Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 67

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G5 - should be automatic delete and salt?

If an article is G5ed, it seems to me that it should not just be deleted but also salted. I don't know if there is way to set up the salt so that before an admin allows recreation of the article, a check is done to see if the new creator is a sock, but this would seem useful. Jytdog (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't agree with the salt, as quite often an article with the title would be valuable to have. Others could write it. Sometimes after deleting I will create a stub with the title. But if there was some special list to add the title to to check on recreators that could be useful as sock alert checking opportunity. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:BEANS, I will not describe how anyone could use this to effectively deny coverage of their competitors' organizations, brands, and products. I will leave it as an exercise for others. Jclemens (talk) 05:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I've been asked in the past to leave such titles unsalted as honeypots. I also understand Jclemens' issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:57, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

It depends on whether salting would likely prevent further disruption. This type of admin action cannot be made algorithmic. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:26, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Salting just puts controls on re-creation -- it doesn't deny recreation of a quality article, right? An article created by a sock was likely an undisclosed paid editor, and the purpose of the salt would be to provide an opportunity to check for return of yet another sock to create it again... there would be nothing to prevent any good faith editor (including a disclosing paid editor) to create it... But I am hearing the resounding "no". Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The problem is this: If a page is deleted according to G5 and another - good-faith - newbie wants to create it, they should be able to. Salting is sometimes necessary when a spammer does not get it but with all protection, it should be used conservatively and only to prevent further disruptions, not because of a single past disruption. Regards SoWhy 18:00, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not. G5 deletions are about the contributor, not the content. G5 deletions of articles about notable topics are necessary (otherwise banned does not mean banned: the only difference between a banned and a non-banned editor is that good edits/articles by the banned editor are not welcome. Bad edits are not welcome no matter who makes them), but there is no reason to make it difficult for others to write about the topic. In fact, in some cases it might be best to delete per G5 and immediately start a new stub. —Kusma (t·c) 18:20, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

The salting should not be automatic as per the comments above. If the subject is not notable etc. the admin is the right person to make the decision on whether to salt it. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 06:30, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

SALT may be used by any admin who can justify doing so - and persistant sockpuppetry is certainly, already, a good enough reason. No need to require it, though. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu

As an aside, I would be supportive of using extended-confirmed level salting to deal with specifically undisclosed paid editing sockfarm articles because there is a high likelihood the company will hire another undisclosed paid editor to try again. This happens regularly. Forcing those articles through AfC is not a bad idea. I think the existing protection policy allows this, since the fact that a company has hired an undisclosed paid editor to create an article suggests future disruption. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- it's quite likely that another sockfarm would recreate the article. Many articles in Deletion-sorting Companies have been deleted in the past, so might as well protect from recreation "at the source". K.e.coffman (talk) 05:23, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Sockmasters are just as capable of thinking of alternate article names as they are of new sock names - this cluster of sock attempts finally overcome by a paid meatpuppet, sticks in my mind (and in my craw) Barbera Caffè S.p.A., Cafè Barbera Franchise, Barbera Coffee, Barbera Caffé, Barbera Caffè, Franchise Café Barbera, Barbera coffee, Barbera Coffee Co., Barbera Coffee Company, Cafe Barbera.

The honeypot notion just tests a sockmaster's ability to think of new sock names, very little else.

Just like its real world analogy, the food needs to be tasted before salt is added. It should remain discretionary, though a pretty standard choice. Previous G11s & G5s in the article's deletion log are a good pointer. Cabayi (talk) 07:51, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The fact that a sock farm has written an article does not necessarily mean that an acceptable article cannot be written. About 9/10 of the time it does, but the other 1/10 is thousands of potential articles.. The usual standard of 2 previous recreations is a fairly safe one, but it still shouldn't be automatic. Administrating WP is like editing WP -- it needs to be done by people using human judgment, not arbitrary rules. DGG ( talk ) 09:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - that said, I do periodically salt articles which are repeatedly recreated, but a long way from doing so by default. Sometimes salting a title which a sockfarm is repeatedly recreating will deter them long enough for them to go do something else, but about equally often it will inspire them to recreate the article at a slightly modified title instead, or with "Draft:" prepended, or with special characters, or in a different language, etc. ad nauseam. For example, see Syed Aman mian sharma, Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Miya), Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma (Tiger), Syed Aman Mian, Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Syed Aman Mian Sharma, Draft:Sayyad Aman Mian Sharma, ... this isn't all of the variations this editor has tried. My point is that deleting these is like whack-a-mole already, adding salt just wastes more time. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:13, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
• Comment The Honey pot idea is an interesting one. The problem is that CU is not pixie dust and does not reliably connect all socks. Using salt more often is a good idea IMO but should not be done automatically. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:13, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose If a subject is notable, then an article should not be salted. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:58, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
• Absolutely oppose. Lots of G5s are for subjects which should have articles. VQuakr (talk) 18:32, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Can CSD be used as inclusion criteria?

Linked discussion has been closed. Closing down this solicitation for feedback. Hasteur (talk) 12:51, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, At Wikipedia talk:Drafts#Brainstorming on an RfC, there is a disagreement on whether a CSD (specifically G13) can be cited to determine a page can/should belong to the draftspace or not. My understanding is that CSD is a procedure not a policy on the usage. But perhaps I misunderstood this so it helps if someone more knowledgeable can weight in. Thanks. -- Taku (talk) 21:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: Limit G13 to exclude moves from mainspace

I had asked about this in the G13 expansion discussion above but there was not any real discussion, so since the discussion was now closed in favor of changing G13, I propose a small amendment:

This applies to any pages in the draft namespace, as well as any rejected or unsubmitted Articles for creation pages with the {{AFC submission}} template in userspace, that have not been edited (excluding bot edits) in over six months. This excludes articles moved to draft or user namespace without prior discussion or request by the article's creator, unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move.

The reasoning is fairly clear. Page movers and admins can move articles to draft or user space without any real oversight since redirects will not be created, i.e. without a second pair of eyes checking the move (as would be the case with R2 taggings of redirects created by such moves). There are 400+ such moves this month alone (cf. database query). With the current unrestricted wording, these pages become eligible for G13 deletion solely because of the namespace and age reasons, thus allowing admins to speedy delete articles that they wouldn't have been allowed to speedy delete in article space. TL;DR: If the article was not eligible for speedy deletion while in mainspace, it shouldn't become eligible just by moving it to draftspace. Regards SoWhy 13:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? And if the only problem is a lack of checks and balances, maybe we can get a bot that lists all draftifyings so they can be checked? All in all, I am not convinced that a further restriction is necessary or helpful. If page movers and admins abuse their powers to delete pages that shouldn't be deleted, we should talk to them, not make our rules more complicated. —Kusma (t·c) 13:33, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • If nobody has noticed the page move in six months, perhaps that is an indication the page isn't that important? That's the kind of wrong thinking that was the basis for the opposition to the change, and apparently ignored by the closer admin. According to the new interpretation, all old draft should now be deleted, no matter their quality. Diego (talk) 13:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are thousands of pages that get (almost) no views for months at a time, for various reasons, for example because they are only about specialized subjects or they are orphans. That does not make them "unimportant" (how is that an objective criterion btw?). And since when is "not important" a reason for speedy deletion in any namespace? The problem is also not abuse here: There is (unfortunately) consensus that pages may be moved to draft unilaterally and there is now apparently consensus that once there and untouched, that's all it takes to speedy delete them, so both the mover and the deleting admin might very well acting in good faith. That does not change the result though, i.e. that articles are made eligible for speedy deletion that otherwise would not be. My point is this: What is not eligible in mainspace, should not become eligible just by moving. Otherwise, gaming the system becomes all too easy. Regards SoWhy 13:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

I view this as more like a PROD type process, only that it takes six months instead of seven days. —Kusma (t·c) 14:12, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the process that has been approved doesn't require any kind of notification nor third party review, unlike PROD. Diego (talk) 14:19, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• There is a draft guidance text at Wikipedia_talk:New_pages_patrol#Clarification_and_guidance_for_draftification that should serve well to restrict unilateral draftification to obviously ok scenarios. I think it is important that this gets written up. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:48, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Fully agree of course but not necessarily mutually exclusive, no? Regards SoWhy 13:52, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Why not some kind of template to apply to draftified mainspace pages? A big orange notice at the top of the page saying something like "This draft was moved from mainspace by PERSON for REASON (user request, post-AfD, preserve from CSD, whatever), please take that into consideration when tagging for deletion." ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • And then what? The problem is, with no rules against draftifying without discussion and no rules against deleting such draftified pages, the policy currently actually allows people to send pages to draft space, wait six months and then delete them, without any oversight whatsoever. And of course the main question remains: Why should a page become eligible for speedy deletion just because a single editor decided to move it to draftspace and nobody noticed for six months? Regards SoWhy 15:05, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
    • And then the person who is about to G13 it goes "Boy howdy this was draftified by so-and-so for such-a-reason, I wonder if it is actually mainspace-appropriate and I should move it back to mainspace." The template should slot any such page into a maintenance category ("Draftified articles", say) so that it can be reviewed (and possibly restored) by anyone at any time, like any of the other backlog categories. That would provide the possibility of extra layer of scrutiny prior to the G13 kicking in. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Weak oppose I often think that our discussion by experienced editors needs to take into account what new people actually think rather than what we as experienced editors think that they think. Too often it becomes fights between people on different sides of the "inclussionist/deletionist" spectrum arguing with new users as a proxy over what is really our viewpoint as to what we think Wikipedia should be.
  I say this because while I often see the argument that deleting after 6 months is biting a new user, I don't really think any of them would be surprised to see it deleted then. Hotmail (remember those days!) used to delete the entire email account after 90 days of not logging in, and Yahoo and Gmail also had similar policies of varying lengths. It is often just a fact of life that most people by now realize that stuff you put on the internet on a major site that you don't own isn't necessarily going to stay there forever. If a user hasn't logged in for 6 months, I doubt they would be surprised that on a website anyone can edit, something has happened to their article, and since it hadn't been touched as a draft, has been deleted, but they can get it back.
  This oppose is weak and would naturally be a neutral, because I don't have strong opinions on the draft space: I only care about making things easier for the editors who work there because it is a tough place to work. In my mind, the whole point of the just closed RfC was to make the bureaucracy regarding G13 less arcane. This seems counterproductive to that goal, so I oppose it because I don't really see a compelling reason for the need per my above musings about making this about actual new users and not about our internal ideological things. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Conditional Oppose If the page is sent to draftspace as a result of a single editor, I think putting a single delay of G13 (i.e. 6 months up to G13, stay, then 6 more months) is reasonable. As the result of a consensus discussion (like AFD) then I think the straight 6 months is reasonable. Hasteur (talk) 14:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose nothing new here not brought up and rejectsd in the G13 RFC. This "except this and that and check for another thing" program just obstructs the process designed to streamline the deletion of junk. It's already pretty obvious which pages are moves from Mainspace to Draftspace because they usually have cats and problem tags and stuff on the talk page. Further, G13 deletion involves notification to the page creator. It's not like this is done in secret. Legacypac (talk) 15:54, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, this would essentially allow any draft sent to draftspace from mainspace to either hang around forever, or clog up MfD for routine cleanup. If a draft hasn't been edited in six months, which is an awfully long grace period, we can probably safely presume that it's truly abandoned and no one has interest in resuming work on it. And on the few occasions that presumption was incorrect, G13 deletions are restored for the asking. This is a solution in search of a problem. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support The move/G13 combo is broken -- backdoor deletion without any oversight. If being in draft space makes a page more vulnerable to deletion then obviously one has to avoid draft space or move pages out of it. Let's just make it simple and get rid of draft space altogether. It's not working and so it's time to roll back the creep. Andrew D. (talk) 17:40, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
  • @Andrew Davidson: With respect, I can think of only 2 cases in which a page would be sent from Mainspace to draftspace. Either via a AFD (for which the community consensus felt it was not worthy), or via a New Page Curation action (WP:NPP). As I indicated above if it's the page curation action I think 1 year of unedited is a reasonable time to remedy the problem. If it's AFD, 6 months is a reasonable time frame as a community consensus (not just one editor) saw problems with the page and an Administrator enacted the consensus. Hasteur (talk) 17:47, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

A G13 deletion of a page that started in mainspace involves a NPP making the decision, the creator accepting the move (doing nothing to protect their creation), a G13 nominator (maybe a bot) and an Admin to actually delete the page. And after all that WP:REFUND is easy. That is a whole lot of eyes on something that is likely useless someone spent 2 minutes to create in mainspace. Legacypac (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, none of that is certain. There is no rule against moving old, unwatched articles to draftspace whose creators have long gone. There is no rule that the person moving and the person deleting have to be two different people. And there is nothing in the current wording of G13 that exempts such pages from speedy deletion. Considering how many articles are already deleted by admins applying the speedy deletion policy far too liberally as it is, it's no stretch to imagine some admins patrolling G13 will delete such "drafts" liberally without caring where they came from. If you agree that such move/deletions should not go unreviewed, where is the harm in actually writing it down? Regards SoWhy 20:34, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Yup, someone could go through all the months and effort to take most of those steps themselves to some old page no one is watching ... or they could take a few seconds to redirect the offending page to some other page, an act no one needs to approve. Seriously, this assumption of bad faith against editors and assumption people are out to destroy valuable content is a little old. Legacypac (talk)

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule what "valuable content" actually is. I'm merely stating a known fact when I say that there are more than enough editors who have biases against one kind of articles or another ("cruft" etc.) so someone actually doing what I described above is probably not a matter of "if" but as matter of "when". Merely saying an article should go through the proper processes is not an assumption of bad faith however. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

If you accept blanking and redirecting as viable solution for unwanted content, why on earth do you need the G13 and what's the need for permanent deletion of the pages? No one answered that question in the RfC, even though it was one of the major points of contention.

Reading the history of a blanked page is way easier than a WP:REFUND, but now you've imposed a huge burden on anyone who wants to review the actions of a serial deleter. Diego (talk) 20:55, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose The proposal doesn't make the abandoned draft any less abandoned. WP:REFUND is available if the author regains an interest in developing the draft to a mainspace-ready level. Cabayi (talk) 07:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Huh? How can it be an abandoned draft if it was an article before someone else moved it to draftspace? After all, don't we tell editors that don't own the articles they created? So how could they "abandon" them? Regards SoWhy 08:46, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I've looked at 100s of pages moved from Mainspace to Draftspace and then abandoned. With rare exceptions they are not appropriately referred to as "articles" for they lack things we expect in articles like sources and/or a claim of notability and/or meaningful content. Seriously SoWhy, I know you are an Admin but your continued harping on this G13 topic and repeated failure to properly interpret consensus (like claiming there was no consensus for G13 expansion when it was over 70% in favor) and lack of support for existing policy around G13 makes me wonder about your judgement. Your posts are getting disruptive. Legacypac (talk) 09:05, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I fear you are somewhat missing the point of my objections. So instead of attacking me personally, why not answer my questions above: How exactly can someone "abandon" an article if they don't own it?

I accept that the community has decided to delete old drafts (without any need) but I don't think they accepted it to be a way to circumvent the deletion policy. We have clear policy in place on how to handle problematic articles, mainly the deletion policy and the editing policy. There are processes described there in length on what can be done or not done to handle such articles. I am merely arguing that these processes should not be circumventable by a single editor's decision. Regards SoWhy 09:43, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy I think you're reading "abandoned" as an action of the author where I'm writing about the state of the draft. I take your point about WP:OWNership of drafts. Would it help to specify some good practice in relation to draftifying? Perhaps ensuring that the draft is tagged for a couple of projects to minimise the chances of the draft becoming abandoned & maximise its chances of improvement? (Putting the suggestion into practise for our poster child draft at Draft talk:The Octopus Frontier) Cabayi (talk) 10:13, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think we are talking about different things here, Cabayi. I was not talking about pages created as drafts that were abandoned - here the word "abandon" makes some sense. As I said elsewhere, I believe draftifying should not happen without permission of the creator or community discussion and I suggested making this a rule but that was not supported. The problem keeps being the lack of oversight when someone draftifies an article without discussion and no amount of taggings will alleviate this because in most cases the only time people really notice such pages is when deletion is discussed. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:--Whilst surely there are fundamental differences between your's and SoWhy's interpretation of rules and/or intentions et al in these areas, I think he's far from disruptive--a word quite strong.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--As much as I appreciate your efforts and think the concerns to be valid enough, I think you are looking for solutions to problems which will be prima-facie rare or absent.I think NPPReviewers and/or page-movers use their discretionary power judiciously enough. Also, I am of an opinion that G13-eligible drafts should not be mass-deleted just because the policy states so and the reviewing admin must expend some thoughts as to possible notability etc.Also, since you seem to have a good technical know-how, is it possible to create a bot that maintains a list of pages moved from Article namespace to Draft namespace; other than by the creator.That would give us a rough idea about the numbers!Regards:)Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 10:34, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Godric on Leave: Running the query I mentioned above without restrictions will give you (after some time because the tables are quite large) 20,700+(!) moves to Draftspace without redirect since December 2013 (and another 4,400+ [https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/21136 with redirects). I'm not a bot creator but it shouldn't be too hard to create a list based on that query, filtering out the few moves by the creators. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy:--Will be shortly taking a look! Thanks!Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:37, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy, as I've mentioned before: I don't actually have firm opinions on draft space: I'm only placing this here for context, but we speedy deleted 24,895 articles from 1 January 2017 to 1 April 2017. That's almost as much in one quarter as articles moved to draft in four years. Assuming deletion rates have stayed about the same, we've speedy deleted 375,000 articles since December 2013. That's roughly 3 draftifications for every 50 speedy deletions if I'm doing my math right. I'm happy to let people make of that what they wish :) TonyBallioni (talk) 03:25, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@TonyBallioni: This is, unfortunately, an incorrect calculation because it assumes that such moves happened at the same rate for almost 4 years. The mass-moving of articles of draftspace only really started this year though, with 20,184 such moves (or ~80%) having been made in 2017 (at the time of this comment). This means the ratio of draftifying to speedy deletion was approximately 16,8% to 83,2% in 2017, i.e. more than 3 in 20 articles or 1 draftification for every 5 speedy deletions (based on 100,284 this year so far (careful, large query)). Regards SoWhy 10:35, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Note: I updated the numbers above to match the numbers I just managed to pull from the database. Still pretty high. Regards SoWhy 11:00, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that update: makes sense. I was going off of the December 2013 rate, since we know that the deletion rate as a percentage of articles created has been about the same for the last six years. I think the 5:1 number is also significant for context, and thanks for providing it. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:50, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

The whole idea of G13 is to allow any mainspace article to be speedily deleted if it hasn't been edited for six months. Move it into the draftspace and immediately speedily delete it under G13. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:05, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

No, a move is a non-bot change. A page that has just been moved to draftspace won't be G13-eligible for 6 months. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: You seem to be very confused.

1. Abducting mainspace pages into Draft space for no other reason than it's 6 months old is 100% out of process and not supported by consensus. Once a page is in mainspace, it's generally accepted that is the permanant home (obviously barring CSD/NPP deciding it's not ready yet/AFD/etc).
2. Even if it were the case, moving the page back to Draft space is still a non-trivial action and as such resets the 6 month clock on G13 eligiblity.
3. Your entire thesis is based on bad faith actions of an editor to the level of pointy edits.

For these reasons I don't think your scenario could ever take place. Hasteur (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

If I am very confused, then maybe other people are too.

1. What I am seeing is that thousands of articles are being moved from the mainspace to the draftspace. Looking at the comments on some of the moves is not encouraging. They point to things like "poorly sourced" and "not yet shown to meet notability guidelines". It seems that articles are being BOLD-ly moved into the draftspace in circumstances where CSD does not apply and AfD might not succeed. An article on Taylor Swift's latest album gets moved to the draftspace. Admittedly, it is then moved straight back again with the comment "Completely out of consensus redirect. Album and release heavily verified by multiple reliable sources and easily passes WP:GNG. Send to AfD to gain consensus if desire deletion or gain consensus on talk." That would likely be my response if it happened to me.
2. G13 applies to pages that have not been edited. I accept your contention that "moving" qualifies as "editing", but if you could supply a link where this is explicitly stated, that would be great. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't have a link except WP:G13. I know the pages that started in mainspace and make it to G13 are almost all junk that should have been CSD'd but mercy was shown. I'm sure there is the occasional one that goes to Draft, gets fixed and returned to mainspace. Imposing the restriction asked for here creates an unreasonable burden on reviewers to confirm the page history (which is not always obvious) and might make bot work impossible. Legacypac (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. When we move pages from mainspace to draftspace, they usually sit there indefinitely. Until I see stats suggesting these pages will ever result in mainspace content, I'm opposed to using draftspace as an indefinite holding ground for content that met mainspace CSD criteria but were moved to allow someone a second chance to build them. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I think you misread my proposal. I proposed exempting pages that did not meet any speedy deletion criteria before moving because the move itself should not be all that changes that. Regards SoWhy 06:47, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Then the article shouldn't be moved out of mainspace? The only reason an article should be moved out of mainspace is because it doesn't meet our standards for articles. If that's the case, we shouldn't hold it indefinitely in draft. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:09, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Articlespace has some of the richest/most expansive CSD rules possible. If editors move a page that is CSDable into draft space to dodge the CSD, I'd give a very critical eye to the action as it seems like gaming the system in order to get the page out of less than receptive hands. Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: We agree on that. Unfortunately, many others do not (see this discussion for example and there seems to be consensus that it's perfectly okay to move articles to draftspace even when they do not meet speedy criteria. My whole proposal here was to at least exclude those articles from G13 deletion (that's why the proposal reads "unless the page was eligible for speedy deletion under another criterion before the move" at the end). Regards SoWhy 13:19, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

• Ok, editors with malicous intent to delete valuable content but who don't have the gumption to use CSD or AFD surely have been moving thousands of pages to draftspace in the hopes no one notices and with prophetic insight that G13 would be expanded this week and the hope someone would blindly delete the pages. Since some editors have convinced themselves wonderful content is being lost from this vast covert effort I propose a solution. Interested editors should patrol Draftspace for quality content! It turns out it takes just one editor to promote a page from draft, just like it takes one editor to demote a page to draft. So go forth and find great comtent to promote. As we clear the junk it is getting easier and easier to find good drafts. Legacypac (talk) 02:11, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this seems like a solution in search of a problem (or at least, a solution so such an improbable problem that we have it already covered by WP:IAR). In my experience, most moves from mainspace to draftspace are by new page patrollers that see some hope for a new article that is just too poorly developed or marginal to be suitable in mainspace. If someone starts moving clearly good pages to draft space, someone will notice pretty quickly and they will be blocked. SoWhy mentions admins and page movers, but of one of them turns evil it seems like they could come up with much more exciting ways to mess our stuff up. See also: WP:CREEP, WP:BEANS. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - G13 should be deprecated; I oppose all other proposals to change it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:45, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Edit filter solution

Thoughts on implementing an edit filter to track all mainspace to draft moves? This would allow interested admins such as myself and SoWhy to patrol the recent moves to ensure proper articles aren't being moved to draftspace. I see no reason to adjust G13 though. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:23, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

A tagging edit filter would be useful so other procedure wonks like myself can also help reverse improper draftifcation (ideally by Technical Move Requests). Hasteur (talk) 13:32, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Godric has requested a bot to keep a list of such moves at Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Keeping_track_of_cross-space_moves..... Don't know which is the better solution, maybe both, the bot could just filter through all the tagged pages without having to resort to querying the database for all moves. I still don't understand though why these pages should be eligible for G13 if they were not eligible for any other criteria before the move... Regards SoWhy 13:35, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

SoWhy do you have data that moved pages were not eligible for CSD before being moved to Draft? I've looked at hundreds and most I've seen could easily have been CSD'd or BLPProd'd in mainspace and many could be CSD'd in Draftspace without G13. Legacypac (talk) 04:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that seems a good anti-crosspace move vandalism tool. I agree it doesn't require change to G13. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

A7 questions

2 questions, quick one first:

Should we make a Wikipedia talk:CSD A7 specifically dedicated that notorious criteria, and so that the rest of us non-A7 gurus can learn about it with current examples?

Is Emdad Sumon, soon to be deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Emdad Sumon, A7 worthy? I view the lead He is the Sole owner of Popular Bangladeshi Record label CD Choice Music. He produced the movie "Eito Valobasa". His first written song "Bolona Valobasi" in this movie was more audible as satisfying A7's t indicate why its subject is important or significant…makes any credible claim of significance or importance. Am I not understanding the makes any credible claim of significance or importance part or what? Thanks, L3X1 (distænt write) 02:03, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't think we need a special talk page for one criterion. WP:CCSI was an attempt to collect examples and results of discussion regarding A7. I'd invite you to help there in an act of shameless self-promotion. As for the example, I don't think A7 applies. Apart from the sources which I cannot read and thus will AGF that they are reliable sources about the subject (which should be sufficient to fail A7 every time), founding a notable label is enough because it presents a valid merge/redirect target per WP:ATD. Regards SoWhy 06:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

• There is a dedicated essay at Wikipedia:Common claims of significance or importance, and you may like to use the talk page Wikipedia talk:Common claims of significance or importance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:51, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

SD decline template created to make informing of declines easy

Just wanted to advertise a template I created a while back that you may not know about, and which is intended to make informing NPPers of declines a very easy process indeed, once you know the template's ins and outs. Use it or not but if no one knows about it...

• {{subst:sdd4|Inform tagger: article not speedied – invalid reason and why it did not apply.}}

When you supply the CSD code (all are recognized; uppercase and lower case will work), it will automatically tailor a message to that criterion, with intro text describing what the criterion covers, for the context of your decline reason.

The decline reason you supply in the third parameter–the reason criterion did not apply above—will place whatever you type after: "That criterion did not apply because..." and the documentation has suggested language to insert for that parameter, covering many commonly misunderstood erroneous tagging bases, broken down by criterion. The documentation is a bit elaborate, on purpose, but not complicated. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:03, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

And another example of a draft that shouldn't have been deleted.

It continues to be clear that any draft that hasn't been edited in 6 months can and likely will be deleted. In the RfC, many people commented about checks and balances, not automatically deleting, etc. yet here is another example in which a draft gets hit in Legacypac's mass tagging and the reviewing admin sees no problem in deleting: Draft:History of Kottakkal. (SpacemanSpiff in this case, whom I mention primarily to notify, not to point a finger at). Not only is there substantial content with some references, but it was split off from the main article. It took about 20 seconds for me to determine as much. Material from Kottakkal was moved over to History of Kottakkal, developed a bit, and subsequently moved to draftspace and now deleted.

Anyone who says to go to WP:REFUND is missing the point. I noticed two problematic taggings just among the handful of drafts on my watchlist. Those that have already been deleted aren't visible to the vast majority of users and so cannot be scrutinized (and are unlikely to have anyone watching). If I hadn't seen Draft:History of Kottakkal, what are the odds that material would be recovered? As per the fundamental sentence in the policy's lead: "Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion." Draft:History of Kottakkal is just one example of a deleted draft that would clearly have a "practical chance of surviving discussion." Therefore time limit cannot be the sole criterion, and it's problematic for anyone to proceed as though that's the case. Is another RfC really needed to clarify this basic element of CSD? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 06:30, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

You're assuming that I didn't check that before deleting. This was what was copied over from the original article, with cn tags carried over from 2010. THe draft had a total of three sources -- one Wikipedia mirror that tries to sell airline tickets, one spam site soliciting home workers and a third that is an Ayurveda clinic. If this kind of stuff doesn't qualify for G13, I have no problem staying away from this and have no interest in wasting my time on this in future. —SpacemanSpiff 07:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• Material split off from the main article and left elsewhere for extended periods becomes an attribution hazard and is best deleted. If the split of material is wanted back, retrieve it from the article's history. If anyone made valuable edits to the forked page, they should be prompt in ensuring it gets history merged back into the main article. Sometimes, doing this is a good idea, but almost always it is not. Sandboxing should be very short term only. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:08, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
• DraftSpace should be treated as scratchspace. A place to play with dubious topics. It is de facto a place to send people who don't know what they are doing so that they do not mess up mainspace so much. People who know what they are doing shouldn't go there. Intending contributors should be advised to not go there because very few people are there to help them. The main game is in mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:11, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I've sent many possibly useful pages to AfC. Look there for stuff to work on, not in the thousands of deleted pages. Admittedly there may be some useful stuff deleted along with the garage bands, copyvio, unattributed copies of mainspace, and attack pages, but I doubt there is anything worth getting excited over. Legacypac (talk) 07:27, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• Really, that looks like a draft that should have been deleted. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:32, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

P I've nominated thousands of drafts G13 and reduced the non-AFC Draft backlog to zero today. Even if the three examples raised are bad deletions, and they are not, my accuracy rate is around 999/1000. Legacypac (talk) 10:28, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Fair responses, all. Thanks for clarifying, SpacemanSpiff. My impression was that the content had been developed, but it's entirely possible it wasn't (or wasn't in any meaningful way). Sorry, I should've left a message for you before opening this thread. Ok, well, after starting two sections on this topic, I'll go ahead and take some extra AGF pills and leave it be. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:55, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

• I personally have lists of about several hundred articles on academics that were deleted, almost half of which can be rescued. They were deleted in the days of massive G13s. when I could not get to them all, or when the notifications weren't working. There are probably at least an equal number that I didn't even catch for the lists. If other subjects are similar, we should indeed have tools for mining the backlog. DGG ( talk ) 16:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

User:DGG many deleted pages could potentially be a valid topic, but are so poorly developed or ref free that it's better to start over. There are not enough editors to work through G13 postponed or current draft pages so mining deleted pages seems pretty low priority. Legacypac (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

most of the ones I had in mind were ones that needed some proper material to support WP:PROF added. This is easy, but time-consuming--especially in the quantities involved. Remember that in the earlier years of AFC people were rejecting pages for trivial reasons. My practice at the time was to try to fix them before accepting them; nowadays I simply accept, if it looks notable, and fixable in main space. I would be very glad of a simple way to find and see them again--even looking at a deleted p as an admin is a multi-step procedure. And the principal reason I gave for becoming an admin at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/DGG was to check deleted articles to see what could be rescued. I fully understand the current need to deal with promotionalism as an emergency, but that's not what I ever wanted to do here. DGG ( talk ) 18:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

G13 clarification

I know we expanded G13 coverage. I thought that was the result of this discussion, but now I am not sure.

What seems clear is that an old draft, in draftspace, can be deleted per G13

I thought, but I do not see that userspace drafts, (emphasis, in userspace not draftspace) could be deleted if they had been submitted (and rejected, although that should go without saying), and six months without an edit had passed.

I don't see that mentioned in the link, so did I miss it, is it elsewhere, or am I wrong?

I did not think that old drafts in userspace that were never submitted would be covered.

I am bringing this up because there are several in the CSD queue as I write this.

E.g:

• User:Jbayarong/Lighthouse Amihan Football Club
• User:Ff153/Tatsuo Miyajima

Are therethey eligible?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:57, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Upon reading G13 again, they aren't. Sorry for the mishap. J947^{(c) (m)} 20:06, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Unsubmitted/rejected old drafts in userspace are eligible if they have the AFC tag, otherwise not. That predates the RFC. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:11, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

OK thanks.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:45, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Yep. G13 originally strictly covered templated AfC drafts. The RfC expanded it to include any page in the draftspace. However, this is not to be confused with "any draft". Just any page in the draftspace. Swarm ♠ 04:34, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

The formulation (as I understand it) is currently:

• Has one of the {{AFC submission}} templates and is at least 6 months unedited.

OR

• Resides in the Draft namespace and has not been edited in at least 6 months (excluding Redirects).

Anything else is outside of the current authorization of G13. Hasteur (talk) 19:25, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Technically I don't think it would exclude redirects as written, although I don't know if anyone would bother deleting those as G13. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:40, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Under the unexpanded G13 it was AfC tagged pages, and no redirect would be (still) tagged AfC. It seems no one even thought to specify or discuss redirects in Draft as excluded. I'll do that now as it seems very non-controversial. Legacypac (talk) 21:57, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Is that redirects to other deleted drafts, or redirects to the article as moved in main space? Because the reason for keeping the latest is to avoid breaking incoming links if someone have created them. Diego (talk) 12:03, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah sorry, I see that you meant to exclude those from deletion. Diego (talk) 12:04, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Redirects to deleted pages can of course be deleted per WP:G8. The idea is that working redirects aren't to be deleted per WP:G13. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:07, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Further the reports and Categories related to G13 exclude redirects User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report [1] Legacypac (talk) 14:10, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

The justification for excluding redirects stems from the "promoted draft" or preserving inbound links. In the grand scheme of things a redirect page is a pittiance compared to the reams of unworthy content. If and when we get to the point that Spam and garbage is being deleted before the 6 month period and we actually need to sort through the redirects we can come back. Until then it's not worth the bytes. Hasteur (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Blanking someone else's stale or unsubmitted AfCs instead of tagging as WP:G13?

Just now, trying to figure out what the precipitating 24 September 2017 event was that prompted this thread on ANI, I noticed that Legacypac has blanked numerous stale/unsubmitted/abandoned/declined AfCs (either with no edit summary or with the edit summary "G13") instead of tagging them for CSD: [2]. Is this allowed? Softlavender (talk) 08:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@User:Softlavender BrightR was annoyed I made this change to a heading of an active ANi thread they started [3]. It was the first thing they mentioned to Cryptic and at ANi.

I only routinely blank normal user sandboxes that elegible for G13 and are not problematic except for being old. Many are just blank AfC submissions. You can't really delete a sandbox completely, it is more friendly than deletion, it takes less edits to blank than to tag G13 (nothing to my CSD log or the usertalk) and lightens the Admin deletion load. It also means no need to request a REFUND required if the user returns, just a undo. Hope that makes sense. If it is an attack page or something we really want gone, I tag appropriately. I also CSD named pages under a sandbox ie User/Sandbox/MyAbandonedIdea as that is not the default sandbox and should not be reused. Legacypac (talk) 08:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I am asking administrators if this is allowed. Blanking (or in any way altering) other users' subpages is not allowed, as far as I am aware. If you want to nominate user subpages for deletion, use WP:MfD. Perhaps I should ask this at AN instead, but I felt there may have been a policy discussion that I was unaware of so I posted this here first, but I can move it to AN instead. Softlavender (talk) 08:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

If those pages are eligible for G13, MFD is not required and G13 does apply to abandoned AFC submissions, even when they are in a user's subspace. Since the sandbox is actually linked to from the menu (at least in Monobook skin), it makes sense not to have it be a redlink. Thus blanking is imho a viable alternative to G13 deletion. Legacypac, you should use better edit summaries though when doing so, so it's clear you are blanking them instead of tagging them for speedy deletion. Regards SoWhy 09:07, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:UP#OWN Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Allowed by WP:UP#DELETE, consistent with instructions found here [4] Lots of sandboxes end up here [5] than here [6]. I think new users mistake the AfC Submit button for a Save button because there are so many pointless blank sandbox submissions. In many cases blanking is just removing the AfC decline placed by an AfC reviewer, not even removing something the user typed. It just restores a blank sandbox for them to use and takes the page off the G13 elegible lists. Legacypac (talk) 09:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Nothing in WP:UP#DELETE or [7], applies to your blankings; if you believe so please quote the text. In terms of "In many cases blanking is just removing the AfC decline placed by an AfC reviewer, not even removing something the user typed"; I don't see that in the deletions you made that I linked to; I see dozens of deletions of entire articles in their sandboxes. Softlavender (talk) 09:46, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Should probably use {{userpage blanked}} for that, although not mandatory. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

(The "#fragment" part of) this hyperlink does not seem to be working; shouldn't it be fixed?

Background

This comment /slash "question" is based upon the current version of the corresponding Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion page, "as of" when this section was added to this "Talk:" page. That ("then" current) version was this version -- (that is, the "04:19, 25 September 2017‎" version) of the Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion page.

("As of" that version), the second-to last bullet of "CSD F8" ends with a hyperlink that displays as More about high-risk images ... and the destination or the (Wikitext "abbreviated") URL that it points to, is: Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#About high-risk images.

OK, so what is the problem?

It appears that the "#fragment" portion of that (Wikitext "abbreviated") URL that it points to, (that is, the "#About high-risk images" suffix of the hyperlink to Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#About high-risk images) does not work any more.

I do not know whether it (the "destination" that used to exist, but is not there any more) had a proper funeral and someone just failed to update the hyperlink ("#fragment" suffix) that used to point to it, or ... if it just "passed away" without any mourners reading the obituary and taking notice, and sending flowers, etc. In any event, the "#fragment" portion of it does not seem to be working (correctly) any more ("at this time").

How I got there

I arrived there by clicking on a hyperlink from a place under [[File:Bright_George_M.-HQ-1-7_1.png#Licensing]]. I clicked on a hyperlink there, that seems to be part of [an instance of] the template "{{Keep local}}". The hyperlink [I clicked on] there, is displayed as "CSD F8" and it points to "Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#F8".

When I arrived there, I probably read "some but not all" of the bullets under "F8".

I clicked on the hyperlink at the very end of the second-to-last bullet. The hyperlink there is displayed as "More about high-risk images" and it points to "Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#About high-risk images".

It does not seem to be working as intended!

Is it me? or ... Is this a classic case of link rot ... ?

It was supposed to take me ("as advertised") to "Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#About high-risk images"; however, (probably because that "#fragment" suffix points to a label or place [or a thing] that used to exist, but has had its spelling changed slightly [...or, has itself been moved or deleted, or something]) now that "#fragment" suffix "#About high-risk images" does not seem to work any more! It took me to the very TOP of the "Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items" page ... because apparently the label or place [or thing] that used to exist, and that was called "#About high-risk images" ... either is now spelled differently, or else, it does not exist any more (or it has been moved, or ... something).

I think I know how to fix the problem

I did find a place called "Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#High-risk images" ... and, IMHO, that is probably what the (now "partially" broken) hyperlink should be pointing to.

The reason why I include the word "partially" ... as in, << (now "partially" broken) >> is because the hyperlink in question does work OK ... except for the "#fragment" suffix portion of it.

I think that it is taking me to the correct PAGE on Wikipedia -- namely the "Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items" page; it is just taking me to the TOP of that page, because there is no place (or "label" or "thing") called "#About high-risk images" on that page.

But, since there IS a place (actually I think it is a section -- a thing whose name is surrounded by double equal signs, ... in the wikitext) called "#High-risk images" on that page, IMHO it would be better, for the hyperlink in question to point to THAT instead! (right?)

Thanks for your patience

... [partly] since, ... maybe I could have just edited the page, without writing all of this "Talk:" stuff, on this "Talk:" page.

Any comments? --Mike Schwartz (talk) 06:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

continued "thread" of comments

The link was broken by this edit--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I have fixed the link to the current section header.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:23, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: Thanks for fixing the link. However, ...

Wait a minute. It seems to be stated above, that the damage was done (or ... "the problem was created") by this edit; ... which happened on [or "circa"] 15 October 2014.

If so, then ... the destination of the hyperlink ("in question") used to be that "#About high-risk images" section ... which -- (when it existed) -- used to come right after [the last (and only) sub-section of] the "#High-risk images" section ... which also used to exist, on 15 October 2014.

However, this edit changes the hyperlink ("in question") to point instead to the entire body of text, which includes both

• [S2] (what used to be) the "#About high-risk images" section, AND
• [S1] the "#High-risk images" section <--(which does still exist ... and still has that name ... and it includes a sub-section called "#Deleting protected files"). ...and, if I understand correctly, that sub-section called "#Deleting protected files" now includes [S2].

If that was intentional, then OK ... the part which is now "included" in

• [S1] the "#High-risk images" section

... in fact, in the "#Deleting protected files" sub-section of [S1], ... indeed used to have (when [S2] still existed ... circa "12:23, 4 August 2014") a one-sentence little italicized "INTRO" sentence (like a hatnote? maybe not...) at the beginning of [S2], saying

See also discussions further up on this page.

but "Whoa", this is confusing (to me, at least). What I do not know, about the topic of (stuff like) that note (at the TOP of Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items) that says

To help centralise discussions and keep related topics together, Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items/content redirects here.

... would fill a book.

I understand that, even though the "putting things back the way they USED TO BE" ... seems to be only "partial", in this case, ... that, it still might be intentional ... on the part of User:Fuhghettaboutit. I just wanted to alert said editor that ... the "putting things back the way they USED TO BE" ... seems to be only "partial" (not "100%") in this case.

I hope this helps. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi. Mike. To the extent that discussion (link) is really the best place to link to for an explanation of why deleting protected images can be problematic, linking to the whole discussion is needed for context. Reverting to the prior (2014) version of the talk page to "fix" the link would not be warranted since we don't modify people's organic talk page discussions like that, as changed by the participants. So, yes, the fix is about all that can be done if we are going to still link there. If you or anyone has a suggestion for a better place to link to, of course, that would be welcome. I actually think the text here, surrounding the link, should have an addition; a qualification; something like (addition in green): Do not delete protected images, even if there is an identical copy on Commons, unless the image is no longer in use (check what links here). I see no reason to reflexively keep every local copy of an image that was protected as high risk for some bygone reason, when we can check its current use.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:16, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: Thank you. I agree that ... the place that the link points to now ... is probably a good place for it to point to.

As far as, [whether or not there is any]

reason to reflexively keep every local copy of an image that was protected as high risk for some bygone reason,

*** even if *** it is now used ZERO places ... well ... the only reason might be ... if there is a significant chance that the ["high risk"] image might be used in the future ... in some article that does not exist yet, OR ... maybe, "by means of" being added to some existing article.

I realize that it might be hard to "estimate" that future "significant chance" -- ("if any") -- ...but that is perhaps outside the scope of this discussion (and/or, maybe ... it is just "not my department".)

For now, I would be fine with considering this matter to be ended. As in ...

Resolved

 – "case closed"

--Mike Schwartz (talk) 16:01, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Deletions are superflous

Why not just blank page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.21.56.82 (talk) 07:35, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Because even if we did so and the page was protected to prevent a revert to the last version, the page's history would still exist and viewable by everyone. The better question would be: Why keep pages that don't belong here? Regards SoWhy 07:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• This has been proposed previously, see Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system. But it failed to get accepted. – Uanfala 09:39, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Clatification for G5

"To qualify, the edit must be a violation of the user's specific block or ban. Pages created by a topic-banned user may be deleted if they come under that particular topic, but not if they are legitimately about some other topic." Does that mean that in the absence of a specific ban or block that would prevent an editor from creating an article on said specific topic, article created by blocked/banned editors who have no specific topic bans cannot be deleted under G5? In other words, if an editor has been let's say permbanned from Wikipedia for some random disruptive behavior but has no topic bans, and then their sock creates an article on some random topic - is G5 applicable or not? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:33, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

• the edit must be a violation of the user's specific block or ban. If their specific block or ban is being indef blocked or banned from editing en.wiki at all, they're violating their ban by socking to create new articles, so anything their sock creates can be G5'd. It checks out fine as written. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:36, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

#RFC: Alternatives to XFD for creations of banned or blocked users is still open above Agathoclea (talk) 15:38, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

• To answer your specific question: yes. If a community banned or indeffed user who creates an article or other page, that article or page is subject to G5 assuming the other conditions are met. This is because of WP:BMB. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:59, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
  • What purpose is served by deleting perfectly good, well-written articles? Doing so amounts to nothing more than vandalism by consensus. It's also worth noting that the language is permissive ("may") and does not create a requirement ("shall"), which many admins and other users fail to grasp. Simply put, if a deletion is controversial, it shouldn't be speedied. And deleting a perfectly good article for no reason other than who created it is certainly controversial. G5 needs to be scrapped entirely IMO, or at least amended to allow restoration of G5 articles upon request of an unblocked (or perhaps autoconfirmed, to make sure they're not another sock) user, like we do for PRODs. Smartyllama (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

RFC: Alternatives to XFD for creations of banned or blocked users

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

*Summary:--There is consensus to Y accept a nuanced version of the proposed change.

• Accepted Wording:--G5, creation by banned or blocked users, subject to the strict condition that the AfD participants were unaware that the article would have met G5 and/or that the article creator's blocked or banned status was not known to the participants of the AfD discussion.
• Details--
  • By a count of heads, the proposal garnered 22 clear support !vote(s), 2 whose votes could not be definitely parsed into black and white and 12 oppose !votes .Given that all-most all the votes were more or less well grounded in different policies and appealing rationale(s), that seems to pass the threshold of enacting policy-changes.
  • WP:BMB has formed the central axis of most of the arguments in favor of supporting the policy.Coupled with that, the enormous benefits of the proposed change to tackle paid-editing-farms etc were also heavily mentioned.
  • Also, it may be noted that, while many mentioned a convinvcable modus operandi wherein paid editors can just AfD their own articles, use other socks to get it kept and use it as a line of protection against our current policies, no practical example(s) were put forward.
  • On the side of the opposer(s), the most significant argument has been that A CSD criteria should not overturn community consensus irrespective of any reason and that CSD is solely aimed at non-controversial deletions.
  • Whilst, the point of the opposers forms the very backbone of the CSD process and could not be over-emphasized enough , a majority of the discussants were of the opinion that BMB must be executed very fiercely, esp. against paid editors and the like even at the cost of ignoring the opinion/consensus of the !voters in a part. discussion and despite certainty of some slight(??) collateral damage.
• Reminder--
  • As always, the administrators are reminded to employ common sense in the entire process, to check the merits of keeping vs deleting the article (may-be upon the original cause of the ban) and use their discretionary authority judiciously.
• Signed by Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} at 14:54, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

---

As there appears to be some debate on the point, I call the question: Does the change described in this revision accurately represent the currently established policy?

CC Interested editors (Doc James—Bilby—Tavix—Legacypac—Kudpung) as people who have inserted/reverted this diff and a user who seems interested. Hasteur (talk) 12:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support yes I believe this accurately reflects long standing actual practice as confirmed in the recent discussion linked in the first change. I do not see this as any kind of policy change although perhaps at some past time Admins were less aggressive at deleting the creations of socks and banned users. Legacypac (talk) 12:26, 7 September 2017 (UTC) (edit conflict)
• Support This seems like a silly question to not support as this is the text of G5 itself. If while the XFD is progressing we discover the page is substantially the work of an editor who was subject to the a block or ban during the time of the creation we don't throw all our policies out the door. I would hope that the nominating user presents clear evidence showing how the user was supposed to be restricted and therefore why G5 is a slam dunk. I'd also expect the admin reviewing the G5 nomination to review and confirm the facts of the case. Hasteur (talk) 12:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• (edit conflict × 2) @Hasteur: If you want this to be an actual RFC, please follow the steps at WP:RFC, i.e. add {{rfc|policy}} to advertise the RFC.

As for the question, I think the change is correct per WP:BMB because if you are banned, you are not allowed to edit, no matter how great your page is. However, this only applies in cases where the applicability of G5 was not known when the XFD was held. If people knew that the page was created by a banned user and they decided to keep it anyway, G5 does no longer apply. In practice, I can imagine few examples in which pages are still eligible for G5 after an XFD because usually in the course of such discussions substantial edits by others will have happened. Regards SoWhy 12:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support per WP:BMB and the text of G5. -- Tavix ^(talk) 12:38, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support - I haven't actually inserted/reverted the diff, but I must admit I was sorely tempted to revert this one. However, with one admin already merrily editwarring I thought it best to stay out of the fray. Yes, the cited diff not only reflects what I believe most admins have assumed anyway, including me, but it also appears to be a bit of text that was missing due to simply not having been timely updated. Anyone who claims it shouldn't be there is, IMO, simply Wikilawyering and possibly exploiting the lacuna to defend their own convictions vis-à-vis articles by blocked/banned editors. And that would be counterproductive to our hundreds of hours working at COIN, DRV, and SPI. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
• If the most recent XFD has explicitly decided to keep a G5 eligible page and the participants in that XFD discussions were aware that it was G5 eligible then it should not be deleted. In cases where the discussion was unrelated to the ban, G5 applies. (I just realised this is basically what SoWhy just said). —Kusma (t·c) 12:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• No - the edit summary for that revision links to this discussion which covers one particular case in which G5 was used in this way and then endorsed by discussion. One-off cases don't make good tests of policy. Generally speaking, if a page has survived a deletion discussion, it has the endorsement of the community and so G5 no longer applies. Perhaps there should be a new criterion for deleting the contributions of editors who are later demonstrated to be undisclosed paid editors, but as far as I know there is no consensus yet that we should indiscriminately mass-delete UPE contribs. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm concerned about two issues. The first is that I haven't seen instances where this has been applied, so it isn't clear that there is a need for the change. Are there instances where pages would have met G5, were created by an editor banned at the time, but where there was a need to delete them in spite of an AfD? (I'm very aware of the current discussion - in that case, the pages did not meet G5 anyway, so it isn't a great example). For a page to qualify, it would have to have been created by a banned editor, gone to AfD, and have had no significant edits by other editors while at AfD. If this is meant to reflect practice, how often is this practice being performed? However, even if there is a need, CSD is meant to be a quick alternative to uncontroversial deletions where there is no risk that the community would disagree with the decision. If the article has survived AfD, then the community has already considered the article and deemed that it should be kept. Accordingly, the reasons we override the community's decisions on an AfD are limited to legal (copyright or office actions) and purely technical (such as dependent on deleted pages). This provision is neither. It seems better to respect the community's decision in these rare cases by sending it back to AfD, prodding the article, or using some other slightly longer but more transparent process than CSD. And if none of those are suitable, and it absolutely and uncontroversially should be deleted, rely on an one-off exception under IAR.- Bilby (talk) 13:57, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support as the paid editing issue is a distraction here, as I mentioned at the DRV. It involves WP:BMB and the fact that as described at the deletion review, nominating your own articles for AfD could easily become a loophole to exploit here. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:06, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - the purpose of a ban is to state categorically that it is not worth the community's time to review that editor's work because it is very unlikely to be acceptable. However, once the community has (perhaps unwisely) spent the time to review the work and found it acceptable, it would be backwards to delete it unless there is an actual problem with it. Tazerdadog (talk) 15:41, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh look! Another set of articles created by undisclosed SOCKing paid editors and sneakily dumped into Wikipedia. What shall we do with them?

So if I circumvent my ban, create something good and the community (unwittingly!) keeps it at XFD, it should be kept even if it was in violation of the ban and the banning policy says "all edits by banned users are forbidden, no matter how good"? Regards SoWhy 15:53, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes. That material improved Wikipedia, even if it was forbidden. The banning policy states that you shouldn't have made the edit in the first place, but deleting good material makes Wikipedia worse. However, if you want to quote fragments of that policy at each other, it also says that "obviously helpful changes ... can be allowed to stand". Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 17:55, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

What I find troubling about the line of reasoning here, is that we have all seen AfDs happen where people show up, glance at the article, do a google search, say "lots of potential references" and !vote keep, saying that the topic is notable in theory. AfD is not cleanup.

This is about cleanup. This is about dealing with the page that actually exists, and is about carting away industrial waste that has been dumped into Wikipedia; it says nothing about whether the topic is notable or if a decent article could be generated.Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I actually understand you position and at one time I actually supported it as well. And for non-banned users I still do because the goal should indeed be to create a better encyclopedia if possible. However, while keeping such material might be achieving this goal in the short run, the encouragement for such editors to ignore bans will hurt the project in the long run. Regards SoWhy 20:32, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Ultimately it comes down to a balancing act between the damage done by deleting an acceptable article and the damage done by weakening our banning policy. I believe that the proper venue for weighing these factors is a XfD discussion, not CSD. On a different note, Cabayi's and Hut8.5's positions below seem to be a workable compromise for this issue, that I can support as a second choice. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:57, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

True and good point, however, won't any keeping of such an article not embolden other banned users? As for the last part, I think what Cabayi and Hut8.5 are saying (and what Kusma and I said above as well) is what most supporters of this proposal are agreeing with. Of course G5 - like any speedy criterion - does not apply if the possibility was discussed and explicitly rejected. This proposal is as far as I understand it only for cases where the eligibility for G5 was not known at the time of the XFD. Regards SoWhy 06:05, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

As a matter of interest, could this situation actually arise? If it is discovered before AfD, the article will be killed under G5. If it is discovered after, the commentators in the AfD couldn't have known anyway. So the only possibility is that it is discovered during, but in those cases we normally just speedy close the AfD and delete under G5 anyway. I suppose a really, really intense discussion would possibly be kept open even if the banned editor was found during it, but they always result in substantial changes to the article if things are that intense. - Bilby (talk) 09:42, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support except where the block was known & mentioned prominently in the deletion discussion BEFORE the bulk of the keep !votes - as already specified by SoWhy & Kusma. Cabayi (talk) 15:59, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support if the article creator's status was not known to the participants of the AfD discussion, oppose otherwise. If the creator is revealed as a sockpuppet of a banned user after the AfD then we are in basically the same situation as with newly discovered copyright violations, as new information proves the page qualifies for speedy deletion. Edits by banned users can be kept if adopted by other people but the fact a page survived but an AfD doesn't mean that has happened. Hut 8.5 18:46, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment if I had a promotional sockfarm I'd have one of my socks nominate my facorate page for deletion with a really poorly written nom, then vote with my other socks, along with unwitting editors fooled by my bad nomination, to keep it. Far fetched? I bet this happens every week. Legacypac (talk) 19:08, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

This is an impossible scenario. Most articles created by paid editors are borderline notable at best. Nominating them for AfD is a quick method of loosing your clients. It is far better for them to act as they do now and just stay under the radar. The vast majority of paid editing is never noticed. - Bilby (talk) 22:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Not impossible at all. Most AfDs get very low participation. All you need is one sock to nominate and the creator and another one or two to vote keep. This would protect pretty well against future AfDs for once Kept at AfD the page is unlikely to be AfD'd again and many voters just say keep or make procedural objections that it was recent kept before. The paid editors are far more modivated than us and it took me seconds to come up with this scenario. Legacypac (talk) 06:24, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

It isn't viable. By nominated an article you were paid to create you have two outcomes - one is that it is kept, which would save it from G5 if you are identified as a banned editor. However, it would still risk being deleted via something other than G5 - such as being renominated for AfD, prodded, or killed under IAR. However, if you fail, not only do you see the article deleted, but you can't recreate it as it would fall under G4. In which case you need to explain to your client that not only did you fail to keep the article, but you made it that much harder for them to create a new one. Try and recreate it anyway, and you are at risk of salting for repeated recreation. Alternatively, just do what they always do - throw away the account, don't draw any attention to yourself, and hope the article survives for a couple of days so you get paid and get the positive review. After that, who cares? You've been paid, and if it is deleted you just blame it on those evil Wikipedia admins. - 07:36, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Banned or blocked users (or paid socks) will find ways to get their articles into Wikipedia after they are banned. We can close the loop hole rather than continue to argue about this. See WP:BMB. If banned editors create good material that is no excuse to get around a ban or keep the article. Others can also create good material without the radioactive waste being unloaded into Wikipedia. QuackGuru (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support It is a good thing to clean up industrial waste that has been dumped into Wikipedia. Jytdog (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support Without it we leave a large loop hole. Paid editors can just AfD their own articles, use other socks to get it kept, and than if they are someday discovered the article is "protected". Agree with User:Cabayi Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Has this ever occurred? - Bilby (talk) 22:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Responding to both of your questions... according to one source in the Orangemoody article, on at least some occasions they would nominate the article for deletion themselves, then extort the article subject, and then come here argue to "save" it with other socks. And who ever would have thought anyone could be that devious on such a scale? The floor has fallen off what paid editors might do to make money off WP. Jytdog (talk) 01:21, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

That wasn't nominating articles in order to protect them from deletion. The rather over the top claim being made here is that paid editors will nominate what in almost all cases is a borderline-notable article in order to protect it, with the additional claim that this is may well happen every week. I don't mind if people want to support the proposal, but I wish the scenarios remained realistic. Nominating an article for AfD is far too risky a move to be a viable means of protecting it. - Bilby (talk) 01:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Tell that to orangemoody! They apparently found it a profitable enough strategy. I do agree with you, that the risk of this risk of this becoming a widespread way to game the system seems pretty low... but on the other hand who would have thought that black hat paid editing of Wikipedia would become such a viable marketplace that it gets written up in Time] and elsewhere? This is like taxes -- throw up a barrier and people are motivated to find a loophole. So it is worth closing it. Jytdog (talk) 05:41, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

It needs to be a viable loophole before it is worth considering - Orangemoody was using AfDs as a threat, not as a means of protecting articles. I just get a tad frustrated when people throw up near-impossible scenarios without any evidence that they've ever occurred as justification for more restrictive rules. We need to avoid falling too far into a bureaucracy, and sometimes the best solution is just to keep things as they are with an IAR out if it is really needed. - Bilby (talk) 05:46, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I am baffled by what you are writing. Orangemoody wanted to get paid for saving articles. Payday is saving articles from AfD - they actually nominated some. (Am I getting that wrong, or are you missing that?) Yes it is risky. Jytdog (talk) 08:38, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Your description of Orangemoody's actions was that the articles were nominated for AfD in order to force subjects to pay so that he save it. However, the scenario being put forward here is banned editors nominating articles for deletion in order to protect the articles from being deleted under G5. They seem like two different situations. Either way, both would be incredibly rare, and I have never seen any evidence of a paid editor nominating an article they created for AfD in order to protect it, nor do I suspect has anyone else. The Orangemoody situation was a good case for using IAR, the lack of any other similar situations shows why we don't need to specifically allow for the faint possibility that they might one day occur.

The rhetoric around paid editing has become bad enough that we need to stay at least a little grounded when we look at the issues. - Bilby (talk) 09:19, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I appreciate your desire to keep the community grounded on this. I know you are view undisclosed paid editing as a serious thing; you were on of the first admins I saw indef somebody on their own authority for violating PAID and directly adding a lot of bad promotional content to WP. I went and looked at some point and you have done that three times.

We trust admins to prevent our community norms and processes from becoming a suicide pact. This gives discretion to admins to clean up these tires dumped in the forest. You may view the "industrial polluter" metaphor as overblown rhetoric but to me that is exactly what almost all UPE is - exploiting our openness to dump industrial waste here, that has nothing to do with the mission. (I write about that a bit on my userpage here if you have a minute). We do end up with these ugly piles of content created by serial SOCKers like the case that sparked this. We need admins to be able to use the mop to clean them up, lest the community spend yet more time in laborious processes when we could all be doing constructive stuff instead. Jytdog (talk) 17:03, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I clearly said that wrong. I have no problem with your view of paid editors and wasn't complaining about that. My problem is with people ascribing greater and more serious activities to paid editors, stretching the definition of paid editing, and overstating the extent of activities without evidence. How people feel about it is absolutely fine, and how they describe their feelings is absolutely fine, and not a concern at all - I have strong feelings about it as well, so why should I object to other people feeling similarly? This isn't the place for the wider discussion, but my concern is that I'm seeing people move further and further away from policy in how they act against paid editors, and as there are so few people working in the area, there is little effective oversight that can keep anti-paid editing activities within policy. - Bilby (talk) 23:01, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

• Mu This is a nonsensical change, because nothing that is ever AfD'ed will have had "... no substantial edits by others." If the author AfD'ed something itself, G6 would have applied. If another editor placed an AfD template, that by itself is a substantial edit, leaving alone that in the process of an article being kept, there are typically many other substantial edits to the page being AfD'ed. Jclemens (talk) 04:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Is placing a maintenance template really a "substantial" edit? After all, once the AFD is closed, the template will be removed and nothing will have changed. And it's not unheard for an article to come through AFD the same way it went in with no changes made by others. Of course, if people edit the article during the AFD to keep it, then G5 no longer applies. Regards SoWhy 06:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

I suppose one could define 'substantial edit' as a term of art to exclude templates, but I would call nominating something for AfD pretty substantial. But so far, no one appears to be engaging with the restrictive nature of G5, in that if ONE good faith editor makes ONE substantial contribution, G5 is off the table anyways. Well, until the next time someone decides that eliminating a UPE product demands that Wikipedia's safeguards be eliminated for the sake of efficiency... Jclemens (talk) 06:17, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

An admin deals with articles created by banned editors.

• Oppose This should be for non-controversial deletions. If an article has survived an AfD, then that cannot be the case. I realise that a deleted page can be re-created, but I am very reluctant to do so, as it goes against consensus. G5 is completely anomalous on this list. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:02, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
• Comment How bout we move them to a holding pen, perhaps in a distinct namespace? in order to allow them to be fundamentally rewritten, and remove the socking editor's name from the history. It gets rewritten on a new page, peer reviewed (perhaps, if that's necessary), moved to articlespace, and the original then G5'd. That would seem to square the circle- we get to keep any good works the sock might have done, whilst equally denying all recognition to the part they played in its creation. Slightly 1984 perhaps, but-. — fortunavelut luna 07:35, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately that is contrary to the CC BY-SA and GFDL licenses, which require every contribution to be attributed. Only if the article gets fully rewritten from scratch so that it is not derivative could you remove attribution, but then you don't need the original article for that. Diego (talk) 08:54, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

But the original article might give sources and other meta information. On the legal side of things one might argue that they would need to sue first and uncover their identity. Agathoclea (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

There is already a great holding pen for all these articles and it is deletionpedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:09, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support with the proviso that there is an exemption if at the time of the AFD the fact of such article creation by a banned user was known Agathoclea (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support It's a very small procedural change and I regret that so much volunteer time has to be spent on it. I assume, though not explicitly covered by the change, that it would also help avoid situations where, when a large G5-eligible sockfarm is detected, the articles at AfD at the time of detection are somehow exempt and survive longer than the rest of the lot (examples [8], [9]), despite being probably the worst. Rentier (talk) 09:47, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support WP:BMB is at odds with G5 so there is a problem; if they are making good enough content, why not declare properly. jcc (tea and biscuits) 11:29, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support per WP:BMB. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:54, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support per WP:BMB Smallbones_(smalltalk)
• This is complicated. It has a history and a context, and I suggest that participants here should read Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 September 3. The community needs a more effective means of dealing with prolific promotional sockfarms but I'm not sure expanding G5 is the best way to do it because that could have unintended side effects. I'd prefer to leave G5 as it is and enact X3: Cleanup of articles started by checkuser-confirmed prolific sockfarms. But what isn't an option is to do nothing. If surviving AfD makes a sockfarm-created article immune to G5, then what we're actually doing is creating an incentive for sockfarms to AfD their own articles with one hand and then !vote keep with their others.—S Marshall T/C 18:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
• Yes it accurately represents the currently established policy that "an editor who is site-banned is forbidden from making any edit, anywhere on Wikipedia, via any account or as an unregistered user, under any and all circumstances." Negating a ban by allowing contributions of banned editors to remain on the ground that they improve an article short-term encourages further abuse. Such abuse causes substantial long-term damage to the project and wastes resources that are better allocated elsewhere. Mduvekot (talk) 19:10, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I completely understand the frustration over sockpuppets and paid editing farms, but (assuming the XFD process was not affected by any socking), G5 is no reason to override the decision to keep an AFD. If the community says the subject should stay, then it shouldn't matter who wrote it. Sro23 (talk) 13:05, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
  • In the cases that triggered this the socks in question were involved in the XFD process. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:07, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
  • And socks are often involved in XfD, sometimes very obviously and sometimes harder to spot. Legacypac (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as this would bypass the community consensus that was established at the given AfD in a way that doesn't happen with the other exemptions (except for G12, but then complying with copyright legislation is much more important as a countering factor than is the merit of enforcing the letter of one particular aspect of the ban policy). In practical terms, there are a variety of reasons that users get banned for, and the best course of action would be different in each case and most of the time deletion isn't needed anyway - for example, if the user was banned for behavioural reasons then this has no bearing on their content creation (and deleting the content just to enforce BMB is tantamount to cutting off the nose to spite the face), and if the user was known for contributing unreliable content, then that content can simply be edited away. However, I acknowledge that there is the problem of banned users creating articles on non-notable topics and then socking the AfD, and there has to be some solution in this case: I would support allowing the use of G5 on the condition that all the keep !votes in the AfD were made by socks of the banned user. – Uanfala 12:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

  We do not have a good ability to detect socks. CU is not pixie dust unfortunately. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:02, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

  There's no silver bullet for detecting socks (and CU is, and should be, used only in a minority of SPIs), but in practice most of the time it's pretty clear if the participants in a given discussions are socks. And in the borderline cases, a second AfD is always an option. To restate my previous point more succinctly, if established editors have reached consensus that an article should be kept, then we shouldn't create loopholes to bypass it. Respecting community consensus is more fundamentally important to the project than the literal enforcement of an aspect of the ban policy. – Uanfala 11:05, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- with the exception that if the AfD specifically considered whether the ed. was banned and decided not to delete it , then a speedy on the same grounds would be against the prior consensus. My support is rather reluctant, because this is a problem for which there is no good solution--any way of handling it has its disadvantages. At this point we are under so much pressure from undeclared paid editing that we need to try this. It might work better. DGG ( talk ) 03:12, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support We need to be clearer about deleting paid edits — implementing this proposal would be of major help. Carl Fredrik ^talk 14:33, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose. G5 is only for pages with no significant involvement by other editors; barring an AFD that gets closed as "no consensus" because nobody showed up, there's always significant involvement by one or more editors in keeping the article. Aside from copyright infringements and office actions (required for legal reasons), it's never for overturning the result of an AFD; the "normal" exceptions are all for things that are housekeeping to some extent. Moreover, if you read down a couple of lines, you'll see the following: These criteria may only be used in such cases when no controversy exists; in the event of a dispute, start a new deletion discussion. Hint: if the article's been kept at AFD, controversy is going to exist. If this gets enacted, this section is going to contradict itself — you couldn't ask for a more fruitful place for breeding disputes. Nyttend (talk) 00:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, with note - A CSD criteria should not overturn community consensus (like that which happens in an AfD). I do think, although, that when the banned/blocked status of the creator is discovered, that there should be another AfD, with a note that the creator is banned/blocked, so that a new consensus can be established. Also, closers of AfDs should take notice of the age of the accounts; if all of the accounts are below autoconfirmed status, then the AfD should probably not be closed. This would help prevent most socks from taking advantage of this "loophole". RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 00:45, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. If a page has survived an AfD then there is consensus that it should exist, and almost certainly has non-trivial contributions by editors other than the original creator and their work should not be deleted without further discussion. Per RileyBugz, the newly discovered status of the creator would be grounds for another AfD if anyone desired it though. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
• Depends what they were banned or blocked for. If it was for repeated underhand behaviour in articles, like sneaky vandalism and hoaxes, or referring to fictitious sources or misrepresenting sources, then any further articles by them would be under great suspicion despite having survived AFD and should be eligible for G5. If it was because they couldn't control their argumentative tendencies in discussions, then that doesn't necessarily reflect on their articles, which should be considered on their merits: Noyster (talk), 08:38, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support Admins have to use judgment when deleting a page so there should be no concern that a great article with significant contributions from other editors will be deleted. Deletion review is always available. WP:DENY is the only tool available to deal with persistent problematic editors and this change would assist that. Johnuniq (talk) 03:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. It sounds a lot like a reaffirmation of G5, but it has too much appearance of allowing admins to ignore community consensus at AfD. Appearance, not necessarily reality, but appearance matters. A better solution, where an AfD was closed as keep/no concensus, and subsequently it is discovered that the creator and all major authors were banned, there being no mention of it at AfD, then the thing to do is to ask the closing admin to re-open the AfD. If it was a NAC, any admin may re-open. If the admin is now inactive, any admin may re-open. The participants of that AfD must be notified. I fear that this is leading to broad discretion to G5 pages retrospectively, delete articles written by later banned editors, especially by editors later banned due to TermsOfUse violations (undisclosed paid editing), and while these deletions are generally a good thing, it is not a good thing for it to be done not-openly. AfD should be used. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:48, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per RileyBugz, Noyster, SmokeyJoe for overbreadth. CSD shouldn't trump a community discussion where there was consensus to keep and where there was a presumably reasonable level of due diligence in examining the article. The appropriate role would be to start a new XFD and note the situation, especially if the issues with the ban/block were about their article content. This would help ensure that the article gets proper scrutiny in light of the new information. An exception would be say the user was blocked for making hard to detect hoaxes, and a diligent search by the admin found that it was a hoax (in which case a dual G5, G3 rationale could work), or other edge cases. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 15:18, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the "per" but I'm not sure it was merited here. My view is that we shouldn't be tasked to do "diligent searches" on the further productions of editors who have already demonstrated their ill-intent, and are presumably now socking into the bargain. And AfD isn't a grand jury and can be determined by just a couple of "keep" votes from unknown sources: Noyster (talk), 08:31, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
    • My per was to acknowledge your correct statement that G5 deletions, especially for pages that have survived and XfD, are very context dependent, which isn't the case for the other provisions in that section. Someone could have been topic banned from X and blocked at the same time because they created sub-par, non-notable X articles (or as you say, were angry in discussions about X articles). If they then create an acceptable, article on a notable X subject kept in good faith at AfD, by a strict application of G5, it could be speedied once the socking was discovered. This RFC was opened to !vote on whether the change in the linked edit at the top of the RFC, and without any additional context, I have to !vote to oppose it. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 05:34, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

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

Template:Db-nn

Template:Db-nn was nominated at RfD which reached a consensus to deprecate (discussion). There was no discussion about how it should be deprecated though, so I've done a quick and simple job (as a normal editor) that I encourage other editors to look at and improve if they see fit. Thryduulf (talk) 11:24, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks good, I merely tweaked it a bit. Regards SoWhy 12:18, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Draft remaining after article was created by copy/paste

See Draft:Brabble, and Brabble.

Seems to me that Draft:Brabble should be somehow speedy deletable, but I don't see how... Jytdog (talk) 00:22, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• No. The draft should not be deleted. The copy-paste was a WP:Copyrights infringement, albeit merely a Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia failure that can be fixed. If anything is to be deleted, it is the copy-pasted article, per Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#G12. It should be fixed by Wikipedia:History merge. The copy-paster, Ralum23 (talk · contribs), should be educated. Ideally, attempts to save a very large amount of new content should invoke a software check for it being a direct copy-paste from another page, resulting in an interruption and warning if true. Even if not true, large new content saves are often copyright infringing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:53, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, history merge requested. Jytdog (talk) 02:45, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: this is  Done. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:01, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

What if all speedy deletion criteria except G12 were abolished?

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

---

What if almost everything were sent to AfD instead of CSD? I think:

• It wouldn't require too much extra effort over at AfD, because (1) the slam-dunk cases typically don't take a lot of time to review and (2) situations where someone creates a whole slew of deletable articles could be listed together as one group
• In more marginal cases, the AfDs would create a record of the best arguments for keeping the article, which people considering recreating the article could then review to see if they have any better arguments than what were rejected before, thereby avoiding pointless re-creations while encouraging helpful re-creations
• Some articles that currently get deleted under CSD would get rescued instead by being improved to the point where they could be kept, during the process of the AfD

It seems like CSD has become the new AfD, i.e., we're at a point where if an admin thinks an article wouldn't survive an AfD, he will usually just speedy it even if it doesn't meet the CSD. For example, if a topic seems non-notable, usually it will be nominated as A7, even if it doesn't really fall under A7. Then all it takes is one admin out of 859 to decide it should go, and it's gone.

If it really is a slam-dunk case of non-notability, wouldn't people at AfD be able to tell at a glance, and not have to spend a whole lot of time looking at it before saying "delete"? But if it isn't a slam-dunk case, then it's more likely that as a group of people is reviewing it over a week, someone will notice that it is in fact notable, and make an argument for it.

From the point of view of people who misuse the CSD, there's not really any downside to tagging the article as a speedy just to see if that flies. Unless someone is going to impose a consequence for CSD misuse (which, as people have pointed out, is hard to do, because of the lack of after-the-fact transparency in a lot of these cases, plus a lack of "constituency" for looking after an article's survival if the original author is no longer around), it seems like the only answer is to mostly just scrap the CSD system. Maybe use prod instead for those cases that are expected to be uncontroversial, and accept the tradeoff of having to wait a week as the cost of restoring the integrity of the deletion process.

CSD probably worked better back when the wiki was small and Jimbo could personally oversee all the admins to make sure processes weren't being misused. I think the wiki has outgrown CSD, because there's no longer that mechanism for accountability. Smooth alligator (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Special:Log/delete indicates to me that you'd need A LOT MORE deletion discussions in such cases. Also, don't forget G10. I get the idea of accountability but in the real world there is only so much manpower and attention. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:54, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I've just today deleted about 50 cross-namespace redirects as a result of userfying a bunch of templates. If I had to send all those to RfD rather than just G6ing them that would be a right ballache. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  19:04, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

If an editor misuses CSD some Admin or other editor will come down on them like a ton of bricks. I was accused of having low CSD accuracy based on some declines, but when I finally managed to turn on User:Legacypac/CSD_log I proved the declines rate was extraordinarily low - the odd decline against thousands of accepts is just as likely to be an Admin mistake as mine. Legacypac (talk) 04:05, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Looking at the logs, there were something like 2000 (two thousand) pages deleted in the last 24 hours—the vast majority of which weren't G12. Just reading the list of page titles would break AfD, even if most were "slam-dunk" cases.

It's also worth noting that a deletion via application of a CSD template effectively requires two consecutive, affirmative "votes" for deletion: one from the editor who applies the template, and a second from the admin who reviews the CSD request. And any editor (admin or not) can effectively veto the CSD request by removing the template; except in cases of abuse, that prevents CSD from being used to delete the article going forward. That's likely substantially more oversight than any two-thousand-articles-per-day AfD process would get. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:06, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, although if an admin sees the article first (e.g. as he's patrolling), he can delete it unilaterally without anyone else's placing a tag on it first. Smooth alligator (talk) 19:52, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

He (why he? We even allow women to have the mop and bucket now you know!) can, but outside of the obvious cases of G3, G10 and G12 (where "get rid of it now" really is imperative) it's really poor practice to do that. Similarly, when you want to project a page, you're better off going to WP:RFPP first unless it's an obvious case like persistent vandalism. And woe betide the admin who blocks somebody they're in an edit war with. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:14, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Poor practice? I have been doing this for 10 years or so, without many problems. Has saved other admins a lot of time, and prevented a lot of problematic articles of getting longer exposure here. Of course one needs to be careful, and in case of doubt tag it (or prod, or just pass) instead, but in most cases unilaterally deleting isn't a problem. Fram (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Ritchie333 that direct deletion is not good as a standard practice. It helps to get a sanity check in, especially with A7 and G11. But an admin who tags something for G10 instead of deleting it should give their mop to someone else. —Kusma (t·c) 11:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose If there is misuse the focus should be in fixing and preventing it, not in abolishing a system that works and prevents a lot of extra time from editors having to vote delete for all those new articles we would have at AFD. I personally think that time has better use elsewhere in the project. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 19:15, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
• On a historical note, there was never a time when Jimbo oversaw all admins - unless you when those first months when Jimbo employed Larry who was the only authority. Rmhermen (talk) 19:19, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
• This is a really bad idea. I did once write a program which attempted to classify mainspace deletions according to the reason for deletion. I haven't kept it up to date so the most recent figures I have are from 2012, but nevertheless they suggest that the number of pages deleted through CSD is something like four to five times the number deleted through AFD and PROD combined. And the vast majority of those articles are rubbish, so we'd waste loads of time putting them through more thorough review. AfD does require more overhead than speedy deletion, it requires somebody to nominate the article, some people (usually at least two) to comment on it and then someone to close it. This can last for up to a month. Imagine if we had to do that every time somebody wrote an article which said "dfjkdjadkadsjf" and was intelligent enough to contest the PROD. Furthermore this would hurt the chances of articles which are worth keeping, because they would be a lot harder to find amidst the tidal wave of crap this proposal would unleash on the AfD and PROD processes. Hut 8.5 19:39, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
• Comment I think I'd like to keep G3 and G10 myself. "we're at a point where if an admin thinks an article wouldn't survive an AfD, he will usually just speedy it even if it doesn't meet the CSD" Utter poppycock. Do you have any actual evidence to back that up? I've done something in the region of about 4,000 CSDs I think and the only one I have ever knowingly done outside policy was Micaela Schäfer, and even then I announced it on WP:AN immediately afterwards explaining why. If you've got actual logs of admins deleting stuff out of order, ping them to this discussion and I'll try and find out why - except 1) speedies like U5 and G11 in particular can be controversial and objective and 2) if you were going to say RHaworth, I can't think of very many, if any, speedies he's actually done outside policy. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:51, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
  • If there's a way to search the deletion log for edit summaries, just look for T2. – Uanfala 00:03, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I was here when the criteria were much narrower. AfD (well, it was called VfD back then) had, relatively speaking, much more traffic. The problem was that then, as now, most deletion cases don't get much serious, insightful review, and so we'd get dozens of boring articles on non-notable subjects. It was, at best, a high-effort process that was a drain on the volunteer resource, and at worst, it was inconsistent and empowered creators of marginal articles since the process was slow and the outcome uncertain. I occasionally follow the logs and I don't see abuse, and I see little in the way of creeping expansion of the criteria that isn't supported by discussion here. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:45, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
• Comment we're at a point where if an admin thinks an article wouldn't survive an AfD, he will usually just speedy it even if it doesn't meet the CSD Sadly, I think you're right, assuming by "survive" you mean an AfD resting in keep (remember, there are other possible AfD outcomes, such as merge and redirect). I frequently see articles that have obvious merge/redirect targets deleted under A7. This AfD is a good example in which two editors (one of whom is an experienced admin) insisted it was an obvious A7 per WP:INHERITWEB (don't get me started on that and its "connexion" to A7. For my views on the matter, you can read this), despite having a blindingly obvious merge/redirect target. The irony here is that it was kept as notable. Adam9007 (talk) 20:59, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose I've speedied thousands of pages in the last few months that don't warrant the effort of AfD or MfD. The OP is either very inexperienced in deletion process or trolling. Legacypac (talk) 00:30, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose . Not trolling but with only 341 mainspace edits and barely 3 months, Smooth alligator would be well advised to get significantly more experience before considering getting involved in serious maintenance areas and talking about what used to be done years ago. A good start to their Wikicareer would be to enroll at the WP:CVUA and do some vandalism patrolling and leave article deletion topics alone for a while. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:50, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Advice noted. Although if you look at the contribution histories of some of the people who are very active in patrolling and deleting articles, or who spend a lot of time weighing in on policy and incidents and such, and filter by article creations, a lot of them have created virtually no articles other than redirects. Or they haven't created articles in a very long time. So they don't encounter speedy deletion from the perspective of the article creator. I'm sure a lot of article creators too spend little or no time patrolling and tagging articles. It's just not their cup of tea.

The different sides of the debate on deletion policy tend to lack a full and balanced perspective because they've specialized so much in their areas of interest (either article creation or article deletion or policy/incidents or whatnot). I see this too in the RFAs sometimes; people will say, "I can't support you because you have no experience in x" even if what they've said they want to do with the tools has nothing to do with x. People naturally tend to think that whatever area they're involved in is important and that everyone should try it. Smooth alligator (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not concerned if you try working deletion or not, but if you have no experience in deletion work it is inappropriate to give opinions about overhauling it in drastic ways. Legacypac (talk) 03:55, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose What benefit would this have? Filling full of spam is what killed Google Knol, and in fact IMO we need more methods to prevent this not less. Those who appear to support undisclosed / disclosed paid editing work very hard to make sure no deletion steps an iota over a very strict reading of policy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:55, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, but somewhat more articles could go through PROD instead of speedy deletion. A lot of things need to be deleted, but there is no urgency. —Kusma (t·c) 11:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Prod does have the significant merit that the proposer provides a rationale, thus letting the article creator know what is needed and allowing them to respond. I have sometimes chosen it over CSD for that reason. But there is no merit in encouraging false hope and effort in situations which have no chance of demonstrable notability (the one-person business creating web pages, the newly self-publishing writer, the local insurance broker, etc.) where A7/G11 are appropriate. AllyD (talk) 12:06, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose: There are no "slam-dunk cases" at AfD. It takes each participant's time and effort to (a) read the AfD rationale, (b) read and evaluate the page, (c) conduct searches in the standard and other case-specific locations, and (d) provide a rationale. A case is generally not closed without more than one "delete" opinion, however detailed, so there is the additional re-listing effort. It is a process creaking with an ever-present load whose increase would not serve the project's interest. AllyD (talk) 12:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, mainly per AllyD, but a few others as well. "Removing" CSD actually causes more problems than it solves, as XfD is actually EXTREMELY complicated. Note to proposer: Please come back once you've read more on Wikipedia's deletion process. ToThAc (talk) 17:21, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Kudpung. To the cynical, the suggestion could come across as — fortunavelut luna 17:33, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - speedy deletion was created specifically because the large volume of "slam-dunk" nominations to AfD was overwhelming the process. There is no reason to think the problem wouldn't be worse given the higher rate of creation and deletion now. VQuakr (talk) 18:37, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

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

Add a baseless claim extension

I was wondering if a "baseless claim" extension to either G3 or G10, leaning G3, can be added. It's already partially covered by G6, but I think some additional parameters can be added in order for pages to qualify under the extension:

• The extension would apply to WP:ARBREQ, WP:LTA, WP:RFC, and WP:SPI, to name a few.
• To qualify, the filing user must have had little or no prior experience in the given administrative area, or have had a generally bad reputation there.
• To qualify, practically everything presented by the filing user must be baseless, subject to a few exceptions.
• To qualify, the targeted user (if there is one) must have a generally good reputation on Wikipedia.

Administrators can check out Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Oshwah, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/NeilN, and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Oshwah as a few examples. ToThAc (talk) 17:54, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

G6 is fine for the links you posted. G3 also covers it. G5 probably also covers these particular ones. G6 is already kind of the catch-all for "this should obviously be deleted but none of the criteria fit exactly". Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:01, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

• Agree with Ivanvector that G6 covers all this. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:11, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
• I think G3 covers it since WP:Vandalism is defined as "intentionally making abusive edits to Wikipedia" and creating obviously baseless SPI reports surely can be considered abusive. Regards SoWhy 09:19, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
• G3 and G10 cover this well. Delete, block and WP:DENY are the correct answer here, not any changes to our criteria. —Kusma (t·c) 09:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposal: replace A11 with G14

I propose that criterion A11 be replaced with a new criterion, G14. This is because the criterion (that the subject was obviously made up) can be reasonably applied to spaces such as template: and draft:. The proposed new text is similar to the existing A11 text, and would be:

This applies to any nominally encyclopedic content that plainly indicates that the subject was invented/coined/discovered by the article's creator or someone they know personally, and does not credibly indicate why its subject is important or significant. The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify under Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Note: This is not intended for hoaxes (see CSD G3).

References

Thoughts? VQuakr (talk) 03:52, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• It seems sensible. "Obviously made up" should be speediable in any namespace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:28, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
• Quite reasonable. Support. J947^{( c ) (m)} 04:55, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as written. Doesn't seem to be solving an actual problem, while causing some new ones. Draft space may be a good place for such topics in borderline cases, even when they are speediable in main space. User space should be left alone. I haven't seen any cases where this could have been applied in other spaces. —Kusma (t·c) 06:58, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kusma: the idea was prompted by the discussion at WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:The Republic of Myhös. VQuakr (talk) 08:12, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't dispute that this happens, but I don't think this happens frequently enough to be a CSD. —Kusma (t·c) 08:59, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Support. We should not have to go to MfD or wait six months for G13 to kick in in order to delete something that we could speedy as clearly made up if it were in mainspace. Kusma, I recognize that userspace is traditionally given more leeway for borderline or even personal topics but we already have U5 for WEBHOST violations, so I think your concern is somewhat misplaced as there's clearly a precedent for getting rid of inappropriate content from userspace. That being said, I don't have an objection to carving out a "no userspace" exception for this one if we really have to. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:38, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

  U5 has an important exception for real long-term contributors, who are allowed to keep otherwise inappropriate stuff in their userspace. —Kusma (t·c) 09:00, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose--Unless and until user-space is left out of it's purview.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:30, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support WP:U5 is used to delete such material in userspace now, but this crieria would be easier for new users to understand. There is no reason any page should be hosting stuff a user made up one day. We need this for Drafts for sure and we should being CSDing such Drafts instead of rejecting them at AfC. Legacypac (talk) 11:34, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Legacypac:--Well, will the new expanded criterion cover User:Catherine de Burgh/Catherine Bonkbuster?Regards:)Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 12:21, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Support - It makes a lot of sense to extend this beyond just article space.- MrX 12:16, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - First, I think it's important to remember that deleting something doesn't actually do anything other than hiding it, and most of the content in draft or user space is pretty well hidden already. Second, drafts and user pages aren't just areas for creating future articles (although ideally they are primarily for that and that alone). For a lot of new users, it's also a safe space to more or less tinker with the software and figure out how it works, which is not an easy thing to sort out. Even though those of us who use it every day are want to forget the steep learning curve. It's also in many ways a space to tinker with policies, and figure out exactly why a draft or a subject isn't acceptable. Third, most editors, especially new ones, don't actually fire up Wikipedia before they've had their morning coffee, and check their watchlist before they go to bed. That's why six months is six months: because it's realistic that a good faith editor might only return to work on a draft after several weeks of absence.

Overall, I think it's a recipe for WP:BITE, and while it might solve a problem from our perspective, it seems doubtful that most readers will ever at all notice any difference, and I don't think that's a level of potential improvement that justifies really much of any level of acceptable risk. GMG^talk 12:39, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Draft space is where such articles could be drafted to eventually indicate why they are significant, and there is no requirement for them to immediately do so. In fact, draft space is exactly where such a thing should be done when it was created/invented by someone the author knows personally, or themselves. Smartyllama (talk) 12:41, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

No Draft space and userspace is NOT where people should be writing about the drinking game or micronation they invented last week. Facebook or their own blog or nowhere are better places. No such page is ever kept a MfD. Also note the page must not assert notability.Legacypac (talk) 17:22, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Those are obvious cases. Sometimes it may not be so obvious. That's why we have drafts and MfD. An article may not assert notability at the moment, but if it can be edited so it does, it shouldn't be deleted from draft space, yet alone speedied. If it were ready to be put in mainspace, it would be there. Articles in draft space don't have to indicate significance the moment they're created, only when they're moved to mainspace. There are two reasons we have that criterion, to prevent articles from being created about topics without any indication of significance and to prevent people from creating articles where they have a conflict of interest. Neither of those policies apply in draftspace. Users with a conflict of interest are explicitly told to create the article in draftspace rather than mainspace, and articles in draftspace are not, and never have been, required to indicate significance the moment they were created. Smartyllama (talk) 17:56, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose we shouldn't be using significance-related standards to delete things in draft space. A page in draft space shouldn't have to indicate how the subject is notable from the moment it is created, which is why A7 doesn't apply there. I am also concerned this might be used to delete jokes in project or user space. Hut 8.5 17:32, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Hut 8.5: in user space the analogous deletion criterion is WP:U5; I do not think an existing problem of applying this criterion to wikihumor exists or would be exacerbated by the proposed change. The proposed criterion is substantially narrower than A7, in that it requires the candidate material to both make no claim of significance and to state that it was invented/made up by the author. VQuakr (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

U5 is widely misused to delete harmless material in userspace, that doesn't really inspire much confidence in me. A11 is effectively an expansion of A7 to include pages which were obviously coined by the creator or an associate, as it imposes a significance test. I'm also not a fan of writing speedy deletion criteria based on a single example. Hut 8.5 06:46, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

• Very weak support: Make sure there's an exception for drafts. Even then, I'd wonder if this would work as an extension of G3 instead. ToThAc (talk) 18:18, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@ToThAc: as noted in WP:A11, G3 implies an assumption of bad faith (vandalism) while A11 (and by extension G14) does not. G3's generally are identified by the implausibility of their claims (ie, "Joe McMiddleschooler was the first person to walk on the moon"). A11's generally make mundane but plausible claims (ie, "Joe McMiddleschoolball is a game I invented last week"). Draftspace is the primary space this proposed change would apply to, since similar candidates can often be deleted per WP:U5 in user space and are covered by A11 in mainspace. VQuakr (talk) 01:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

• Leaning towards support. Let me present an example that I think this new criterion is intended for: Draft:Spangclanism. As it stands, we have to wait for G13, or waste time at MfD. Adam9007 (talk) 22:39, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

  Obviously created in wrong namespace, and could have been moved to mainspace instead of draftspace and deleted as an A11. I would also delete this as a G3 hoax at its current location. —Kusma (t·c) 07:15, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I’m not understanding why you feel that page was “obviously created in the wrong namespace”. Saying anything that could be taken as a suggestion of moving drafts to mainspace to seek deletion will get you in serious hot water. That is very unpopular. Legacypac (talk) 07:32, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't "feel" it was created in the wrong namespace, I looked at the page history and noticed that it was created in the Wikipedia namespace. Someone then moved it to the draft namespace instead of article space. I assume it was intended for article space, as many newbies think that "Wikipedia" is a space for articles. —Kusma (t·c) 08:36, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

And I have "abused" my powers to delete it. —Kusma (t·c) 22:06, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose It would have been easier to mfD than to start this discussion. In general, in draft space we give more tolerance for things that may appear unjustified, as the purpose of draft space is for drafts that arestill unsatisfactory is for articles to get improved into articles. DGG ( talk ) 21:24, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose this is hardly a problem. Very few pages fall into this category. MFD will do fine, or if it does go to an article it can then be speedily deleted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:38, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
• Comment: Currently leaning oppose but can someone supporting this proposal demonstrate that such pages are created frequently enough that MFD can't handle it? After all, convenience is not really a reason to create a new criterion. Regards SoWhyMobile 00:47, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

New criterion - T4, aka Template PROD

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

---

I've been mulling this one over for a while now. One stalled discussion in January made me pause, but it's been mentioned to me a few times (most recently by Nihlus) and I think I'm going to put the question to rest.

At current we have no PROD-like system for Templates. We (obviously) have PROD for articles and F11 for images, but no way to quietly delete an unused template other than to clog up WP:TFD with nominations that almost everyone will !vote "delete" on.

I propose a new criterion, T4: If template is unused and shows no likelihood of being used, the item may be deleted seven days after notification of the creator. Templates deleted under this criterion would be refundable just like PRODs. This keeps some of the clutter out of TFD, still allows the creator to protest the nomination, and avoids gaming the system (one of my main issues that brought on the January discussion was the fact that users were nominating under G6 and G8 for unused templates).

Thoughts? Primefac (talk) 02:47, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• Support – Looks like you beat me to the punch, so it stands to reason that I completely support this. My drafted wording was: Templates that are unused–that is, are not transcluded in any pages, are not being actively substituted, are not used as a preload for another template, and are not used in any editnotice–may be deleted after being tagged for seven days. In addition, I was going through and gathering data on any TfD that used the "unused" argument. None of them were kept, and all but one was deleted. One resulted in no consensus. Nihlus 02:58, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  I like your wording better, though I think the after notification of the creator bit needs to stay in. Primefac (talk) 12:02, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  Let's try:

  Templates that are unused–that is, are not transcluded in any pages, are not being actively substituted, are not used as a preload for another template, and are not used in any editnotice–may be deleted seven days after notifying the creator and being tagged.

  Gets a little wordy but gets the point across. Nihlus 12:37, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• So just add templates to the list of things that can be prodded? Why is this here? -- Tavix ^(talk) 03:01, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  @Tavix: See the wording of T3. Nihlus 03:08, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  So add templates to the list of things that can be PRODed and we won’t need T3 either... That would help a lot more than adding another criterion, and it’d simplify the system too. -- Tavix ^(talk) 03:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  A PROD is a very vague "I don't expect issues" deletion. One could (in theory) set a prod tag on a sidebar or infobox that is in use with a perfectly valid rationale and it very well could be deleted. The point of this criteria is specifically for unused/never-going-to-be-used templates. Of course if a consensus develops to modify the wording of PROD, then that's what we'd go with, but I was looking for something a bit more specific. Primefac (talk) 11:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

  A PROD is simply for uncontroversial deletions, which seems to be your objective with the criterion (ie: to reduce the load at TfD). Adding templates to PROD would solve that issue, without muddying the waters further between PROD and CSD. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  Since F4 to F7 and C1 have a seven-day horizon, in addition to F11 and T3 already mentioned, it seems too late to achieve a clean separation between PROD-like processes and true speedy deletion: Noyster (talk), 12:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• Support so as to help free TfD of discussions with 10+ days between relistings. J947^{(c) (m)} 03:04, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
• Question: How can you tell whether a template is being actively substituted? Doesn't substitution remove backlinks to the template? Regards SoWhy 12:25, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • @SoWhy: {{Substonly}} should be transcluded on the documentation page. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 12:33, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • This relies on the documentation being done correctly, which is not necessarily true. —Kusma (t·c) 12:41, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • Which is fine, because we give notice to the creator and a 7-day hold. If they're actively using their poorly-documented template, they can just remove the PROD. From experience, the vast majority of orphaned templates are not substitute only, and if they are, the majority of those are documented. The rest are usually pretty obviously substitute only. We then have to consider the trade-off between maybe having to undelete 5 templates that should have been documented better versus literally thousands of useless TfD discussions that require closers we don't have. The choice is pretty obvious. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 12:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict × 2) I understand that but Nihlus' suggestion is to exempt templates that are not being actively substituted, so does that mean to exempt templates that have the {{Substonly}} tag on it (no matter if they are still used or not) or to exempt templates that are still being substituted? And if it's the latter, how can you tell? Regards SoWhy 13:02, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support per my comment above. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 12:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
• Only if... Ideally, PROD shouldn't be used for templates for the simple reason it's not used for redirects: they don't have enough watchers. In practice, however, I don't think this is going to lead to less scrutiny in the deletion of templates, given the low participation at TfD and its overall bias for deletion (e.g. a discussion consisting only of the nomination and a comment expressing doubts about the validity of the nominator's rationale, is as likely to be closed as "delete" as it is to get relisted or closed as "no consensus"). If a PROD-like process gets adopted, then it should have two explicit requirements: 1) The nominator should have made the effort to notify interested parties. Minimally, this should involve notifying the creator as well as a relevant wikiproject (for example by project-tagging the template's talk page, provided the wikiproject is active and subscribed to the article alerts). 2) An explicit check for substitutions must have been made by either the nominator or the deleting admin. This check is important for two reasons: a) most of the regular TfD nominators so far don't seem to have had the habit of checking for substitutions and that burden has traditionally been with the participants in the discussion (and no, the template's documentation is not enough: hardly any of the subst-only templates that get nominated as "unused" are documented as being subst-only); b) a check for substitutions will be able to pick the occasional case where template content has been merged into an article (or another template) and its history will need to be preserved for attribution. – Uanfala 10:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • If projects want to keep track of their templates, they must tag them themselves. We cannot be responsible for knowing every WikiProject out there; such a requirement is crazy. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 10:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Crazy would be to expect projects to keep track of stuff they have no way of know of knowing it exists. Projects can come into the picture only once a page has been tagged. – Uanfala 10:50, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
      • Uanfala, which project should be notified for e.g. Template:AFv5 hidden, or Template:Acd (now up for deletion), or Template:Agent? Fram (talk) 11:07, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
        • In the few cases when there are no relevant projects, then no projects should be notified. Aren't we supposed to use common sense when applying the rules? – Uanfala 11:12, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
        • Incidentally, Template:AFv5 hidden is within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject User warnings, and Template:Agent is relevant for Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes (I don't know how active these are). Of course, it can be argued that if there's no way to make a nomination noticed by wikiprojects (or by other interested editors), then TfD should be the way to nominate the template for deletion. – Uanfala 11:22, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
          • I'm not going to search around if there is perhaps some project which may or may not be related to a template created years before and never used. Rules making it harder to do simple maintenance, without a clear benefit, should not be imposed, as we are not a bureaucracy. Fram (talk) 11:31, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Projects interested in monitoring certain templates should use the WP:Article alerts system. --Izno (talk) 12:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support with no requirement to notify some morbid wikiproject about some template no one is using. Lighten the kiad at TfD. Legacypac (talk) 20:50, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose unless there is are explicit requirements that: (1) the nominator and deleting admin both check for templates being actively substituted, and (2) all substantial editors to the template (not just the creator) are notified, and (3) all projects that have tagged the template and/or are clearly relevant are notified. Article alerts are not enough imo and alerting inactive projects is not a burden. I don't expect nominators to do a deep search of all potentially relevant projects, but if a template is related to e.g. a geographical place then the project for that country should be notified even if they haven't tagged it, similarly anything that gives a warning to editors is relevant to Wikipedia:WikiProject User warnings even if they have never heard of it before. Thryduulf (talk) 11:34, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as proposed. The opinion about a template's likelihood of being used can vary from editor to editor. That, and unfortunately, we have no way to determine substitution counts to validate how useful a template might be in regards to substitutions. Best to keep template deletion proposals at WP:TFD so that editors can determine if an unused template can be saved or used appropriately. Steel1943 (talk) 20:37, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as proposed. I've been thinking about this for a bit, but I don't think it makes sense to insert a PROD-like process into CSD. I would, however, support the addition of templates to the list of things that are PROD-able since it seems the reason for this is to help unclog TfD. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:24, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  @Tavix: As explained above, F4, F5, F6, F7, F11, C1, and T3 all have the seven day window. This PROD-like process you speak of was introduced into CSD a long time ago. Nihlus 21:30, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  This is literally a "Template PROD", as nicknamed from the header. It would be less complicated to simply add templates to WP:PROD (like what was done with files a few months back) rather than a new CSD blurring those lines even further. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:34, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  Your argument seems to rely solely on semantics. T3 exists so it is essentially a template PROD already. There's no metaphorical line to be blurred as it already has been defined. Nihlus 21:38, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  If "template PROD" already essentially exists, as you claim, then there should be no issues with adding templates to PROD. If "Template PROD" is actually added, then we can simplify the CSD list by deprecating the "un-speedy" criteria if desired. Instead, you're trying to add more criteria to CSD, which in my opinion is not the right way to achieve the objectives stated above. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:45, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Sorry to be pointing out the obvious, but there's a substantial difference between the PROD-like process proposed here and the kinds of speedy deletion criteria that happen to incorporate time delay. F4, F5, F6, F7, F11 are there to deal with likely copyright infringements and so are need for the fundamental purpose of staying on the right side of the law; T3 is for the removal of duplication (and hence the template-space flavour of A10); C1 is for empty categories, where this is virtually a technical deletion, where the non-technical and potentially controversial part of the process has already been done by its emptying (and hence anyone would have already objected before this point). These are all inherently uncontroversial deletions, which is definitely not the case for templates that appear unused, at least not any more than it would be the case that it's uncontroversial to have a speedy deletion criterion for orphaned articles. – Uanfala 22:00, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• The definition of CSD, from the very first sentence of WP:CSD is "The criteria for speedy deletion (CSD) specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media" (my emphasis added). If we have a seven-day delay, then it's not immediate—let's not add another violation of this. Thankfully, the addition of File PROD has rendered the F time-delay criteria redundant. That leaves C1 and T3. I understand the delay for C1, but even empty categories can be a controversial deletion if there's articles to populate them, so I rather have a category PROD than C1. I don't see the point of having a time delay for T3. If there is substantial duplication of another template, that's still going to be the case seven days later, so I would support removing the delay for that criterion. -- Tavix ^(talk) 22:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - This one doesn't seem to qualify as "speedy" to me. There are enough, if not too many, criteria using the seven-day period, like F7, which I think are starting to become more redundant to me. I'm thinking that "Template PROD" can be re-proposed with slight tweaks, Primefac, at either WT:PROD or WP:VPP. It doesn't have to be part of the CSD, does it? Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 05:59, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
• Mostly technical oppose: Isn't this a proposal to expand PROD to templates? I think WT:PROD would be a better place. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:26, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

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

F9 and XfDs

At Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Consensus_and_copyright_law, it was pointed out to me by Adam9007 that while we do list G12 as a reason to delete a page regardless of the outcome of an XfD, F9 is not listed here. Is there a reason why it isn't? I'd also highly suggest that we go ahead and add it: consensus cannot override copyright law, and this is already acknowledge in the policy by having G12 listed as a reason to delete a page that has survived an XfD. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

• I do think it's rather queer that we must technically go to FfD if a file has survived FfD and it later turns out to be an obvious copyright violation. Copyright is something that the participants at the first FfD may not have considered. Adam9007 (talk) 02:13, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
• I've gone ahead and added F9 to that list: [10]. No objections raised here and G12 is already listed and also applies to the file namespace, so logically F9 does as well. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:14, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Proposed additional guidance for G4

I am a non-admin, and having just been chastised for tagging an article with G4 wrongly, I think the guidance for its use should be expanded as follows:

Non-administrators do not have access to articles that have been deleted as a result of an Articles for Deletion discussion. They should therefore only nominate an article for speedy deletion under the G4 criteria if there is certainty that the new article is substantially identical, for example through familiarity with the article prior to its deletion.

See also archived discussion here. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 20:16, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

I think this is pretty well assumed most of the time. Usually the best course of action is to reach out to your friendly neighborhood admin and get them to do a quick check to see if they are sufficiently identical. GMG^talk 20:18, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

That suggestion could also feature in the guidance. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 20:22, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

• Shifting perspective to the editing flow when a new instance is created by the name of a previously deleted page, the red-highlighted instructions are clear: ”If you are creating a new page with different content, please continue. If you are recreating a page similar to the previously deleted page, or are unsure, please first contact the user(s) who performed the action(s) listed below.” If contributors follow those instructions, a repost susceptible to CSD G4 should never arise. But it does.

The proposed definition combines “certainty” with “substantially identical” in a responsibility on the tagger. That remains interpretive and easily gamed against non-admin editors. I see no virtue in constructing another situation which can result in negative feedback on the judgment of reviewers seeking to deal honestly with reposts which are often system-gaming by people with a direct interest in achieving a published article.

If non-admins are going to be susceptible to negative comments after proposing CSD G4, then I suggest the second sentence of the proposed guidance should instead become ”Instead of nominating the new article for speedy deletion under the G4 criteria, they should open a new Articles for Deletion discussion, with a rationale which suggests that it may be a repost of the article previously deleted under this or a variant name.” The downside is an(other) uplift in AfD workload, but the merit is that it provides the non-admin with a decisive above-board process. AllyD (talk) 09:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC),

• If a new page patroller believes in good faith that something is a recreation (standard case: something that was deleted just minutes ago), they should tag the new page for G4. The reviewing admin should also assume good faith, and either delete or un-tag without making the tagger feel bad about it. It is not reasonable to expect perfection from the tagger here, and it is explicitly an admin job to check whether something is or is not a G4. (There are cases when it is clearly wrong to tag something previously deleted as G4: say, something was deleted as lacking sources in 2006, and there are reliable sources from 2017 about something the subject did in the past ten years cited in the article). —Kusma (t·c) 09:50, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

  In other words, I think Nyttend is wrong about the general principle that you should only tag when you are sure that it is a repost (i.e. only when you are an admin and don't need to tag). However, I don't think the grumpy reply Curb Safe Charmer received necessitates any change in procedures. They tagged something in good faith, they were wrong, the page was not deleted, no harm done. In any case, the main mistake Curb Safe Charmer made here is the following: The existence of an AFD for a person does not mean we should have to delete a draft about the same person. If any "abuse" of process occurred here, it is in the fact that drafts are not usually covered by a previous AFD, only by a previous MFD. —Kusma (t·c) 10:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

  not sure this worked, so pinging @Nyttend: with my apologies for any double pings. —Kusma (t·c) 10:03, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

  This would be a very good addition. The policy is clear, and should remain clear, that this is for reposts, not different pages on the same topic, let alone different pages on a different topic with the same name, as I've periodically seen. If someone comes to me and says "Would you compare Page X against the deleted version, and let me know if they're identical", I'll happily look into the situation and answer; sometimes this doesn't require admin rights, since a page with more than a few major edits has no chance of being a repost, but I'll always be happy to answer the question. I am not at all happy to see people abusing the criterion by tagging without a shred of evidence, as was done here (you might as well just tag a music article for A9 without checking to see whether the musician has an article), but if you're asking, I'll always be happy to help, whether it's "here's the answer" or "please glance at the article history; it's changed too much to be a repost". I would make some changes to the proposal, also: first, G4 is for everything, so it should refer to XFD not AFD. Non-admins sometimes can find deleted content; you can find pages on archive.org, and the last "you shouldn't have speedied this" objection I received came from someone who based his argument on a Google-cached version. Perhaps the proposal should say something like "for example through familiarity with the article prior to its deletion, or through viewing an archived version, or by virtue of in-article evidence such as maintenance tags that predate its creation." Nyttend (talk) 12:16, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

  On the contrary, this would be a very bad addition. Nyttend's proposal undermines G4 whichever way it plays out.

Nominator leaves a note on Admin's talk page suggesting Article may be a G4 recreation. Admin investigates & confirms.

At this point what happens? Does Admin, knowing the article is a recreation, officiously confirm this to Nominator and insist that Nominator tags the article with a G4 notice, which Admin then responds to by deleting the article? A two step process has now become a five step process.

Or does Admin delete Article? A public, open process has now become a private deletion-on-request process which is prone to WP:ADMINSHOPping.

Far better that Admin accepts that, in the two-handed process which all CSD nominations are, the balance falls more heavily on the Admin than the Nominator when assessment of G4 is concerned.

So long as the material in the article still has the flaws mentioned in the AFD discussion which led to the original deletion G4 is appropriate. Only where the new article is obviously different to the article discussed in the AFD is any admonishment appropriate.

The guidance proposed fundamentally changes the nature of G4. For that reason, I oppose it. Cabayi (talk) 19:07, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

• The specific example given (Draft:Jeffrey Guterman) was a draft tagged for G4 because an article on the subject was deleted in mainspace, which isn't an appropriate use of the criterion. Even if the content was identical to the deleted version it still likely wouldn't qualify for G4. If some content isn't considered suitable for mainspace then it's perfectly OK for someone to work on it in draftspace to bring it up to standards, and the wording of G4 says that drafts don't qualify for G4 unless the material was moved there in order to evade deletion. I don't think the suggested change is a good idea, I think a better course of action is for admins to be aware that non-admin taggers haven't got all the evidence in front of them. Hut 8.5 19:17, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Fully agree, also with what Cabayi said above. Tagging for G4 basically means "I think this is a recreation, could you check please?" which is a good idea imho if done in good faith. After all, all taggings are merely a user asking for an admin to check whether the page meets a certain criterion and if so, act accordingly. Restricting non-admins in the proposed way makes NPP harder, not easier, without any real benefit. Regards SoWhy 19:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps we could change the SD-G4 text to make it sound less certain. or even add a SD-G4? template to say the tagger thinks it might apply. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:52, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

It already says "This page may meet Wikipedia's criteria for speedy deletion" (emphasis mine). No speedy deletion template is a definite claim, they are all potential. Whether a page meets the CSD or not is always ultimately decided by the admin working through CAT:CSD, not by the tagger. —Kusma (t·c) 08:50, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

You must not tag a page for any sort of speedy if you can't provide evidence that it qualifies, and I'm routinely encountering tags that are placed with no evidence whatsoever. That's not good faith: it's recklessness at best and deception at worst. We need to make a firmer statement that this is inappropriate and give some examples of what a good-faith user does. Nyttend (talk) 12:56, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm as strict when it comes to speedy deletion as they come but even I think that's a too strict interpretation of policy. As Kusma points out, the speedy templates use the wording "may meet" since 2005, so I think it's pretty clear that the community has always considered tagging a request to check applicability of the speedy criteria. Regards SoWhy 13:11, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Wrong: You must not tag a page for any sort of speedy unless you can't provide evidence for why you believe it qualifies. Evidence, in this case, is the link to the previous AfD. What is reckless is not non-admins tagging pages without definite proof (just based on the best of their knowledge), it is admins deleting tagged pages without checking the evidence and page history. —Kusma (t·c) 17:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

I do a lot of CSD tagging but G4 is essentially useless to a non-Admin as we can't check the deleted page and I perceive the stand to be "identical" to the deleted page based on Admin's actions when I tried to use G4 in the past. I've had too many Admins come down on me for alleged "incorrect tagging" even though my CSD accept track record is extremely high. Therefore I don't even use G4. I never see an Admin sanctioned for bad accepts or declines on CSDs yet I've seen Admins make such mistakes. This discussion shows there is a wide range of Admin opinion on how to treat G4 anyway. Legacypac (talk) 18:45, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

• I agree that there's a power differential here. The "substantially identical" wording applies to the admin making the deletion decision, not to the editor tagging it. Tagging a draft as G4 is already wrong, per the current wording of G4, but we shouldn't expect editors to compare articles to Deletionpedia before placing a G4 tag. Good faith on the part of the tagger should be enough; the admin has the tools, and the buck stops with them. Jclemens (talk) 19:40, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

In my pre-admin days I sometimes applied G4 on the basis of archived copies of the deleted page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:44, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Removing speedy tags on your uploads

We're all familiar with "The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag from it." Of course, we don't apply this in 100% of cases; nobody will complain at you if you remove a U1 or G7 tag, in particular. But how do we apply it to files that have been tagged with delete-in-several-days tags if the problem has been resolved? For example, let's say I upload an own-work image with no license, so you tag it with {{nld}} and notify me, and I go and add a license. May I remove the tag, since the problem's been resolved, or must I leave it, since I'm the uploader? Whether in the intro or somewhere else, we ought to say something about such a situation; it's hardly an uncommon occurrence. Nyttend (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Edit requests

WP:C2

Hi, this page should mention WP:C2 (speedy rename), which is currently available only in a section of WP:CFD. 165.91.12.213 (talk) 03:15, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

CSD A7

Maybe explicitly state that fictional characters, organizations, etc. (besides hoaxes) do not qualify for A7? The same would also be true for A9. 165.91.13.204 (talk) 01:26, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

New criterion: C4

I’m proposing a new criterion for:

recently created categories that unambiguously duplicate the scope of an existing category and where all members unambiguously fail the inclusion criteria, are already in the other category, are themselves nominated for speedy deletion, or can be uncontroversially added to the other category.

Categories like these sometimes come up in WP:CfD, and this criterion could mitigate some of the trivial nominations. The case where addition to the category would be uncontroversial is called speedy merge. It would also be in line with WP:A10. I’m open to suggestions. 165.91.13.204 (talk) 01:22, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

 Not done. This page, for the most part, is set in stone. I've been here for years and I bet if I made these changes without getting consensus, they'd be reverted by the very first admin who happened by. You're an ostensibly new user and you're trying to get a wide range of unprecedented changes via edit requests. Maybe instead, would you mind creating an account then starting a discussion here? CityOfSilver 06:18, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I've added C2; it's just a housekeeping note for an established thing, unlike tweaking the wording of existing criteria or adding a new criterion. Nyttend (talk) 20:42, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Proposed additional criterion: Redirect from "transient branding"

This is mostly inspired by abuse of redirects from radio stations' "branding", but it applies in other areas too...

There are some redirects to radio station articles where the name of the redirect is the station's "branding". For example, WBZ-FM calls itself on-air 98.5 The Sports Hub. And there is a redirect to WBZ-FM from that name.

I propose that such redirects are inappropriate, much as the radio fan crowd loves to create them. Redirects are supposed to be a convenience for readers, but it is very unlikely that anybody is going to type "98.5 The Sports Hub" into the search box. Nor are these "common names" for the stations - I guarantee you that nobody in Boston goes around saying "I listen to 98.5 the sports hub", nor in my town do they say "I listen to Newsradio 600 KOGO". These "brands" appear only in the station's jingle package and on the sides of their vans.

Just about everybody outside the station's coverage area will be completely unfamiliar with the "brand", further reducing the utility of these redirects.

Worse, radio stations change their "branding" often. This results in a detritus of useless redirects. NewsRadio 99-1 redirects to WDCH-FM, but the actual article does not even mention the term "newsradio".

Not all "brands" are bad. It would be fine for, say, "Pontiac" to rd to "General Motors" (if it didn't already have its own article). But these very transient "brandings" are far less worthy. They are really nothing more than the station's most-often-repeated slogan. And we don't redirect from slogans. Do we?

I suggest a new CSD for redirects, "redirect from transient branding". Jeh (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

• I don't think this is a CSD case, it fails uncontestable and I think also fails objective. I can think of two radio stations near me which are known by branding like this, CHTN-FM "Ocean 100" and CKQK-FM "Hot 105.5" (neither have these sort of redirects, though). And I'd argue they are useful search terms (WP:RFD#K5). Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:33, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

• Agree with Ivanvector; when I was in college, I worked at a place that played "Froggy [frequency]" on its sound system, and I wouldn't have had a clue how to look it up, except by searching for that branding or by looking at a directory of radio stations and checking the ones with similar frequencies. Some of these are trash, of course, but there's no way to determine trash-or-useful easily and reliably, so these ought not be deleted without discussion. Also, aside from really obvious stuff like transwikied pages or worthless portals, please remember that CSD is only for common occurrences; I doubt that problematic branding would be worth its own criterion, even if we could easily determine what did and didn't qualify. Nyttend (talk) 03:45, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Regarding G3 in Sandboxes

In my sandbox, I used infobox country for the fictional country of Kekistan. My sandbox was later deleted for being a hoax. I am curious, if is there a consensus that hoaxes shouldn't be in sandboxes?SpanishSnake (talk) 01:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

You can't have hoaxes anywhere on Wikipedia. I routinely seek and get speedy deleton for hoaxes on userpages and drafts. If you want to experiment with a infobox for the purpose of learning how to improve real pages, using fake info for a bit, you could add "this is fake info purely for short term testing" at the top of the page and it's likely to be left alone for a while. Legacypac (talk) 19:51, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Must a remover of a CSD tag be an "established" editor?

There has recently been some back and forth about whether an editor needs to be established in order to remove a CSD tag from a page they did not create. The disputed text follows in context.

The creator of a page may not remove a speedy deletion tag from it. Only an editor who is not the creator of a page may do so. A creator who disagrees with the speedy deletion should instead click on the Contest this speedy deletion button that appears inside of the speedy deletion tag. This button links to the discussion page with a pre-formatted area for the creator to explain why the page should not be deleted. However, if the sole author blanks a page (other than a userspace page or category page), this can be taken as a deletion request, and the blank page tagged for deletion with {{Db-blanked}} (see G7). If an established editor other than the creator removes a speedy deletion tag, it should be taken as a sign that the deletion is not uncontroversial and another deletion process should be used.

Should the word established be used, and what should it mean in practice if it is?

Pinging those who have recently added or removed this text: @TonyBallioni: @Lourdes: @Patar knight: @Winged Blades of Godric:

Tazerdadog (talk) 17:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• No. Any editor in good faith can remove a tag because anything else would be elitism and contrary to "anyone can edit". Problems with bad faith removals can and should be handled as vandalism / disruptive editing. Regards SoWhy 17:50, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

PS: I removed the sentenced added by Tony completely for now until this discussion is over to avoid further edit-warring on this policy page. Regards SoWhy 17:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

PPS: As a compromise, how about we use the following wording:

If an editor other than the creator removes a speedy deletion tag in good faith, it should be taken as a sign that the deletion is not uncontroversial and another deletion process should be used.

This should address concerns of gaming by bad faith editors without adding any elitism. Regards SoWhy 17:56, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

An article creator removes the CSD tag.I revert and warn him.A brand new account/IP pops, reverts me and throws the afore-inserted line.What shall I do?Winged Blades ^Godric 17:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Another option may be to add the phrase in good faith in the line.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:57, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

• I completely concur with SoWhy's compromise.Mine using the word established was to avoid being taken hostage to bad-faith system-gaming. Winged Blades ^Godric 18:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
• I support SoWhy's addition as a compromise. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:58, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
• No I haven't got the sense that this is a necessary or desirable change. We seem to have managed to deal with situations of sockpuppetry and the like just fine. Phrases like "established editor" or "in good faith" are just going to be weapons used to bully new editors or IPs. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 18:04, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
• Neutral I originally added the "established" bit. But I'm actually okay with anything: established/good-faith/just editor. While I don't agree with World's Lamest Critic's contention of the addition bullying new editors or IPs (The ACTRIAL was also opposed on similar lines...it's turning out quite fine), the intent of Tony's addition was not whether the editor is established or not, just that if someone were to remove the tag, then subsequent editors need to think twice before re-adding the tag. I would suggest that in the same way as we advice rollbackers to leave a comment in the edit summary/user talk page explaining their revert if the revert is not of vandalism, we suggest that the tag-removing editor explain the removal in the edit summary or on the article talk page. Something like "Unexplained removal of speedy deletion tags may be reverted.". Thanks. Lourdes 00:26, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
  • The only instance I can see where reverting would be for SPAs, obvious socks, or on tags where policy is nuanced so an inexperienced editor shouldn't be removing without admin review (G12 and G5). In those cases it is kind of a smell test, and you assume that admins should have the judgement to see if it would be controversial or not. I also disagree with WLC, but he's also likely thinking of fallout from a major paid editing sock farm in July that he and I were both involved in (before I got the bit), that involved several contentious G5s. In most situations, I don't think I've ever seen an admin bully a new user or IP over a removal, and as a NPPer, I would always send to AfD rather than revert anyway, and I think that is the common practice amongst most reviewers anyway, even in the case of SPAs. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:28, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
    • I wasn't thinking of a specific incident when I made my comments, only general tendencies (which have been widely observed and discussed here over many years) for some editors and admins to treat new editors and IPs differently. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 15:29, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

• What is going on here is Wikilawyering or (Rechtanwalting) over semantics. 'Established' is a term that is used throughout Wikipedia, and while it does not imply any form of hierarchy (we also hear users referred to as 'senior editors'), it could be interpreted to mean users who are not new and who have always kept their noses clean, never been blocked, never edit warred, and never bullied ot harassed anyone. On the other hand it could be argued that it simply means, as suggested above, 'good faith' editor. In any case, admins would be in their rights to apply sanctions to any editor who does not demonstrate good faith, or who is making tendentious edits, or who is bullying or harassing anyone. World's Lamest Critic's comments are off topic and not relevant here.

In conclusion therefore, I would settle for 'Good faith', which dispenses with any possible connotations of hierarchy. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Wikilawyering? I thought we were discussing whether a change in wording was needed to improve this policy. Your definition of what "established" means is not what I believe most editors would understand from that word. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 15:20, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

This discussion has, I believe, been engendered by a recent problem which I was aware of but with which I was involved only peripherally, involving the removal by an established editor of obviously correct speedy tags on two different articles, in neither case without any meaningful explanation and without any attempt to improve the articles. The tags were replaced by an admin, and removed again by the same established editor, and this sequence was repeated five times. It may be said that to replace the tags, even when they were correctly applied, could be seen as against policy, but I would suggest that a repeated removal of a valid speedy tag without attempting to explain the reason for the removal or to improve the article should be seen as vandalism. If we are going to modify the policy as regards removal of speedy tags I propose that we should take the opportunity of defining incorrect removal of speedy tags, after appropriate warning and assuming good faith, as vandalism with the option of the imposition of a block if deemed appropriate by the reviewing admin. --Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 16:44, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Disagree.As I said if the AN3 case was a piece-meal one, as it initially seemed, NA1000 was clearly wrong.Also, we can be courteous enough to give good faith editors a chance to postpone a speedy and plead before the community at an AFD over a longer time.If somebody tries to exploit this new adding by choosing to mass-remove CSD tags in direct contravence to community expectations for any cause/purpose, Adam9007 is an example to follow.Winged Blades ^Godric 17:56, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we use commonsense. If one editor was so consistently outside the norm of what the consensus on the criteria was, we'd have a conversation with them asking them to stop. This was inspired by the AN3 issue, and I think NA1K was wrong there. The general sense here is that if an established editor in good standing prefers a discussion, we give them a discussion. If a new good faith editor prefers a discussion and it isn't their article, we give them a discussion. If it becomes disruptive or the editor isn't editing in good faith, we deal with it as needed. The thing is, I didn't (and still don't) think we need an RfC here for what is the standard practice already. Talk page discussion to iron out the wording is helpful, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:35, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Offering the threshold of "good faith" tells new editors that they are free to remove speedies. However a new user removing a speedy is likely to be taken as a sockpuppet of the author and be blocked on behavioral evidence alone. "Established" is less likely to entice new editors to unwittingly blunder into this pitfall. Despite its potential for conflict down the line - the guidance in the template ought to be "Established", and the practice should be "good faith". If there's a neat way we can make that the reality... Cabayi (talk) 21:50, 12 December 2017 (UTC)