media files as a web storage area). >Radiant< 09:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD I8 addition

I would like to propose adding the following line to CSD I8 (in light of various discussions on WP:AN/WP:AN/I):

If an editor requests a copy of the image remains held locally, for whatever reason, then please allow it to remain. Server space is cheap.

Thoughts? Objections? Comments? Neil ム 12:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Very bad idea, runs counter to WP:OWNership, and to the very idea of "free" content, and the server space argument is a red herring and appeal to emotion. Or, to put it differently, your personal objection to the Commons site, or your unwillingness to check your watchlist in two different places, does not entitle you to additional editorial control over images you have uploaded at some point in the past. >Radiant< 12:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    No objections to images being copied to Commons. Retaining a local copy as a courtesy if asked ought not to be a big deal. And where did I say "retain editorial control"? Neil ム 14:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    What's the purpose of the local copy, though? For some reason, I've got it in my head that non-admins can't upload images over Commons images (ie: some random person can't upload a shock image with the name of Cowboy Mouth performing.jpg because the name is already taken at Commons). I could be wrong about that, though... EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    You'll have to ask a non-admin, I don't know if they can or not. The purpose of the local copy is so I can keep the version being used on en.Wiki watchlisted without having to jump across different accounts or watchlists. If and when single log-in comes about, then I might change my opinion on that, depending on how it actually works. Neil ム 15:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    Only if two copies were on en.Wiki, surely? It's more like a transwiki than anything, but where the article that were transwikied were still suitable for use on Wikipedia (can't think of a single example, and that's where the analogy breaks down). But comparing articles and images is like apples and oranges. Neil ム 17:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  • This makes more work for admins doing speedy deletions, for editors transwikiing images to Commons, or for editors tagging images which have already been transwikiied to Commons. My suggestion for those who object to their images by transwikiied to Commons, then deleted, is to maintain a gallery of uploaded images, and then you will notice when an image is missing. Then, go to Commons:Undeletion requests and ask that it be undeleted. Commons admins have, in my experienced, undeleted most things. And if they decide to not undelete an image because it is unfree, it probably shouldn't be there... (and in that case they may undelete it so you can transwiki it back here with a non-free license). --Iamunknown 20:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    If I want to undelete them, I can undelete them myself. I shouldn't have to (and the majority of users are not able to). Neil ム 21:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't follow your logic. The majority of accounts both here and at Commons are not sysop accounts and thus the majority of editors cannot undelete anything themselves. So they ask an administrator, whether formally or informally, to undelete whatever needs undeletion. It is not an arduous process, and the request to undelete an inappropriately-deleted legitimate free image is rarely denied (I am aware of no such failed requests for undeletion).
    • My points about the extra work for administrators, transwiki-ers, and image taggers on this project still stand. Dcoetzee raises interesting points about synchronization and the effect on other-language projects. I had not considered that angle, but it is sensible.
    • As with Carcharoth below, I do understand that it can be frustrating to lose editorial control over free images, but I think that duplicating images would negatively effect the Wikimedia community of projects, and I don't think that this proposal constitutes good policy. --Iamunknown 01:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
The proposal is a bad idea, as is the concept of keeping duplicate images on En and Commons. The latter needs to be avoided for several reasons. Someone operating on only one wiki may easily update one image but not the other, particularly as part of a batch edit. Depending on which copy is updated, either En or all other wikis won't receive the changes. It's also easy for a Commons editor who doesn't speak English to forget to check En. Comments about the image and updates to the metadata and license should only need to be done on one page, not many. This problem is compounded when many wikis having local copies. Local copies are an endless source of maintenance trouble. Dcoetzee 22:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that having local copies is more trouble than it is worth. But equally, I can see how it is frustrating that editorial and admin control over images appearing on Wikipedia is lost when those images are on Commons. Imagine if the template namespace was a separate wiki, and anyone changing things on that wiki changed the appearance of the transcluded templates on Wikipedia (similar to the Help namespace example that Evula pointed out). Also, to repeat what I said above, it makes no sense for the Commons bureaucracy to be separate from the projects that it shares images with. I would want admins on Commons (and maybe meta as well) to be approved by the entire community of projects that both Commons (and meta) serve, rather than risk the culture on Commons and meta diverging from the culture of the projects they serve. Carcharoth 01:55, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I suppose you could try and motivate a substantial amount of enwiki users to make an account on Commons and participate in the local equivalent of RFA, that'd get you the input. Perhaps we can have a template like the one on WP:BN that instead lists all people nominated for adminship on Commons. Or Meta. Or both. >Radiant< 07:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

C1: Empty categories

C1 currently says "Empty categories that have been empty for four days." How can we check to make sure that they have been empty for 4 days? As it stands, I can't find any mechanism that lets you do that. Can I suggest that we either remove the four days bit, or set up some sort of system whereby categories nominated for deletion are held in some sort of speedy deletion limbo for 4 days (similar to how things like Category:Images with the same name on Wikimedia Commons are done)? Mike Peel 09:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I use two mechanisms: (1) bookmark the category and check in four days whether it's still empty, and (2) if the category was recently created, check whether 4 days have elapsed since the date of creation. If either of these criteria are met, it's generally safe to delete. Given that relatively few categories are tagged/deleted per C1 (and most cases are completely uncontroversial), I'd prefer to avoid a "limbo"-type system. — Black Falcon (Talk) 18:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I've never been comfortable with C1. I think that it would be easier to slap a prod tag on the category. When the prod expires, if the category is empty, then delete it. --After Midnight 0001 01:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD I7

Why is I7 a criteria for speedy deletion? Many of the fair use criteria (particularly 1 and 8) are extremely subjective, and seem more appropriate for community consensus to decide via IfD than a single administrator. Evouga 18:52, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I7 is only a criterion for speedy deletion if the rationale is blatantly invalid. Otherwise, the image is tagged and left for 48 hours for the uploader to contest or explain before it can be deleted. - Zeibura (Talk) 18:57, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
But if it's contested, and the single administrator does not share the opinion of the contesting editor, the image is still deleted without community consensus-forming. I would think IfD would be the appropriate place for such discussion, instead of the inevitable deletion review. Evouga 20:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
My view is that if contested, it should always be sent to IfD. Most of the time, they're not contested, and there really are too many of these images for IfD to handle. - Zeibura (Talk) 21:05, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Many of them are also uploaded by "drive-by" users, the use is clearly invalid, and the uploader is never to be seen again. There's no need to clog up IfD with those, that's exactly the kind of thing speedy is designed to prevent. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

CSD I6 and I7 harmonization, notification requirement

These officlal policies are inconsistently worded, and incorrectly summarized at [[15]]. I6 is written with no stated requirement for notification instead weaseling with "Offending images can be tagged with /{/{s ubst:nrd/}/}, and the uploader notified with /{/{subst:missing rationale|Image:image name/}/}. ".

I7 is clearer, stating "may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader ".

Problem: As written, I6 lets bots and drive-by taggers not notify uploaders and delete images with relative abandon. The deletions are of course closely followed by missing image bots deleting links to the now-missing images.

Solution: I6 should read "shall/must be tagged" and "uploader shall/must be notified", or rewritten to mandate same. Consensus? --Lexein 07:55, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with stating it must be tagged and the uploader must be notified, if you think that's clearer (although in practice that's already the case), but what bot has not been notifying uploaders? BetacommandBot is the main one, and it actually notifies not only the uploader but also leaves a notice on the talk page(s) of the article(s) the image is used in. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Is A7 (non-assertion of notability) an exclusive list?

As currently written, A7 says "Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject."

I had an A7 declined because it was for a comic strip, with the comment that it was "technically not covered". As a technologist, I get confused mighy quick - it seems that the criterion as worded consists of two (non-matching) lists, which are intended to be exhaustive in what they cover (leaving bands and clubs in an indeterminate state). To draw a ridiculous example - this would mean that if I wrote an article about my cat, it wouldn't be eligible for deletion under A7, because a cat is not listed.

I see two ways to make A7 clear:

  1. Reformulate as "An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. No other types of articles are included.". One list, clear that it's exhaustive.
  2. Reformulate as "An article that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject, and where the importance or significance is not immediately obvious. Such articles may be about a real person, group of people, band, club, company or web content, or other subjects." A general rule, with a list of exemplars.

What do people think? --Alvestrand 08:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It's very much intended to be exclusionary, for a number of reasons previously discussed, and would not have been supported in the first place without that quality. The first of these would be a reasonable clarification. Dcoetzee 09:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
The purpose of speedy deletion is to make certain that the other deletiojn processes are not overloaded with things that are always deleted. Until PROD and AfD are overloaded with articles on people's cats there does not need to be a speedy criteria to cover them. Comic strips, unless they are published only on the web, are not covered by A7. Dsmdgold 19:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
CSD A7 has always been meant to be strictly limited in scope. What may make it somewhat confusing is that the scope has been expanded several times: it used to be limited to biographical articles (and IIRC was titled "vanity biographies" at some point), but these days companies and websites are included too. You're right that an article about your cat, your house, your WoW character or your left big toe isn't technically speediable under this criterion; this is not a major problem since these are not as common — even though they do come up from time to time — and because we still have PROD and AfD (and WP:SNOW) to deal with them.
That said, it has also always been common for people to try and stretch A7 to cover any content they consider obviously non-notable. So far, at least, there does not seem to have been consensus for changing the scriterion to actually say so, and sometimes one just needs to gently remind overzealous NP patrollers of it. It's not like we're forced to keep those articles — they just need to be handled by one of the other methods listed above. (I just sent a made-up-one-day religion tagged as A7 to AfD instead. It'll sit there for five days and then get unanimously deleted. Maybe PROD would've sufficed, but I wanted to get a decisive outcome.)
Bands and clubs, by the way, count as groups. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks - with two people backing this, I feel comfortable that we should make the change in my first version. I'll add some text to the "explanations" page - if that's uncontroversial, I'll come back and modify the rule. --Alvestrand 05:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand, I'd have no problem simply having it state "An article which does not assert the importance or significance of its subject", period. That should be the first thing to any bit of writing—why should the reader care in the first place, what is this actually about, what does it affect? (And I probably would've speedied the comic strip, if in all reality it made no assertion. If we're going to get technical, most comic strips are commercial in nature, so they could fall under that.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The problem with this is that, for highly technical/specialist areas, it is sometimes unclear what an assertion of notability is. SamBC(talk) 22:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I experienced the same thing. I proposed an article about a random free internet game that didn't assert significance for deletion[16], but it was declined because "products aren't speediable under A7". I don't really understand why not. When an article doesn't assert any notability, A7 should apply for everything, imo. (the article in question will soon be deleted after an AfD, by the way) Melsaran (talk) 22:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
As to specialist areas, I'm not really sure about that. Know what a lepton is? I imagine a lot of people don't. Yet, I can say it's one of the fundamental elementary particles which make up everything in the universe. Even if you still don't know anything else, you now know it's important. What about some piece of art that's considered the foundation of a major painting style? Well, say that, there's your assertion! No idea what germanium is? It's one of the fundamental chemical elements. I fail to see how such assertions can't be made even in specialist areas. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I suppose "products" would be a reasonable addition to A7, because these are created by a group or company, and the group or company can be deleted if it doesn't assert importance. >Radiant< 09:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree that "products" should be added. I just had an editor challenge a speedy I deleted. He said that he could not source the information and could not assert notability but felt it should be re-created because it technically did not meet the criteria. Is there consensus to add products to A7? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JodyB (talk • contribs) 20:24, August 23, 2007 (UTC).
I am somewhat torn. On one hand, ad-like articles about products are very common and are one of the most speedy-resistant type of crap articles out there, so it would be nice to have a weapon to use against them. On the other hand, more than once I have been confronted with an article about a product and I just didn't have the knowledge to say whether it was notable or not. Sometimes the article gets eventually deleted, sometimes it gets kept. It's just hard to tell.
I almost sort of feel that a better approach when confronted with an ad-like article about a product would be to aggressively strip out ad-like information, and then prod it. I don't think it hurts Wikipedia that much to have an article floating around for awhile that says, "Product X exists" even if product X is non-notable. The major hurt is when there is an article that says, "Product X will slice, dice, chop, and cure both hangovers and cancer." That's what I have a problem with... --Jaysweet 20:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I understand what ou are saying. I do not think speedy is the place to determine whether a thing is notable or not. Its the assertion of notability that's the issue. For example, I am not an expert on hip-hop. But I can tell of someone is asserting that it's an important article. I am bothered by articles that simply report the existence of some product without the assertion. --JodyB yak, yak, yak 20:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Unless there is some evidence that these types of articles are beginning to overwhelm PROD and AfD, then products shold not be added to A7. Dsmdgold 02:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
One of the most common things I see at prod and AfD (and speedy, too, for that matter) is product articles. Generally, I'll figure that if a product article does not assert significance, it must be an advertising attempt, and G11 it, but I think it would make it more clear to add it to A7. If an article on a company must assert significance to remain, why shouldn't an article about a product it makes? Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
"Product" is a bit of a vague term. I wouldn't want to see it added to CSD. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:26, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
We can define it precisely if needed. --JodyB yak, yak, yak 21:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps "commercial product"? Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:23, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
A product is more or less defined by being commercial, so that is not much of an improvement. If it's necessary to add to A7, I would prefer to more clearly eliminate from the expansion articles like basis swap. A key point is that items not specific to a company or brand should be excluded. I would also prefer for intellectual or cultural products (e.g. books, movies) to be excluded. Christopher Parham (talk) 21:31, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
I would consider basis swap a concept, not really a product, much in the same sense that a book is a concept, but Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a product (though it's of course an unquestionably notable one.) In the same vein here, the basis swap is a financial concept, though a specific offering of such from a specific company is a product. Also, products can be noncommercial. Debian is a software product, but it's not intended for commercial profit. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:42, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Commerce doesn't have to be for profit (how do we know Harry Potter is intended for commercial profit, one might ask). Given the audience of Wikipedia I would expect that free software is one of the main areas where people are adding articles on topics some might regard as not meeting the notability requirements. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:05, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, absolutely (though it doesn't seem to get a free pass, I've seen plenty of free-software AfDs result in deletion, and plenty of spamvertisements for this or that project tagged and deleted under G11.) That's why I'm more for saying "product" in general, which doesn't require an analysis as to whether it's commercial or not. Also, remember preventing A7 just requires an assertion of notability. If there's even some idea as to why product X could be notable (first of its type, high sales, etc.), it's a complex case and should go through prod or AfD instead. This is mainly for articles written on some crap you'll see on the half-hour ads if you flip on your TV at 2:30 in the morning, but which aren't quite enough advertisement to G11. And from what I've seen, I think some corporate marketing people are wising up and learning just where that G11 boundary tends to lie. This would stop that type of game-playing. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:11, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the significance of books is in large measure independent of factors like high sales. We wouldn't particularly expect someone writing an article on a book to mention its sales figures. To address the problem you made about marketing articles, I would much prefer simply to push the boundaries of G11 without actually changing anything in the criteria themselves. Practically, this makes it much easier to overturn bad or disputed results at DRV. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
(Arbitrary unindent) I have a problem with basing the notability of books on sales, and would have a problem with the inclusion of any books, under a "product banner" or through any other means at all, in A7. In some cases, the mere claim that a book is by a certain author would seem to be a claim of notability to those familiar with the field, but to those outside the field, would seem to say "this is book by some guy." For example, the earliest version of Stranger in a Strange Land read "Science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein." Does this have an assertion of notability to someone who knows nothing about science fiction? Dsmdgold 14:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

A7

"Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If controversial, or if there has been a previous deletion discussion that resulted in the article being kept, list the article at Articles for deletion instead."

This is being used to delete content based on a 100% subjective criterion. The articles should be flagged, or an Internet search done to look for references. Things don't have to be the biggest, oldest, or smartest. Thats for inclusion in Guinness World Records. See Talk:Edison Medal --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:55, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is subjective to an extent. But if I write an article saying my dog is lazy and sleeps all day would you suggest keeping it? Of course not. Unfortunately, pure objectivity is impossible else a quick python script could handle the tasks. The goal here is to write a useful encyclopedia not a collection of non-notable material. If we do overstep, any single editor can take the delete to the wider community at deletion review. --JodyB yak, yak, yak 21:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thats why established content should never be deleted by any single person. It should only go to AFD for consensus if its more than 24 hours after creation. You could have a chance to speedy delete on creation and in the following 24 hours. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Original research

I propose a new addition. Articles which do not have at least one secondary source within the article, either as a footnote, reference, or external link, should be speedily deleted as they are origional research.--SefringleTalk 03:14, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

A lack of sources does not inherently make an article original research. There is no objective way of determining that such an article is genuinely original research. SamBC(talk) 03:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
According to WP:OR, origional research is "is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories" I think it is pretty obvious that if the article doesn't have even one source it is origional research.--SefringleTalk 05:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
How about the hypothetical article: "George W. Bush is President of the United States."? Obvious original research? I'm not seeing it. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:12, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't even able to get that to go over as a prod-style deletion (see WP:PRODUS), you might want to reopen discussion on that or something similar though. There did seem to be some support for userfying totally unsourced stuff after a period of time to the person who created it, I think that might be workable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
A lack of sources is an indication that sources should be added, not that the article should be deleted. How can we improve a deleted article? EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, sometimes an article is best improved by deleting it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Heh, that much is true, but completely wrecks my argument, so I'm ignoring it. ;)
(seriously, though, whether an article needs to be deleted or not is not dependant on whether it has sources or not; an article with crappy sources can still be deleted, and an article on a notable subject that, somehow, doesn't have source may still be kept) EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Though if the topic is notable, it should be possible for someone to easily source it. The unsourced version is crap, and should be deleted, and someone who actually can source it, then should re-create and source it.--SefringleTalk 05:00, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
We don't differ in opinion in that sources should be added to an article if they can be found. Where we differ is that I see no reason to just suddenly delete an article just because it has no sources; why make someone rewrite an entire article when simply adding a properly filled-out {{cite}} would suffice? EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Quite often there are no sources to cite something, because the creater just made it up. If unsourced material can be removed from an article, why can't the entire article just be removed?--SefringleTalk 05:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Unsourced material shouldn't be removed, at least on a general scale, without making some effort to find sources, unless that material is extremely doubtful or potentially harmful. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
so we are supposed to just assume that whoever created the article actually knows what the truth is, and that they didn't make it up? How can wikipedia be a verifiable encyclopedia when the content cannot be verified because it is origional research?--SefringleTalk 05:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I can easily see that being well covered by existing criteria (A7 comes to mind). We're dealing with hypotheticals, however; can you provide an example of an article that would fall under your proposed addition that wouldn't be covered by an existing one? (I'm not asking for a real example, though that would be nice; if you can conjure up an example, that would suffice for a better discussion) EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
By random article, some examples are The Boy Who Found Fear At Last, The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981 film), St. Peter's Secondary School, Huntingdon, and City of Greater Dandenong.--SefringleTalk 05:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The fourth item is inherently notable and therefore ineligible for deletion (by your proposed CSD or any other deletion process). The other three... notability is more of an issue than references. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
However it is also origional research, and would probably be better if deleted and later re-created by someone who cited the sources in the article. The other three do lack evidence of notability, but wouldn't be deleted by A7, because while non-notable, they do assert the importance or significance of its subject.--SefringleTalk 06:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
They are unsourced claims, which can be tagged with {{fact}}. Just because something is unsourced doesn't mean it is actual OR; it just means it is unsourced. Whether it actually is original research is something that has to be determined on a case-by-case basis; it's not an automatic thing. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) And nothing is inherently notable. Everything's eligible for deletion, whether or not that often happens in practice. I've seen colleges and secondary schools deleted (generally small ones, granted, and most are indeed kept, but it does happen). Notability means there's a significant amount of reliable secondary source material about something, it doesn't matter what it is. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Are we forgetting the spirit of "no original research"? The fourth revision of the page is revealing. The content policy "no original research" was never meant to be a reason to delete what we are here proposing be deleted; it was meant to be a reason to either cull content or to delete "crackpot articles". An article with zero sources is not necessarily a "crackpot article" and thus should not be speedy deleted as "NOR".
  • An important question that surrounding this issue is: Why? Many articles that lack sources, yet are not a candidate for speedy deletion due to the other criteria, are appropriate for Wikipedia, even with a broad interpretation of A7. All they need is sources or, at least, a single source. So, just add a source, or perhaps counsel the editor who created the article. Or notify a relevant WikiProject, or a familiar editor you know deals with the relevant subject matter. Or, if you feel that the article should be deleted, prod it. Very little on Wikipedia needs to be so rushed (no deadline), and there exist many venues for improving articles that ought remain. --Iamunknown 07:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Actually, I'd tend to agree. I proposed that prod-like process for that very reason (the only difference between it and a normal prod is that it can't be disputed for any reason, but can be stopped by anyone who adds a relevant source), I don't think most unsourced articles need to be removed at once, unless they're a BLP. I do think, though, that verifiability is one of our more under-enforced policies, and that we should to do something to make clear sourcing is a requirement, from the first edit that creates the page all the way up through FA, not a nicety to be gotten around to sometime. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Indeed, while "no original research" should not be a criterion for speedy deletion, "verifiability" could be a reason to delete some things. While I do not necessarily think things should be rushed on Wikipedia (barring a copyvio, BLP-vio, attack page, etc.), scalability is a serious issue, and creative and scalable solutions (like prod was for AfD in early 2006) to solving the issues of unsourced articles are needed. It is good we are all engaged in discussion, even if this particular suggestion is ultimately rejected. --Iamunknown 20:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Not to get unnecessarily pedantic, but yes, certain things do have inherent notability. Any country or city (of reasonable size) is notable enough to be in the encyclopedia, no questions asked (several other things are as well, like animals or anything on the periodic table for example). EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

The list provided by Sefringle is a gross misunderstanding of WP:OR (NB. spelt original research). The Boy Who Found Fear At Last, The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981 film), St. Peter's Secondary School, Huntingdon, and City of Greater Dandenong - all of these, except the school, are verifiable by the external link provided. Please, please remember that the external links often act as a de facto source for verifying the content of the article. As primary sources, they cannot be used to source claims about the topic of the article - that requires secondary sources. But the primary sources can verify the existence of the topic, and basic and uncontroversial facts about the topic. Carcharoth 16:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

PS. Your original statement said "or at least one external link" - so why did three of your examples contain external links? Carcharoth 16:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I changed my original statement to secondary source. If there are only primary sources, it is pretty much OR anyway.--SefringleTalk 22:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
You are misunderstanding the differences between the fact-checking part of verification and the correct attribution of opinion part of verification. The presence of only primary sources is in no way a good indication that something is OR. You need to learn the difference between verification of facts using primary sources (not a problem), and sourcing of opinion and claims to secondary sources (also OK). What is bad is when people use primary sources to back up a claim they make. The correct method is to find a secondary source to provide the opinion, and to paraphrase them. And the spelling is 'original', not 'origional'. Carcharoth 23:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If we had a pristine encyclopedia and someone wanted to add an unsourced article, maybe. But as things stand a vast number of legitimate legacy articles with no sources. Speedy deletion isn't a good way to attack a requirement that perhaps half or more of the articles here would fail. You get the "turning Wikipedia into swiss cheese" problem. Wikidemo 18:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

So it is better to have crap on wikipedia, where because it may or may not be verifiable, but rather made up, and is unsourced, rather than speedy delete it. No wonder why wikipedia's critics say wikipedia is an unreliable source; little gets deleted, even if it is garbage!--SefringleTalk 22:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
It's a very odd bias around here, that I've seen. I understand that when I submit work here, it is not mine, and it may be altered or even cut by others at will. That's fine, that's a standard part of the editorial process, and that includes cutting. Indeed, the best editors are always prepared to cut heavily, if need be. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Hang on. Seraphimblade, do you seriously agree with the examples Sefringle used. Sefringle was asked for examples. I have looked in detail at all four: The Boy Who Found Fear At Last, The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981 film), St. Peter's Secondary School, Huntingdon, and City of Greater Dandenong. They are all real, and verifiable. The fairy story is public domain and can be found online here (among other places). The film is for sale at Amazon: here. The city has a website here. The school has an OFSTED entry here. Using words like 'crap' and 'garbage' to include these articles with ones that are crap and garbage is irresponsible. Until Sefringle comes up with better examples, all of which will probably fit better under existing CSDs, I cannot take the ides of a speedy criteria for so-called unsourced articles. Particularly in light of the failure to understand how external links can provide verification. Carcharoth 23:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
  • As an example, I fixed the verification concerns at St. Peter's Secondary School, Huntingdon, by adding an external link. Please don't confuse verification with original research. WP:OR is primarily aimed at crackpot theories and Wikipedia editors inserting their own speculation. Verification applies to speculation and opinion, but it also applies to basic facts. Once the basic existence and notability of an article has been established, concentrate on cleaning it up and improving it, not trying to apply speedy deletion criteria. Carcharoth 23:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Cacharoth, I don't agree with speedy for unsourced articles period. On the other hand, I don't agree with them sitting around in that condition forever either. We should give some time for sourcing before deletion, it shouldn't be a speedy, but on the other hand there should come a point to say "Time's up, if no one's found anything yet, find the sources before writing next time." There's a middle ground between "shoot on sight" and "leave around forever," and that's what I support. As to yours, I don't just want to see verifiability. Just because something exists doesn't mean it should have an article, there must be substantial independent and reliable source coverage, not just verification that it exists. I verifiably exist, but I don't want to see Seraphimblade (Wikipedia editor) written anytime soon. Or in other words, verifiability is a necessary condition for establishing suitability for an article here, but it is not a sufficient one. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
      • The problem is how do we do that? Do we propose a policy like all articles tagged with unreferenced for over a year get speedied? PROD won't work in case the author is watching, just waiting to remove a PROD notice, and the author may or may not add sources when he removes the notice. The current afd system has its own problems, and quite often origional research is kept without sources being added. Getting anything deleted through an afd is hard these days, no matter how bad the article is. There has to be a better solution to dealing with articles which are completely original research.--SefringleTalk 04:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes. It takes too long, often origional research is kept because of comments not based on the actual content of the article, and it just wastes everyones time when stuff that should obviusly be deleted has to be voted on. Then there is WP:SNOW, another obstacle to origional research being deleted.--SefringleTalk 05:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Give an example of something that went to AfD that you would have preferred to see speedied or PRODed. AfD does have problems, but seriously, just use WP:PROD to see if anyone objects. If they object, AfD should work. If that fails, try and understand why people have argued for something to be kept. Your spelling is still origional research, by the way. :-) Carcharoth 07:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, how about that school there? If all there is is some "OFSTED report", which I understand exist for all schools in those areas, it needs a merge to a parent district article (if such exists) or deletion. The OFSTED report, being a government requirement, is not a nontrivial source, any more than my birth certificate is a nontrivial source about me. Everyone has one. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
By all means PROD or merge it, but please make clear to Sefringle that this is not an example of original research. The founding in 1870 is unverified, but if a source can be found, this could be of interest. What if, for example, the founding of the school occurred before the district was created? What then? Where does the history of the school go? Carcharoth 08:15, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Here is another example: Marceline, Missouri--SefringleTalk 03:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

That page does not constitute original research, nor is it entirely unverifiable. The demographics can be verified by checking the 2000 United States census, and a simple Google search reveals many possible sources. All one—either me, you, or someone else—needs to do, is add inline citations. --Iamunknown 04:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
If you look carefully in the text, you will see that it has inline references: {{GR|1}} and {{GR|2}}. But these aren't called out in a "references" section. --Alvestrand 06:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I also reject this proposal, I think that Sefringle meant like obvious WP:NOR infected essays which I am seeing alot on. The now deleted About Polish Houses is a perfect example. That article I speedied as copyvio, but if it wasn't a copyvio, it was going to be let rotted in prod for five days. I support a speedy critera for that but not for articles that is unsourced only. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 14:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

csd:A7 do be removed or severely conditioned

While created with good intention, and not after long discussion, I see lately that this criterion is becoming wildly abuzed by a swarm of fresh admins who mistake their own ignorance for artcile notability. In my wildest dream I could not imagine that IEEE lacks notability, but lo! For someone it is so. And someone else think he is right. Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Unwarranted_deletion_spree_of_Butseriouslyfolks.

Someone well versed in policies, please introduce reasonable safeguags. Of course, IEEE will not suffer from this kind of activity. I guess it is beyond dignity of IEEE fellows to fight teenager's arrogance. But the image of wikipedia suffers. And potential experts are drawn away with muilitant disrespect. `'Míkka 21:35, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

The fact that someone misused or misunderstood it does not indicate there's anything wrong with it. That's rather like suggesting we change our guide to editing because someone ignored it and vandalized instead. That issue was already corrected anyway, at what point can we lay off BSF, figure it for a good-faith mistake, and move along? We got DRV if someone screws up. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
This is one instance, likely brought about by ignorance of what exactly the IEEE is. The correct solution to misapplication of a policy is not "ZOMG BURN TEH WITCH!", however satisfying that is. -Amarkov moo! 00:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd rather not send every article here (44 at the time of this edit) to AFD or let them sit around for 5 days as a Prod. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.Z-man (talk • contribs) 00:52, August 27, 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Radiant, just because an admin did some bad deletions, he needs to be taught why, if it's obvious just undelete and if it's borderline take it to WP:DRV, also I reverted your wording change, that needs to be discussed here. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 15:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

A7 guideline clarification

I suggest the highlighted clarification.

people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject, neither directly nor by verifiable association with notable subjects.

Rationale: A7 has become one of the major route of misuse, as I see from this talk page. Speedy Deletion is especially destructive, because it does not show in the watch list,the authors do not have neither time not even a short notice to defend the page.

It seems that quite a few admins don't exercise due diligence in verifying possible notability of the subject, judging from their limited knowledge. I observed this for quite some time, but, understanding human nature I was't worried much: if a subject is notable then someone else will write the article back into wikipedia.

But a recent event pissed me off tremendously: an admin deleted a huge number of IEEE-related articles writing "notability not asserted". For authors of these articles the very word IEEE is notability, and it even didn't cross their mind that they have to enter some popularity contest so that the article wins the hearts of teenage wikipedia admins. What is more while undeleting them, I notice that some of them were deleted multiple times! Indicating that this is not only laziness and ignorance of a single steel broom here: it is a widespread attitude of "IDontLikeIt".

Therefore I propose this extension, as a reminder for due diligence. Please notice that "verifiable association with notable subject" is not a criterion for survival of the article: it is a red flag for more careful attitude for deletion. And in most case a direct association with notable subject is a valid reson to have the content merged/redirected. `'Míkka 15:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

  • As above, if one person misuses policy (as alleged here), that is grounds for educating that person, rather than for changing the policy. Aside from that, it is not a given that notability is associative; for instance, a celeb's neighbors or personnel are not generally suitable topics for an encyclopedia. >Radiant< 15:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • As I explained, the problem is not in educating of single person. The problems are:
      • Speedy deletions are difficult to detect
      • Multiple persons are abusing thius criterion
      • Yes celeb's personnel may not deserve a separate article, but it is not for a single person to decide.
      • Yes celeb's personnel often deserve redirects. Celeb's hairdresser may be quite notable. A good hairdresser is a celeb in themselves, be advised to know.
      • Yes for purposes of speedy deletion notability is associative. Speedy deletion is primarily for obvious cases of blatant abuse. Any possible traces of notability are not obvious and to be evaluated by broader consensus. It is very clear that the notion of notability is not a straightforward consensus.
      • If many people complain about this criterion, may be it is time to chnge it rather than brush aside complaints as a nuisance.
    • My change does not introduce a new criterion or change of rule. In merely highlights a common sense. `'Míkka 16:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • A couple of points:
    1. We don't change policies and guidelines because of one incident, generally speaking.
    2. If that association is mentioned in a reasonable way, it will be an assertion of notability.
    3. The underlying problem, that crops up every so often, is a very unsubtle interpretation of what an "assertion of notability" is, and over-broad application of A7 (awards aren't covered by it, for sure).
  • So, yeah, I oppose the change. SamBC(talk) 16:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    1. Can you please read before writing? this is not one incident. `'Míkka 16:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    2. Obviously not everybody clearly understand this, as multiple instances show. Therefore the suggested clarification. `'Míkka 16:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    3. Exaclty for this reason unexplained, vague and subjective declaration of non-notability cannot be criterion for speedy deletion. `'Míkka 16:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Only one incident (involving several pages, but only one admin) seems to have been mentioned. Declaration of non-notability is not a criteria for speedy deletion, the article failing to assert it is. If a person with a reasonable but non-specialist education can't understand from the article why something might be notable, then that's seen as a good reason. In the fiasco that prompted your suggestion the admin ran wild for no good reason, IMO, but the rules being different wouldn't have stopped them because they already went beyond the rules. SamBC(talk) 17:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
        • I repeat this is not a single incident. The rules being not different, but clarified would prompt him to double-check. I may easily believe that seeing 30+ articles of "IEEE something" an unqualified person may think "wow, what a shitload of promotional crap!". But if someone reasonable bothers to look into IEEE article, they might stop to think twice about deletion. My addition is precisely a prompt to look into evident places to check for notability. "The article failing to assert" is a dangerous phrasing: it it doubles the POV judgement: My whole point of addition is that association with notable subject is assertion of some degree of notability, which is subject to community scrutiny, rather than single-person judgement.. The preamble to WP:CSD specifically says Where reasonable doubt exists,.... My addition specifically says that association with notable subject is an immediate cause for a resonable doubt. `'Míkka 17:25, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
          • I agree with SamBC. Deleting pages about awards is already beyond the rules. An award isn't usually considered a club or company. A7 only applies to "people, groups, companies and web content". If it is used for anything else, it should be undeleted immediately (and I've done so in the past). How would you suggest we get rid of pages like this or this (temporarily userfied as examples but were originally created as articles). Should we waste the time of other editors at WP:AFD, should they fill up the PROD categories (generally around 100 pages in each daily category already). Finally, if any criteria is misused (or "misinterpreted" to AGF), it is not A7 G1, patent nonsense. And on a side note, I would also recommend getting rid of that "teenage wikipedia admins" age discrimination crap. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 17:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
        • "teenage wikipedia admins" is not "age discrimination crap". It is a psychological fact that various age groups have different behavior pattern and priorities, and while they have the same rights in wikipedia, the rules must be formulated in the way that they will be correctly interpreted both by "teenage wikipedians" and "senile wikipedians" (which would be about me, and i am well aware who i am). `'Míkka 18:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how this is possibly workable. Find me one article subject here which is not associated with Earth, atoms, the universe, and/or humanity, all very notable subjects. Notability is never inherited. Seraphimblade Talk to me 03:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

A7 and archiving the hidden process and transparency in the process

  • Well, one of the problems with Speedy Delete is there is no record of it. All evidence of the event is erased, and no one is notified, so its very difficult to document abuses. I only found out that the Edison Medal was deleted when my redirect to it was flagged for deletion, and that transaction was recorded in my watchlist. When I tried to recreate the article, the only information I got was "no assertation of notability". That recreation message is a recent innovation, all other information on speedy delete, is not archived. There is no central repository to peruse to look at what has been speedied and determine whether they were justified or not. It would help if there was a page that showed what was speedied, and the lede paragraph from each article. Everyone can review the AFD process, no one can review the Speedy Delete process. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Your statement on this issue is a little flawed. I don't think it's due to your misunderstanding, but rather due to a simplification/misrepresentation: everyone can review the AfD process, and everyone can also review the CSD process. Only administrators can verify that the deleted content correlates to the comments surrounding the deletion thereof in either case. One significant difference is that the comments surrounding deletion are harder to find and far less verbose in the case of CSD. Another is that CSD takes minutes to hours while AfD takes days, so in-progress AfD nominations are easier to notice when you aren't looking for them. BigNate37(T) 17:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • (edit conflict) Well what do you want? We can't keep the content around, that would defeat the purpose. Just as with WP:PROD, the only record is the deletion log. Most speedy deleted articles are short stubs, so keeping the intro would mean keeping the whole thing. There are also GFDL problems with copying content then deleting it and it would make speedy deletion take twice as long as now. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 17:59, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • The initial idea of speedy deletion was to deal with very evident cases. The "notability" A7 was accepted by after a long and painful debate. Wikipedians were eventally pissed off by a flood of articles about "me and my puppy" or "my boyfriend is great". Unfortunately, it seems that A7 now interpreted way too broadly. `'Míkka 18:01, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    At the moment there is a place when you can look for speedy deletions: it is deletion log. I guess peope versed in mediawiki can write a program which can filter this log for various types of deletion. `'Míkka 18:01, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Looking at this page . . .

Looking at this page, I'm glad something good came of my error. I'm the "happy idiot" (Mikka's words) who deleted the IEEE-related articles. I'm just popping in to add this possibly relevant topic to the discussion. Maybe the answer to the A7 debate can address some of the concerns expressed there. Enjoy, and let me know when you're done so I can follow the right procedures! :-) -- But|seriously|folks  18:24, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, "presently unsourced" has repeatedly been rejected as a speedy deletion criterion. It is even often rejected at {{prod}} or AfD. I don't support Mikka's proposed addition to A7, but I think your interpretation of A7 was a bit too broad. Most of the articles you deleted were journals and awards. Although an argument could be made that the online journals constitute 'web content', the articles on paper journals and awards did not fall under any of the categories covered by criterion A7. In general, I think speedy deletion is problematic when it comes to handling a relatively large group of related articles. That's just my perspective on the issue. — Black Falcon (Talk) 18:43, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the page reference. It seems that there was some good work underway there.--JodyB yak, yak, yak 18:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

A7 reformulation to make exclusivity clear

Following up on an earlier discussion, and to make sure that I'm representing consensus clearly, given the amount of other debates on A7:

I propose to reformulate A7 as:

Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. No other types of articles are included; they should be addressed using Proposed Deletion or Articles for Deletion instead. If controversial, or if there has been a previous deletion discussion that resulted in the article being kept, list the article at Articles for deletion instead.

This makes it clear that the list is exhaustive, not an example. OK? --Alvestrand 19:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, that ought to be excessive verbiage, but it apparently isn't, as lots of people don't seem to get it until it's spelled out. Quite possibly worth it. SamBC(talk) 23:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll admit right up front, coming in when I did and missing the history of A7's development, that I wasn't aware of these limitations. And if I missed it, then casual users may as well. So the clarification is appropriate. -- But|seriously|folks  23:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I think simply putting "No other types of articles are included" would suffice, as the remaining explanation applies broadly to all criteria for deletion and are already explained at the top of the page last I checked. Dcoetzee 00:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I would very much like to see "No other types of articles are included" added. The suggestion to send other types to PROD or AfD is a good idea as well. The final sentence is a bit redundant, but I would like it anyway. I see no problem with saying the same thing over and over, since many people only skim portions of the text, and may miss the statement elsewhwere on the page. Dsmdgold 03:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem here is that you're running into a common fallacy: if the problem is that people are breaking rules, adding more rules is not going to help. In other words, excessive verbiage. >Radiant< 09:34, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
  • And the opposite fallacy is: Why have rules? People break them anyway, so lets not have any. The answer is in the middle, have well thought out rules, and as people exploit loopholes, close them. And add checks and balances when one person exploits existing law to benefit their personal agenda. If a small number of rules were needed, we would have found the optimal number in the first 2,000 years of written history. We could have stopped at the 10 commandments. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:40, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the rules are considered canonical, and once an interpretation is formed, it is followed enthusiastically, sometimes with unintended consequences. As it reads now:

No assertion of importance/significance. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not state or imply why its subject is important or significant. Note that this is distinct from questions of verifiability, notability, and reliability of sources. If controversial, or if there has been a previous deletion discussion that resulted in the article being kept, list the article at Articles for deletion instead.

Article can, and are being deleted, no matter how well referenced they are to reliable media, becuase they aren't stated to be the biggest, the best, the smartest, the oldest. As it reads now you can speedy delete anything that doesn't have Guinness Record puffery in the Lede, and no due diligence is required before deletion, and no oversight is required. Why cant we have more oversight? Perhaps the tagger should not be allowed to be the deleter. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we're confusing Webster's notability with Wikipedia Notability. It doesn't have to be the most superlative anything. All it needs is a couple of citations to independent, reliable sources to satisfy WP:N, and WP:V for that matter. If it does not cite any sources, it really should have some explanation of why it is Notable. An unsupported statement that it is the biggest or most something isn't my first choice, but I consider that at least an assertion of significance / importance, so that satisfies me from an A7 perspective.
Incidentally, several of the IEEE journal articles I reviewed during my now-famous deletion spree asserted that their subjects were highly ranked in a list of journals cited by others, and I deemed that an assertion of importance sufficient to survive even my incorrect understanding of A7, so I did not delete those articles. I bring this up as an example of another good way to demonstrate Notability. -- But|seriously|folks  18:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, my adding "or implied" tried to address this. When you think about it, all notability assertions are implicit. Hypothetically, imagine a tiny stub article that simply says "The Elk Creek Diversion is the primary source of water to the town of Sugar Beet, Tennessee." Or how about this one: "Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is a reservoir in Yosemite National Park...[with] a capacity of 360,000 acre feet (440,000,000 m³)?" Notability asserted? Not directly, but certainly implied in both cases. To actually write it out seems silly you would have to say something like:
...which is a lot of water...
...water being one of the primary things needed to sustain life...
...which is an important subject to people...
...especially as part of a town's water supply...
...thereby making such a large quantity of water notable...
I agree that "implied" is a slippery word that is hard to define in this case. But that is what we are going on, so we might as well say it like it is. The confusion here, and the reason a lot of good articles are needlessly deleted, is that the issue is complex, not just the wording. That and some over-zealous administrators. In the past week I've run across several red links and dead spaces where real articles should be, and no way to know what was in them. That gets annoying, far worse than any annoyance I find from non-notable and vanity articles Wikidemo 18:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Geographic features, highways roads, schools, TV shows and a host of other categories of subjects have attained a de facto exclusion from WP:N. If it were up to me, this would not be so, but deletion of any of these subjects is controversial, so they can't really be speedied (except for copyvios and attacks). -- But|seriously|folks  20:06, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with the proposal, it's an invitation to game the system: you can speedy the nn band, but you can't speedy their albums, so with lots of albums bluelinked, the band is now apparently notable. Ditto bios & their works, essays, books, and even dogs. An essay I wrote couldn't be speedied, but my biography could be, and if I wrote an article about a fictitious Paco Suarez, his made-up bio doesn't get speedied either. I find it odd that my bio would get speedied but my dog's bio gets five days of fame. I wouldn't want WP to go to the dogs. Carlossuarez46 02:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I added "No other articles are included" to the rule. The mention of PROD seemed a little controversial, so I didn't add it. --Alvestrand 05:52, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarification re the revision on A5

I noticed at some point in August (I haven't traced the actual date) that the criteria for A5 had changed. It currently reads: "Transwikied articles. Any article that either consists only of a dictionary definition, or that has been discussed at Articles for deletion with an outcome to move it to another wiki, after it has been properly moved and the author information recorded." On July 31st, the criteria read, "Any article that has been discussed at Articles for deletion, where the outcome was to "transwiki" – move the article to another wiki – and where this has been properly performed and the author information recorded. Alternately, any article that consists of only a dictionary definition, where the transwikification has been properly performed and the author information recorded." I used to somewhat routinely walk dictionary definitions through transwiki and, once they'd been transferred, nominate for speedy deletion via the 2nd provision of A5. As it is written, A5 seems to suggest that articles can be nominated for speedy deletion simply because they are only dictionary definitions, but this is contradicted by "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"" under Non-Criteria further down. I'd be grateful for clarification on the policy. I could not find sign of a discussion of the change, so I'm unsure the rationale. Please excuse me if I'm missing the obvious. :) --Moonriddengirl 00:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I have modified the criterion so that "dicdef" is no longer a speedy deletion criterion (so many supposed dicdefs are actually articles about concepts or end up becoming disambiguation pages) unless it is accompanied by an AfD consensus to transwiki. Let's see if it sticks. — Black Falcon (Talk) 03:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually I disagree with that. Moving information to another place is not deleting information. It is a well-established principle that Wikipedia Is Not A Dictionary, whereas Wiktionary is. The transwiki-to-wiktionary process is perennially backlogged, and necessitating sending all of that to AFD is really not going to help. >Radiant< 09:36, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your responses and for clarifying. It was the intention I was wanting to explore, to be sure that I understood the application. :) I believe that my uncertainty with the re-write rises out of the simple use of a comma before the parallel relative clause "or that has been discussed." Since relative clauses are not separated by commas but independent clauses are, it left me uncertain if there were meant to be two criteria here: (a) dictionary definition; (b) dictionary definition discussed AfD, transwikied. I've always been uncomfortable with A5 anyway because the corresponding template specifies AfD--and, in fact, the table below sets out "Transwikification completed (applicable only if transwikied per an Articles for deletion discussion)." I've used the template otherwise, but added a note when applying it. Recently, I've been PRODding instead. I try to be scrupulous about the use of speedy deletion. So next question, then: is there a reason that the template for A5 only covers AfD and not routinely transwikied articles? --Moonriddengirl 12:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
    • That would seem to be an oversight. The A5 template is not used all that often, because most people who do the transwikiing are in fact admins and don't need the template. >Radiant< 13:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Who's that edit warring on the policy page?

My 2 cents: the additions being reverted and re-added are indeed not supposed to be consensus-issue changes. However, inadvertently or not they do change policy. The mere existence of evidence that consensus has changed should not be enough to save a once-deleted article from speedy deletion. "Clear and present danger" is a very specific but somewhat misplaced standard that is not currently part of the test for which articles are subject to deletion. And although it is fair to point out that speedy deletion for failure to assert notability is a different question than whether an article is in fact notable, it is not entirely "distinct" as the revised version seems to show. So based 10% on it being a non-consensus policy change even if accidentally, and 90% on its being weakly written, I support removing this section to talk about it first.

Anyway, the whole policy page needs a good copy edit. Can we do all that calmly instead of getting the page edit locked again? That doesn't do anyone any good. It's not going to kill anyone if the changes remain for a few hours or a day - or better yet if whoever wants the changes can be a little more patient. Thx, Wikidemo 17:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I would support reverting these changes so we can sensible discuss them seperately. SamBC(talk) 19:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
In terms of the speedy criteria, notability is not a speedy criteria. It never has been, it never will be. A7 is so widely misused that this needs to be spelled out. If you can think of a way to make this clearer than the current version, go for it, but the basic fact is wholly within consensus.
As for the "clear and present danger," that could be changed to a citation to BLP if you preferred - to my mind, clear and present danger left some useful wiggle room. In either case, the core issue needs to be there - when in doubt, don't delete.
As for evidence that consensus has changed, yes - speedies are for things where the consensus is inevitable. Not for things where consensus is probable. The instances where this applies are few and far between, but in those cases abuse of speedy procedure is deeply harmful.
In all of these cases, however, go ahead and tinker the wording - I remain convinced that all three of these reflect practice, and if the wording indicates otherwise, go ahead and change it so that the meaning comes through more clearly. But to say "discuss on talk first" when the edits are merely clarifying existing practice is silly. Phil Sandifer 21:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
My preference is to reject the first change (re. stifling discussion) because I don't favor making policy pages longer by adding editorials or commentary. If you can capture all that by tweaking a phrase, adding several words, or rewriting a sentence somewhere, that's more like it. I would accept the second change but replace "there is evidence that the consensus...may have changed" with "it appears that the consensus...may have changed" - to get rid of the implication that any evidence at all removes it from speedy deletion. And I would accept the third change but possibly change "or imply" to "(directly or indirectly)." To clarify, you could change "This is distinct from the questions of" to "This is a different matter than non-speedy deletions based on..." Wikidemo 23:07, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I still think "When in doubt, don't delete" is a key phrase - as evidenced by the fact that a variation of it appears in the nutshell (But not, curiously, in the main policy.) As for the other two, I've no objection to your changes - why not go make them? :) Phil Sandifer 23:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, the first change ("Speedy deletion exists to save time debating...") is redundant to the rest of the header; the second change ("[G4] should not be used if there is evidence...") seems redundant to the DRV wording. The one I think is most problematic is the third change (adding "imply" to A7) because most of the criticism against A7 is that it would be subjective, and this change makes it more subjective.
  • Aside from all that, the apparent problem (that some people are too trigger-happy with deletion) stems from the fact that not everybody follows the rules strictly, and by definition adding more rules is not going to help against that. >Radiant< 07:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I think the first change is very important given that "when in doubt, discuss" is in the nutshell but not in the policy. In the second case, I am loathe to make DRV a necessity for undeletion. Part of that is that I continue to find DRV a deeply broken page, part of that is that I hate to make process mandatory. If it looks like consensus might have changed, don't speedy - that's straightforward, as you should never speedy unless you're sure you'd have consensus. I can see the issue with "imply," but on the other hand, it is important to distinguish between A7 and "Delete nn." A7 is not about "is not notable." This one, yes, is a problem with people not reading the rules, but it is becoming such a widespread problem that I think something needs to be done. Phil Sandifer 12:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
      • However, it would seem that plausible ways for an article on, say, a band to assert its significance are listed at WP:MUSIC. And so forth. Unless you wish to have each individual admin use their own opinion about what is or is not a valid assertion of importance, it would seem relevant to point people to the established guidelines on the topic. That is not to say the lists given in said guidelines are all-encompassing, but they're at least a start. >Radiant< 13:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
        • A7 has never been permission to speedy because of failure to adhere to notability guidelines, though. Yes, that leads to the problem of subjectivity, which is why a lot of people were wary of A7 to begin with, but there's absolutely no consensus that "fails MUSIC" is a speedy criterion, and, I suspect, an active consensus to the contrary. Phil Sandifer 13:54, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
          • That is precisely not what I said. >Radiant< 14:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
            • Can you think of a phrasing that makes clear that this is not a question of notability as such, then? (This has always been my problem with A7 - it uses the loaded "notability" but doesn't really mean it as such - I tried to address that in my original change, which was to change the whole question to "Article that does not answer the question 'why should I care?'" That's the real point of this one - an article that leaves out "who cares" is not an article we want to keep.) Phil Sandifer 15:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
              • It's a middle ground. Obviously, failing WP:MUSIC (and so forth) does not mean the article is an A7 - but neither is WP:MUSIC entirely irrelevant to A7, because (regardless of the name of that page) it contains accumulated examples of assertions of significance. In other words, if people (or novice admins) ask "what is significant for a band", the obvious place to point them to for examples is WP:MUSIC, and telling them to use common sense from there, since it's not the Ultimate Exhaustive List. >Radiant< 15:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
                • I'm still not 100% convinced - let's say that the article asserts something that falls just short of WP:MUSIC - a 20 minute feature on national TV, say. Is that a speedy? Should we even leave that into the realm of judgment? Maybe you could propose some wording that captures what you're trying to say while leaving the "don't speedy because of lack of notability" point? Phil Sandifer 15:42, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
                  • I'd say a 20-minute appearance on national TV is enough of a potential assertion; I certainly wouldn't A7 that. I think, though, that MUSIC contains some good guidelines as to what in most cases constitutes an assertion of notability. Most bands I see up for A7 are clear cases, containing something like "The band will be releasing their demo tape in..." (On an unrelated subject but a gripe of mine, I wish more people would remember that while the notability subguidelines contain things that are assertions of notability, they don't contain things that are proof of notability, only significant sourcing verifies that someone's actually taken note.) Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I have two comments and a question. First, I don't think it's necessary to state that G4 "should not be used if there is evidence that consensus on the deletion may have changed". If consensus truly has changed, deletion review or discussion with the deleting admin should result in undeletion. Second, I agree with Radiant's removal of "or imply" from CSD A7. I think it's important to require an actual assertion of notability, since people can infer all sorts of things. My question is: why was the mention of "notability" removed from A7 (see diff)? Although the notability guidelines may provide context, guidance, or perspective for speedy deletions, as suggested above, deletion per A7 (failure to assert notability) is undoubtedly distinct from deletion for failure to prove notability. — Black Falcon (Talk) 17:28, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:CSD#R1

Does R1 apply to the User: and User talk: namespaces? --MZMcBride 20:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I think so, unless it is evident that the user in question wants them to exist for some reason. Then again, what would be the point of a redirect to an empty page, even in those namespaces? -- But|seriously|folks  20:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, though like any speedy candidate if there is evidence of controversy, it is best to pursue an XfD in lieu of speedy deletion. The difference between userspace and mainspace speedies of redirects in this case is that the user's voice has more weight in the matter, and more leeway should be given. In the mainspace, controversy would not include complaints of the content creator; in userspace if the creator is the user whose space the content is in, it does. Sorry if that's confusing, I tried to be as clear as possible. BigNate37(T) 21:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
User & user talk pages should not redirect unless it is to an alternate account. You shouldn't click on a username in a page history and end up at a place that you cannot leave that user a message. It's confusing to new users. I've seen too many personal messages on an article talk page because of such redirects. However, I see no reason the page needs to be deleted -- just blank the redirect. -- JLaTondre 00:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
That might be true for the main userpage and the talk page attached to it, but not to other pages (subpages). SamBC(talk) 01:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
True. I was only speaking of the user & user talk page so thanks for clarifying that as the terminology isn't precise. -- JLaTondre 01:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Well I've got about 300 broken redirects in the User and User talk namespaces that need to be looked at and probably (in most cases) deleted. User:ST47 generated a full list of all broken redirects on en.wiki, however, I pulled out the User and User talk section and put it here to have some other people look at it. As it is, I've deleted over 1600 broken redirects in the past two days. Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Ah yes, when I think user namespace I tend to almost exclude the base userpage (though not intentionally), and I certainly do not consider it to include user talk namespace pages. BigNate37(T) 15:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

A7 abuse and a remedy

A7: "Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If controversial, or if there has been a previous deletion discussion that resulted in the article being kept, list the article at Articles for deletion instead."

  • A7 is being used as a back door method for deleting personally objectionable material without supervision and without consensus. There is no objective criteria for deletion, just the subjective "does not assert the importance or significance of its subject".
  • Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Unwarranted_deletion_spree_of_Butseriouslyfolks.
  • Guinness World Record interpretation of A7: It seems that A7 is being interpreted as the topic has to be the biggest, the best, or the oldest to be notable, instead of the usual "subject of multiple independent, reliable sources".
  • I propose that established content should never be deleted by any single person. It should go to AFD for consensus if its more than 24 hours after its creation. You could have a chance to speedy delete on creation and in the following 24 hours. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Proof by assertion isn't. Do you have evidence for any of what you just said? Is there any particular reasoning between the seemingly-arbitrary cutoff point of 24 hours? >Radiant< 09:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I think that the recent controversy over the speedy (and in many cases, out of process) deletion of many established IEEE related articles is probably the inspiration for this proposal. (My apologies to Richard Arthur Norton is I am incorrect) Dsmdgold 14:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Reject. Can you imagine what AfD would look like if every silly article written starts showing up there? CSD is an important tool with a workable appeals process. An arbitrary 24 hour period accomplishes little except to ensure articles are deleted while they are still being worked on.--JodyB yak, yak, yak 11:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Reject many obvious A7s survive more than 24 hours (especially during morning hours in which many Americans are still working or in school, and it's afternoon in England and early morning in Australia). Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 14:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • For the reason listed Jaranda, I don't think that a time limit would be the best thing for this, but perhaps an understanding that A7 should not apply to articles that have had substantial contributions by more than one logged in, non-bot user should not be eligible for speedy would be. My reasoning is that if multiple editors have seen and worked on an article it could no longer be considered non-controversial deletion. Dsmdgold 14:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Multiple trustworthy editors you mean, I somewhat support this proposal with some changes. First a certain edit count like editors with at least 100 edits maybe, as I seen cases that the article is edited by the creator and their friends or co-workers, also not including users adding tags or reverting vandalism. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 15:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that at times multiple users will create and edit a clearly non-notable page, but it is, in my experience, rare. I think that it is better to suffer the rare example spending 5 days at PROD than it is to introduce the subjective "trustworthy". (Personally I think that, until proved otherwise, we should consider every editor, from their first edit forward as trustworthy). I tend to take a stance that, aside from page history, no material, other than the page itself, should have to be checked, in order for an article to be deleted for A7 (and most of the other speedy criteria). If you need to check google, other articles, etc in order to determine if there is an "acceptable" assertion of notability, then the page should not be speedy deleted. That said, in this case I could see it reasonable to extend the "logged in editors" guideline to "logged in editors who have edited more than one article”. As a side note, I exclude edits by IP accounts not out of bias against anonymous editors, but because of the real possibility that edits by multiple IP accounts represent the work of a single person. I would also note that by "substantial" edit I would exclude those fine wikipedians who toil to add categories, sort stubs, correct misspellings, and address other formatting issues. Dsmdgold 15:51, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
  • WRT "single person" - I was under the impression that the whole speedy deletion process was supposed to be "someone proposes, an admin disposes". Certainly I've chosen to place {{db-nn}} on articles I consider NN instead of deleting them myself. Is this something that should be clarified, or am I the only one who thinks that this is the proper way? --Alvestrand 18:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
    • That is not the intent. The point of "speedy deletion" is that such pages can be deleted at sight, by any admin, with no need for debate or process. The reason that the speedy tags exist is because most users aren't admins. Of course, it is fine for an admin who is unsure about some article to put a tag on, essentially asking for a second opinion - but it is also fine for an admin to delete those pages at sight. A core issue for Wikipedia is that we must be able to trust people's judgment, because if we could not, the project wouldn't work. >Radiant< 09:31, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Entirely agreed with Radiant. I have, at times, chosen to speedy tag articles I wasn't 100% sure on rather than speedying it myself, to make sure a second pair of eyes sees it too. On the other hand, if I'm looking through Special:Newpages, and see "John Doe is the coolest kid at Somewhere High and you all will bow down before him", but no tag's on it yet, I'm not going to waste a second person's time by tagging it, it's just going to go. The tags are mainly intended for editors who see a potentially speedyable article to bring it to an admin's attention, there's nothing that requires an article to have ever been tagged before it's speedied. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:29, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
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