Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion

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Read this before proposing new criteria

Contributors frequently propose new criteria for speedy deletion. If you have a proposal to offer, please keep a few guidelines in mind:

1. The criterion should be objective: an article that a reasonable person judges as fitting or not fitting the criterion should be similarly judged by other reasonable people. Often this requires making the rule very specific. An example of an unacceptably subjective criterion might be "an article about something unimportant."
2. The criterion should be uncontestable: it should be the case that almost all articles that can be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to general consensus. If a rule paves the path for deletions that will cause controversy, it probably needs to be restricted. In particular, don't propose a CSD in order to overrule keep votes that might otherwise occur in AfD. Don't forget that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect if not carefully worded.
3. The criterion should arise frequently: speedy deletion was created as a means of decreasing load on other deletion methods such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. But these other methods are often more effective because they treat articles on a case-by-case basis and incorporate many viewpoints; CSD exchanges these advantages for the practical goal of expeditious, lightweight cleanup. If a situation arises rarely, it's probably easier, simpler, and more fair to delete it via one of these other methods instead. This also keeps CSD as simple and easy to remember as possible.
4. The criterion should be nonredundant: if an admin can accomplish the deletion using a reasonable interpretation of an existing rule, just use that. If this application of that rule is contested, consider discussing and/or clarifying it. Only if a new rule covers articles that cannot be speedy deleted otherwise should it be considered.

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

Oft referenced pages

• Wikipedia:Deletion policy (talk)
• Wikipedia:Deletion log (talk and archives)
• Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators (talk)
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal (July 2005 proposal to expand WP:CSD)
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/New criteria (Summary of suggested changes as of November 2005)
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Explanations, explanations of the reasons for each criterion

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Removal of tags

Latest comment: 18 years ago14 comments10 people in discussion

I've always heard that anyone but the author may remove a speedy tag for any non-vandalous reason, and it can't be put back. However, some people have started to say that only admins can remove the tag, or that non-admins may only remove it if the article clearly does not fail a CSD. Since people are starting to oppose RfAs over this, it needs to be clarified. -Amarkov moo! 04:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Anyone except the author can remove a tag, but there is no basis to say that "it can't be put back". The removal may very well be wrong. Obviously, revert warring about it would not be productive, etc., but the simple removal of a speedy tag is not some binding decision. —Centrx→talk • 05:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree, and I don't see that being an admin has anything to do with it. There can be no basis for anyone reinstating a removed speedy which is contested in good faith, since speedy is only for incontestable deletions. Edit warring over a speedy is not appropriate--it should go to AfD, which exists for the purpose of conducting such debates. If something is not clear, its not a valid speedy. If in doubt, it is not a speedy. if there is any grounds for doubt, it is not a speedy. In the case of someone gaming the system by contesting nonsense, on the other hand, I think an admin is justified in deleting anyway, as long as the admin is prepared to defend the action if challenged. We have previously discussed some examples on this page. DGG 05:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, no. Many pages should be deleted but are "contested". In such case though, it should be brought to the admin noticeboard for immediate deletion. Some extreme examples are attack pages and copyvios. Some person edit warring over the tag does not mean that the deletion is in doubt or that it is not a valid deletion. —Centrx→talk • 01:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Even for copyvio, I have seen tags put on when deletion of a paragraph would have sufficed. But I agree that there are cases where the fact that it's contested can be ignored, which I could sum up as Bad Faith Hangons. There are quite a number, and the proportion seems to be increasing. DGG 02:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• PROD tags shouldn't be put back, that's the whole point of PROD. Speedy tags, however, can certainly be put back if the article meets a speedy criterion, and the absence of a speedy tag does not in any way protect an article from being speedied. >Radiant< 08:48, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Oh, I think I mixed up my processes there. Anyway, does anyone not think that non-admins should be able to remove speedy tags? -Amarkov moo! 23:53, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • If the article clearly doesn't meet the cited speedy criterion, adding the tag in the first place is arguably vandalism that should be reverted, but since I imagine that the vast majority of tag removals are done by people who simply don't think that the article should be deleted even though it's clearly in violation of Wikipedia policies, it's probably best to do anything we can to discourage non-admins from removing the tags. Geoffrey Spear 18:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
      • If an article doesn't meet the speedy criteria, it should be untagged by anyone. Especially if the article is expanded by the person untagging it. In some cases, the author should untag it, for example, when an overzealous new page patroller marks a partial save for deletion as "empty". The speedy category is backlogged badly enough as it is; we do not need people who discourage non-admins from helping out by removing inappropriate tags. Kusma (talk) 18:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • I got the same complaint once upon a time. Some people believe that since admins are the only ones who can delete, they should be the only ones to remove invalid CSD tags. I just replied that this was not the case and cited chapter and verse, and the person said "oh, okay!". Case closed. -- nae'blis 18:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Non-admins removing tags in good faith is actually much appreciated. Removing a tag is quite time consuming (if you use a good summary and notify), I could probably delete 5 no-brainers in the time it takes me to remove one invalid tag. I think this is a big reason CSD gets so backlogged... all those ones that should probably be untagged but no one feels like dealing with so it sits there for 10 hours. So if non-admins want to do a decent job of removing invalid speedies, more power to them. --W.marsh 19:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I quite agree. Removing a clearly valid tag is wrong, whoever does it. Removing an invalid tag, or expanding an article so that a previously valid tag (such as "empty", "no context", or A7) no longer applies improves the encyclopedia, and is thus a very good thing. Anyone can do this, and anyone who is willing to do a good job of it should, and should be praised, not criticized, for doing so. Of course, some cases are borderline, but that is the nature of things, and non-admins are as free to weigh-in on borderline issues as anyone. DES ^(talk) 20:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since articles have no WP:OWNer, this means anyone may remove a CSD tag, right? Or what's going on here? --Kim Bruning 16:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It is explictly request that the article creator not remove a speedy tag, but use {{hangon}} instead. This is not because the creator owns the article, s/he does not. It is because the creator has already expressed an opnion by creating the article, and endless revert wars can too easily happen if creators remove tags, or perhaps worse, validly placed tags are removed, and the page falls off the new pages lsit, and is far more likely to be missed. Thus removign a speedy tag from an article you crfeated is considered vandalism, and ther is a whole series of uw (user warning) tamplates for it. DES ^(talk) 22:05, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Why isn't A2 a general criterion?

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I wasn't sure what to do when I saw Template:صندوق just now - evidently it doesn't belong here as it's a foreign language template, but at the same time I figured it wouldn't fall under A2 (foreign language article) as it's a template, not an article, and there are no other criteria which suit it. Why is A2 exclusive for articles? Surely someone could just as easily copy over a category, template or userpage from a foreign language Wikipedia, would they not be speedily deletable as well? - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 14:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Probably because it doesn't happen all that often. As such I would suggest using WP:TFD instead. >Radiant< 14:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

There are some cases where templates in a foreign languages are considered useful, such as Template:User it (which I presume exists on other projects). Tizio 14:15, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

There are also cases where a person whose primary language is not English, or who doesn't speak English at all but only does edits that doesn't require speaking English, may wish to include information about themselves or what they're working on in their first language on their user page or a subpage, or discuss something on a discussion page in their own language. I for one have frequently left messages regarding Commons-related activities on talk pages on other wikis in English. A2 should certainly apply to categories as well, though. Dcoetzee 22:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Commons media categorisation

Latest comment: 18 years ago81 comments11 people in discussion

Hello,

I've encountered a user who has created several categories for images as analogues to categories on the Commons based on the idea that then linking those categories to the Commons makes locating images easier, even though there is far less image content on WP and so the result is many categories for a few images; they have even begun categorising Commons media that are not even used on WP (1,2,3,4) so as to populate the hierarchy of categories created (1,2). My understanding was that we were actively in the process of moving all free images to the Commons, and so it followed that if not reducing image infrastructure on WP, we shouldn't be increasing it. After an inquiry to an admin working on image categorisation that recommended that I transwiki to the Commons any images that were on WP, and which led to deletion of one of the images, this user promptly created a page for the Commons image and again categorised it on WP. According to that sort of convention, wouldn't we have every image from the Commons categorised by their WP pages on WP, thus pretty much negating the utility of separate projects? Please advise, Tewfik^Talk 05:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

far less? en's image database is a little over 50% of the size of commons. there is still over 700K images.Geni 05:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I meant in this specific case, there are a minimal and fairly static number of images to which these new categories would apply, so that a small number of images had many more layers of categories than would otherwise be warranted (especially since there were often redundant categories added). Tewfik^Talk 06:09, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Image description pages for images on commons are WP:CSD I2. I think a category for the same purpose would also be a speedy delete. Whatever category the "commons category" is placed in should/could have a link to the commons category/media. A category on commons isn't a problem, if it's populated. MECU≈talk 12:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

(I've copied this over from Wikipedia talk:Images and media for deletion - I would very much appreciate a definitive answer.) Tewfik^Talk 22:08, 29 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

---

Tewfik copied all of the above discussion from another page. There has been no discussion here (until my comment now). In spite of this Tewfik unilaterally changed one of the speedy deletion criteria. Here is the diff.

The comment by Mecu in the above discussion incorrectly cites WP:CSD I2. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Tewfik has been trying for a couple months (starting March 7, 2007) to depopulate several image map categories at wikipedia in order to put those categories up for speedy deletion. Especially map categories with the name "Palestinian territories" in them. See Category talk:Maps of the Palestinian territories for a bigger picture if you are interested.

Tewfik is Israeli, and his motive for eliminating these particular wikipedia image categories is obvious if one examines his edits and talk page comments. He does not like the name "Palestinian territories." This latest attempt to eliminate the categories was by subtly rewriting a section of the criteria for speedy deletion. Then he added a speedy-delete notice to the images that populate the categories in question. His next step would have been to put a speedy-delete notice on empty categories. Some of the categories in question have subcategories linked from them, so the speedy-delete would not have occurred.

See Tewfik's user contributions, and select "images" from the namespace dropdown window. Here is a direct link. Note the image edits starting March 7, 2007. First he tried removing the category links from the images several times, and then putting the categories up for speedy deletion. But I noted this on their talk pages, so that tactic can not work as long as there maps that belong in those categories. I put the URLs for those maps in the category talk pages so admins have reason to wait before speedy deleting the categories.

So now Tewfik is instead trying to eliminate the permanent wikipedia image placeholder pages for images stored on the commons. Wikipedia image placeholder pages are common throughout the many image categories. Click on any wikipedia image on any wikipedia article page and you get the temporary or permanent placeholder page. That page lists all the wikipedia articles in which the image is found. It also sometimes lists the categories in which the image is sorted. These are oftentimes different categories from the commons. The English wikipedia categories also do not have most of the foreign-language-labeled images found in the commons.

So anyway, wikipedia image placeholder pages are a longstanding wikipedia tradition. The programmers long ago created the mechanism for instantly creating a wikipedia placeholder page. That page becomes permanent when the image page also has wikipedia category links on it, or other info specific to wikipedia. Those category links allow ENGLISH wikipedia editors and readers to explore related images out of curiosity, or out of a need to find more English-language (usually) images for use in English wikipedia articles.

I have reverted Tewfik's unilateral change of the speedy deletion criteria. From the top of this talk page are these instructions:

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

I added the bold emphasis. --Timeshifter 12:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

While I am very interested to discover my true nationality and what my secret motives for doing this are, there is discussion on this page and several others reflecting that creating image deletion pages for media not on WP is contrary to policy. Tewfik^Talk 14:15, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

There was no discussion on this talk page. So there was no consensus to change this wikipedia policy. Here is the quote again from the beginning of Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion concerning making policy changes: "Do not, on the other hand, add it unilaterally to the CSD page."

You made a policy change unilaterally without getting a reply first on this talk page. You copied discussion from another talk page. From that discussion elsewhere Mecu discussed WP:CSD I2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CSD#I2: "Corrupt or empty image. Before deleting this type of image, verify that the MediaWiki engine cannot read it by previewing a resized thumbnail of it. This also includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images." So Mecu was incorrect. Because WP:CSD I2 does not apply to the topic at hand.

You linked to a comment on your user talk page from User:Xaosflux. I commented later at User talk:Xaosflux#Commons media in English wikipedia categories. He then replied to me on my talk page with a comment on March 25, 2007. From User talk:Timeshifter#Common's categories: "It seems like there is a dispute going on here as to the acceptability of these categories. While I've got an opinion on the matter, it is not a strong one, and I am trying to avoid getting in to this dispute. What I have a srong opinion on is simply that we should not speedy delete categories on en: if doing so will leave red-linked categories on other pages, and thats about it. Category talk pages and if it comes to it WP:CFD is the approriate venue to discuss this. Thanks, --xaosflux"

WP:CFD has to do with "deletion, merging, and renaming of categories". You tried to speedy delete the categories in question, but that did not work because the categories were not empty.

Xaosflux's last comment was about categories, not images. So you have not quoted anyone who agrees with you currently about your proposed policy change concerning wikipedia image description pages. --Timeshifter 16:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I see some related discussion farther down in a section titled "Clarification of I8". I commented further there. The comment there from User:Grm wnr seems to confirm what I am saying about keeping local English wikipedia image description pages that have category links. --Timeshifter 18:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I pulled up the other related talk sections so that there is less need for repetition. The 2 sections titled "Clarification of I8" and "I8 clarification". --Timeshifter 13:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clarification of I8

Part of I8 currently reads: If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the file deletion. That seems to imply that in a case where no information is lost, the WP image description page of Commons media should be deleted. Furthermore, if that isn't the case, it seems that there is nothing preventing any or every image on the Commons from also having a WP image description page. I suggest that we clarify that such image description pages should be subject to I8, or alternatively, that image description pages of Commons media not used on WP be subject to I8. Please let me know what you think, Tewfik^Talk 03:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

This proviso is actually contradictory with the sentence which comes before, which states that all information should be transferred to Commons. It also fails the "new CSD" guidelines at the top of this page, as such images are rare and the inclusion of the proviso makes the criterion unnecessarily complex. If Commons realy can't cope with having en-featured tags, then Featured Pictures should be exempted from I8. Physchim62 (talk) 04:31, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I believe you might have misunderstood me, as I'm not trying to apply I8 to featured pictures. I'm simply trying to clarify how the existing policy deals with WP image description pages of media on the Commons (especially in cases where it isn't used on WP), and to discuss solutions for dispelling any ambiguity. Tewfik^Talk 06:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

My suggestion is

1. Remove the part of I8 which you cite, as it is confusing, contradictory and unnecessary;
2. If removing the part creates problems because Commons would have a few en-specific tags on its IDFs, then exempt "problem pictures" from speedy deletion all together and make them go through normal image deletion (they won't by many which fall under this case)

I think I'm responding to your point, but if I'm not, don't worry, I apologise, but I still think my suggestion is worthwhile :) Physchim62 (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps a good suggestion, but still not what I'm talking about. All I want to know is the status of WP IDPs for Commons media, and whether it is subject to CSD. It seems to be implied from the selection I quoted above. If not, then what criteria prevents any or all Commons media from having WP IDPs? Tewfik^Talk 16:47, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

As the one who originally wrote section I8 back in the day, I have to mention that it's full off caveats and relatively verbose for a reason: To get it to fly at all (a rule like that had been discussed and shot down for various reasons literally for years). I expected it to get more lenient as time progresses (another is the one-week rule, which I thought would be temporary but which has proven surprisingly resilient. If one were to revamp I8 it's another point that could be simply dropped), but for some reason that never happened. Anyway, the reasoning was and is as follows:

• IDPs are considered to be basically inseperable from the image.
• No information must be lost in a speedy move to Commons.
• However, there is information on IDPs that may be redundant or, even worse, contradictory to the kind of information Commons needs. Mostly Featured status, and I can't think of any others right now, but there may be more.
• Commons IDPs are subject to the editorial rules of Commons, which may differ from the en ones, which may theoretically be a problem.
• If there is a local IDP, both are displayed, so it's no basic problem in having a local one, apart from the fact that it's another page to take care of.
• So, it's a good idea to keep a local IDP if there is a good reason for it, but if there is none, it should be deleted to make handling easier.

If somebody manages to make a good, consistent rule out of the above, feel free to be bold. -- grm_wnr Esc 16:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

What I would like to see is a clearer restatement of your last line, maybe something like: A Wikipedia image description page of media on the Wikimedia Commons should be deleted unless it includes information that is contradictory to or disruptive of the Commons, such as {{FeaturedPicture}}. Let me know, Tewfik^Talk 06:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

So does anyone have a better formulation, or shall I add this in in place of the negatively framed passage quoted above? Tewfik^Talk 04:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Based on a suggestion to clarify, I've settled on and replaced the passage with: A Wikipedia image description page of media on the Wikimedia Commons should be deleted unless it includes information that is not relevant to the Commons, such as {{FeaturedPicture}}. Cheers, Tewfik^Talk 05:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Looks fine to me, except, well... deleting an image automatically deletes the description page as well (at least it did that when I last deleted an image, it's been a while). So maybe it should say "remain deleted" - but then again, anyone able to delete an image should be aware of this, and this page should deal more with the rule instead of the implementation. It's no big deal either way. -- grm_wnr Esc 01:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I did not see this additional talk section on this subject until now. See my comments in the related section higher up called "Commons media categorisation". The original version of the CSD policy before Tewfik changed it was better. The one that said: "If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the file deletion." Though I think the "not" is a typo from who knows when, and should not be there.

The reason the original version of the policy is better is because the English wikipedia image description page (for images stored on the commons) can have categories linked on it. So the wikipedia image description page may have to be undeleted after the image itself is moved to the commons. Tewfik is not actually talking about moving images to the commons. He is trying to delete English wikipedia image description pages long after the image has been moved to the commons. See the more detailed discussion at "Commons media categorisation".

Also, Tewfik seems to be ignoring what User:Grm_wnr previously wrote here about image description pages (IDPs). Here are some excerpts with emphasis added:

"As the one who originally wrote section I8 back in the day, ...

• IDPs are considered to be basically inseperable from the image.
• No information must be lost in a speedy move to Commons.
• However, there is information on IDPs that may be redundant or, even worse, contradictory to the kind of information Commons needs. Mostly Featured status, and I can't think of any others right now, but there may be more.
• Commons IDPs are subject to the editorial rules of Commons, which may differ from the en ones, which may theoretically be a problem.
• If there is a local IDP, both are displayed, so it's no basic problem in having a local one, apart from the fact that it's another page to take care of.
• So, it's a good idea to keep a local IDP if there is a good reason for it, but if there is none, it should be deleted to make handling easier."

The reasons for local IDPs are for the English wikipedia categorization reasons I explained much more thoroughly at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Commons media categorisation and Category talk:Maps of the Palestinian territories. This is a longstanding tradition.--Timeshifter 18:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

That is extremely misleading considering that he was in favour of the rephrase, only objecting that it should be immediately obvious. Tewfik^Talk 18:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

User:Grm_wnr suggested changing your rewrite of the policy. You did not include his suggestion in your rewrite when you added it to the CSD policy page. So you did not have any consensus to change the policy.

Also your version of the policy does not make a lot of sense. Your version from this talk section: "A Wikipedia image description page of media on the Wikimedia Commons should be deleted unless it includes information that is contradictory to or disruptive of the Commons, such as {{FeaturedPicture}}."

How are wikipedia category links "disruptive" or "contradictory" to the commons. The wikipedia category pages are completely separate and different from the commons categories.

What you actually ended up adding to the CSD article page was: "A Wikipedia image description page of media on the Wikimedia Commons should be deleted unless it includes information that is not relevant to the Commons, such as {{FeaturedPicture}}."

Even that version does not allow for deleting local English wikipedia image description pages that have category links. Wikipedia category links are not relevant to the Commons.

The original version of the policy makes more sense: "If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the file deletion."

Except I bet the "not" was mistakenly added long ago by somebody else confused by this topic. It ought to be rewritten to something like

If there is any non-commons-related information or links on the wikipedia image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}} or category links), the wikipedia image description page must be undeleted after the image file deletion.--Timeshifter 18:42, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would be extremely appreciative of comment from others here. The actions above are being used to justify the creation of IDPs for Commons media and their categorisation on WP, seemingly ad infinitum, which is disruptive to the project and decreases the utility of categorisation as well as transwikiing, as well as being implicitly disallowed under the current CSD. The most recent examples (of dozens [1][2][3]). Tewfik^Talk 16:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Local English IDPs (image description pages) for images stored on the commons are created whenever the images used in wikipedia articles are clicked. This is done through the trans-wiki process. When categories are added to those local English IDPs, that info is saved at wikipedia. The trans-wiki process combines the commons info with the wikipedia info to create the local English IDPs. It is all completely normal or the programmers would not have set it up that way. Each different-language wikipedia has the same setup. That way each wikipedia in each language can categorize and easily find the images labeled in its language. That is how it works. --Timeshifter 17:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm going to have to agree with Timeshifter here. Having a picture in the Commons categories is fine, but there's no reason I see why it can't be in local categories too. And either way, no wording of I8 which has ever existed seems to me like it would disallow such a thing. -Amarkov moo! 02:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So my question is why the text says "undelete" if it has a featured tag, implying it would otherwise be deleted, since all 1.4 million commons images could be categorised? Tewfik^Talk 07:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Many of those commons images ARE categorized in English wikipedia categories. That is my whole point here, Tewfik. You are trying to change a longstanding wikipedia method of classifying commons images in local-language Wikipedia categories. All just so you can depopulate a few English wikipedia map categories with the names "Palestinian territories" and "Golan Heights" in the category names, and then put up those categories for speedy deletion. You are Israeli, as you have freely pointed out on talk pages, and it is such an obvious POV you are trying to introduce from the right-wing of Israeli politics into English wikipedia. The right wing of Israeli politics does not like to acknowledge those names. But for those territories those names are the common names used in the world. And wikipedia naming policies require using the most common names. --Timeshifter 07:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The original policy at CSD said "If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the [image] file deletion."

I took out the word "not". It is a grammatical error. Note the word "any". That CSD policy is within a larger policy about transferring the image itself to the commons, and what to do about the remaining local image description page (IDP), the uploading history, etc.. That CSD policy is not about encouraging people to come back months and years later and remove local English category links from local IDPs. The policy is about the immediate cleaning up after moving an image file to the commons, deleting the image file from wikipedia, and moving the uploading history to the commons. --Timeshifter 07:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please keep your gross AGF violations and conspiracy theories out of this discussion. It is none of your concern or at all relevant what my nationality is, and no diffs of me "freely" saying any such thing exists. Tewfik^Talk 08:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Get real, Tewfik. You have discussed it freely. I am not going to go back and hunt up the diffs. And your POVs are not a conspiracy theory. We have already discussed your POVs and this naming dispute on multiple category, article, and user talk pages. For example: Category talk:Maps of the Palestinian territories. --Timeshifter 08:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What on earth makes you imagine you can disqualify Tewfik's edits based on alleged nationality that you have invented? This is an egregious violation of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. You owe Tewfik an apology on several grounds. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am not disqualifying anyone. I am disagreeing with Tewfik. I disagree with Tewfik on many issues. I pointed out his nationality in relation to the politics of the issues involved. Are you saying it is not relevant to discuss someone's nationality or religion when discussing issues connected to nationality and religion? I see the nationality and religious affiliation of editors discussed frequently by admins on incident boards. There are frequent disagreements between Hindu and Muslim editors for example. Tewfik has discussed the nationality and religion of editors. Editors usually aren't hiding either one. I did not assume bad faith. I was civil. So exactly what wikipedia guideline did I break? I would like a guideline quote please. If I broke a wikipedia guideline, I have no problem apologizing. But I have often disagreed with you Jayjg, both on talk pages, and on incident boards, and I want something more significant than your pronouncements. I follow wikipedia guidelines, not wikipedia editors. So, please quote the wikipedia guidelines. --Timeshifter 23:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The technical policy question at hand has nothing to do with politics or religion, so it's inappropriate to bring those up here. Doing so anyway is a blatant violation of WP:NPA (using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views). --Latebird 07:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am not dismissing or discrediting Tewfik's views. I was illuminating his views. From WP:NPA is this: "There is no bright-line rule about what constitutes a personal attack as opposed to constructive discussion"

Those are bald lies. You are inventing stories, and conveniently refuse to even present your "proof". Tewfik^Talk 01:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

My recollection is that you did not disagree when this was mentioned before. But now you seem offended. So I will not mention it again. I meant no disrespect by discussing nationality. If you were offended, I apologize. I don't remember on what talk page I got the idea that you were Israeli. But here is a photo you took: Image:Alon Shvut.JPG of an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. It doesn't prove anything, but you asked for "proof." That is all I can pull up quickly now. In any case I am not pursuing this further. --Timeshifter 14:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This isn't a matter of offence, but of you brazenly fabricating a reason that in your mind disqualified me from an unrelated policy discussion, that if true would still be a violation of WP:NPA. Its about you further creating a flawed "recollection" when the comments appear quite clearly on this very page. And its about what are merely the latest of many comments based on incivility and discussion of editors instead discussion of policy/content. The fact that you actually dug through my edits and in the same line acknowledge that "it doesn't prove anything" while still trying to justify your behaviour makes the need for a real apology, and more importantly a cessation of this type of disruption, all the more crucial. Tewfik^Talk 07:29, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I already apologized for the offense in question. The rest of what you said is BS. There have been several incident reports where you have been unfavorably mentioned by several people. --Timeshifter 14:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It may have been Amoruso's comment at Talk:October 2000 events that I was remembering: "I drove through those roads [in Israel] later and there was not a single traffic light that the 'solidarity protestors' didn't break." His user page acknowledges that he is Israeli. You asked for "proof" so I looked through your edits to try to find your relevant comments. I saw the photo upload there. I vaguely remembered that the talk comment was on Talk:October 2000 events. So I looked there and found the comment. So I was mistaken about who made the comment. I apologize again. Feel free to delete this part of the thread here if you want to. --Timeshifter 16:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I went back and struck through the comments in question. Feel free to delete all of the thread dealing with this issue.--Timeshifter 16:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

"There have been several incident reports where you have been unfavorably mentioned by several people", and there you go again with more halftruths ad hominems that are in any event irrelevant to whether you violated NPA or not. "Israeli" isn't an expletive any more than "Palestinian", and so beyond the fact that the claim that I discussed it wasn't true, that is not the offence. The problem is "using someone's affiliations as a means of dismissing or discrediting their views" on this and other pages. That is what you need to apologise for, and more importantly, stop doing. Tewfik^Talk 20:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe I have mentioned nationality in other cases. The comment about incident reports was about this BS statement of yours: "And its about what are merely the latest of many comments based on incivility and discussion of editors instead discussion of policy/content." You should apologize for all your many incivilities, exaggerations, etc.. --Timeshifter 01:27, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have no desire to continue with you trying to justify what you did wrong by inventing things that I've done wrong. You've "reported" me for various matters that garnered indifference or comments questioning the validity of such accusations because you never supplied proof of any of these charges, then or now. If you want to apologise for the personal attack violation and cease the discussion of editors instead of content, do so. If you have diffs of my supposed incivil comments, then produce them, or stop making such charges. Evidence (not different pages, but still two sections of this page [4][5]) trump any 'beliefs' and 'recollections'. Regardless, this isn't the place for any of this. Tewfik^Talk 01:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You say you have no desire to continue this, yet you continue with general accusations and BS. On many talk pages, and on some incident report pages, your many incivilities have been mentioned by others. If you want to apologize for your personal attack violations and cease the discussion of editors instead of content, do so. --Timeshifter 02:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm only going to ask once more that you not make accusations without providing a diff. I've provided diffs of your personal attack, which is on this page. If you don't want to apologise for it, just say so, but this is not the place for continuing this discussion. Tewfik^Talk 03:31, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You make general accusations, and throw in a few diffs, all while saying this is not the place for continuing this discussion. I'm only going to ask once more that you not make accusations. With or without the diffs. --Timeshifter 03:40, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

There is a personal attack on this page, whose diffs I provided. Whether or not you choose to apologise for the personal attack, your responding with accusations of personal attacks on my part, without evidence no less, is inappropriate. Tewfik^Talk 05:12, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have provided evidence numerous times of your incivilities. I don't need to repeat all the previous discussion about all this. When you apologize for all of your incivilities I may find your actions here less inappropriate. --Timeshifter 05:37, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is also completely untrue; if you have evidence of my supposed personal attacks of incivilities, then please cite the diffs in a report on AN/I. Otherwise I insist that you stop making allegations (especially when they have nothing to do with this page) without any sources. Tewfik^Talk 05:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It is completely true, and it was pointed out numerous times. I insist that you stop making allegations (especially when they have nothing to do with this page). I insist also that you stop insisting. --Timeshifter 08:29, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, parroting me does sound like a productive response. "It is completely true, and it was pointed out numerous times." You are of course continuing to make unsourced allegations. My only "allegation" is a request that you apologise for your personal attack on this page ([6][7]). I'll tell you one more time, either report my supposed "personal attack", or stop accusing me of such. Tewfik^Talk 07:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'll tell you one more time... --Timeshifter 10:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So you aren't going to apologise for your personal attack ([8][9]) against me then? Tewfik^Talk 07:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'll tell you one more time... I have already apologized. See previous discussion. I'll tell you one more time...--Timeshifter 23:00, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You said "If you were offended, I apologize". Do you recognise that it was a personal attack then and not merely an insult? Additionally, can you either cross-out your allegation that I committed a personal attack or present evidence of it? Thank you, Tewfik^Talk 20:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

All of this has been discussed already. See previous discussion. --Timeshifter 21:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

---

The info in this section was also discussed in this incident report: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive236#Image description pages. --Timeshifter 07:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I8 clarification

Hi all, I would really appreciate if others could sound off about whether they feel the creation of Wikipedia image description pages for media on the Commons is acceptable or not. Part of the current criteria reads: If there is any information not relevant to any other project on the image description page (like {{FeaturedPicture}}), the image description page must be undeleted after the file deletion.

My understanding was that that implied IDPs not containing such templates would have already been deleted. A user is arguing that categorisation also requires undeletion, which means that the vast majority of media on the Commons, if not all 1.4 million, could have IDPs recreated on Wikipedia (like so [10][11][12]). For the record, I rephrased the line in question based on discussion above, which was reverted by the user making the above argument. AMarkov initially held the revert, but noted that had he been aware of the full history he would not have reverted. The previous discussion is located above. Due to the history, I don't anticipate bilateral success, which makes outside parties' comments that much more valuable. Tewfik^Talk 02:57, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

For articles we have A3 prohibiting pages containing only links (including category links). Conceptually speaking, a local IDP for a commons based image is not much different. I don't quite see the point in duplicating information (IDPs and entire category strucures) here that is already present on Commons, just so that we can garnish it with local links. Doing so is a vote of distrust against the Commons, saying "they can't do their categories right, so let's do them again here". Other than {{FeaturedPicture}} and other possible exceptions that Commons can't handle, I'd vote for speedying local IDPs and the related category trees. Those categories do nothing but to prevent people from uploading images to the Commons right away. --Latebird 12:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The guideline you refer to does not apply to the discussion at hand. Many of the images on the commons are not labeled in English. So wikipedia editors and readers use the wikipedia image categories to do further research in English, or to find images labeled in English to use on English wikipedia.

I moved all 3 talk sections closer to each other to avoid needless repetition. I changed nothing. I suggest Latebird, that you also read the preceding discussions if you haven't already. --Timeshifter 13:08, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Many of the images on the commons are not labeled in English. - which should be motivation to label them there, not to create redundant structures here. I have read all the preceding discussion that I could find, because this unnecessary duplication has been disturbing me for quite some time. Of course I know that A3 does not directly apply here. But the intention behind it (and behind C1, for that matter) should still be taken into account for this discussion. It helps to remember that a local IDP (even an automatically generated one without local content) is basically just a link to an external resource. Is there any other place in WP where we categorize external resources without adding any actual content? --Latebird 13:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

A3 only applies to articles. C1 only applies to empty categories. The categories in question are not empty. They have images and subcategories. Images on the commons that are labeled in English can not be changed to English without using an image editor. Then they would have to re-uploaded with the new labeling. The old commons image would remain of course, because other-language wikipedias need the other-language labeling. Categories are indexing systems to help people navigate articles, images, etc.. They are very useful, and many readers use them. --Timeshifter 14:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just because A3 and C1 apply to different types of pages doesn't mean that the intention behind them should be completely reversed when dealing with images. The guiding principle should always be the same: Avoid creating pages that don't add any information.--Latebird 18:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Category pages are different from article pages. And they are treated differently. Category pages often consist only of links. An article page containing only links would be deleted. --Timeshifter 20:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

When there are labels within an image itself, then it is standard practise to upload different language versions to Commons in parallel. I don't quite understand how that relates to this discussion, though. They will still get sufficiently categorized in Commons, without any need to duplicate that work here. --Latebird 18:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Latebird, I just want to reiterate my total agreement with you on this issue. I hope that other editors can voice their opinions so that we can issue a clear pronouncement. Tewfik^Talk 01:50, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

People can not immediately access the wikimedia commons categories from the English wikipedia image description pages (IDP). They have to click the commons image link on the English IDP, and then go to the bottom of the commons image description page to get to commons categories. This is an unintuitive way to get to commons categories.

Most English wikipedia readers and editors want to click the image they see on wikipedia, and then immediately see the image categories linked on the local IDP that shows up. Readers see category links on the bottom of article pages. So it is intuitive for readers to look for category links on the bottom of image pages (IDPs).

That way they get to see English-labeled images first without having to wade through all the other-language images on the commons. If they want to see the commons image categories there is usually a link leading to the commons category with the same name. That is if someone has added that link to the wikipedia category page.

So with the current longstanding image category system for local IDPs most people see the categories that interest them first. That being the categories with English-language-labeled images. --Timeshifter 20:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Most English wikipedia readers and editors want to click the image they see on wikipedia, and then immediately see the image categories linked on the local IDP - How many WP readers did you interview to verify that rather bold claim? It seems much more likely that for most readers, image categorization is inconsequental, because they only look at images in the context of reading articles. Image categorization primarily helps the editors, and those should be familiar enough with the system to browse for them on Commons. In summary, I have yet to see a compelling argument why we need this duplicated information, and who is supposed to do the multiplied maintenance work. --Latebird 12:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

"Image categorization primarily helps the editors." That is untrue. Please avoid these sweeping assertions of yours. There are tens of millions of readers of wikipedia. Many probably follow a few article and image category links. Even if only a few do, they number far more than the editors. I should have been clearer in my own assertion. I meant that most people who click images, and who are interested in image categories, want a direct path first to images labeled in their own language. If they want images in other languages, there is frequently a link to the commons category from the wikipedia category. The commons link code is {{commonscat}}

For example; let us say you click the image at the top of this article: 1948 Arab-Israeli War. You are taken to its wikipedia image description page: Image:1948 arab israeli war - May15-June10.jpg. If you are interested in image categories you intuitively go to the bottom of the page, just as for article pages.

At the bottom of the local IDP page you might want to check out this category: Category:Maps of the history of the Palestinian territories. Note that the category title is in English. If you were at French wikipedia, the image category names can be put in French on their local image description page. At the wikipedia category page there is link to the commons category. This way people have the option to check out more images, especially in other languages.

This is a longstanding system. There is no multiplied maintenance work. If people do not see the need to categorize images labeled in their own language, then it does not happen. Many images are categorized in the wikipedia image categories. --Timeshifter 13:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Interesting that you accuse me of "sweeping assertions", while you seem to know exactly what other people want, and how many they are. Reality is, we have no idea how many people actually "are interested in image categories". You assume they are many, I assume most of them are editors. And nobody knows what they all really want until they tell us.

I'm not sure why you constantly feel that you need to explain to me how WP works. I edit in several languages, so I may be more familiar with the issues at hand than you assume. I also understand that the Commons were created as a tool to store and categorize images and media, in order to relieve the other WP projects from that task. Since you seem to be primarily concerned with maps (one of the few images types that actually need to be translated), are you familiar with the Commons Atlas? It was specifically designed to be accessible in multiple languages. This is the real solution to your problem, while local IDPs and image categories are a stopgap measure at best. --Latebird 17:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Also interesting is the continued assertion that "this is common practice", which is neither reflected in the vast majority of media that are not so treated or any guidelines to that effect, and somehow assumes that numbers are the issue here. The same case could be made for any number of inappropriate behaviours, yet I think were someone to say that vandalism were okay due to its popularity, we would immediately recognise the fallacy of the argument. Tewfik^Talk 23:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have been linking to some of the atlas articles from the map categories. Atlases are great. But image categories cover far more topics, and with more images. The commons allows an image to be stored on one server instead of on multiple servers for wikipedias in various languages. Local IDPs need very little storage space since they do not store the images. They just store a few lines of code and text. Such as category links. The rest of the local IDP is transwikied from a standard template and the commons IDP for the image. There is no problem with this system. It works fine. --Timeshifter 17:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

FYI, categories on Commons are almost always in English, as that has been decided upon as the lingua franca. Otherwise, we'd end up having Category:Cheese, Category:Fromage, Category:Queso, etc etc. The only ones that aren't usually in English are taxonomy categories, as those use the Latin names instead. howcheng {chat} 19:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, the Commons category names are mostly in English. But one can get some of the page navigation in other languages. See some French-language navigation of the commons map categories:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_of_countries?uselang=fr

The local IDP category names are in the language of that particular wikipedia. Thre are many map categories and subcategories at French wikipedia. See the French wikipedia map category names here:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Carte_g%C3%A9ographique

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Carte_d%27Asie

Note the many map categories and subcategories at English wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps --Timeshifter 21:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So we'll create 1.4 million IDPs for a minority of foreign language categories. It seems that the media that is actually relevant to EN (or other languages) can be dealt with on the Commons, or can be the fraction to which exception is made and IDPs can be created. Tewfik^Talk 23:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

That is what is happening now. The images relevant to English wikipedia get categorized in English wikipedia categories. The other commons images are not categorized in English wikipedia categories. Same for French wikipedia. --Timeshifter 00:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

As far as I am concerned, Wikipedia's goal should be to create the best possible encyclopedia, period. If using Commons actually interferes with that goal, then as far as I am concerned it is better to ignore Commons. If we feel that having images locally categorized adds value, then we should do so. If not, then we shouldn't. Ideally the Commons integration should be so seamless so that one effectively can't tell the difference between local images and Commons images, by which I would imply seamless use of watchlists, cross-categorization, upload histories, and everything else, but we are far from that goal. In the mean time, I feel we should focus on doing what's best for Wikipedia and ignore the other issues. If that means creating little image description pages that consist solely of Category tags, then I'm okay with that. Last I checked, for Commons hosted images both the local (if any) and the Commons description page get displayed to the user, so having a transparent local page consisting of just category tags shouldn't interfere with anything. Dragons flight 23:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So you really want to create and maintain potentially millions of redundant pages, just to save a mouse click once in a while? But then, the arguments from both sides have been presented and I don't see this ending in a consensus here any time soon. The issue really goes beyond a question of speedy deletion anyway, so it should probably be discussed somewhere else. I'm just not quite sure yet where the right place would be. --Latebird 22:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Do you want French wikipedia readers trying to navigate English wikimedia category names? Or Russian wikipedia readers trying to figure out English wikimedia commons category names? And so on for all the many wikipedia sites in various languages. There is little maintenance or server space involved in saving a few lines of text for some category names. The work has already been done in creating the software for the automatic transwiki process. --Timeshifter 23:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Assuming that the issue was languages, then why replicate English language categories on English language Wikipedia? If there was a need, then it would be for exceptions, and not for what is by far the most common language on Wikimedia. Why have this translation process take place on Wikipedia at all, when one could just as easily replicate on the Commons instead of creating dozens of new copies of the 1.4 million Commons media. And even if we then somehow accepted all that, the impracticality of maintaining such an exponential growth in pages should alone disqualify it. Tewfik^Talk 02:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The commons media is not duplicated. It remains stored on the commons. The commons category names are in English. But many images on the commons are labeled in other languages. And there will be many more. So English wikipedia also needs its own image category system for categorizing the images with English labels. There is very little server storage space needed to store a few category links for each image. --Timeshifter 16:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Disparity with Wikipedia:Non-free content

Latest comment: 18 years ago7 comments7 people in discussion

Why does this page have different time limits from NFC? NFC states, "If an image on which fair use is claimed is not used in any article (Criterion 7), it may be deleted immediately." CSD I5, however, requires a tag and a seven-day waiting period. Pagrashtak 16:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure, I know I8 was discussed further up the page in terms of waiting time, but as for I5, I'm not sure. However, when I'm clearing the image backlogs and it turns out I5 applies better than another criteria (such as not having a source, I4), I typically IAR and I5 it on the spot. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The image may have recently been uploaded and is intended for use in a particular article, or the image may have been removed from the article by vandalism or some content dispute, for example. If a fair use image is actually not used in any article then it can be deleted, but in practice the absence of an active inclusion of the image in an article does not mean that it is not "used" and that it should be instantly deleted. —Centrx→talk • 17:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's NFC that's out-of-date in this case. The waiting period is required so that interested parties such as the uploader can be made aware of the problem and have an opportunity to correct it, particularly since as Centrx noted the rule can be exploited to destroy images otherwise. On the other hand, if the image claims fair use and fair use is probably not realistically possible, i.e., it's being used only as protection from deletion, then a quicker deletion may be warranted. Dcoetzee 17:25, 3 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't understand why the image deletion subcategories are considered "speedy" at all. It generally takes at least two weeks to get images deleted this way, up to a month if further delayed by some technicality. — CharlotteWebb 10:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

"Speedy" means no discussion required, not necessarily the time period between tagging and deletion. howcheng {chat} 18:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, "streamlined" or "straightforward" deletion might have been a better use of the acronym. -- nae'blis 18:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

A new user warning template

Latest comment: 18 years ago10 comments6 people in discussion

I have been working on a new template. It is a communication aid, and not in the same boat as the uw-vandalism things. This template deals with improper speedy deletion tags apllied, which through sifting a bit through Cat:CSD, I find it becomes more and more useful. The template is temporartily here. It is the first level warning, however. I'd appreciate some feedback as to whether it really has any use, and ways to improve, etc. Evilclown93 22:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that has much use. Either the user thought that it did qualify for speedy deletion, in which case a templated message is useless for explanation, or they knew that it did not qualify, meaning they're doing it in bad faith and won't care about a templated message. -Amarkov moo! 23:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't say a templated message is useless at all, it might give good faith users the incentive to re-read the criteria. Should only be used in instances where they've seriously made a mistake though, for instance tagging a hoax article as patent nonsense, which I see a lot, and that's clearly outlined in the criteria. As for the bad faith taggers, these should be treated as vandals, who are still warned with template messages at all other times, regardless of whether they care about it or not... - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 01:12, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've got right now three basic message templates. One is a simple "I've removed your speedy tag.", serving as a notice (almost like the "I've put your page for speedy deletion" ones), a newbie one, which guides a newbie to WP:CSD and related pages, and a plain pre-vandalism warning (bad-faith things like tagging Lemon for speedy deletion, which in a way assumes good faith, before starting with vandalism warnings. Here are the templates: 1b ; 1a ; 2 . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evilclown93 (talk • contribs)

• Let's not use that. It sounds condescending. >Radiant< 08:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
• When someone places a speedy tag that I disagree with, I often put a message on the talk page of that user. in each such case I take the time to individually explain why i think the particular article or page is not properly subject to speedy deletion. A general template such as the ones linked to just above does not do this. it does not explain in any way why the person removing the tag or placing the template feels the speedy was unwarranted. Such a template might be useful for a speedy tag whose placement seems like obvious vandalism -- placing a speedy tag on Solar system, say -- but not on a good faith but misguided use of a speedy tag. A template that gave the boilerplate part of such a mag (such as links to the CSD page) but required that an individual reason be provided might be of some value, but not the above templates, IMO. DES ^(talk) 15:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I just drafted User:DESiegel/Speedy-Warn which fits my own prscription above. If people think it might be useful, I could move it to tempalte space. Note that it absolutely requires that a reason be spelled out, because the message makes no sense with the reason ommitted. DES ^(talk) 15:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I like your template, but I honestly don't like at all "I request", because I feel it sounds too commanding to the noob placing the improprer template. Evilclown93 00:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I used the word "request" precsely not to sound like a demand, adn to be polite. This mirrors non-tempalted msgs I have left in teh past. How would you suggest wording this to be more polite and less threatening while making it clear that reapplying the tag without discussion may be a poor idea. Perhaps "please consider not..."? DES ^(talk) 17:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fortunately most users of speedy would not even think of replacing the tag, so I would be reluctant to suggest it to them. Perhaps the template could simply have an optional part at the end for special messages as needed, in addition to the required space for reason. Otherwise I think it's great. DGG 05:30, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have encounterd quite a number who have replaced tags, or even deleted, after a tag was removed with a reson why IMO the tag did not apply. Want diffs? But I'll edit to reduce the strength of that. I'll be editing a bit and testing soem more, then i'll move this to tempalte space and announce that here and on the user template msgs page. DES ^(talk) 21:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Question over I5

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Does CSD Images/media 5 (Unused unfree copyrighted images) applies for the talkpages of the deleted AFDs like this one? ----♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 17:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

(I assume you meant to link to Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Rajkumar Kanagasingam/Archive.) Yes, it still applies; our non-free content policy allows such images only in the article namespace, where it must appear at once. See Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria, especially points 7 and 9. —Cryptic 17:47, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you very much :-) --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ ^{walkie-talkie} 17:57, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD-I3

Latest comment: 18 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

I have been bold and made a slight change to CSD-I3.

In that CSD, we for some reason imply that a non-commercial or "Wikipedia only" image is allowable if it has a fair-use rationale. Clearly, this is nuts - fair use rationales must be able to apply wherever our free encyclopedia may be used - and the point of our free encyclopedia is that it can be used anywhere for any reason, including commercially.

This "fair use" clause is not being enforced in I3 - how can it be, it makes no sense - but is being abused by people who are uploading bad images to Wikipedia. Given both those circumstances, leaving it in is nonsensical.

I can see why it has been put there - Jimbo's original ban on non-commercial/Wikipedia-only images two years ago [13] mentions fair use... but only in the context of older images before the edict was introduced. When he reiterated the point 8 months ago [14] he made no mention of fair use being a get-out-of-jail-free-card: as indeed it isn't, since fair use is, by definition, either fair everywhere or it isn't fair use.  ⋐⋑ REDVEЯS 20:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think you missed the point. The idea is that for our purposes, non-commercial licenses are treated just like every other non-free image, meaning they can be used with a valid fair use rationale. -Amarkov moo! 20:40, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

(ec) Ummm, the point is that images licensed as 'for non-commercial use only' and 'non-derivative use', etc. could still qualify for fair use even in the context of commercial and/or derivative use. We don't want to delete things used legitimately under the doctrine of fair use simply because the owner doesn't necessarily like it to be used that way. Secondly, fair use is always context dependent and varies from country to country (with many countries using alternative concepts, e.g. fair dealing). There is no such thing as universal fair use, so your last sentence is nonsensical. However, one may be able to make an argument that a picture of a widget may always be fair use when appearing in a encyclopedic article on widgets, so it might reasonably be argued that it would be fair in all contexts where it is being used as part of an encyclopedia style article. Dragons flight 20:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The fair-use rationale that is being generated is a rationale for fair use on Wikipedia. The non-commercial permission generates a fair-use rational for fair use on Wikipedia. The uploaders have no concept of the reuse of material. They actively want to restrict use to Wikipedia. This line - which is not supported by Jimbo or common sense - is used by uploaders as a justification for that choice. I clear the I3 category daily (nobody else bothers, just me; when I took a week's holiday recently, I came back to 500 entries - proof positive).

Rarely have I come across a Wikipedia policy that means exactly the opposite of what it says, is not supported by Jimbo or by practice, is not compatible with our free licence, and is directly contradicted by the automatic placement of the db template on I3 images, and yet is being kept in because of what it might mean if read a certain way under specific circumstances that don't apply and are never used. Tsk!  ⋐⋑ REDVEЯS 20:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, so it certainly needs to be clarified that the rationale must work even if Wikipedia did not get permission to use it. -Amarkov moo! 20:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Then why keep it at all?  ⋐⋑ REDVEЯS 20:59, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The same reason why we allow any fair use images. Although I'm not quite sure what that reason is. -Amarkov moo! 21:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Amarkov, please tell me this isn't you reverting something you agree with again? Coz, mate, really, that's just plain odd :o)  ⋐⋑ REDVEЯS 21:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree that fair use images are needed to be a good encyclopedia. I just don't know how the rabid "YOU MAY NOT USE A FAIR USE IMAGE WHERE A TERRIBLE QUALITY FREE ONE VAGUELY RESEMBLES IT", who are the driving force behind not allowing with-permission images, can square their opinion with allowing fair use at all. -Amarkov moo! 02:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

We need to keep our thounge straight (hmm, does that explression work in English?) when dealing with these images. "All rights reserved" is the most restricted "license" possible, and it also happens to be the default state of all copyrighted works. Basicaly no one is allowed to do anyting with it. By publishing something the copyright holder give a implicit license to view the work, and that's about it. Fair use and other copyright exception doctrines exist to allow various "worthwhile" and "fair" uses of such works anyway without the right-holders permission. Now if someone has released something under license terms that says that you can use the image, but only for non-commercial purposes that's not an added restriction, it's an added freedom to use for non-commercial purposes and a preservation of the default status for commercial use. This added freedom is not enough to meet the definition of free content that we use though, so we don't allow these images based on that, but adding freedoms to the work does not mean it has suddenly become ineligeble for use under the fair use doctrine. So an image licensed for non-commercial use only (or any other possible terms for that matter) can be used under a fair use claim. We simply ignore any additional freedoms the copyright holder have put on the image and treat it like any other "all rights reserved" image. It needs to use a proper "fair use" template, be non-replacable and all naturaly, and fair use rationales along the lines of "fair use because we have permission" and what not is naturaly not going to fly, but if the uploader has made a "good faith" effort to make a fair use case for using the image it's no longer a candidate for deletion under the "invalid license" criteria. If the fair use claim in question does not meet our criteria it becomes a candidate for deletion under criteria I7 (invalid fair use claim) though. --Sherool (talk) 00:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

That sounds right to me. Remember that part of the emphasis on free images is so the material can be used on those WPs in countries without a fair use provision.DGG 03:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes. Any image which does not satisfy our free license requirements, including non-commercial and limited permission images, should be treated precisely as though all rights were reserved. An image does not become any more or less likely to be usable under fair use because of these loosened restrictions. Dcoetzee 18:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Image CSD notification - Second set of eyes?

Latest comment: 18 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." -Mark Twain

I was convinced that when tagging an image with {{orfud}} ( WP:CSD#I5 ) required notification of the uploader to delete. I've just spent an hour and a half trying to determine for sure one way or the other. Can anyone point me to canon on this? Even better, which (if any) CSD criteria require user notification?

Thanks! ~ BigrTex 18:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• See here, here and here None seem to be the exact origin of I5 (one is the stsrt of I4 I think). I4 had a limited requirement to notify, and some argued for a stronger one. i think I5 initally had an absolute reuirement to notify, but I can't find a page that says so. CSDs do change from their inital proposals over time. In any case, notification is IMO a very good thing, whether is is strictly mandatory or not. See the notifiaction thread earlier on this page for several views on this. DES ^(talk) 22:12, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • AFAIK no CSD criteria require notification, with the exception of the 48 hour route for I7 (if you notify it can be deleted after 48 hours, if not then 7 days). It generaly makes sense to notify people to avoid them repeating the same mistakes over and over though, but for orphanded fair use images I don't see the point. No one did anyting wrong, the image is just no longer beeing used. If no one missed it for a week chances are it's not going to be missed at all, and if it does happen we can always undeleted. --Sherool (talk) 23:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • I do think at one time some of the image criteria DID require notification, but that was when image deletions could not be undone, and so were more risky. DES ^(talk) 23:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • Chances are the user will revert the edits of whoever had the gall to orphan their image. — CharlotteWebb 18:24, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• This is a WP:PERENnial issue. Notifying the author of a deletion is certainly nice, but not something that should be mandatory. >Radiant< 08:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Yup. Try to remember: image deletion is not the big deal it used to be; it can now be undone. So if someone makes a mistake, or a user finds out too late, things can always be remedied. Mangojuice^talk 14:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

FYI to anyone reading this who cares, there is an outstanding script available at User:Howcheng/quickimgdelete.js. This script gives you links to automatically tag an image for deletion and notify the uploader. if you notice someone tagging images, but not notifying the uploader, please consider telling them about it. When I am going through the image backlogs, the only place I check for notification is on WP:IFD ... but it's still a really good idea for the uploader to be notified and this script makes it easy. --BigDT 03:42, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ambiguous case

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Hello, I have a question regarding the policies and a definite case... You see, recently "The World Online" video game has been renamed to "The Secret World", and a newly registered editor created a new page instead of renaming the old one. Naturally, the edits history is lost this way, so I'd like to move TWO to TSW properly, thus requiring a quick deletion of the current TSW to "free" the article name. All relevant edits made by the above mentioned user were incorporated into the old article, so no information would be lost with this deletion.

The problem is, I haven't found any SD criteria matching the case and, since it's just a technical misunderstanding, I don't wanna initiate a complete AfD procedure. Can someone help me out here? Thank you in advance. --Koveras ^☭ 22:06, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This actually falls uner CSD G6 (Houskeeping) but usually this sort of thing is handled by posting at requested moves or on WP:ANI or just flagging any handy admin. Or use {{merge}} if there is new info to be saved. I'll look at this one. DES ^(talk) 22:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you! ^^ --Koveras ^☭ 22:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

  Resolved

DES ^(talk) 22:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Suspend A7 until the issues at WP:N are settled.

Latest comment: 18 years ago18 comments12 people in discussion

As you may or may not know, the parts of WP:N relating to assessment of notability are currently disputed following loss of consensus support. A re-write and adjustment of it is in process at the moment. However, this leads to the problem that there is currently no working guideline on Notability.

I suggest that A7 be suspended until this is settled. It may also be an appropriate time to review A7 itself, as is often misused. --Barberio 09:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

We can suspend it for 30 minutes; if that is not enough time to fix WP:N I prefer to misuse A7 to a backlog of a couple thousand garage band articles. Kusma (talk) 09:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Or to give a different answer: a large number of A7's are uncontroversial and completely unaffected by what WP:N says. Suspending these deletions would be bad. Kusma (talk) 09:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yay!! Complete anarchy on Wikipedia! I always wondered what would happen if we put all the worst failed proposals into effect, just for a day... Grandmasterka 09:31, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The odd thing is that looking at the current backlog for these, almost all of them could be nominated for other Criteria. (G1, G11 or A3) Generaly, if an article isn't asserting importance in some way, it's going to have content problems to hit another CSD criteria. --Barberio 10:15, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

As I understand it, A7's "assertion of notability" does not depend on the precise definition of notability at WP:N. The definition of notability at WP:N has to do with sources that actually exist; A7's "assertion of notability" just means that sources might exist. (For example "John Smith is a professor at Caswell College" is an assertion of notability because appropriate sources might, or might not, exist on such a person, so that's not an A7 even though it might end up failing WP:N. On the other hand, "John Smith was born in 1987 and lives on Elm Street and is a student at Caswell College" gives no indication that sources might exist, so that is an A7.) On the other point that you just made, I have to say that when I do newpage patrol, there's a ton of A7's that would not fit G1, G11 or A3. Pan Dan 11:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes but on DRV for instance, the "assertion" part of the phrase is interpreted differently by different folks. Deletionists tend to take "assert" as the actual presence of reliable sources, whereas Inclusionists tend to take "assert" as the fact that someone has claimed that the topic is notable. --MalcolmGin Talk / Conts 11:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Their dispute is truly about the assessment of notability, i.e., determining whether an article which claims notability is actually notable. Over here we are dealing with the assertion of notability, which is simply evaluating whether an article claims notability. They're two different things, and I don't think a conflict in one precludes us from continuing to enforce the other. (ESkog)^(Talk) 11:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, it's also if the definition of notability is objective or subjective, which *does* impact on A7. Since A7 has historically used the WP:N definition of notability. If A7 were altered to give a fuller definition of what 'assert the importance or significance' means, this wouldn't be an issue. Personally, I'd go with "Where important, significant or notable information on the subject matter is minimal or lacking, and the article is unlikely to be expanded upon." --Barberio 11:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

A7 predates WP:N, so this request makes little sense. A7 is a practical matter, WP:N and similar pages tends to attract people who believe they can legislate Wikipedia. >Radiant< 14:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

No, no reason to suspend A7 just because WP:N is a little up in the air. In looking over my deletion log, I found several articles I deleted under A7; one of them said only "Chris is a professional Quad rider from Salinas, California."[15] The idea that I would have to not delete similar articles because a borderline-related guideline is in a state of flux at the moment is a little silly (and yes, WP:N is only barely related to A7; the vast majority of articles I've deleted under A7 were so mind-numbingly obvious that only if WP:N said "subject must exist in some form, and then they're notable" would it actually be applicable). EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

A7 doesn't even mention notability, so I'm not sure why we would do this. In fact, most problems with applying A7 come from people who equate it to "article has a non-notable subject". -Amarkov moo! 14:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Actually, A7 has historically not used the WP:N defination of notability, but a rather lower bar. Anny assertion that, if sourced, might cause a significat fraction of typical editors in an AdF discussion to consider keeping the artilce is enough to block an A7. A7 doesn't even use the word "notability" although "significance or importance" has a very simialr meaning. There is no reason to suspeced A7.DES ^(talk) 14:35, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

  Going through the current A7s, I've already come across several where the editors appear to have checked for WP:N style sourcing, rather than seeing if the article asserted importance. So it appears that people are currently reading A7 as WP:N based. --Barberio 22:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

  People are reading it that way, true. But seeing as there was no consensus for the proposal to speedy delete articles with no sources at all, speedy deletion of articles without multiple reliable sources certainly isn't allowed. -Amarkov moo! 22:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'd say that people in the field disagree? :-) --Kim Bruning 08:15, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• If people are doing so, they have to stop. If they don't undelete them, send them to DRV. If they continue to do so afterwards, consider escalating the issue. A7 is controversial enough without people abusing it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

  • Proof by assertion isn't. >Radiant< 09:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Don't delete if you simply don't understand the assertion of importance or significance; delete only if you know that there is none.

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

After all this discussion of A7, I've added the language above to it.

Recently, two administrators deleted Jeffrey Adams (mathematician), which they said contained no assertion of notability. But in fact, the article said that Adams

led the project that calculated the characters of the representations of E₈.

Given that that project made headlines in the New York Times and all other newspapers and all over the web in March 2007, that is an assertion of notability. I think those two administrators should have at least realized that they did not understand the quoted phrase. Michael Hardy 20:04, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I learned very fast to stay away from sports figures. I've since been learning progressively more things to stay away from. This is why I've always felt it should take 2 people, not just one admin, except for blatant vandalism. It should be 3 -- I hope someone monitors the deletion log like people do the newpages. The best of us working carefully might have a 5% error rate. For two people in succession, it goes down to 0.25%, which is one or two per day. DGG 04:31, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

2 templates connected with speedy deletes

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I have created two new notification templates.

{{Speedy-Warn}} is used to notify/warn someone that a speedy delete tag that s/he has placed has been considered inappropriate and has been removed.

{{SD warn-needed}} is used to remind editors that when placing a speedy delete tag it is a good idea to notify the creator of the article involved that it has been tagged.

Both templates were discussed in earlier threads on this page.

I have tested both templates in my user space before moving them to template space. I expect that they will be most useful to people patroling Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. I hope people find them useful. DES ^(talk) 15:21, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD I6 (fair-use rationales)

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm not sure where this conversation initially took place, so please direct me to the proper place if this isn't it. I don't think the 4 May 2006 deadline is necessary anymore. In practice, images uploaded before that are just tagged with {{non-free use disputed}} for the same reason, and usually end up deleted in the same timeframe. There's no reason to duplicate process here, so the deadline should no longer apply. Thoughts? (ESkog)^(Talk) 16:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Remove my user page and end my account

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I wish to no longer be associated with Wikipedia; remove my user and talk pages immediately. Carajou 20:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Not the place to make such a request. You could explain your request by putting {{db}} on the pages. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

trivial A7s and what else to call hem

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

We do have to consider dividing A7 between the trivial nonsense that can be gotten rid of quickly, and anything which might possibly be taken more serious--personally, I think the first approach is to use a G1 db-nonsense or G2 db-test on the sort of one sentence junk from hopelessly nn high school students and the like. I think giving them a a7 notice makes them thin k they are being taken seriously, and by far the better course is to dismiss them out of hand--instead of saying we don't thing you're notable enough, just saying we know it's stupid play. When someone writes "my girlfriend kim is beautiful" and we say "does not assert the importance or significance of the subject". they're probably laughing at us.

Then we can think what to do about the other half--that'll be a little harder . DGG 05:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please remember that G1 Nonsense is restricted to patent nonsense which is ratehr more limited than many suppose. A7 was inveted for precisely this kind of thing, if it didn't exist there would be IMO no justification for A7 at all. DES ^(talk) 14:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you must use a different criterion, A3 would also apply to "my girlfriend Kim is beautiful". -Amarkov moo! 16:04, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you feel really stupid giving them an A7 notice and taking them seriously, you could always go for another option like {{uw-creation2}}. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 18:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

And so I do if they bother to look. A3 sounds good. The other point is that deleting this sort of stuff takes very little time, and deleting a more complicated and longer but still possible speedy is another matter--if it sounds in any way conceivably plausible one ought to check Google etc, or look at user contributions, so it would help to be able to sort them out. (and make errors a little less likely). 04:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Strange edits

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Everytime I edit a page of Ana Johnsson, whether it's an album or single, a message comes automatically asking for a speedy deletion, while I haven't written anything about it nor emptied the article.... Anyone knows what's going on with this? -- Luigi-ish 15:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

There was an edit to the album info box template, placing a speedy delete tag on that template, and thus on every page that uses it. The tag has been removed, but it affects the articles until they are edited and re-saved -- any edit at all, even one that changes nothing, will do. DES ^(talk) 22:54, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The meaning of no context

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

What does it mean by "no context"? I've seen some very short articles which simply state a basic definition of the subject in a single sentence without explaining it further. Do those have enough context? I'm a bit confused when I look through the list of "dead end pages". Can someone clarify please? Thanks in advance.--Kylohk 22:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It means that you don't know from the information given enough to do research to expand the article. For example, if the article is about someone with a fairly common name (like John Smith) and the article says, "John Smith is an author", that isn't enough information to even begin trying to do research to find out who he is. There have been thousands of people named John Smith and certainly more than one of them authored a book. But if the article says, "John Smith is an author of children's books, including the award-winning Blah blah blah blah", that gives you a starting point and provides sufficient context to do research to expand the article. --BigDT 22:41, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Exactly. "XYZ is a novel by Q.R. Author" has virtually no content at all, but if the title/author combo is pretty much unique, it has pleanty of context. If you can tell what the article is about enough to have a fair idea where to find more info, there is context. If that is hopeless, thre is no context. DES ^(talk) 22:48, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I far too often see sub-stubs with very little content being speedy-tagged as having no context, where there is all the context anyone needs. DES ^(talk) 22:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

"No context" would be closer to "The Green House is a book with a ghost in it." >Radiant< 12:42, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Exactly. Particularly if there are multiple books by the same title, so a simple amazon or google search will not reliabely give more info on the book that is the subject of the "article". DES ^(talk) 15:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Definition of G4

Latest comment: 18 years ago8 comments6 people in discussion

When does an article meet criterion G4 (a recreation of content deleted after an XfD discussion)? The reason I am asking this is the article Franchise Circle. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Franchise Circle was closed early, when the article was speedied per A7. The article has since been recreated. Does it qualify for G4 or not? The article may obviously still be deleted via A7, ofcourse. Aecis^Brievenbus 21:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm pretty sure G4 only applies to pages which are an exact repost of the one which has been through the XFD process. This diff's edit summary seems to confirm that, as does the wording on {{uw-repost}} ("If you can indicate how {{{1}}} is different from the previously posted material...") - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 07:45, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

But obviously, a very small rewording, or other minor edit to the page, is gaming the system and the article will be speedied anyway. --ais523 10:57, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

In this particular case, the article seems substantially expanded, but it reads rather doubtful to me so I'll throw it on AFD once more. >Radiant< 12:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The reason I brought this up is mostly for future reference. A substantial number of AFDs are closed early after a speedy deletion. Those article weren't deleted per WP:AFD, but per WP:CSD. So does G4 apply in such cases? Cows fly kites (Aecis) ^{Rule/Contributions} 19:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Either open a new AFD discussion, or retag it with the former speedy criterion if it still fits. G4 seems inappropriate when the discussion is short-circuited, and is only there to prevent the gaming discussed above; the page wasn't actually deleted according to the XFD discussion, after all. -- nae'blis 19:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What about cases where the speedy deletion of an article was upheld in Deletion review? I'm in discussion with Corvus cornix (talk · contribs) over the speedy deletion, recreation and current AFD on Whyville. It was deleted by AQu01rius (talk · contribs) on May 15. The deletion was more or less upheld in Deletion review; the request was rejected but the deletion itself was neither endorsed nor overruled. See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 May 16. My take is that it doesn't qualify for G4, since no XfD discussion took place. Any thoughts? Note: this might be some cross-posting, since Corvus cornix has raised this matter at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review#Whyville. Aecis^Brievenbus 22:53, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If we don't allow db-recreated to be used for speedy deletions which have been upheld at DRV, what's the point of having DRV? So what if a speedy is upheld, if the user just recreates the article and it's forced to go to AFD to get deleted? Corvus cornix 22:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

For the record, Deletion review never endorsed this particular speedy deletion. It didn't speak out on this deletion, it didn't consider the request for deletion review. If an A7 article gets recreated and recreated and recreated, the page can be protected. If it continues, the user may be blocked. There are a lot of ways to prevent recreation sprees. But G4 is not one of them. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Speedy tags on templates

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

I have seen several cases, recently, where a template is tagged with a DB tag, thus putting all pages that transcude the template into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. This is usually a bad thing. Perhaps the project page should include a warning that tagging tempaltes currently being transcluded will have this effect, which may be undesireable. DES ^(talk) 15:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The projetc page already tells people to noinclude the tag for templates. Kusma (talk) 15:24, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

So it does. obviously some people miss this. Is there anythign practical that can be done to help? in at least one case, a generic {{db}} was used, not any of the more specific tempaltes (and IMO it was an invalid tagging anyway). DES ^(talk) 15:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Probably there's not much we can do except tell the editor who tagged the template not to do it again; a large warning would probably violate WP:BEANS... Kusma (talk) 15:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I was thinking, could parser functions be used so that if (and only if) a DB tag is placed on a page in template space, a big red warning appeared about the use of noinclude? legit tgging of tempaltes for speedy is rare, after all, and the people who do this improperly don't read the CSD page in detail anyway. I'm thinking of the same sort of thing that {{prod}} does if you forget to subst it. DES ^(talk) 15:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that's possible. The code would be something like {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|Template|BIG ANGRY MESSAGE}}.-- Visviva 06:17, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Questions on Speedy Delete Process

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

I just discovered that an article I had created, Latin American subaltern studies, had been nominated and processed for speedy deletion within three hours. It's true that the article was just a stub. But here are a couple of notes regarding the process:

1. If a bot hadn't notified me of the nomination I would not have been informed.
2. The deletion itself didnt' show in my watchlist.
3. I have apparently no way of finding out either who nominated or who deleted the article.

It seems obvious to me that the editor or adminstrator here was being over-eager, at best. They lacked the courtesy to check the page history or my own contributions and then to raise their queries with me or at least put in a "prod." What worries me is less the fact that they got carried away than that I have no avenue to respond to the process, to know to whom I should respond, and indeed that everything almost took place almost un-noticed, if it weren't for a third-party bot. All this seems rather problematic to me. --Jbmurray 19:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You can find out the admin who carried out the deletion by looking at the logs, which is a link on the page that comes up when you click the redlink, or at the top of the history page for an existing article[16].

Thanks, that's very helpful. I saw that the history had been wiped, but didn't know about the logs. I've now been able at least to leave messages on the relevant adminsitrators' talk pages. --Jbmurray 19:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

removing speedy

Latest comment: 18 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

The statement that "anyone" can remove a speedy tag was removes, on the basis that it shouldn't just be by a whim. That point is well taken, but Ido not think that removing it altogether had consensus, and nonetheless a statement is needed that admins and nonadmins both--anyone but the author--can remove a tag--I have therefore restored it pending discussion.

It would be useful to say what follows this, if we can agree. What I would like to say that if the original speedy placer disagrees, and if the tag was removed with some degree of reason, the next step is AfD, not another speedy.

I'd also like to specify what follows a hangon tag, and how much time should be allowed, and what to do if the copyvio permission takes longer than expected. I am not sure about what should be said here, however. DGG 04:50, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Perhaps we need to keep the speedy deletes to non-controversial matters. Certain things should qualify regardless, no questions. Often, I think a few of the CSD fall into a gray area. Obviously, editors who post the db feel the article is above repair, but given the proper motivation, the author might not feel that way. As far as I can tell, and this is just my opinion, G11 and 12 can contain some gray area, as they're not concisely defined. Thinking of examples where G11 and 12 are obvious isn't hard. Thinking of examples where there might be some controversy is a different story. Perhaps we should attach a caution note, with some extended time to certain CSD? A1, A7 also come to mind. I'm not sure if there are any other CSD that might even be controversial enough to warrant a removal. In summary, what I'm suggesting is we make the existing CSD more bulletproof, and remain a speedy delete, and provide a clear line when AfD should be used instead. -wizzard2k ^(C•T•D) 06:10, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Well, the thing is that while anyone can remove a speedy tag, doing so does not in fact prevent the article from being speedied if it meets the criteria. >Radiant< 09:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Indeed; it's speedy deletion, meaning an admin can delete it at any time without the need for any process. Tagging is only for non-admins to bring things to the attention of admins, or admins to bring it to the attention of other admins if they want a second opinion. The exception is images, for historical reasons only (in the past it wasn't possible to undelete images; that should really be changed now). --bainer (talk) 10:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think it is a good idea for almost every deletion to have at least two opnions. Thus, except in cases of obvious blatent vandalism (or houskeeping, for stuff like fixing C&P moves), I never speedy-delete a page unless some other editor has tagged it, instead I will tag for anothe admin. i promised this in my RfAS and I have stuck to it. i urge othe admins to strongly consider doign likewise. DES ^(talk) 14:20, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I will tag some speedies for a second opinion, but most of the ones I opt to deal with are extremely clear-cut (attack pages and nonsense). I respect your decision to be more cautious, but I don't think it should necessarily become standard practice. -- nae'blis 14:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Agree with removing the exception for images; don't agree with taking out the language explaining that anyone except the author can remove tags. -- nae'blis 14:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Recent edit

Latest comment: 18 years ago9 comments5 people in discussion

I strongly disagree with this edit and I wish it had been discussed in advance. i will probably be reverting parts of it. I see that soem parts have already been reverted. Specifically:

1. I think that the phrase "If a page does not uncontestably fall under a criterion, or it has previously survived a deletion discussion, another process should be used instead." is important and should remain in the policy page.
2. I like the phrase " Don't delete if you simply don't understand the assertion of importance or significance; delete only if you know that there is none." and I don't see why it was removed. I ahve seen a number of speedy tags and some deltions that contained what I think were clear assertions of significance.
3. I think the wording "The "speedy deletion" policy specifies the limited cases where administrators may delete Wikipedia pages or media "on sight" without further debate" is important to make it clear that editors, including admins, can't simply make up their own new speedy delte criteria, an new or significantly changed CSD must have consensus before it is used. DES ^(talk) 14:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with the first point. If a page has survived an XfD, but falls into speedy deletion criteria, I do not see why it can't be speedy deleted. I think what you want to say is that it is not an A7, as notability is presumably asserted. Tizio 14:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

No I mean more than that. Which speedy criteria could a page that survived a valid XfD "fall into". If it is vandalized, it should be reverted, not deleted, so it can't be patent nonsense, no content, nor empty, as a version that was any of these wouldn't survive an XfD.A Copy vio could be discovered, yes, that is an explicit exception. Housekeeping to fix a C&P move could be an exception also, but that isn't really speedy deletion. Office actions might still occur but they are rare. What else? If XfD kept it, even if it is later revealed that a banned user's sock was the original creator, i don't think it should be deleted. Author requests shouldn't apply after an XfD. After an XfD version that was kept can't be considered blatant advertising, or it wouldn't have been kept, and if later versions are, they should be reverted, not kept. R1 could I suppose eventually apply. So could I1 or I8, the other I types I cant see how they could apply after an IfD result of keep. I also don't see how U1 could apply if there was a prior keep result. DES ^(talk) 14:51, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Then, "survived XfD" = "not speedy candidate" is instruction creep. If an XfD survivor cannot meet a speedy criteria, why having a rule about it. On the other hand, an article may survive a notability-grounded AfD while still being blatant advertisement, etc. The CSD are for articles that "can be unilaterally deleted", so consensus obtained in whatever venues is irrelevant. Tizio 16:14, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If articles are passing AFD (there's no such thing as a "notability-grounded AFD") and are still blatant advertisements, there's either enough interest to warrant cleaning up the article, or AFD is broken beyond what I can believe. Only legal-ramification speedies (previously unknown copyright infringement, for example) should trump XFD discussions. -- nae'blis 16:27, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

By "notability-grounded AFD" I mean an AfD where the nominator starts with "non-notable, does not pass [insert notability guideline here]". I don't know if they have a better name. If an article is still blatant advertisement after AfD, that proves that there is not enough interest in cleaning it up. Tizio 16:33, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

G12 is one of those notoriously vague criterion; remember the cookie caper? I would absolutely support a second AFD if the article maintains an unusable/unencyclopedic state but using CSD as an end-run around consensus at AFD seems sketchy to me. If people are still closing AFDs as keeps when the article has not at least started to improve on the concerns raised, that's a separate problem (in my view), but I thought we were mostly over that sort of "it's fixable someday" mentality. Thanks for clarifying what you meant. -- nae'blis 16:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

We should not over-ride consensus by individual personal action. We don't in editing, and we shouldn't in deletion. If something is deleted in XfD, it shouldn't be re-created without new evidence or Deletion Review--we already have that rule, and we need it. If something is kept, it shouldn't be deleted without another community discussion, or if something new is discovered such as copyvio or a duplicate. DGG 05:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If consensus established that a specific version of an article should be kept, despite it satisfying speedy deletion criteria, that seems to say that it's an exception to the rule, as consensus is the overriding guiding principle. An unspeediable article cannot become speediable, because of the "revert if you can" rule. This leaves only cases where significant new information that would undoubtedly reverse all the "Keep" votes comes to light, such as copyvio or duplicate articles.

I agree with all the restored statements.Dcoetzee 08:29, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

A suggestion for a new CSD candidate

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

I am suggesting a new CSD candidate: Article about a video game and/or video game content that does not assert the importance or signifigance of the subject. In my experiences patrolling, I have come across a few articles that would fall under this criteria, yet I am forced to either tag them as patent nonsense, which is untrue for most of these articles; very short articles without context, which again most do not fall under or ProD them, which the majority will be contested, thus bringing them up to AfD. By expanding CSD for this candidate, it should help reduce the amount of AfDs that are brought up. Examples of articles that would fall under this category: Teru-Sama, Monster Hunt, List of Monster Hunter Monsters(deleted under AfD, but would have fallen under this criteria) and List of Spectrobes(again, deleted under AfD, but would have fallen under this criteria). SuperDT 05:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

How often does it turn up? I rarely see them during my patrols, and I'm automatically wary of adding to the already-too-subjective A7 criteria. --badlydrawnjeff talk 05:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

In the past two days, doing about 2 hours of newpage/randompage patrolling a day, I can count four articles off the top of my head that I believe would fall under this criteria: Teru-Sama, Monster Hunt, Adventurers Guild and Naruto: Battle of Death (Now deleted under patent nonsense, which it really was not). If this is not enough to warrant a change in criteria, I completely understand. SuperDT 05:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Four really isn't much of anything, really. At least in my opinion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 05:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• In my experience, such articles are frequently stubs about minor characters, locations, or items from some video game. If these are sub-trivial, that can usually be solved by redirecting them to the game in question. >Radiant< 07:57, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I'd much rather see these become redirects to list/aggregate pages than be speedied. This seems overly narrow, and any 'fictional character stub' criterion is going to be WAY too subjective for my liking. -- nae'blis 14:35, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD I2 split

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Have we considered a split of CSD I2 before?

• Corrupt or empty image. Before deleting this type of image, verify that the MediaWiki engine cannot read it by previewing a resized thumbnail of it. This also includes empty (i.e., no content) image description pages for Commons images.

Here is the template: Template:Db-noimage. I find that editors worry the actual image is going to be deleted as "missing or corrupt" when it is marked as CSD I2 because it is an empty description page for a Commons image. I'd like to reduce some of the worry and questions about the deletions when they should be fairly uncontroversial deletions. --Strangerer (Talk) 13:39, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If there's a consensus to delete keep description pages for commons images (last I looked it was up in the air), why not just write that in as an exception to I2? -- nae'blis 14:36, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Proposed revision of G10

Latest comment: 18 years ago14 comments9 people in discussion

I'd like to suggest a revision of G10 that I feel makes it less restrictive and more accurate of actual practice. The current version reads:

10. Attack pages. Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). This includes a biography of a living person that is negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no NPOV version in the history to revert to.

My proposed revision is:

10. Attack pages. Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). This includes any page which cannot conform to the Biography of Living Persons policy.

I would not make such a change myself without support, so I'm placing it here first for comments. Thanks. --InkSplotch 18:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would prefer the decision that a page cannot conform to BLP rest in an AfD discussion rather than the hands of individual administrators. --Iamunknown 18:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The wording's a bit confusing, as it implies that all articles not meeting BLP standards are classified as attack pages. If someone wrote "John Q. Doe is the best person in the world", this wouldn't meet BLP standards either as it's still not written from NPOV, but can hardly be called an attack. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 19:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

They key is "cannot conform", as in, if a page could be made to conform it wouldn't be a speedy candidate. But if there's no way it could be made to conform to BLP, it could be. --InkSplotch 20:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Normally I'd say CSDs should be applied with caution, but you're right in that this one reflects actual practice for quite good reason - David Gerard 20:51, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This would be a welcome improvement, but may need some clearer wording. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:55, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Someone help me out...I'm not understanding the improvement. Obviously just because we can speedy an article which could be made to conform to NPOV with little work doesn't mean we have to, even under the current wording. If the article is unsourced and negative, deleting it forces a fresh start and gets anything possibly libelous out of the page history. And what would it mean "cannot" conform? That there is no way to say something NPOV about the person? I don't understand when that would be the case. So far, I prefer the current wording. NickelShoe (Talk) 21:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What I'm trying to get away from is a strict interpretation of "attack page." Several articles which have gone through recent deletion have been marked as BLP violations that are not pure attack pages, but still violate the protections to living persons that BLP is trying to protect. I'm not sure I could explain better without pointing you to AFD and DRV. --InkSplotch 21:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, several articles have been recently deleted because people simply objected to their content, and used BLP as an excuse. Some editors are far too quick to characterize articles as violating BLP. Unlearned hand 23:52, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

(EC)Here's another stab at it...I'm still not sure, though. --InkSplotch 21:05, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

10. Attack pages. Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage their subject or some other entity (e.g., "John Q. Doe is an imbecile"). This includes any page which cannot be made to conform to Biography of Living Persons policy.

Feel free to point me in the direction of a relevant AfD or DRV. I'm still not understanding the "cannot" business. Under what circumstances could an article about a person not be written from an NPOV? NickelShoe (Talk) 21:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

BLP demands good sourcing, too, so if there aren't good sources, it can't meet BLP. -Amarkov moo! 00:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Remember we have A7 for these cases as well. G10 still specifies an "attack page", and I'm still unclear as to how you can have a biography which is classifiable as an attack page which isn't defamatory and negative in tone, which seems to be what you're trying to encompass with the new wording. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 04:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

There are attack pages on other things than people. Schools, for example. I think the present wording is fine. The BLP part is implicit--the wording is pre-BLP policy, but it still fits. DGG 05:43, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Look at the clock!

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I just left the following message on my User Talk page after I got a robot msg on an SD, but want to share it with the SD community:

"Just for the record, even though I'm talking to a robot, I want to say that I don't oppose the deletion of that article but I consider it absolutely pathetic that I was given notice during sleep time (07:43 local time) and even though I'm answering this barely one hour later and early in the morning (9:03 local time), the article is already deleted by an admin. If I wanted to halt the process, I couldn't because it was my fault that I was sleeping and didn't check this page for one hour. Pathetic."

Sorry about the strong word. --maf (talk-cont) 08:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I sympathize, but it's always sleep time somewhere in the world... -- Visviva 08:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Until recently you might well never have gotten any notice, only found that the arricle was gone when you noticed a red link, and had to check the deletion log to find out why it had been deleted, if you knew how. Speedy deletion means "deletable on sight" that is, without delay or warning in most cases. Notices are a courtesy so that you can find out what happened and why -- if it happens that you are in time to contest a speedy tag, fine, but there is no guarenteed right to do so. Any speedy can be reveiwed at Deletion review if you think it was imporper, or better, you can ask the deelting admin to reconsider if you have a good reason. This is one reaosn why the speedy deletion criteria are supposed to be narrow and adhered to pretty strictly -- if an admin is unsure that an article warrents deletion without time for discussion, then s/he should use {{prod}} instead. DES ^(talk) 16:33, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Template suggestion

Latest comment: 18 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

The current template is a very good design but could be improved by adding Image:Keep tidy.svg:

 This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The given reason is: {{{1}}} Speedy concern: {{{1}}}

If this page does not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, or you intend to fix it, please remove this notice, but do not remove this notice from pages that you have created yourself. If you created this page and you disagree with this page’s proposed speedy deletion, please add (in addition to the speedy deletion template):

{{hangon}}

to the top of this page below this tag, and then explain why you believe this wikipedia talk page should not be deleted on this talk page.

This will alert administrators to your intention, and should permit you the time to write your explanation.

Administrators, remember to check what links here, the page history (last edit), the page log, and any revisions of CSD before deletion.

I would like to gain consensus before making this change. It's a minor, albeit cosmetic one, but it could work. Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 09:48, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

That's a person throwing rubbish into a garbage bin. It's an offense magnet.--Fuhghettaboutit 11:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Agree, the suggestion is just biting the newbies. Kusma (talk) 12:15, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've withdrawn this idea, it doesn't seem feasible. I was wrong, I admit. --SunStar Net ^talk 13:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Funny, the folks in Finnish Wikipedia don't seem to think so... =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 10:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Double Redirect

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Is the sole fact that an article is a Double Redirect grounds for speedily deleting it? I can accept that it may be grounds for deleting, but cmon, speedy deleting? We can't let Deletionists determine the Criteria for deletion. Mathiastck 14:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Seems unlikely unless it falls under the general housekeeping criterion. Usually double redirects are fixed; what particular redirect are you referring to in this case? -- nae'blis 15:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Surely if article 1 redirects to article 2 which redirects to article 3 then article 1 can just be fixed so that it redirects to article 3 as well. And if article 3 doesn't exist then they both get speedied under R1. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 15:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't think even a deletionist would argue against merely fixing the redirect. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Android Mouse Bot 2

Latest comment: 18 years ago20 comments5 people in discussion

People do not need to be informed about speedy deletions. Speedy deletions are not controversial, that is the whole point. This bot is doing nothing but cluttering up talk pages with huge warnings and getting people scared for no reason. By the time most people see the warning the page in question has already been deleted. This bot is useless and should be disabled. shoeofdeath 17:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I disagree. If someone doesn't get an explanation of why their page was deleted, they'll just recreate it or get pissed off (that isn't to say that both won't happen). We shouldn't bite the newbies. EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The SD process and the bot msg are not in sync. The SD admins need to agree to either a) keep the {{hangon}} reference but not delete the article less than 24 hours after being tagged for SD (to allow me to sleep at night); or b) rm the {{hangon}} reference from the bot msg and delete on sight. The way it is now, to pretend to give a chance for hangon, does not work. --maf (talk-cont) 20:38, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

That has nothing to do with the bot, the reference to {{hangon}} is in all the standard notification templates that editors are encouraged by the text of the various db templates to put on the talk pages of article creators. DES ^(talk) 20:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

"Speedy" is not defined as "no less than 24 hours", and is most certainly not contingent on someone's sleep schedule. I've deleted too many articles that in no way deserved a 24 hour "notice period" to think this is a good idea. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I requested the bot be created, and i am very glad that it is doing what it is doing. Basically it is merely automating a task that editors are always requested (by the wording of the various db templates) to perform, but IMO far too many omit. The notifications server several useful purposes. When people create invalid articles that should be speedy deleted, because they don't know wikipedia polices, the notice helps indicate what the problem was and what happened to the article. When persistent spammers or Vandals recreate articles, the notices can make it easier for editors to notice that early and deal with it. If a speedy tag is debatable or invalid, it helps let a user know how to challenge the speedy properly (and I have responded to many "hangon" tags by removing the speedy tag and notifying the tagger, often together with improving the article so hangon does work in a good many cases). If an article gets deleted before the person notified can challenge the deletion, it is always possible to ask the deleting admin to reconsider, and if s/he declines, to take the matter to deletion review. While most speedys are perfectly valid, IMO, a fair number are at least debatable, and this can help people learn how to debate them rationally, rather than just recreating in place, to no one's benefit. DES ^(talk) 20:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You are overestimating the number of "debatable" speedy deletions. Most are noncontroversial and a huge number are articles that were not created by newbies. I agree with you that this bot does some good in the cases where the creator of the article disagrees with its speedy deletion. This is by far the exception, though, and the majority of the warnings given by this thing are doing absolutely nothing but confusing regular users with a huge graphic and bold text. At first I thought this bot was relatively harmless (and useless) but now I am convinced that it is actually doing much more harm than good. shoeofdeath 21:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is a great idea. We'll be able to keep a lot more newbies editing. Shoeofdeath, after being an admin for a long time and going through CSD a lot... I'm sorry, but I don't have a damn clue what you're talking about. Notifying the author can only hlp in about 90% of cases and there are a lot of controversial ones, especially from the perspective of the people who create the articles. Grandmasterka 21:14, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would say it helps in more like 10% of cases. I am against page creation for brand new users anyway but that is another issue altogether. I am obviously not going to win this fight and am not going to argue about it anymore. In any case I would strongly suggest that the warnings given by this bot be toned down and be made more discrete, at least in blatantly noncontroversial deletions such as redirects or other housekeeping. shoeofdeath 21:28, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

How can you say that leaving the bot msg AND deleting on sight are good for the author? Where will the author put the {{hangon}} if the article's already gone? I don't understand how one admin says that hangons solve a lot of problems, and another admin likes to shoot on sight. Admins, get in sync and adjust bot or process one way or the other. --maf (talk-cont) 22:21, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Honestly? Most of the articles I seen in CAT:CSD are absolute shit, and no amount of {{hangon}} placement will change that. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:48, 24 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If the article's creator disagrees with the deletion, s/he can use hangon if deletion hasn't happened yet. If the creator or anyone else disagrees after the deletion has occured, that person can ask the deleting admin to reconsider (link found in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log deletion log), or take the matter to deletion reveiw, where there are instructions about how to handle contested speedy deletions. DES ^(talk) 16:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• In response to User:Shoeofdeath, I agree that most speedy deletions are clearly proper. Many are by relatively new editors, many are not, but many of those by not so new editors were still good-faith creations by editors who can profit by being informed exactly why the article was speedy deleted. I think that in the vast majority of cases notices are likely to be helpful -- only in the case of the willful and persistent vandal are the of no use to the editor being notified, and there they can help clue-in others that this is such a vandal. I agree that notices for G6 housekeeping are of little use, because those deletions are normally undone promptly. Perhaps notices for deletions of redirects without targets are unneeded, but in some cases the redirect sits on a history that an editor will want preserved, and i don't see how a bot can tell when this is the case. And I really don't see what harm the notices do even when they are not needed. DES ^(talk) 16:38, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Note that the bot does not issue a notice when {{db-move}}, {{db-g6}}, or {{Db-userreq}} is used to tag a page. DES ^(talk) 16:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • See the related discussion #Notify authors about speedy deletion? further up the page. DES ^(talk) 16:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I note that in this edit User:Shoeofdeath removed a bot-created notice of a speedy deletion from the talk page of a user, which user expressed himself as displeased by both the deletion and the removal of the notice. If a major reason why User:Shoeofdeath dislikes the notices is because it leads to editors complaining about his actions, then perhaps he should think twice about those actions, although of course many complaints about speedy deletions are not justified. DES ^(talk) 16:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have also removed such warnings on several other occasions and have been thanked for it. Please note that I posted here before your example; this has nothing to do with my opposition to this bot. shoeofdeath 17:23, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Very well, i accept your statement. I had noted that on several occasions when a complaint was made on two talk pages when refering to the same complaint about a speedy tag you had placed, you siad something to the effect that the complaint wouldn't have occured had the bot not been active. You can perhaps understand how I got the impression i did. DES ^(talk) 18:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Certainly, although "several occasions" was actually only one time. People are overly protective of any pages they create, even useless redirects. Again, I see that there is general consensus to keep this bot and understand why it exists. Thank you for your detailed responses. shoeofdeath 18:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

On review i find that there were such comments in only two, not "several" edits, and that both refered to the same notice, making this really only one "occasion". My apologies for the inaccuracy, it was a failure of memory. DES ^(talk) 21:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Proposed text addition to A2

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to propose the addition of some text to A2 to clarify things. The text would be "All articles in a non-english language that do not meet this criteria (and are not clearly copyvios or spam), should be listed at Pages Needing Translation (PNT) for review and possible translation." The reason for this is concern that has been brought up at PNT that too many articles are getting speedied without the needed review and consideration for translation. The way the process is supposed to work is that such articles are listed at PNT, and if nothing is done in 2 weeks, they get AfD, unless it is determined that they are copyvios or spam, inwhich case they are speedied. I believe that the problem is that many of the good folks who do NP patrolling - and even some admins who work the CSD mop closet, are simply unaware of the PNT project, and unaware that it is where such articles should be listed, and it is my hope that by adding this bit of text, a bit of education will be accomplished. Comments? Flaming darts? AKRadecki 01:44, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is a good idea, but rather than "and are not clearly copyvios or spam", i would just say "and do not meet any other criteria for speedy deletion". - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 09:31, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

No objections, so added amalgum of my original proposal as modified by Zeibura. AKRadecki 18:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clarification of C1

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Criterion C1 currently states:

Empty categories (no articles or subcategories for at least four days) whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories. This does not apply to categories being discussed on WP:CFD or WP:SFD, or disambiguation categories. If the category isn't relatively new, it possibly contained articles earlier, and deeper investigation is needed.

I interpret "whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories" to mean that any category whose description page has contained content other than parent category links at some point is not speedyable under this criterion – and that categories which have never had a description are. I've always followed it this way, but it seems a little odd and I believe it is routinely ignored, so is it actually necessary? The part about CfD doesn't entirely make sense either, as it would seem to disallow speedy closures, which certainly happen – Gurch 02:07, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This needs to be changed to reflect/clarify what is done (correctly, I think) in practice. It should be changed to something like "Empty categories (no articles or subcategories for at least four days). This does not apply to disambiguation categories. Before deleting, make sure that the category did not become empty due to vandalism or by other inappropriate means". The whole part about "whose only content has consisted of links to parent categories" doesn't really make sense. That would imply someone could get around the speedy criteria by simply typing a letter as the category description. The CFD part should also be removed as confusing, as speedy closes happen (appropriately) all the time. VegaDark (talk) 02:21, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Empty categories are those that have no pages that link to them (none listed). This does not mean categories that are blank, but have pages listed within them.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:33, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Flagging articles that might need deletion or extreme tidying up

Latest comment: 18 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

Is there a way to flag up articles that might need deletion or massive tidying up, but which have some potential. Something like the speedy deletion tags, but different (ie. more urgent and more easily tackled) from the "needs cleaning up" tags? The article in question is social perception. Where is the best place to start with this kind of "donated academic material"? Carcharoth 01:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't tag it for deletion. If it were blatantly an essay, I'd use proposed deletion. Also I tend to google badly formatted material to see if it's been copy-pasted from somewhere, but in this case it doesn't seem to be, plus it cites sources. I've cleaned this article up a bit, which is the approach I'd recommend for these types, rather than just deleting it. If you can't be bothered to do any work on it, just go for blue box overkill.

To avoid confusion, the original version Carcharoth refers to is here. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 06:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! :-) You really cleaned that one up! I picked CSD as one of several talk pages where I might get a quick response, but didn't expect it to be this quick! For next time though, is there a central place for "articles with potential" where I contact editors who specialise in rescuing articles under titles that obviously have encyclopedic potential? The other tips are helpful as well. I'll bear those in mind next time. Carcharoth 09:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You lookin' for Wikipedia:Cleanup? It seems that Wikipedia:Extreme cleanup is red. Splash - tk 13:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

PS. In case anyone was wondering where I found that article, it was at Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/uncategorized, in the list for April 2007. Carcharoth 09:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I once drafted User:DESiegel/urgent cleanup. If anyone wants to move this to template space and start using it, be my guest. I never got consensus and dropped the matter. DES ^(talk) 01:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would definitely start using this. There does need to be an alternative to {{cleanup}}, which has no value at all. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 10:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't really see what the point would be, unless this is an end-run around the rejected criterion for unsourced articles. There is no deadline, so what makes it so 'urgent'? Cleanup tasks are already being tackled in reverse order now that the templates are dated, and anyone can work on any article at any time. -- nae'blis 16:25, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's the line between "this article needs a bit of formatting" and "this article is barely legible due to lack of formatting, but looks like it may contain some useful content". - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 16:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sofixit. I'm so tired of people slapping tags on articles when for a few moments' more time, they could actually fix the "nearly illegible" formatting. Are we writing an encyclopedia or playing Whack-a-Mole?? -- nae'blis 16:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Zeibura, one of the reasons why {{cleanup}} takes so long is that there are so many articles to clean up. Creating {{urgent cleanup}} will be no different if Category:Articles in urgent need of cleanup becomes populated with hundreds/thousands of articles. Please let's not additionally complicate our maintenance categories system. If it were a new template specifying a certain type of cleanup ... I might support it. But this I just can't. If a non-speedyable article needs urgent cleanup for legal/ethical reasons (e.g., it's a BLP that contains potentially libelous material), then revert it to a better version, remove the problematic content, or bring it up at the BLP noticeboard. I really can't see any other case that would require "urgent" cleanup. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I see your point, "urgent" is perhaps the wrong term to be using. My main issue with cleanup is that I don't think it would be as full as it is if the specific maintenance templates were used more often instead of {{cleanup}}. I believe {{cleanup}} should be reserved for cases where loads of specific tags would need to be used to address multiple problems, but I know it's far too unrealistic to expect that to happen. I guess "urgent cleanup" would be used for this purpose, but I sympathise with your point about the category becoming just as full and rendering the template equally meaningless - it probably would happen eventually. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 19:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Expanding A7 to films and videos

Latest comment: 18 years ago16 comments9 people in discussion

Not to beat a dead horse, but I continually see material being brought up at AfD with basically immediate deletion, but which cannot be speedied, because it's not on the list - specifically, films and videos, such as Star Flaws: the Return of the Ginge. Any film which is notable enough for inclusion will, someone, assert some degree of notability - i.e. by listing awards, receipts, association with famous actors/directors, etc. This would also get rid of the horrible YouTube fan videos that keep showing up, but cannot currently be speedied. I feel this is specific, and targeted enough not to adversely affect the encyclopedia outside the scope of what it is supposed to get rid of. --Haemo 09:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I haven't looked at AfD in a while. Would you be able to list previous deletion discussions on such films to show whether it really is a problem. How many "non-notable films" in the last year are we talking about? 10? 50? 100? 200? Carcharoth 09:07, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I guess I could dig through this - give me a little while. --Haemo 13:06, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Okay, I did to May 7th, since it was taking forever, and I found 7 articles which could be speedied under my proposed change (That's around 125, on average, per year) - in total, I counted 14 film/video deletion debates; this means half of them could have never consumed the communities time, or effort.

1. Better Luck Yesterday - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Better Luck Yesterday
2. Star Flaws: the Return of the Ginge - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Star Flaws: the Return of the Ginge
3. The Backpack (Short Film) - [17] - also note that this was improperly speedied per criterion A7, as "web content" - even though criteria A7 is specific only to websites.
4. Life Mein Kabhie Kabhiee - [18]
5. Professor Plum (film) - [19]
6. The_Assassinator - [20] - There was a "hold on the speedy" on this article; which is odd, since it's not speediable anyways.
7. The Neighbor (TV series) - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Neighbor (TV series) - yet another A7 speedy, which is currently invalid

There are some things to note:

• First of all, as some entries on the list have shown, people are de facto exercising this already. In fact, the this template]directly contradicts WP:CSD in its scope. It only makes sense to formalize this. --Haemo 13:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• The answer is to fix the template in this case. Even you're saying 125 on average per year - that's a drop in the bucket, there's absolutely no need to expand it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Really? That's half of all the film related material I counted - and if you re-write that template to exclude Youtube videos, as the current guidelines mandate, you're going to be seeing a lot more of these AfD's in the near future. --Haemo 13:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Good, these should be discussed individually, especially with YouTube becoming a legitimate mainstream content provider. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:59, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Fair enough - I guess if it's a minor problem, then it's not really worth the fuss, after all. I wasn't aware of the scope needed for a change to be made. --Haemo 14:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Well, it's not a bad idea per se, you should try asking for more feedback on the village pump. There are a handful of people on this talk page who automatically object to any additions to the SD criteria, so this talk page gives a rather lopsided view of what the community thinks. >Radiant< 12:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm not yet one of the handful of CSD talk page regulars, but I also object to this proposed criterion for now. First, this proposal vastly overestimates the quality of articles on films. Most film stubs, even if they're about a notable film, do not state much beyond "X was a 2007 film. Here's the plot ...". Second, if this criterion would apply only to about 125 articles per year ... it's probably not worth it. Just another opinion. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • I object to the expansion because I'm not sure what a "claim of importance or significance" is supposed to be for a film or video, and I'm not sure those claims would always find their way into legitimate stubs people might start. If it had a cast list with a bunch of blue-linked names I didn't recognize, would that be enough? Would I have to look through those linked pages to see if those are legitimate notable actors or part of a walled garden? What about having a release date, or a blue-linked company backing the film that I don't recognize? Some articles on legit subjects may make some clear & direct claims (ie some critic may be quoted as giving the film some kind of superlative) but the ones that really matter are indirect claims. (I actually have exactly the same trouble with the "company" category, but I accept that one because we need it to help fight those using Wikipedia for promotion). Mangojuice^talk 19:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

This seems to be almost exactly what I came here to propose, so if no one minds, I'm going to slightly expand the suggestion. Could A7 be expanded to include fanfiction in general, regardless of genre? It came up in this AfD when I was asked why I didn't just speedy the article. I'm not sure whether it would fit under A7 now, as there's an external link with exactly the same content, but at the time, that link was as much in progress as the page, so I'm honestly not sure where it was added first, or if that has any relevance to the appropriateness of using A7. Including fanfiction would certainly eliminate that confusion. -Bbik 02:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Fanfic? That is almost by definition self-promotion for non-notable copyvios. Wikipedia is not fanfiction.net. If memory serves me right, the only reason why articles on made-up self-published stories and/or your homemade RPG character and so forth aren't in the CSD list is either because they don't come up all that often, or because we already do and policy hasn't caught up yet. That's different from (and less controversial than) films, though. >Radiant< 09:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Actually, a CSD for fan fiction or characters from fanfic or from unpublished RPG games was propsoed, but failed to gain consensus. See this summery. The overall conclusion was "While most people agree that most fan fiction is not encyclopedic, it is not generally obvious from an article whether it's about fan fiction or real fiction." Note also that in a few rare cases, fan fiction has actually become notable. A classic example is "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", but that was helped because its author is a notable published author. There are a few other examples, and i can fid cites if you really want. But it is very rare. DES ^(talk) 18:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Indeed on looking furhter, it appears that User:Radiant! was the inital drafter of that earlier proposal to add a CSD for fanfiction, and I was one of thsoe who argued for it. How time does fly:) If such a criterion would be adopted in future, i think it should be a new, separate criterion, not an addition to A7. DES ^(talk) 18:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I searched the internet for the examples above and learned from IMDB that one of them, Life Mein Kabhie Kabhiee, is a Bollywood film by Vikram Bhatt, and we seem to have articles about all of his other films, so I don't see why that one should be any different. Looks like both of the AFD participants were Americans, so regardless the article's quality, and despite being the most recent film by an apparently "notable" director (even if it was a critical flop [21]), it probably didn't have a chance in hell  . The others don't seem to be listed on IMDB at all, so I'm just guessing those were amateur projects, I mean IMDB is pretty comprehensive. I've never watched a film that wasn't listed on IMDB. Have you? I guess what I'm really trying to ask is, if we are going to add or expand criteria to deal with films, would this be to arbitrary of a standard:

"It is an article about a film which makes no assertion of 'notability' and even the Internet Movie Database has no entry on it."

(read it again, it says "and", not "or") — CharlotteWebb 17:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Notability does not automatically disqualify from other CSD criteria

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

I have seen several articles lately that have had a spam or other non-A7 CSD removed by admins claiming that an assertion of notability precludes any speedy deletion. This is simply not the case. It doesn't matter how notable a person or group may be, spam is spam. It may preclude an A7 speedy, but if it's still a candidate for any of the other categories, it should still be speediable. DarkAudit 20:40, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Remember, though, that 'spam' is only speedily deletable if it "would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic". Thus there may be spammy articles which are not speedies since what they really need is either cleanup and/or an appropriate tag. There are, of course, many spammy articles that do just need to disposed of on sight. Splash - tk 21:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Point taken. But some admins are taking an assertion of notability to mean a complete disqualification from CSD, and that's not true. DarkAudit 21:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Is there a SD tag that can be used for people like Steve Beverly, that are non-notable but have large articles b/c somebody is his friend? Stellatomailing 23:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's not correct to say that notability is an exemption from other speedy criteria. But if something is demonstratably notable, it is rather unlikely that any of the speedy criteria will apply, so it should definitely be evaluated more critically. -Amarkov moo! 23:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Copyvio is a common tag for articels about otherwise notable subjects, as is blatent spam. In the latter case, though, if the subject is celarly notable a rewriute is usually better than a deletion, even if a spammy version technically qualifies, IMO. An attack page agaisnt a notable subject is obviously subject to deltion or drastic rewrite, and if the atttack is a the level of legally actionable defamation, deletion may be better. DES ^(talk) 01:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Accidental creation?

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Would pages that were accidentally created, i.e. in the wrong namespace, fall into any of the current speedy deletion criteria? If not, what do we think about making it a new criteria, G13. -- kenb215 talk 04:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would think that could be covered by either G6 (Housekeeping) or G7 (Author requests deletion), depending on who wrote it and who's trying to move it to another namespace. -Bbik 04:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Assuming that the page has been moved to the correct namespace, the resulting redirect could be speedily deleted per G6 or G7, as noted above, if it has no significant incoming links (these can be repaired/replaced) and no GFDL issues are involved (i.e., a copy-paste move of content did not take place). In practice, G6 has a rather wide scope when it comes to pages that are not articles, but exist simply to ensure the smooth(er) operation of the project. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clarification on G5

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

If an article was created as part of behavior that got a user blocked, would it be eligible for deletion under G5? the contributions of the editors in this sockpuppet case were what caused the blocking, not after. DarkAudit 06:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you look closely at "G5" you will notice the the prepositional phrase "while they were banned" (emphasis not mine). I'd guess this was deliberately added and intentionally emphasized in response to previous requests for "clarification". — CharlotteWebb 10:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What counts here is as follows: If the user was violating a ban by creating this page, including by using sockpuppets, then G5 applies. Otherwise, it doesn't. Od Mishehu 14:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Then I would believe it does not where the users above are concerned. They were blocked after they created the articles and spammed their linkspam, because they created the articles and spammed their linkspam. Most of their 'contributions' are being deleted anyway through other, more applicable procedures. DarkAudit 17:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If it's heading for deletion anyway, it doesn't matter much. On occasion, though, a banned editor makes a page that others find useful, and not always in bad faith. (I remember seeing a couple of Wikipedia essays like this). In those cases, only G5 would apply, so it had better strictly apply. Mangojuice^talk 18:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Which reminds me that this would also apply to topic bans. If the arbitration committee had banned me from "all articles relating to sports in the U.S. state of North Carolina", the article Serge Zwikker could be speedy deleted, even when it was not created by a sockpuppet. — CharlotteWebb 17:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

G5 clarification

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

Banned user. Pages created by banned users while they were banned.

I think the implication of this should be better explained. Banned users should not be making edits. How about "pages created by ban evading users" -- Cat ^chi? 17:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Or "ban violating". But I think the current wording says the same thing. Remember than bans and blocks aren't exactly the same thing, and I don't take G5 to mean that any block-avoiding creation should be spedyable. Mangojuice^talk 18:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I want to think of it as both. Blocked users shouldn't even be editing. -- Cat ^chi? 20:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, but an editor that's evading a block can be blocked, but I don't think there's consensus to wholesale revert or delete everything they do while evading the block. Others? Am I wrong? Mangojuice^talk 22:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've always viewed G5 to apply only to banned users and indef-blocked users whom no administrator is willing to unblock (and who are thus effectively banned). The latter is per point 1 of Wikipedia:Banning policy#Decision to ban. I've never thought of pages created by users while temporarily blocked as speedy-able per G5. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

• For temporary blocks, no. For indefinite blocks or bans, the policy allows us to delete whatever edits they make, but that doesn't mean it is required. Depends, really; if they do something useful, keep it, but they usually don't. As I recall there are two or three users that Really Are Not Welcome and are an exception to this. >Radiant< 08:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I understand the criterion as something of an educational tool. Only if we delete and rollback their non-bad contributions we can show a banned user using lots of IPs and sockpuppets that he is really banned. We do not want any of his contributions until he stops making bad ones. If we keep good edits, it gets a lot harder to get the point across that the user is really banned. Kusma (talk) 09:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • When a user creates a good article, it should be kept: our purpose is to build p the encyclopedia. If an indefinitely banned user (generally this is a result of prior vandalism) does manage to create a good and useful article, this could perhaps be seen as a sign that it might be time to un-ban him. As Radiant says, persistently disruptive users are quite another matter, and it is not good to allow them to re-integrate themselves without further discussion.DGG 00:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

About Da Volunteers picture

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

How, exactly, do you delete a picture?

You can't, unless you're an administrator. The picture I think you're referring to will be deleted in a few days by an administrator because its copyright status is unknown. Hut 8.5 08:10, 2 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Extension of A7

Latest comment: 18 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion

A7 currently only lists people, groups, corps, and web content. I was wondering if this should be expanded, as i have sometimes encountered unremarkable software programs and other things that don't neatly fall into the specific A7 langauge. It wouldn't be a major change, just something like "does not assert the notability or significance" in a more general fashion. Is this a good idea? hbdragon88 22:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

No, it isn't. See above for the basic reasons why it's really not a good idea to expand this further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:26, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Allow me to expand on badlydrawnjeff's point. Many editors think that A7 is already too broadly applied by some. Regardless of one's position on the matter, it is almost guaranteed that any proposed extension will generate significant opposition. Another issue is that it is often difficult to recognise what constitutes an assertion of notability when one is not educated about the subject. This is particularly true when it comes to specialised topics such as chemistry, physics, biology, and even software programs. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Even as something as simple as "so-and-so is a software program"? Well, I guess that could fall under A1 territory. hbdragon88 23:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

It could fall under A1 depending on the actual content of the article. However, I don't think most one-sentence software stubs would be speedy-able per A1, as they seems to consist of "X is a software program by Y for Z", which provides enough context to definitively identify the subject of the article. I think {{prod}} would probably be better for such cases. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

In general the danger of deleting unfamiliar things is already great enough with people, and even worse with corporations. Once we get the process running with greater precision, then we can think about expanding it. DGG 04:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• It would help if you were to cite evidence that this is an actual problem, as opposed to a hypothetical one. For instance, do we get a lot of AFD nominations for software programs that don't plausibly fall under another CSD? Does PROD not suffice for these? >Radiant< 14:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe this is a problem, as from my experience, 90% of "non-notable software" or "non-notable product" articles fall under G11 anyway. In the few cases that they don't, PROD, or in dubious cases AFD, is fine. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 16:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

So does this mean I could write an article about an unremarkable company and phrase it "Software product is a product developed by Unremarkable Company..." and if I disputed the prod tags it could only go through AFD? That is ridiculous. A7 is much better for this than G11, as G11 is easy enough for the creator to avoid (add some neutral language, a couple sections and presto, it's "almost" a real article). -- Renesis (talk) 16:22, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

New image criterion

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Something I've come across a number of times is an image which has been uploaded for the sole purpose of identifying or mocking someone on an attack page. I generally just delete these images as "attack only" even though that's not literally set out in the image criteria. Would it be useful to explicitly state that images uploaded for this purpose should be speedily deleted? Mak (talk) 16:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

G10 or G3 is fine for these. Remember that the general criteria apply across all namespaces. - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 16:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I believe that this is the main reason why "attack pages" was changed from an article criterion to a general criterion. >Radiant< 16:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Reword proposal of G1 template

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I don't know how many of you watch templates, so I'm posting a link to this here. I've just posted a message on Template talk:Nonsensepages proposing to reword the template that some of you might be interested in offering your opinions on. Cheers! - Zeibura S. Kathau ^{(Info | Talk)} 23:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Time limits on image speedy deletion

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

I'm suggesting once again that the time limits in the criteria for images be removed.

For those who may have wondered at some point or another why the speedy deletion criteria for images have time delays built into them while all of the other criteria do not, the MediaWiki software has only recently (since June last year) supported the undeletion of images. Prior to that, if images were deleted then they could not be restored (indeed, one admin was emergency desysopped when he deleted a bunch of images). This was a very good reason for having delays built in, so that images would have to be tagged before deletion, giving an opportunity to make certain that the images should be deleted.

However, with image undeletion available, this is not necessary at all. If an image is mistakenly deleted, then it can simply be undeleted. There is only one good argument I've heard in favour of delays, and that relates to giving bots an opportunity to do things with images slated for deletion, such as orphaning them. But that can be catered for by using holding categories, and deleting images once the bots have finished their work. --bainer (talk) 00:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

That assumes that someone is going to notice the deletion of a legitimate image from an article. I don't see what the disadvantage is to waiting a few days before deleting. —Centrx→talk • 00:17, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

If that is the case, then why aren't there waiting periods on all of the other criteria? --bainer (talk) 00:34, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Because page history can and should be checked to see if the other criteria were met at one point. There is no file link history to see if the image was removed from a page, so there needs to be time for people to notice on the page itself. -Amarkov moo! 00:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Time is a good thing. I'd actually advocate allowing a bit more time to let people correct the problems, but thats me. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 23:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Also, surely in CSD I6, the 7 day countdown clock should be starting from the time of tagging, not the time of upload? Jheald 15:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

G8 needs revisiting.

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Talk pages for nonexisting pages are often useful...

• If they contain interesting discussion about a topic that should exist, but the article at that headword was so bad that people decided on AfD to delete rather than blank (a better fix would be to blank more often as the result of AfD, but this doesn't happen atm)
• If they contain non-deletion discussion about the topic that is relevant
• If they contain discussion that began separate from the article's existence and was moved to the article talk page when it seemed relevant (in which case the page should be merged elsewhere, not deleted).

In general, speedying something by association is dangerous, and should be treated here with more care. +sj + 07:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Maybe an admin could explain. It seems to me that if a deleted page is validly recreated, then the talk page could be undeleted upon request. People might not know to ask, but it would solve some of the problems you raise. Placeholder account 07:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Right. The great majority of these pages have no relevance after the original page is deleted; the contain mainly templates from the various assessment teams and the like. To a considerable extent, retaining them in general would obviate some of the virtues of having deleted the usually spurious article. But there are times to do it, and there are examples of such pages where this has been done. . Just ask either of us. DGG 03:38, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fair use rationale and boilerplates

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Images #6 should say that boilerplate fair use templates DO constitute a fair use rationale, IF the boilerplate contains enough enough rationale. For example {{Non-free game cover}} or {{Non-free album cover}} if it's used only on the page about the game or album in question, the image is low resolution and no free alternative can be made. Comments? I'm bringing this up because someone is flagging thousands of images for deletion. --Apoc2400 09:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Already being discussed several places, please don't start another parallel thread here. See Template talk:Non-free album cover#Hard coding the fair use rationale in to the template for one such discussion. --tjstrf talk 09:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Deletion summaries for attack pages

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

See WP:AN#Deletion summaries for attack pages. Given the relevance to this policy, I thought I ought to post a pointer here too. To summarize, I think that using prefilled deletion summaries for G10 deletions should probably be avoided. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:27, 5 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fair use rationale is not fair use tag

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

The text on Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Deletion templates for {{db-badfairuse}} suggests a fair use rationale is the same thing as a fair use tag:

"Bad fair use rationale - image tagged for fair use under a rationale that is patently irrelevant to the actual image, like {{game-screenshot}} on a photo of a celebrity. Please notify uploader on their talk page using {{subst:badfairuse|image name including prefix|tag that was on the image}}."

Besides a copyright tag, each fair use image needs a fair use rationale explaning the purpose of use on Wikipedia. Either there should be made a difference between a bad fair use rationale and a bad fair use tag. I suggest the text is changed to:

"Bad fair use tag - image is tagged for fair use with a tag patently irrelevant to the image, like {{game-screenshot}} on a photo of a celebrity. Please notify uploader on their talk page using {{subst:badfairuse|image name including prefix|tag that was on the image}}."

– Ilse@ 11:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Support. Good call. Well spotted. Jheald 15:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Urgent proposal to temporarily suspend CSD-I6

Latest comment: 18 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

Bearing in mind

1. The enormous sudden number of "missing fair use rationale" notifications that have been put out by BetacommandBot in the last few days,
2. open division and debate here on talk WP:FAIR as to what the appropriate (and even the current) standards for book covers, media covers etc actually are,
3. urgent - but far from complete - efforts at talk WP:FURG to develop model rationales for standard use cases (eg album covers on album articles, logos on logo articles, screenshots),
4. the widespread confusion on this issue, and just what the bot is asking for, evidenced at WP:VP and othe talk pages for the bot and its owner,
5. the legal importance of high-quality rationales, preferably based on legally checked models, because low-quality rationales will be pilloried by anti-commons zealots like the so-called Progress and Freedom Foundation, and could even constitute criminal incitement to copyright infringement,
6. the wide level of anxiety amongst ordinary wikiusers right across en wikipedia that this is causing,

I propose that it would be appropriate to suspend CSD-I6 temporarily, at least until items (2) and (3) above have become more resolved.

Cases like this one [screenshot from "Rebus"], where an image was deleted two hours after the bot slapped a tag on it, are particularly inappropriate at this time; and arguably not appropriate for Speedy on this timescale at all.

CSD procedures are supposed to be non-controversial. In the current circumstances, CSD-I6 does not fit that brief.Jheald 11:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Regarding the "Rebus" image that seems to have been a WP:CSD#G7 deletion seeing as the uploader himself deleted it. --Sherool (talk) 12:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fair call, I've struck out my comment about the Rebus screenshot.

But, as User:Tony highlights here at talk WP:FREE, surely there is an error in CSD-I6 as currently constituted. Shouldn't the 7 days countdown clock for deletion be running from the time of tagging, not the time of upload ? Jheald 15:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be images that are falling foul of a wording change on the template as well.(Paraphrasing) "Do not remove this template an administrator will review the fair use rationale" has changed to "Remove this template if you have added a fair use rationale". So some images have had rationales added, the template left in place as requested, the template text changed and then images were deleted because they had the template still present, regardless of the fact they had a rationale. I know this a side issue to the above but it is relevant to it. - X201 14:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Does that really happen? If someone delete an image with a fair use rationale for the reason of it not having a fair use rationale you should go poke them with a stick and ask them to please pay more attention. Note that there are sometimes multiple reasons to delete an image though, and just because someone added a fair use rationale does not nessesarily mean all it's problems have been resolved. Some log entries with examples of such deletions would be usefull... --Sherool (talk) 14:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

(I'm waiting for the Admin in question to get back to me) I can only speak about what I've seen. Not sure if it's a bot gone wild or an Admin making an honest mistake but there are enough people saying "I added fair use but you deleted anyway" on User_talk:Naconkantari. The image (Aiwasegacd.jpg) I added a fair use rationale to was deleted with the edit summary "Expired disputed fair-use image, concern was: no fair use rationale given" which leads me to think that a mistake of some sort has happened. - X201 15:18, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fixed, images restored. - X201 16:10, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmm regarding Image:Aiwasegacd.jpg, I'm not sure "To illustrate one of the Mega-CD variants that Sega released with third parties." would quite qualify as a fair use rationale. That just says that you intended to use it for, not how it fulfills all the 10 criteria in our policy. The fair use rationale guideline could probably still do with some imrpovements to avoid such confutions. I'd suggest writing up a stronger rationale to avoid problems in the future. Also beeing sold in low volumes in Japan only is not nessesarily a reason to say a free licensed image of one can't be produced, though I agree it's better than your average "could not find any on Google" reason given by many. --Sherool (talk) 16:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD U4 proposal (myspacing)

Latest comment: 18 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion

I'd like to propose another criterion for speedy deletion of user pages. I believe that all pages of users with no encyclopedic contributions whatsoever, and being used as a Myspace substitute should be deleted. Many of these pages have been nominated on MfD, and they're pretty much cluttering up the place. —Crazytales (public computer) ^{(talk) (main)} 14:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

That's a tough matter to determine clearly though, and since it's userspace, it's almost always worth asking the user to stop first. How would you propose wording it, and how busy is it really making MFD? Last I checked it was maybe 10-15%, and that's not a high-traffic page. 64.126.24.12 14:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The wording I'm proposing is: "User pages of users that have made no contributions outside of their own user space and that contain no information that could be considered encyclopedic" - that should cut down on the MFDing traffic, while getting the most obvious violations. It's about 30-40% at the moment as far as I see. —Crazytales (public computer) ^{(talk) (main)} 19:16, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to see a length-of-time since creation criterion for the criterion (boy, that's recursive), and your proposal (as written) isn't just for social networking pages, but anyone who does not use their userpage for drafting articles. Needs to be much tighter. 64.126.24.12 22:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

In my heart, I like the idea, but I don't think the practical implementation will work. I routinely tag long userpages with prod, using a summary like "User's only edit; WP is not Myspace." Only in rare cases does it need to come to MFD. Also, MFD is not really cluttered; it could easily handle double the traffic it currently sees. Basically, I've seen test pages in userspace from 2004 and 2005 when that was the user's only edit, and I've blanked them or tagged them G2, and admins have advised me not to bother with these. YechielMan 08:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

PROD may be a more suitable venue, I actualy haven't seen many prodded userpages. Maybe because Ihaven't been checking CAT:PROD. —Crazytales (public computer) ^{(talk) (main)} 13:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I realize "user has more edits to user/usertalk spaces than to articles" would not be an effective catch-all definition, but it would at least help identify the most prolific "myspacers" without ensnaring legitimate, productive editors. Thoughts? — CharlotteWebb 08:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

That might have a false positive though. SOme editors value communication between people very highly, and thus have a higher usertalk then mainspace edit count. (Though of course the useratlk edits are relevent to encyclopedia building) For instance, I have 1700 mainspace eidts and 1100 usertalk on my main account. It's not much of a stretch to see that I may have more usertalk than mainspace edits if I communicated a lot. —Crazytales (public computer) ^{(talk) (main)} 13:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

An effective new page patroller is supposed to have more non-deleted edits to user talk pages than to mainspace. Let's try to use common sense instead of a perfect definition. Kusma (talk) 13:14, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I think we've discussed this before, and a reasonable wording was "accounts that aren't new and have no contributions to article space" or "no contributions outside user/user talk" or something like that. This obviously needs a breathing space for novice users. Other than that, good idea, and we have quite a lot of such users these days. >Radiant< 13:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  How about non-new users that have no contributions other than to user/user talk? That gets your twp wordings merged together. —Crazytales (public computer) ^{(talk) (main)} 19:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  • Why no instead of "very few", or "no recent"? If you want to add a speedy deletion criteria, you might want to catch all the people that edited once in 2006 on the Myspace article. -- lucasbfr ^talk 08:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Edit summaries

Latest comment: 18 years ago11 comments7 people in discussion

Some time ago, I added to the page the advice that an editor who nominates an article for speedy deletion should always mention that fact in the edit summary. I thought this would be non-controversial. Shortly thereafter, however, another editor weakened my phrasing to "it is a good idea to...".

I do not understand this. There does not seem to be any good or legitimate reaon why anyone should ever nominate an article for speedy deletion without mentioning that fact in the edit summary.

The guidelines at Help:Edit summary say:

Always fill in the summary field. This is considered an important guideline.

I have strengthened the wording again, to say "Please be sure to supply an edit summary that mentions that the article is being nominated for deletion."

If there is actually an issue here for debate or discussion, I would be glad to discuss it. But at present I cannot see what the other side of the argument could possibly be; it seems to me to be a completely unobjectionable request. -- Dominus 17:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

A possible objection might be that this slows down deleting of large numbers of articles, but there are tools to deal with this, really. Dcoetzee 18:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, it should always be mentioned. I think the concern is that it's not like forgetting to mention it in the edit summary makes the deletion request void or something. NickelShoe (Talk) 18:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think I was the editor that rephrased Dominus' edit, and that's exactly what I was trying to avoid. When we use "must" and "always", we make it sound like they have broken process if they do not do so. Wikipedia's definition of "guideline" is not well-understood by everyone. 64.126.24.11 19:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clearly identifying editing activites, especially when nominating a page for deletion (XfD, prod, speedy) should always trump the "but it's easier" argument. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I support saying that one should always do this. I just wouldn't support punishing someone for ignoring this issue, as long as they're still trying to help. Mangojuice^talk 20:56, 6 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I now understand the concern; thanks for explaining. The issue I want to address should be clear: Last week an article that had been around for weeks or months, that I was planning to do more work on, was speedy-deleted, and even though I had it in my watchlist, I didn't find out until it was too late, because the editor who added the speedy-delete tag had left the edit summary blank.

Adding language to this page won't entirely solve that problem, of course, but it might help. And I do think that the speedy-delete instructions should say something about putting an appropriate annotation in the edit summary; that step should be part of the recommended process.

I don't frequent this project, so it is my hope that you folks who do will come up with some language, acceptable to everyone, that will insist, as firmly as possible, that the edit summary be filled in when an article is nominated for speedy deletion.

Thanks. -- Dominus 00:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The article isn't gone forever; you can always submit it to Deletion review if you feel that it was unfair, or you can ask an admin (yo) to restore the article if you've got substantial edits to make that would address the speedy deletion criteria. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I did already get it back, thanks. But that is an orthogonal issue. -- Dominus 00:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I completely agree that proper edit summaries should be used; I just wanted to make sure that you were fully taken care of. Glad to hear you are. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• It's good, as long as people don't start like "the deletion is out of process because the edit summary was unclear". >Radiant< 11:06, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clarification of I6 (missing or invalid fair use rationale)

Latest comment: 18 years ago17 comments5 people in discussion

I've rewritten I6 for clarification of the restrictive nature of the Foundation Licensing Policy. Anything that isn't free and doesn't qualify under the exemptions is to be deleted, so I've redrafted with an eye for that:

• Missing or invalid fair-use rationale. Any image or media without a valid fair use rationale as specified in the guideline (which is our Exemption Doctrine Policy under Foundation licensing policy may be deleted seven days after it is uploaded. Foundation policy is restrictive rather than permissive. If in doubt, delete. Boilerplate fair use templates do not constitute a fair use rationale. Images and other media uploaded before May 4, 2006 should not be deleted immediately; instead, the uploader should be notified that a fair-use rationale is needed. Images or other media uploaded after May 4, 2006 can be tagged with {{subst:nrd}}, and the uploader notified with {{subst:missing rationale|Image:image name}}. Such images can be found in the dated subcategories of Category:Images with no fair use rationale.

This doesn't change current practise. Tagging should continue and uploaders should still be given time to remedy their omissions. --Tony Sidaway 02:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Rewriting this is completely out of order, when the clause and its implementation is under active discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/FURG. Get consensus first. Reverting. Jheald 02:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here's the diff (new text in bold):

Missing or invalid fair-use rationale. Any image or media without a valid fair use rationale as specified in the guideline (which is our Exemption Doctrine Policy under Foundation licensing policy may be deleted seven days after it is uploaded. Foundation policy is restrictive rather than permissive. If in doubt, delete.

You're telling me that's not a major change of emphasis you want in the guidelines?? That kind of change needs consensus. Jheald 02:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Deletion of non-exempt non-free media is already foundation policy and cannot be revoked by the apparatus of this wiki. We'd need consensus to create a new exemption. This is just a clarification. --Tony Sidaway 02:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Guys, this is already covered in I7: "Media that fail any part of the non-free content criteria and were uploaded after 13 July 2006 may be deleted forty-eight hours after notification of the uploader." -- Ned Scott 02:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just the same, it's best to cut off the routes of escape to the wikilawyers. --Tony Sidaway 02:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I disagree with the change. First, just as there can be content disputes, there can also be disputes regarding the validity of a fair use rationale. Such cases are better handled through discussion rather than summary action, albeit the burden of proof should naturally be on those arguing to retain the fair use image. Second, the statement "If in doubt, delete." is rather extreme. "If in doubt, ask others" seems a much more reasonable standard. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:53, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

100% agree. The way SPEEDY is used (or even if SPEEDY is used) to carry out such deletions is not for Tony S to re-write on his own. If there is consensus for such a change, it needs to be established here, first. But I too dispute it. Jheald 03:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is a misunderstanding of what the criteria for speedy deletion, and foundation policy, are about. The foundation mandates that non-qualifying media must be deleted. The exemption policy permits certain exemptions. The I6 criterion permits seven days for discussion and resolution. Images with invalid fair use criteria will be deleted. This clarification simply says that it will happen. --Tony Sidaway 03:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Seconded, its pretty implicant never mind the foundation policy for a second, why would it be in CSD if it were not to get deleted in X days. Thoguh I don't mind making an exception for the next few weeks to allow time for folks to correctly justify their images. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 03:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

If time is an issue, we could extend it to 14 days. But non-exempt images will be deleted anyway. This simply enables us to comply with Foundation policy--and we have to do that, one way or the other. --Tony Sidaway 03:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Seems to me the most relevant point about time is it should be X days from tagging, not X days from upload. Jheald 04:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

No problem there. How about 14 days from tagging to deletion? --Tony Sidaway 05:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just to clarify ... my only problem with the revised version of I6 was in the wording of two statements; I neither intend nor want to change the Foundation's stance. :) Specifically, I disagree with the inclusion of the sentence "If in doubt, delete" and the addition of "or invalid". Regarding the former, it seems to invite people who don't know much about fair use policy to delete first and ask questions later. I realise that is not its intent, but that's how it comes off. Regarding the latter, invalid fair use rationales don't and shouldn't prevent images from being deleted, but I think genuine disputes regarding the validity of specific rationales should be handled through discussion rather than speedy deletion. Essentially, I want to make sure that speedy deletion of images doesn't extend to controversial cases. I realise full well that that wasn't your intent and I apologise that my previous post was not clear in expressing what it was that I actually disagreed with. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 07:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well we can do without "if in doubt, delete" because it could certainly incite a trigger-happy attitude. Not sure about losing "or invalid", because at some point we've got to start looking through fair use rationales, some of which are pretty ropey. The upload log shows that we've taken on board over 100 image files in the past hour, and this at a time when most of the Western Hemisphere--the bulk of the English speaking world--is asleep. There's no way we can handle all of the invalid rationales in the non-free images at human speeds. Tagging, fixing and deletion of the unfixed images is the only practicable way to keep copyright infringement on this huge scale under control. --Tony Sidaway 07:54, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The other way to handle it is to identify standard classes of usage which we can agree are okay, with standard rationales that can be straightforwardly linked to. That would hugely reduce the load of un-rationaled articles, and give us the advantage of relying for the most part on a few standard rationales which can be legally quality-assured. But this is a discussion for another place. Jheald 08:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I haven't been too involved in the various discussions about non-free content (I've focused more on text than media), but I think that would be problematic as the fair use rationale is always contingent on the particular type and purpose of use in a given article. Standardised rationales would be inapplicable in more than a few cases -- in fact, even valid rationales can become invalid if the content of an article changes. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 08:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Revised proposal for I6 (and the BetacommandBot tag mountain)

Latest comment: 18 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

Eagle101 has suggested the following way forward at WT:FAIR#Way forward to deal with the BetacommandBot tag mountain; (other admins have made similar suggestions at WP:AN/FURG).

• we start work on correcting the currently tagged images. Be that leave them be and let them get deleted (some may have to go this route), fix up the images that are being used correctly, or add some critical commentary about it, and then fix up the rational. I would suggest that if we take this course of action that a proposal be made (or effort go to supporting a current proposal if there is one), to hold off deleting the currently tagged images for 2-3 weeks. By that I mean extend the tag's time period from what it is now to 14-21 days. After this timeperiod ends and the image backlog returns to normal (admins get a chance to review all of these) we turn betacommandbot back on. The bot would be to run at tagging 300 images a day. Thats managable. (as opposed to the literally thousands tagged daily).

• scanning and tagging could continue for new uploads

• I7 (speedy deletion for clearly hopeless or fraudulent fair use claims) to continue as normal.

Follow-ups on this general plan to WT:FAIR#Way forward

Specific proposal for I6

• Normal grace period for I6 changed to 10 days from tagging (per Tony Sidaway at 05:02 above, but less generous), rather than number of days since upload.
• Temporary moratorium on carrying out I6 for 14 days, to be reviewed at that date, while attempts are made to clean up the current tag mountain by other ways than deletion.

Would people find this acceptable? Jheald 07:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC) (follow-ups to here).Reply

Yes to a temporary grace period increase. No to limiting the bot's tagging, in any way. -- Ned Scott 08:08, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

User:Jheald, your proposal seems reasonable. However, there are two tag mountains, because User:BetacommandBot has been applying two templates, viz.

1. {{dfu}}, which places images in a subcategory of Category:All disputed non-free images. This category currently contains c. 14,000 images.
2. {{nrd}}, which places images in a subcategory of Category:Images with no fair use rationale. This category currently contains c. 7,000 images.

I think that the moratorium should apply to both templates, since from the BetacommandBot point of view they are functionally equivalent, both being added to images with no rationale. I mention this because {{dfu}} appears to formally fall under CSD I7. Possibly a different dated CSD I7 template should be written. Spacepotato 08:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah, although unlike the original proposal I say we sick the bot on all the remaining non-free images with no rationale at maxmum possible speed (with some apropriately modified boilplate messages) rater than hold it back untill the current backlog is cleared. Once it's finished it's run though all current images we can then set aside all the dated categories created during it's run and say that images in categories dated X though Y will be subject to deletion 14 days (or 30 or 90 or however long is deemed reasonable dependign on how big the backlog gets) after the tagging date rater than the normal 7 to give people a reasonable chance to provide rationales. Subsequent dated categories created after this run has finished (presumably containing only newly uploaded images) should be processed per the normal rules in the meantime. --Sherool (talk) 09:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Could we centralise discussion please on what to do with the bot to WT:FAIR#Way forward, and keep the discussion here to just the specific CSD proposals? Thx. Jheald 09:21, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Wow, what a ridiculous suggestion. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, how will we catch up with the problem by going slower? And why should we add the extra effort of having to tag images (rather than allowing the grace period after uploading) just because people were negligent in reading Special:Upload? --bainer (talk) 10:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Why? It's called good faith. You ask how we will catch up by going slower. The hope is that the images will have rationales added, the infighting over the bot will stop, Wikipedia will stop being disrupted and we will be in a better place than before. We're trying to manage a change in our policy over a period of time, rather than simply announcing and implementing a new policy in one move. Yes people were negligent in reading Special:Upload, but we've already seen thousands of images deleted out of process based on this issue, something I hope we can all agree is not on. What we're looking for is a cessation until the end of the month, to give WikiProjects the time to write proper rationales, and not boiler plate rationales. We want to see a proper resolution to this, and the majority of people who have commented now think that that is best managed over a period of time. What you have to understand is that there are two solutions to an image with no rationale. You can either add one or tag it. At the minute, given the speed at which the bot is ripping through, tyhere's a slight imbalance in favour of tag adding/deletion. This problem has existed on Wikipedia a long time, another 21 days isn't going to hurt anyone. I hope all of that helps. Steve block Talk 15:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Lets remove C3

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

§C3 specifies: "Template categories. If a category is solely populated from a template (e.g. Category:Wikipedia cleanup from {{cleanup}}) and the template is deleted per deletion policy, the category can also be deleted without further discussion.". But, when the template is getting deleted, then the category will probably be empty, and thus deletable per §C1. I know a long time ago, the categories wasn't updated directly, but now adays, they are, so there is not a big problem. I believe it's a rather unnecessary criteria, and could easly be removed. →AzaToth 19:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well C1 technicaly says you have to wait 5 days though (not sure to what degree that is actualy followed, for one there is no way to tell how long a category have actualy been empty), anyway I would think it would just be common sense to get rid of such categories without much fanfare, but then again a lot of the criteria are common sense things, so I guess there is no harm in having this written down either. --Sherool (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'd like to comment on the uselessness of the "wait 5 days" limitation. If a category had members less than five days ago, it's difficult to prove. You'd have to find individual diffs showing the more recent removal of category links from one or more pages (which may or may not be by the same user who marked the category for deletion). If a category has actually been empty more than five days, you couldn't prove that at all (not without doing fully searching the next database dump to see that no revisions within a certain time range contained a link to the category). This is because Special:Relatedchanges only shows edits to pages which are currently in the category, not ones freshly removed. — CharlotteWebb 01:33, 10 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

New C4: Advocacy categories

Latest comment: 18 years ago50 comments24 people in discussion

C4: Advocacy categories. For the same reasoning as templates, categories that exist to group users according to point of view.

This makes sense in itself and seems to follow logically from the overwhelming endorsement of a large number of ad hoc speedies performed by Dmcdevit the other day [22]. --Tony Sidaway 20:21, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Not sure this is at all necessary, and there's also nothing to indicate this won't be horribly abused. What failsafes would be put in place? How do we tell the difference between advocacy (usually not good for interpersonal cooperation) and full disclosure of a point of view (usually very good for interpersonal cooperation)? What's the actual need? Let's not assume that DRV, closed a day early and hardly unanimous, demonstrates a wider consensus. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:33, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD is for administrators, who are the only ones with the delete button. Administrators are reasonable people. If you are going to oppose on principal because you think administrators are evil and it will be "horribly abused" for some reason, that's your prerogative, but I don't see any reason to listen to such insults. Dmcdevit·t 20:44, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Given the fail rate of A7/G11 speedies, I think it's more than a valid concern. Most are reasonable, but too many are not. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

The reasoning given for deletion was as follows:

Divisive POV-advocacy user categorizations: please refer to WP:SOAP, WP:NOT#WEBSPACE, and especially WP:ENC; this promotes no encyclopedic purpose.

This is a list of the endorsed deletions:

Wikipedians by political issue Wikipedians who support green energy Wikipedians who support German-American relations Wikipedians who support Western Saharan independence Wikipedians who support public transit Wikipedians who support Quebec independence Wikipedians who support Tibetan independence Wikipedians who support Republika Srpska abolition Wikipedians who support Sealand recognition Wikipedians who support Somaliland recognition Wikipedians who support Yugoslav reunification Wikipedians who support Montenegrin independence Wikipedians who support Kurdistan Wikipedians who support Canadian National Unity Wikipedians who support Chinese reunification Wikipedians who support Taiwanese independence Wikipedians who oppose drugs Wikipedians who support legalizing cannabis Creationist Wikipedians Creationist Wikipedians Wikipedians who oppose the Iraq War Wikipedians who support Aung San Suu Kyi Antifeminist Wikipedians Wikipedians who advocate traditional British counties Euroskeptic Wikipedians European Union Reformist Wikipedians Wikipedians who support spelling reform Semi-presidential Wikipedians Environmentalist Wikipedians European Union Wikipedians Unionist Wikipedians Antimonarchist Wikipedians Pro-Choice Wikipedians Pro-Life Wikipedians Wikipedians who oppose the United Nations Evolutionist wikipedians WikipediansWikipedians interested in the homeless Wikipedians who support Sustainable Living Wikipedians who support interracial relationships Wikipedians who support the death penalty Wikipedians for racial equality Wikipedians supporting Turkey's accession to EU Wikipedians who oppose the death penalty Wikipedians who support Abkhazian independence

I think you'll agree that it's a pretty catholic criterion. All were endorsed. --Tony Sidaway 20:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but the reason for deletion was "divisive POV advocacy", not just POV advocacy. I fully agree that divisive user categories should be speedy deleted, but that's not necessarily any POV category. -Amarkov moo! 21:39, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

See the above list. --Tony Sidaway 21:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I saw it. I'm not sure what you want me to look at. -Amarkov moo! 21:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Unless you are intending to delete things like Category:Roman Catholic Wikipedians and Category:Democratic (US) Wikipedians then I think your wording is too broad. CFD often finds a distinction (albeit a fairly fuzzy one) between categories that advocate a position (e.g. support/oppose) and identity statements (like religion and political affiliation, where it is not simply pro/con choice on a single issue). The former are generally deleted/merged into neutral categories like Category:Wikipedians interested in the abortion debate and the latter are consistently tolerated (i.e. the two examples above). Dragons flight 21:44, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I don't violently oppose the change made (now it is "group editors by position on a divisive or inflammatory issue"), but that sounds a bit weaselly to me. Something said can be divisive, even if it isn't already about a "divisive issue." Can we think of a wording to solve that? Dmcdevit·t 22:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

So again, why do we need this? --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:13, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oppose. This is much too broad, and the 'endorsement' above involves squinting your eyes just a bit. -- nae'blis 03:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose The current template criterion is "divisive and inflammatory" which is a much narrower criterion and is in fact applied fairly narrowly. I see this proposal as an attempt to prempt proper debate at CfD. We have a place that can deal with the problem. DGG 05:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Comment - Note this CSD for user categories discussion, for a previous attempt at creating CSD criteria for Wikipedian categories. (Additional comments would be welcome.) - jc37 10:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• Would this technically cover Category:Administrators open to recall? --W.marsh 18:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Yep ... trolling categories should be speedied. But this is too much of a slippery slope as it is now. --BigDT 18:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • EH? that category is not even advocacy, as has been established several times now, and to call it trolling is a bit of a reach. Or were you saying that 90+ admins are trolls for putting themselves in it? I think a clarification might be in order... ++Lar: t/c 01:18, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
      • And BigDT is in that category, so I'm not sure what he's getting at. I can't even tell why that category would qualify under any definition of the criterion, so this seems like we're getting sidetracked. Dmcdevit·t 04:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
        • Sorry ... maybe I should have punctuated my comment better. Yes, I agree with the concern that this rule would cover the recall category. I believe that trolling categories (which this rule would be designed to cover) should be speedied, but it is a slippery slope because it might be applied (correctly or incorrectly) to other categories, such as the recall category. --BigDT 04:33, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Arbitrary section break

I agree with the idea, but I think the wording needs to be better. Instead of "For the same reasoning as templates, user categories that group editors by position on a divisive or inflammatory issue" how about "...user categories that explicitly advocate a particular point of view on a divisive, inflammatory or controversial issue". This is less open-ended, seems more in line with what actually got deleted. Moreschi ^Talk 19:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

That doesn't make sense. That covers none of the deletions that were endorsed. Categories don't advocate a point of view, they categorize people according to point of view. That was my initial version, which was changed. Dmcdevit·t 20:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose for the same reasons I oppose T1: too subjective. I also believe that speedying this type of thing generates conflict, rather than eliminates it. Dcoetzee 21:04, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I believe it's a good idea (and note, Deco, that this is not a vote so a bolded statement like that really isn't necessary). There exists a plethora of templates about opinions and issues (many of which reside in userspace). Since we have the whatlinkshere function, it does not follow that all these templates need have a matching category. Indeed, except cosmetic purposes, such cats are pretty pointless. >Radiant< 11:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • I agree, and regarding [23], if someone thinks it is a good idea but disagrees with the wording, it would be nice if they participated in the discussion, instead of making an unproductive drive-by revert. Dmcdevit·t 04:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Sorry, just following suit. I should clarify: speedy deleting trolling categories that people were placed into by others as an attack, is already covered by the Attack pages CSD. I don't believe categories used for any type of self-identification should be susceptible to speedy-deletion, on the general policy that speedy deleting potentially offensive things has not been shown to effectively derail conflict, nor do I believe it does so. Dcoetzee 21:37, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I support this idea very strongly, and I think Dmcdevit is onto something here. Honestly, what we have is mess of senseless user categories that do absolutely nothing to help build an encyclopedia. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:27, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Removing the templates per T1 has been appropriate. Removing categories which essentially serve the same purpose that divisive templates do is equally appropriate. These should be deleted on sight and any templates which populate them should be either deleted if they are divisive or edited to remove the categorization if they are not. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose, sorry. An admin doing something once does not necessarily make good policy. I think that deleting unhelpful advocacy categories is a good idea, but CSD is not the best way to go about the deletion; there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the process. In its everyday usage, CSD is most useful for pages that are being created and are viewable at Special:Newpages. I assume C4 would mostly be used for clean-up of previous categories, not dealing with with unstoppable swarming masses of advocacy categories that appear every day (cough).
• So, I think it would make a bad CSD criterion—better left unwritten. While suggested in good faith, I suspect that this will be abused to no end, like T1 sometimes is. Abused by "reasonable" admins who maybe just want to get something done, process be damned: they no longer need to explain their logic (as Dmcdevit certainly did), because they have policy on their side. Gracenotes^T § 01:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Screaming about dire inevitable abuse from evil admins is a silly reason to oppose a CSD. If a policy is "abused" administrators should be held accountable, and a CSD is no impediment for holding them accountable for real abuse. As far as I can tell, usually the people that have cried admin abuse are the ones that disagree with such deletions taking place in the first place, and have no other recourse. All criteria for speedy deletion 1) institute mechanisms for deletions without discussion, because 2) admins are trusted users with the judgment to act according to the community's will. As such, we should not be debating whether something is abuse-prone (an absurd concept) but whether it makes sense to delete a type of page, which can be clearly defined, outright. In this case, I would say both that these categories are easily identified by our administrators who we can trust to make the judgment, and that all categories identified as such should always be deleted (and the community has supported that position). Dmcdevit·t 10:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • "As far as I can tell, usually the people that have cried admin abuse are the ones that disagree with such deletions taking place in the first place, and have no other recourse." - Considering a recent discussion, I think I might dispute that statement (though I don't believe the words "admin abuse" were ever "cried"). Also, while we presume that "admins are trusted users with the judgment to act according to the community's will." - wishing doesn't make it so. One need only to go through the archives of WP:AN / WP:AN/I / WP:RfAr (among other places) to see examples of where that clearly isn't true. So while we would like to, and should presume good faith of our admins, just as we should of any editor, we should also recognise their humanity and possible fallibility. An admin is not necessarily quintessentially, existentially, or inherently right. They are just being trusted to (hopefully) attempt to perform in the encyclopedia's best interest, per previous community consensus. And WP:CSD is strict for just those reasons. - jc37 11:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • That's not my only argument. As I said, this criterion would be used for cleanup. Tacking on policy to handle a problem like this is instruction creep, and in my experience, results in bureaucracy. I don't think CSD is a good way to handle this: we could set up a category prodding system if WP:UCFD can't handle the load (I think they can). Gracenotes^T § 16:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
      • Interesting, but, it's a bit odd to say I didn't reply to your whole post when you did the same to mine. My main point was that these categories are easily identified and that they are always in need of deletion; the combination supports speedy deletion. I don't quite know what to say to your claim that speedy deletion is bureaucracy, except to note that it is incongruous, with your suggestion that each one be taken to WP:UCFD or that we set up a new WP:PROD for categories. Please don't just throw the buzzwords at me because you can; requiring all these to go through some unnecessary process is instruction creep, not speedy deleting them. Speedy deletion is the non-bureaucratic solution. Dmcdevit·t 01:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
        • Hm, I didn't respond to anyone's post, I don't think. It was just sort of a "comment out of the blue". As for the bureaucratic part: no, it won't be bureaucratic now. But when basically all advocacy categories are deleted (with 1 or 2 trickling in every week), it will be bureaucratic. This is why I would prefer process to policy here, especially a policy as core as WP:CSD. WP:TFD sees a hell of a lot of templates that should obviously be deleted. Wikipedia is a volunteer project, and the apocalypse isn't going to come if someone chooses to spend their time (which is completely their own) to vote to delete an advocacy category. Gracenotes^T § 05:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
        • I should probably mention that I'm certainly not a fan of needless process, but I'm also not a fan of needless policy. Rather precarious balance here. szyslak does have a good idea below about letting the community decide in more borderline cases, and this appears to be a reasonable compromise, so long as it is not abused. Gracenotes^T § 06:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose not because I don't support the deletion of divisive categories, but because I feel this is a solution in search of a problem. Perusing through WP:UFD, I see that there are several days where only one category is nominated. In fact, May 29 and June 2 went by without a single nomination. The worst offenders can already be deleted per G3 or WP:IAR. I'll support this in an instant the day UFD is so backlogged it's ready to burst. szyslak 10:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  Wikipedia:User categories for discussion would have bursted a few days ago if Dmcdevit had nominated all the categories he speedy deleted the slow way. Instead, he did it the fast way. So let's legimitize the fast way to prevent the surrounding drama from reoccurring next time someone does the right thing and deletes a swath of these categories. Picaroon (Talk) 21:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  I think UFD could've handled it. For the several days of the debate, UFD wouldn't even be as busy as one day at AFD. The system is working. szyslak 04:05, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  But why? You said above that it is a solution in search of a problem. In fact, it is a solution to the needless bureaucracy of WP:UCFD, yet another deletion process, and one that, frankly, very few people know about. This set of categories is clear, and even in this thread, I think only 2 people have actually said that such categories shouldn't be deleted, others like you have made arguments in favor of process for something you agree should be deleted. WP:UCFD, on the other hand, is a solution in search of a problem. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dmcdevit (talk • contribs) 04:25, June 14, 2007 (UTC)

  Yep, I do support deleting most, but not all, "advocacy" categories. I also support deleting articles that contain nothing but original research, but I wouldn't advocate a speedy criterion for that purpose. Why? Because it takes the community input of a deletion debate to determine what is and is not an inappropriate "advocacy" category. Blatant cases can already be speedied. Also, if UCFD constitutes one too many deletion processes, maybe we should merge it back into WP:CFD. Maybe instead of painting all possible "advocacy" cats with the same brush, we should adopt something more similar to T1, which nukes the obvious cases and leaves the rest for the community to decide. szyslak 05:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• I support this proposal because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not Myspace, it is not Free Republic, it is no Democratic Underground. The encyclopedia's articles are not the place to push your point of view, so why should category space be sacrificed for that purpose? The answer is that it shouldn't. Picaroon (Talk) 21:20, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I support the idea; kudos to Dmcdevit for coming up with this. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 01:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• This will save us days of debate on deletion forums, at no cost to the encyclopedia. There is no downside. If you have views you can type them into your user page easily enough. Such categories only enable canvassing and vote stacking, and are useless for creating an encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 01:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • T1 came in by fiat; this is unlikely to stick/gain consensus in any simpler way, as categories are inherently less inflammatory. -- nae'blis 03:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
    • "I don't support this because it doesn't have support" is not a logical argument. In fact, it's rather embarrassing that the community couldn't have decided on T1 by itself, but that was months ago and we've certainly accepted it by now. Dmcdevit·t 04:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
      • Good thing that's not what I said, then (or at least not what I meant). The CSD criteria that are the most disputed are those that are the most subjective; T1's uses have been narrowly defined enough that it usually doesn't cause controversy anymore, but think back to the userbox wars and tell me again that had broad support among Wikipedians in good standing. Viz A7, G11, etc... I don't believe consensus support is demonstrated here for C4, so the only way I see it coming in is by fiat. Clearer? -- nae'blis 13:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• I think this is a great idea, but Nae'blis brings up a good point. There are too many people that use these types of categories that will be against it that consensus will probably be hard to get. --Kbdank71 19:20, 15 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. Yes, process is annoying at times (there's a category I want to delete right now, but will have to wait 4 days for C1 to apply), but it ensures that fewer mistakes are made and less controversy is produced. There is no need for this addition to the deletion criteria and I believe it would unnecessarily create problems that could be avoided through the use of UCfD. Lack of patience to start a deletion nomination (which only takes 2-3 minutes, by the way) should not be the basis of a speedy deletion criterion. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• Can someone explain why this wouldn't already be covered with CSD C3 in combination with CSD T1? I mean, those categories arise from userboxes, right?People may subst the userboxes, leaving some behind, but I wouldn't think this is a big stretch. Mangojuice^talk 21:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  People might add themselves to user categories without using the template. C3 would apply to some, but not all that exist currently, and wouldn't apply to the categories as they were created. - Zeibura^(talk) 08:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

  OK, technically, yeah, but does that happen so much that we really need to worry about it? I don't think this is really needed: with T1 and C3 we should be able to delete most of these anyway. And the few we can't, can go to CFD. Mangojuice^talk 17:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose. On the one I think if we're enforcing T1, we may as well be enforcing this. However, Black Falcon's statement about consensus seems valid, and those stating that a divisive category isn't as bad as a divisive template have a point; the categories still leave text at the bottom of someone's userpage saying "Wikipedians that (inflammatory point of view)" even after they've been deleted, just in red text, whereas the userboxes don't. It's a bad idea, and we shouldn't be condoning it, but the only real reason for concern is the fact that they leave divisive text at the bottom of user pages, which they would do even if they were deleted. It's not enough of a big deal to be creating a new speedy criterion which is essentially just a judgment call. - Zeibura^(talk) 08:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose per the discussion above, because this is a solution in search of a problem. I don't see any capacity problem at WP:UCFD or any urgent need to prevent damage to the project;yes, these categories are mostly a bad idea, but taking a few days to run them through WP:UCFD will do no harm. Per Black Falcon, using the available process has the advantage that fewer mistakes are made and less controversy is produced. --15:44, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

"provided that the copy is substantially identical"

Latest comment: 18 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion

Can we reword this to emphasize that it's meant for exact copies of the deleted article?

Any recreated article is, by definition, going to be about the same topic. That's certainly not a criteria for speedy deletion; it should go to a regular AfD. This criteria is only for articles that are exactly the same; copied before deletion and pasted back in afterwards, with a minimal number of edits since then. — Omegatron 20:10, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

They would not necessarily be on the same topic either, especially less likely if the title is a person's name. But yes I see your point here. If an improved version of an article on the same topic is posted, it should not be speedy deleted. In fact the old deleted edits should be restored underneath it if the new version is obviously derived from the old one (containing any of the same sentences or paragraphs). I think the phrasing "substantially identical" is clear enough. If you can look at the two versions and immediately notice the difference, it's not "substantially identical". — CharlotteWebb 23:28, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

"Substantially identical" means "identical in every way that matters". In other words, you can't just change one word to escape G4. I'm not sure what wording needs to be changed - the criterion already means what you are seeking to change it to. --BigDT 01:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree with BigDT here, I'm not sure what your criticism is here. Trying to be more specific will just generate ruleslawyering. -- nae'blis 02:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I may be --for a change--a little less permissive than some about this: think it ought to mean, a copy which is the same in substance by not having addressed any of the problems which got it deleted. What would be permitted, for example, is that if it was deleted because there were no references, and you added some, if because there was copyright material and you removed it; it it contained BBLP and you fixed it; it it was loaded with spam, and you removed it. What should not be permitted, and continue to be speediable, are trivial changes: if there were paragraphs full of spam, and you removed just a little, if all the references were from the subject, and you added another one but also from the subject, if it was intrinsically non-notable, and you changed the wording around. Let's face it, there will always be people trying to slide by essentially unfixed versions, and there will on the other hand always be people who were strongly opposed to the article, who will call any reworking, no matter how satisfactory, a re-creation. wherever we draw the line, there will be problems. (I'll mention one special case: trivial changes in the title do not avoid the ban on re-creation. Nothing is more common than for someone to add or remove a middle initial and try again.)DGG 07:04, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• It is not meant for exact copies, but for substantially identical copies. So no. >Radiant< 11:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

a copy which is the same in substance by not having addressed any of the problems which got it deleted

Even that would need to go to a normal AfD, to determine whether the original problems have been addressed. Speedy should only be applicable to articles which are based exactly on the deleted version, with almost identical wording. If the article's been rewritten from scratch, it's not good enough that one admin considers it to be the same article; it needs to go to a normal AfD and be determined to be a copy by consensus. — Omegatron 01:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Then every article is going to get 50 AfDs. —Centrx→talk • 02:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Frequently it is a matter of obvious fact (rather than opinion) whether the "problems have been addressed". For instance, if an article is AFD'ed for lack of sources, it is easy to see whether a recreation does or does not have sources. >Radiant< 07:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD G13 - New Proposal

Latest comment: 18 years ago16 comments11 people in discussion

I move that we establish CSD G13. Many times, I'll be working on Wikipedia, and I'll find an article that *doesn't quite* match one of our CSD criteria. However, I still believe it should be deleted. Many times, these are in Wikipedia-space as well, which is why I propose it be a general criteria. Therefore, I propose CSD G13, which would be worded as follows:

13 - Pages that should be deleted - This applies to any and all article/template/category/redirect that should be deleted in their respective xFD deletion discussion, but the tagger or admin is far too lazy to do such a thing, and would rather see it gone now before anyone decides its worth keeping (ie: Prod is not an option). This would include reasons such as WP:UNENCYCLOPEDIC, WP:JNN, WP:RUBBISH, WP:IDONTLIKEIT, WP:BORING, WP:IDONTKNOWIT, WP:ALLORNOTHING, WP:LOCALFAME, and WP:GHITS

Brilliant, yes? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please tell me this is simply an elaborate joke. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:41, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, it made me laugh :D - Zeibura ^Talk 14:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

That sounds like a speedy prod. :P This is obviously a joke. Funpika 20:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I like it. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I Vote Support!. ^(H) 04:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just as long as we create a new WP:BLOCK rationale for "editors who attempt to annoy G13 deleters by adding sources and improved prose to articles to circumvent a deletion". I see the secret Deletionist Cabal goals are finally nearing reality. --W.marsh 04:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, you could say that an article deleted under G13 just had some bad luck ... --BigDT 04:16, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Here is a draft of the template. :P Funpika 20:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm tempted to tag the page for deletion per WP:CSD#G13. ... ;-) Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

But it only says articles, templates, categories, and redirects! Nothing about user subpages! Funpika 21:08, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Umm, let me think ..... G14 anyone? -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:47, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

G14 – All pages that do not meet any of the speedy deletion criteria, but would probably be deleted in their respective XfDs, and the tagger or admin is *still* too lazy to go through other channels and would rather see it gone before anyone has a chance to argue that it's worth keeping.

Can't we just make that G13? Funpika 22:02, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I guess I should have specified: All pages that do not meet any of the speedy deletion criteria, including CSD G13, ... :) -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 05:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Change "lazy" to "lazy or impatient", and I think you've hit it on the head. (I really hope this is a joke : ) - jc37 11:11, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

No. Change it to "lazy, impatient, or having a divine imperative from God (does not apply if the admin is an atheist)" Gracenotes^T § 16:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Bogus license, copyvio, is this a speedy?

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I'm still a bit foggy on csd for images. This Image:Clemensatyankeestadium.jpg was uploaded with a claim for public ___domain, but the meta-data shows its copyrighted to Getty Images. Can this be speedy deleted or does it sit around for a week like other images? —Gaff ^ταλκ 22:11, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think G12 (Blatant copyright infringement) would apply. -- Ned Scott 22:15, 11 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh good grief ... what Real Man of Genius (tm) took a pd-self license from an spa named Mike123454325 seriously and moved it to commons? --BigDT 04:19, 12 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

small (I hope) change at User pages

Latest comment: 18 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I propose to change the header of that section to

For any user pages that are not speedy deletion candidates, use Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion or Wikipedia:proposed deletion if the user has made few or no contributions to the encyclopedia.

WP:PROD#How_it_works states that Only articles may be proposed for deletion. The only exceptions to this rule are pages in the User and User talk namespaces which may be proposed for deletion if the user has no recent edits and has made few or no contributions to the encyclopedia, this should probably be reflected here also. -- lucasbfr ^talk 08:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

For clarification, a comma should probably be added after the link to MFD. Gracenotes^T § 16:48, 13 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Given that, if there are no other objections, I'd have no problem with you adding it. Gracenotes^T § 21:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Should we use Template:AutoArchivingNotice here

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This talk page gets long quickly with all of the comments that are posted. I think it might be helpful if we added {{AutoArchivingNotice}}, perhaps set to 7 days after the last comment. Anyone else agree? -- kenb215 talk 23:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually if the template and bot had enough customizable features it could be used everywhere. But I'm not aware of any way to get it to move to the next archive once the previous one reaches a maximum size, other than watching it like you would a gas pump. — CharlotteWebb 23:57, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD A2

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A question regarding CSD A2 (article that exists on a foreign language wikipedia), does this exclusively mean a foreign article which has been copy-pasted over from (part of) a foreign language wiki article, or do foreign articles which appear to have been written from scratch, but an article on the same topic exists on a foreign language wiki, also meet the criterion? The example which has brought this up is Palmares, Pernambuco, which appears to have been written from scratch, but an article about the city also exists over at pt:Palmares. - Zeibura^(talk) 08:05, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

"G11 - blatant advertising" too subjective

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

I'd like to propose either the clarification or removal of criterion G11, "blatant advertising", because that criterion, as written, is too subjective to be appropriate to trigger speedy deletion. I suggest something along the lines of, "An article which primarily contains links to websites, phone numbers, unsourced assertions of the quality or superiority of the subject of the article, or other non-encyclopedic advertisement material should be evaluated by examining what content would remain if that material were removed. If the remnant of the article after such an edit would meet any other criterion for speedy deletion, then the article as a whole also qualifies for speedy deletion. Otherwise, the article should simply be edited to remove the offending material." Any thoughts? --Dachannien^Talk_Contrib 12:49, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

G11's been around for at least 6 months now and honestly the only truly controversial deletion made with it was the whole Fleshlight incident, and G11 was just a convenient excuse for a deletion that probably would have happened anyway. Also, G11 came down from the foundation's legal counsel at the time. So those two things are important to consider. At one point I was trying to write an essay to define as closely as possible what blatant advertising is (User:W.marsh/Blatant advertising), and I still think something like that would be somewhat useful.

But, in the field, we seem to be okay with admins making the call on what is blatant advertising, and what isn't. There's always the admin's talk page or WP:DRV when they get it wrong, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as problematic as everyone thought it would be to let admins speedy delete "spam". DRV is hardly crawling with cases of admins deleting legitimate articles under this rule. It's kind of a "I know it when I see it" thing and I'm not convinced we could ever put it into words very effectively, either an admin has the judgment to make the right call or he doesn't, in the latter case he'll figure out if he keeps getting challenged. --W.marsh 12:59, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

To be fair, there was also the food products deleted under G11 fiasco, but I'm willing to attribute that to growing pains since it was very new at the time and got roundly overturned, IIRC. -- nae'blis 16:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I'd forgotten about that... your summary is pretty accurate. Since G11 has gotten a bit more established it's not like it's been used to just purge any article on commercial products or companies, it just makes getting rid of the unenyclopedic ones easier and doesn't bog down AFD. --W.marsh 20:41, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree that G11 is too subjective, not so much because an admin cannot identify "blatant advertising", but because articles should only be deleted if they either have no redeeming value or describing a subject that is, in and of itself, not notable. Notability is notoriously subjective and not something a single admin should determine. As for no redeeming value, I've rarely seen a G11 candidate that couldn't be stripped down to a descriptive outline that was much more NPOV, which is what ought to be done for notable products. Finally, many G11s are written not by corporate representatives but by fans of the products - these are legitimate editors who should be receiving feedback about NPOV and encouraged to fix up articles on their own. I think we've all written some prose that was a bit too positive about subjects we like.

In short, I think the process for blatant advertising should work like this: strip out the POV material, and if you believe the subject itself is still non-notable, nominate for prod or deletion. Dcoetzee 20:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Personally, I also find G11 a little vague. I'm usually more comfortable using A7, most of the G11s fit that too. However, for those that don't, I'm very willing to delete if the amount of rewriting that would be required is significant: more than deleting a few lines from the article. I don't mind salvaging an article that's almost okay, but I'm not going to spend my time to save an ad, it makes me feel like I'm working for the company who posted it. That said, legitimate disputes over G11 deletions have happened a few times but are really quite rare, so I think the criterion is okay. Mangojuice^talk 15:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Proposed template: naming convention orphan redirects

Latest comment: 18 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I'd like to propose a new speedy deletion template for orphan redirects created as the result of page moves such as Dominion (album kamelot) → Dominion (Kamelot album), for which {{db-pagemove}} or {{db-redirtypo}} aren't really suitable.

I'm thinking of calling it {{db-namingmove}}, with rationale:

It is an implausible redirect page resulting from renaming a page according to naming convention (CSD G6).

Any comments or objections? --Piet Delport 16:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Not really objecting, just thinking... One could argue that if the original article creator made the mistake, it is reasonably likely that other users will do so as well. There's also a certain (very limited) historical value in these redirects. -- Visviva 16:53, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This is true of many redirects, but not so much of this particular issue, i think: the creator may invent an unconventional parenthetical disambiguation when forced to name the article, but other users will find the existing article instead of trying to create and name it.

I think it's worthwhile to avoid keeping such redirects around: they're basically clutter, much like typos, that serve little purpose other than confusing new users and propagating bad naming style.

I tried to indicate the limited scope with "implausible redirect", but perhaps the rationale text needs to make this clearer? --Piet Delport 19:08, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I always use the redirect criteria (R2 and R3) for clearing up page move redirects which aren't necessary. I personally think the text on R3 should be expanded rather than G6, so that rather than saying "from an implausible typo" it just says "an implausible redirect". From the current wording, if someone created "Dominion (album kamelot)" as a redirect (as opposed to creating it as an article and the article being moved) it wouldn't be speediable. - Zeibura^(talk) 20:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

proposal

Latest comment: 18 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

dear wikipedians! some of peoples have patrol function about newpages and they often use speed deletion`s templates in the articles. usually those articles do deleted in future. with this deletion, the history of article and further, profitable contribution of the wikipedin does deleted. for solve this problem, we must found a way which these contributions be remained for wikipedian. I`m a new user and If anyone know where we could suggested and corect this problem, wrote the message about it in my talk page. thanks a lot, --Gordafarid 16:50, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Are there any particular deleted articles you think shouldn't have been deleted? If so, take them to a deletion review. - Zeibura^(talk) 20:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Additionally most admins will restore a deleted article to your user space if you ask, so long as the article wasn't libel or a copyright violation.--W.marsh 20:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

For example, I will restore a deleted article if uncontroversial--if in any doubt, I'll email (sometimes after a promise that it won't be restored in its present form). And when I keep a deleted article in my own user space temporarily, I generally add nowiki tags around the article so its won't appear in searches.

But this is a more general problem, and frustrated me very much when I first came here. I had some radical ideas until people such as W.marsh explained the practical need to go fast. We still need a way of demarcating the undoubtedly deletes as altogether impossible from the others. The problem is that at some point any process needs to rely on someone's judgement, and the best of us are only approximately perfect. What we can do, is try to organise things here so its clearer to people what to do, and also to educate them when they overdelete or mislabel just as we educate people when they put in articles inappropriately. My current guess now that I know the system better is that we get maybe 10 malicious speedies a day, and perhaps 200 or 300 that either should never have been nominated at all or need AfD instead. W.marsh, what's your guess?-- I'd like to think that we catch them all, but of course we don't. For people who know enough to complain, of course we can fix things afterwards. DGG 01:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I really don't know what the current error rate is with deletions... but it seems to be acceptable. Each day Wikipedia takes a few steps backwards and dozens forward, it's all part of having such a high edit/unique editor volume. Trying to make no or very few mistakes would probably slow the whole machinery down to an unacceptable degree, considering the restrictions and layers of review that would be needed. We just have to accept that there are going to be some bad deletions. If an acceptable article on a legitimate topic is deleted, eventually someone will notice, even if the initial creator doesn't take it to DRV. And once it gets noticed, it will get corrected. Hopefully that makes sense... it's unfortunate that stuff gets deleted improperly sometimes, but it's really hard for a legitimate article to fall through the cracks for long, even under the current system. --W.marsh 03:12, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Curious

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments5 people in discussion

What speedy deletion criteria would userpages in CAT:TEMP fall under? They don't fit exactly into any of the criteria, but they still need to be speedily deleted. Sean William @ 19:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I wouldn't say they were speedy candidates. The category text says "these pages should be deleted after a suitable period of time", so that's not speedy deletion; placing the userpage in the category marks it for deletion at a later date. It's a separate deletion method, so to speak. - Zeibura^(talk) 20:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

After said time expires, then it would be fair game for somewhat speedy deletion. That's what I'm referring to. Sean William @ 01:19, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think the most appropriate speedy deletion criterion would be CSD G6 (uncontroversial housekeeping), although perhaps Zeibura is right that it constitutes a de facto separate deletion method. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

WP:PROD accepts userpages now, I could see tagging it there if {{db-userreq}} doesn't fit... -- nae'blis 03:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Also, housekeeping cleanup (or G6). Note that "speedy" in this context does not mean "immediately", it means "without the need for further discussion". >Radiant< 16:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

That was fast. KP Botany 23:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Clarification of R2

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Today, I came across Wii v. PS3, which is a redirect to Wikipedia:List of Humourous Articles/Wii v. PS3. Would CSD R2 apply for redirects from mainspace to the Wikipedia namespace? —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 08:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Nope, although this particular one doesn't seem necessary. Cross space redirects can be useful though, for instance shortcuts such as WP:NOT and C:CSD are technically both in the mainspace. - Zeibura^(talk) 08:50, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

CSD-A9: BLP

Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

This proposed criterion for speedy deletion is a formalization of principle 4, "Summary deletion of BLPs" in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff/Proposed decision.

• 9 Gross and irretrievable violation of the BLP. Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy.

Rationale: this is a form of words currently being adopted (6-0-0) by the arbitration committee in the above arbitration, and constitutes an authoritative interpretation of the biographies of living persons policy (BLP). Deletions qualified as above, if challenged, must be treated as described to comply with the BLP. Gross breaches of administrator conduct, such as restoring BLPs without actual consensus to restore, are disruptive and may result in immediate blocking, and are likely to result in substantial remedies if brought up at subsequent arbitration cases. --Tony Sidaway 09:45, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Isn't this essentially the same as "attack pages" (G10)? Seems to me that a page that spreads negative information on a living person is an attack page. >Radiant< 09:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Not all BLP vilations are attacks. But G10 does appear to become redundantper this, a stronger (or more widely-applicable, anyway) criterion. Guy (Help!) 10:00, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree with JzG. I'd rather not let it bleed into attack pages. For instance that article on the pole vaulter the other day had BLP problems, but it wasn't a simple matter of negative information. Rather it was information grossly overbalanced the article. I think BLP in its full sense should come out from behind the shadow of "attack pages".

However we could of course merge attack pages with this new wording. It also occurs to me that the intention of the arbitration committee is to cover all pages, not just articles, so this should be the wording of G10.

How does that sound? --Tony Sidaway 10:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

• (edit conflict x3) Unnecessary, we have a BLP clause in G10 that we can expand. This would be better as it would apply to more than just articles, and we could also word it less redundantly that way. The arbcom formulation is in great part a restatement of the general WP:CSD policy. --tjstrf talk 10:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Merged. How does it look? --Tony Sidaway 10:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply