Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 15

Gracenotes ^T

§ 21:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe

Wikipedia:Speedy deletions should be renamed Wikipedia:Speedy deletion process, analogous to Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Wikipedia:Deletion process. If there are no objections, I propose to do that. --MCB

22:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The difference is there is not much of a speedy deletion process, "Deletion process" is about deletion in general—including speedy deletion, and "speedy deletion" is already its own special meaning on Wikipedia, whereas "Deletion" needs something extra to describe it. —Centrx→talk • 22:29, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

If we're going to nit-pick about pagenames, Wikipedia:Deletion process is really only about the process for closing a deletion nomination/discussion and for archiving that discussion. It is not the overview of the entire process. For that, you need to read Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Rossami (talk) 04:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I just don't understand why it is separated from this one - for most users browsing through the deletion-related pages, they will rarely come across

There was a recent proposal to merge them and merged page at

Wikipedia:Speedy deletion, but it never happened for some reason. —Centrx→talk

 • 09:03, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'd say a merging is certainly appropriate. (Radiant) 11:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

At what point can we delete the hangon tag so an article can be speedy-deleted, because it is obviously a personal biography page of someone who is not notible? Check this page for an example of what I'm talking about. Thanks. JE.at.UWO^U|_T 06:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

"Hangon" is supposed to be used to buy you a few minutes while you pull your evidence together and create your arguments on the article's Talk page. Acknowledging the vagaries of internet connections and the need to occasionally stop to sleep, I'll generally give someone a few hours to make their comment - and maybe more depending on the situation.

In this particular case, I note that the user already added his comment to the article's Talk page. Whether you as the deleting admin find that argument compelling is a different question. Looking into this specific case, I'm inclined to agree with the suggestion to move the page in as the new user's Userpage with a polite welcoming note about our policies and standards (including

WP:AUTO). Rossami (talk)

06:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I don't like the possibility of hiding the text through a NavBar. The warning should always be shown, after all it is a critical notice that the article will be deleted in a matter of minutes. As for the color, at WikiProject Albums we changed the studio album color from orange to lightsteelblue because a user expressed it may trigger unhealthy reactions with a determined health condition. Personally, I like the template as it is now. I would heavily suggest, thought, to modify the different copyvio warnings, as they encourage creating talk pages without articles. -- ReyBrujo 19:01, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Color changed to pear-green, which still attracts attention, but also provides a better color for the text there. It won't be the periwinkle blue. This needs to stand out. I also suggest doing it for the AfD template. The hangon template would become a subset, where one could type in a second parameter. If it were activated, it would display the hangon template inside the navbox. I like these, as they do not intrude. Frankly, the current one pushes the article too far down, and we need to be an encyclopædia as well: if an article that is clearly notable, such as

MyTV|PolygonZ|Green Valley

) 23:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

If a notable article received a deletion tag, the tag would most likely be removed rather quickly. Just a note. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

• I don't like the centered text much, and I agree the 'hide' button is unnecessary. Note that many of the possible reasons given on the template will be several lines. (Radiant) 11:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Articles about living persons that cite no sources, cite non-existent sources, or that cite only self-published and/or notoriously unreliable sources, may be speedily deleted. It is not necessary under this criterion for the article to be defamatory.Robert A.West (Talk) 02:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it will be a great day for Wikipedia when enough of our articles are sourced for us to actually be able to do this, but right now it would result in the deletion of too many articles on important subjects which contain verifiable information (albeit temporarily unsourced). If this criterion isn't focused on negative information, which is the main thrust of

WP:BLP (and covered by the current CSD on attack pages), then why biographies in particular? --Sam Blanning^(talk)

02:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Because, in the absence of a reliable source we cannot tell whether the person is a private or a public person or what sort of thing that person might consider embarrassing or defamatory. As a real-life example, it is not uncommon for professional singers to perform in religious services of faiths they do not share. While there is no deception involved in the hiring, singers have been replaced because of congregation reaction when the fact was revealed. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This criterion does not focus on the 4 points at the top of this page. Either way though, it is not necessary to link this with the morality based BLP criterion if you are removing the defamatory part. Ansell 02:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll address the four points explicitly, then.

1. Objective -- this is based on a lack of sources or sources of the worst sort. If there is any colorable claim of reliable sourcing, this criterion does not apply.
2. Policy clearly requires only sourced material in the biographies of living persons. While the care arose from concerns over defamation, that can be a debatable issue, and it is possible to harm someone by saying untrue things that are probably not defamatory at law.
3. Unsourced articles of all types are common as dirt.
4. Except in the cases of obvious attack articles, I do not see any overlap with pre-existing criteria.

I hope that answers. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Points 1 and 2 are not that secure. They assume that every admin knows how to interpret the disputed WP:RS criteria equally. Assuming that untrue things can be damaging without being defamatory does not have a clear definition. The case you gave was clearly an unfair employment dismissal, something which Wikipedia should not have as a specific purpose. You are also attempting to expand BLP using a speedy criteria, which is not the way these criteria are supposed to work. They are supposed to focus on cases for deletion which have already happened multiple times. Articles being deleted because of their references being of the "worst sort" may happen, but it is still not actually objective as you say. Ansell 04:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The information can - and should - be edited out of the page. Deletion is an unnecessary and divisive action. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

So, you argue that the article can be blanked, but not deleted? Robert A.West (Talk) 03:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Blanked, no. Stubbed, sure. Offending material removed? Absolutely. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I like the criteria, but make it only for defamatory in the beginning. After people have learned this, add a notice that any kind of article that does not cite source can be deleted. Doing this for every article without having a HUGE discussion would be a mistake. -- ReyBrujo 03:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Wait... we already have a speedy criteria for defamatory articles. In any case, stubbing sounds pretty well too. -- ReyBrujo 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Stubbing is a better idea. For a somewhat amusing example of what could happen if this rule were implimented as suggested, see here. --W.marsh 03:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) If the article consists completely of unsourced material, what material is not offending? Unless the person is famous, what stub could one possibly write? Robert A.West (Talk) 03:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it would mean searching for reliable sources to create a stub. If the person is not famous, it is deleted under A7. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

A7 does not concern fame, only an assertion of notability, which is a low criterion. Asserting that someone founded a G/L/TG group is an assertion of notability. By public policy, it is not defamatory. But, so claiming falsely could be harmful. Robert A.West (Talk) 03:35, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I expressed myself incorrectly, sorry. If the person is not notable, nor he is related to some notable being (including persons or groups or locations) or event, he can be speedied. While the new criteria would make it possible to speedy delete an article that simply says "Guy is one of the most notable singers in Country" without citing a source, I believe we should give a notification to users that their article are going to be deleted unless sourced. In other words, a speedy deletion that gives 7 days to update the article is much better than a plain speedy deletion. -- ReyBrujo 03:48, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

You describe a broader application of A7 than I have always understood: notability is often hotly debated. I suppose that one could dodge by deleting the unsourced statements that assert notability and then tagging for speedy, but that seems doubtful conduct. Robert A.West (Talk) 04:04, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, by no means I would suggest doing that. Any article that does not claim notability can be speedied, no matter how well written. I understood your new criteria as a way of broadening A7. Right now, if an article states...

1. "Singer is a singer from Country, who studied at School." can be speedied under A7, as there is no notability claim;
2. "Singer is a singer from Country, who studied at School, considered the precursor of Style." can be send to AFD, but not speedied, as there is a notability claim.

However, with this new proposed criteria, if in the second case there is no source, the article can be speedied just as A7, because we are purposely dismissing the notability claim as unverifiable. If I am mistaken, feel free to correct me. -- ReyBrujo 04:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not a good policy. Many articles when they are created by newbies lack sources even when they are about genuinely notable poeple. I see nothing that this criterion would accomplish other than biting more newbies and adding more work for admins. JoshuaZ 04:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: Policy does not state the unsourced material in BLPs is unacceptable, only controversial material. —Centrx→talk • 04:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, thank you for your comments. I can identify a lead balloon when one falls on my head. Robert A.West (Talk) 04:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Note: See also

User:Dmcdevit/CSD addition. (Radiant

) 11:54, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• And you honestly think this will be handled responsibly? Have we forgotten how horribly A7 is handled? Did we forget the 40 pastry CSDs from a month ago? This will be completely unworkable, and it's completely unnecessary. We need a culture change here, pronto. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Jeff, please provide some evidence of your allegation? (Radiant) 15:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • You mean that A7 isn't being handled wlel? Did you think the 12 day process for the deletion of things like Famous Amos was a good thing? We only had about 40 articles for that deletion spree, what happens to DRV when it hits 4000?
      • That was a G11, not an A7. (Radiant) 10:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, that's why we select trusted people to handle it. It does not make any sense to not use a process that overall adds a ton of value to the project just because there are some mistakes. Your reasoning would be reason to scrap CSD altogether because those mistakes were made. And unlike C7 this an unambiguous criteria: either there is a reference or there isn't. There's no judgement call about whether the text asserts notability. If there are mistakes, educate, don't throw out useful processes. - Taxman ^Talk 16:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Whether we should scrap CSD (which we should for anything that isn't nonsense, an attack article, or empty) is a whole different discussion. Meanwhile, what happens when a reference isn't easily recognizeable? What happens when a reference isn't approved by the reviewing admin, much like admins regularly delete articles with assertions of notability under A7? Wholesale deletion of entire articles that may lack obvious references would cause major, major strife to our processes, cause massive conflict, and overwhelm everything while creating a net loss to an encyclopedia that's getting better by the day. A better choice would be to expect editors to find sources for articles as opposed to delete them, but god forbid we ask people to build an encyclopedia. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Again, if there is no discretion on what counts as a reference, then there will be no issue of "approval" by an admin. We delete articles everyday, deleting some more won't cause major strife, massive conflict etc. Even if it would, it's worth it to more fully make the shift to everyone reallizing that all articles need references. You're focusing on potential problems (that are on the margins only anyway) while ignoring the gain. You're forgetting about the result of this new speedy criteria being thousands of new referenced articles and drastic improvement in the average quality of new articles, and thus the whole project. I can't think of anything more important for the project. - Taxman ^Talk 17:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • You say that, but either you know it's not true or you're unaware of the problems A7 and G11 has caused. Deletion is not the answer, and this does not improve the project. It's unnecessary, it's an editing issue, and this simply should not be pursued. If it's important for the project to have references (and it is), stop making it dependent on the person adding the information alone and instead compel everyone to add references. The fact that you're coming at this from a deletion standpoint rather than an improvement standpoint is the problem, and I can't think of anything more important for the project to oppose at this point. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Nah, I don't buy it that that is the problem. It's infinitely more important that the material we have be referenced than it is that we don't delete unreferenced materical. There just aren't that many new topics that we desperately need that it's such a grave problem if we wait until a referenced version is added. WP:V already allows removal of unreferenced material. What this new CSD does is come at it from both sides. Currently it's entirely up to later editors to add references. Now it will be up to both the person creating the article, and later editors to improve the referencing. Shifting that burden so that it is shared is critical. We simply shouldn't keep looking the other way when one of our most important content policies is violated. The person adding the material in the first place is in the best position to add the reference anyway. And if you're so afraid of deleting, userifying solves that, but I don't think it's really needed. - Taxman ^Talk 20:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • If it's important for the project to have references (and it is), stop making it dependent on the person adding the information alone — It is worth noting at this point what the original wording of our verifiability policy said on the matter of placing the burden for finding sources on other editors:

            It is unfair to make later editors dig for sources, particularly when the initial content is questionable. Those who write articles likely to be deemed in need of fact checking, for whatever reason, should expect to assist by providing references, ideally when the article is first written.

            What this new CSD does is come at it from both sides. — It is worth noting at this point that it has always been possible to delete unverifiable articles via AFD, we have had tags such as {{unreferenced}} for a long time, and it has always been possible to "come at this from both sides". Uncle G 11:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• Yes, well, the 14 day waiting period in
  WP:BITE (and badly). I'm not sure I support THAT proposal, but I certainly don't support this. Mangojuice^talk
  15:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• I'm wary of any CSD that's slower than
  prod. As it happens, prodding such pages, then AfDing them if deprodded, would lead to faster results than the proposed CSD and the same effect; perhaps you need a new process (something like prod but for sources and not removable by anyone unless the article is sourced). --ais523 15:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC
  )
  • That is a good point; arguably the time limit should be similar to PROD's. The processes are related, anyway. (Radiant) 15:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Nah, I'm fine with the 14 days. Waiting 14 days isn't a huge problem, and it is infinitely less wasted resources than gathering a bunch of users arguing over an AfD. - Taxman ^Talk 16:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • If you have to wait 14 (or 5, or even 1) days then it's no longer a "speedy" deletion; is it? The question then changes from being "Should we add this to csd?" to "Do we need a new deletion process to deal with this?"
      • You'd think this is something we could look at in terms of editing rather than deletion. If there's this much attention being focused on the "issue" right now, perhaps we're better off looking at it from an entirely different context. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • The evolved definition of "speedy" deletion is that it may be deleted without debate, not that it is necessarily fast.
          t
          18:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • If that means it's not a speedy criterion, what about
        I6? If someone sees an issue with "speedy" deletions taking days, the best course of action might be to propose a more rigid definition of these not-so-slow deletions (i.e. prod, I5/6, this proposed BLP criterion). I suspect simply gathering these processes under the name delayed deletion or something similar would change the way the (proposed) processes are viewed. Or, we could rename CSD to "Criteria for Simplified Deletion", because if not for the process' speed, CSD is best known for its simplicity of process as contrasted with XfDs. That, I think, is the idea behind making the BLP proposal a CSD criterion anyways. BigNate37_(T)
        17:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC) P.S. Just to clarify my personal stance, I don't have a problem with some of the CSD criteria taking days. I don't intend these comments as a formal proposal of anything I suggested here.
        • Images can't be prodded, so speedy is still faster than prod in I5/6. As for 'delayed deletions', I came up with something similar (although I've never proposed it due to instruction creep problems); maybe A1, A3, and A7 deletions should have a 10-minute delay (with the tag on), so the user has a chance to fix the problems (especially when multiple saves are used). As with BigNate37, not a proposal, just a mention. --ais523 17:17, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • In practice I don't think admins delete per A1 A3 or A7 for less than a few minutes. I avoid doing so and I know some other admins do so as well. JoshuaZ 17:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • If this is going to be a 14 day criterion or something similar we should discuss it elsewhere. Why doesn't someone draft another version of that put it in Wikipedia space and point us to it. JoshuaZ 17:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • I don't mind if anyone wants to take it and move it wherever is appropriate. Are you suggesting that it's not a CSD because of the 14 day lag? It's constructed much the same way as the image criteria 4-7 are.
            t
            18:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
            • I guess there is some paralellism there. I'm not completely happy considering those as speedy conditions but I suppose given that we call them that it wouldn't be unreasonable to classify this as a speedy condition as well. Consider my objection in that regard withdrawn. JoshuaZ 20:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• I oppose the original suggested criterion on the basis that first of all, it is wider than BLP itself, in that it includes sympathetic (vanity) as well as defamatory articles, and vanity articles do not have parallel issues of reputation and liability. Moreover, there are very few biographical articles that cannot be merely edited (however drastically) to remove unsources defamatory material, which is what BLP already tells us to do. If this leaves an article that satisfies an existing speedy deletion criterion, let it be deleted, but more likely we'd (at worst) end up with a stub describing a person's name, nationality, date of birth, occupation, and claim of notability. Deco 21:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

A9. Any article that was created after 18:20, Saturday, April 27, 2024 (

• Would you be using {{
  unsourced}}, modifying that tag, or want a new tag? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs}
  ) 18:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd want a new tag; {{
    afd}} but without the maintenance stuff and with fewer words. --ais523 18:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC
    )
    • Which makes me think why not userify the pages that meet this criteria instead of deleting them? They could immediately be moved to a subpage of the user that created the page with a simple explanation that references are needed. That not only doesn't impeded the needed improvement like deletion does, but it gets the point accross that references are needed. Or just userify newly created pages and older articles could be moved to something like Wikipedia:Unreferences/foo. That way for new pages we could do it over a much shorter timeframe than deletion and without the harm. The technical problem of leaving a mainspace redirect to user/wikipedia space could be solved without too much trouble and they could simply be deleted in the meantime. - Taxman ^Talk 19:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• And why couldn't the AfD process handle this? Why does it need to be speedy deleted? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Right now there is no clear-cut procedure for deciding that a poorly-sourced or unsourced article has no sources. An editor searches diligently for sources, can't find any, tags the article, waits, searches again, and finally puts it up for deletion. All too often, we get a batch of, "Keep. All this article needs are sources, and I'm sure those can be found." No actual help finding sources, of course. The closing admin counts noses, and the result is no consensus.

    This process moves the

    burden of proof back where it belongs. We can't prove a negative, but we can demand a positive. If Verifiability is a non-negotiable requirement, then writing an article that completely lacks sources is an assertion that sources are obvious and easy to find. If we can't find an arguably reliable source in two weeks, it isn't easy. If sources are neither provided nor obvious, there is nothing to discuss, so an AFD is a waste of time and effort.

    Now, maybe this process should be DFV (delete for verifiability) or some other name. The only keep vote that matters is a halfway-decent source for enough of the article that we would have at least a decent stub left if the article were reduced to the verifiable content. Once that threshold is reached, the case is closed.

    If time runs out, we can always undelete if someone finds an actual source later. If no Wikipedian cares enough about the topic to research and fix it, the topic can't be that important. Robert A.West (Talk

    ) 20:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes changing the way you count to only counting a keep that adds a enough decent sources is a successful way to shift the burden, but still adds a lot of overhead that an XfD brings. But I agree shifting the burden is important. - Taxman ^Talk 20:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • The burden is already shifted in the direction you want. If anything, we should be shifting the burden backward - expecting those who are capable to provide sources. Whichever way we want to do this, if our goal is better sourcing, AfD is a better route because more eyes will see it, as opposed to the eventual unilateral deletion by admins that no one notices until it's too late. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)--badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • No it hasn't shifted the right way yet and that's why this is needed. Currently new unreferenced articles are allowed to stay, and practically they won't successfully be AfD'd because nothing says people have to follow policy in AfD votes and the fact is they don't. Shifting the burden the right way will mean that everyone knows that for an article to be accepted it needs references. Everyone knowing that upfront is very valuable to encouraging the type of content we want and need. - Taxman ^Talk 21:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
        • I don't know if I agree with your perspective on this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
          • I think we've already established that. :) There's room in this project to disagree on approaches. It still means I'm right on this, but you can disagree. :). Ok, kidding – seriously. - Taxman ^Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • All too often, we get a batch of, "Keep. All this article needs are sources, and I'm sure those can be found." No actual help finding sources, of course. The closing admin counts noses, and the result is no consensus. — The correct way to address that, as a few editors do, is to contribute to the AFD discussions, pointing out that the only rebuttal to an assertion that an article is unverifiable is to demonstrate that it is verifiable, by citing sources against which the article may be verified, and that mere assertions of verifiability without putting in the effort to cite some sources do not cut the mustard as a counterargument.

      And you should note that equally all too often at AFD we get editors who say "Delete. This article doesn't cite any sources.". That's an equally bad argument in the opposite direction. An article is only deletable for being unverifiable if both it cites no sources and no sources can be found when editors make reasonable efforts to find some themselves. Merely arguing that an article is unverifiable without putting in the effort to do the research and check that no sources can be found does not cut the mustard, also.

      Expanding CSD criteria is not the way to educate editors into not making either of those bad arguments at AFD. Uncle G 11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose a speedy deletion criterion for articles without references. Often, locating appropriate sources may require specialist knowledge or access to an academic library that the average user lacks. In the areas in which Wikipedia is lacking good coverage, we have very few regular contributors, so expecting somebody else to somehow notice the article and add sources in 14 days is unreasonable. This would also include most stubs, and Wikipedia has always held that stubs deserve time to grow. Besides that, people just often neglect to add references because it's hard and they're lazy - if you ask them to do it, or ask other interested people, they probably will, whereas if you yank the article out from under them they may not notice or care. It also won't encourage addition of references up front because many users who create articles like this are specialists who are not very familiar with our policy. I also think, from comments above, that it's necessary to remind people that CSD is never a method for circumventing "keep" decisions at AfD. Much too overinclusive. Deco 21:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • How about another possible outcome to AFD? If everyone thinks "the article just needs sourcing", the closing admin can still delete the article if it has no sources. An Unsourced Delete result? —Wknight94 (talk) 21:47, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • "many users who create articles like this are specialists who are not very familiar with our policy" is exactly why we need this change in policy. So that everyone will know it. It is very easy for those same specialists to add a reference, they just need to know they should. We have a huge problem with reliability in many articles. We need to remove every impediment to making sure as much content as possible is referenced. - Taxman ^Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Tale of an article

An article, A is created without references by editor X, a specialist who understands the field and knows the sources. It is noticed after a few months by editor Y, who has an interest in the area, looks for references, but can't find any. He puts it up for AFD. Editor Z comes along and thinks the article is a great piece of prose, if only it had references, but has no clue where to look for them, or perhaps no time.

Who should have the burden of finding the references? X could have added them trivially, but may not be watching the article -- may have left Wikipedia. Y tried his best and has given up. Z wants the article kept.

In my mind, X was in the best position to help Wikipedia and failed. He overlooked, or did not understand, "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Y has tried to help Wikipedia, yet it seems that many editors want him to work harder and find references that he cannot know for certain exist. Z has done very little to help Wikipedia, but many editors feel that he has no responsibility.

Who should have the burden, and how should it be enforced? Robert A.West (Talk) 21:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• Any encyclopedic subject will at least have non-highly-reliable sources that can verify it is not a hoax. If it is not a hoax, there is nothing wrong with keeping it on Wikipedia, especially for more than 14 days. There is also the problem with people putting stupid sources in to get around this, such as a website for playing Nerf games being used as a source for an article on military tactics. It has "references", but such an article written by some facile fool warrants deletion a lot more than an article that was clearly written by an expert on the subject. You might note, for instance, that commercial advertisements and non-notable bands will always have an external link to the homepage, whereas people frequently edit academic subjects with no references at all; then we would be in the uncomfortable position of actually evaluating whether a source is reliable or not in speedy deletion criteria. This proposal is a non-starter.

  In fact, in terms of time, the opposite would be a more appropriate speedy deletion criteria: If no one has added any sources on an article for two years, that indicates a lot more about the encyclopedic quality of the subject than no sources added for two weeks. New articles warrant time to be improved; old articles with no sources and no one interested in editing them warrant a more relaxed view of A7, but nothing so strict as "any article after 14 days". I say again, however, verifiable does not mean cited; people are free to add information to Wikipedia without being required to re-read all the many books they have read on a subject, or tweak citations. A policy requiring citation would turn off the experts who actually know about a subject, and would attract only the people who are in the process of learning a subject, out of a single book which they have in front of them. —Centrx→talk • 21:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Why do you think that? It's very easy for an expert to source their material. They're the ones that best know the sources. And the idea of a CSD isn't to be perfect and miss nothing, but to make a large majority of cases very easy to handle. Those that game the system as you describe would be handled by other processes just like they are now, there's no loss in that. - Taxman ^Talk 22:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• Add me to the list opposing this proposal. I empathize with the sentiment but the proposal ignores human nature. While it would filter out a proportion of the bad content that we're trying to deal with, it would also result in the loss of significant volumes of good information that experience tells us will eventually be sourced.
  To answer the question immediately above, remember that to our theoretical expert much of the material covered in an encyclopedia article is "common knowledge" - that is, so well and widely understood within the field that it is no longer specifically cited in references. How do you cite a fact that shows up in a dozen different texts? This is an all-volunteer project. Not everyone is interested in doing that kind of work. Yet they have been and still are very valuable contributors to the project. Rossami (talk) 23:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
  • How do you cite a fact that shows up in a dozen different texts? — The question is the answer. Cite one of those dozen different texts. And the fact that one only need one citation, and one has a dozen texts to choose from, actually makes it easier for volunteers. The irony of the fallacy of thinking that there are exceptions to "everything must be sourced" is that every single counterargument actually demonstrates how easy it is to source the material that people think requires some sort of exception. There are no exceptions to everything. Uncle G 11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
• It would simply be easier for an expert to pull a book name out of a hat, but that's not necessarily an accurate citation and is only an impediment to someone adding what is regardless accurate information. It's not that people would be gaming the system with the external links, but that external links are naturally associated with the sort of articles that most warrant deletion for lack of sourcing. I don't see what articles this proposal would delete; even original research often includes self-published book or website references.

  Now, we do need to clean house of junk, but it's probably best to start with the oldest junk articles that have never been improved than the newest articles that may actually become good articles. Most of the articles on Wikipedia today would have been deleted under this proposal. Although, looking at New pages, it may be best to just forget about new CSDs and prohibit new page creation altogether, except perhaps by accounts 3 months old or something. I just clicked on about 20 articles in new pages and only 2 should probably be on Wikipedia, both happen to have been added by users since 2005. If the problem is new junk being created—and there is a lot of junk—the solution is not to delete 90% of it (and it will be that high with the CSD proposed here), but to limit article creation; most legitimate articles are already created, and any new ones can be added through

  WP:AFC or by less recently registered users. —Centrx→talk
   • 03:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• Going back to the original point, surely it's best if user X sees (in MediaWiki:Newarticletext (which comes up whenever you start an article) or somewhere like that) a warning saying "The article will be deleted if no sources are provided." It might even be worth adding it to MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning (the text below the edit box, which currently reads '

By publishing changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.

'; perhaps say 'Encyclopedic content must be verifiable and provide sources'). To do that, however, we need a deletion criterion in place (speedy, manadatory AfD closure, DfV, or whatever). To Centrx: The point of a CSD is not to get rid of every bad article, just to filter some obviously bad ones to save time and effort (although I'm sure you already new that), and the reason about 90% of new pages violate the new rule is that the rule doesn't exist (so there isn't any point in complying with it). To Rossami: most experts will be able to cite the facts they add trivially, because if they're well-known information in the field they'll be in the standard reference books. Academic experts will already be used to doing this when writing papers. --ais523 09:00, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• • I suggest reading the edit history of
    MediaWiki talk:Copyrightwarning. Uncle G
    11:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Academic experts may be used to formal citations but not all experts in all fields are academic experts. The power of a wiki is that we draw on the expertise of anyone who wants to volunteer, not just the academics. It doesn't matter how easy you would find compliance with this proposed rule. The relevant question is how many otherwise-excellent contributors would leave the project if you forced them to work in a manner that does not interest them. I believe that it would cost the project more than it would gain.
    Given that we don't have an consensus on this kind of standard even in regular AFD discussions, I don't see any possiblity of gaining consensus that this is an appropriate CSD criterion. Rossami (talk) 04:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, experts are not just professors who have published in academic journals. The computer programmer, the experimental physicist, and even the common graduate student have knowledge in their heads, not all cross-referenced to books. Also, citing sources is tedious; that's not why people do research, and that's not why people add to Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 05:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This concept has been mentioned quite a bit in recent discussions on this page. Here's a a specific policy proposal with explanatory text. This is the result of considerable thought toward all the views expressed, and it has already generated quite a bit of positive feedback on the talk page (when it was in my userspace). Please take a look at it and see what you think. We hope it can become an official CSD sometime in the future.

Does the length of an article have any effect on whether it is speedy-able or not?-

Only for CSDs A1 and A3. --ais523 08:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for helping me!-

K37

08:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone can create pagefuls of gibberish or obscene pictures. —Centrx→talk • 09:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Not really, a banned user can re-create a deleted copyright infringement of nonsense that is quite lengthy. It could affect A7, but one can still write a lengthy essay on one's own family or pet; it could affect copyright infringement, but it doesn't matter how long it is if there was one copyright infringing contributor. —Centrx→talk • 09:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for explaining that. Cheers-

K37

09:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion G8 has been causing confusion, because it states talk pages should not be deleted "if they contain deletion discussion that isn't logged elsewhere". This exception clause is several years old and stems from the time when deletion was debated on an article talk page, instead of on AFD as we do now. Hence, it is no longer relevant to make this exception, and I think it should be removed since people are using it as a bureaucratic argument to argue for keeping post-deletion arguments ("why is tihs paeg deleted????2??"). (Radiant) 10:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

LOL, I was doing that for a little while until I realized very few other people were paying attention to it. If it causes confusion for a few and is ignored by everyone else, I agree - kill it. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. When it was made, we weren't

salting pages, either, and often, the talk apge of those deleted areas are the only place people can go to possibly discuss trying to get the page back. DRV isn't really doing its job in this regard, and if you go back too soon, you'll get shot down, so I think we should really be encouraging the use of the talk page on these types of articles. --badlydrawnjeff talk

11:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I remember a recent case in which this exception clause was important, but I'm afraid I can't provide a citation. AfDs are contested on the nomination page, but speedy deletion tags may still be reasonably contested on the talk page. Unlike PROD, speedy deletion tags can't simply be removed if contested, so it seems like we need it for this case. Deco 11:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Per the wording of

protected deleted pages unless we have to. Kusma (討論)

11:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Not to get technical but Deletepage says that discussion of "restoration" can be left on the talk page. Discussion about the original deletion - which does often resemble Radiant's example - doesn't count as restoration discussion IMHO. It seems like

WP:DRV is a better place for restoration discussion anyway. Move restoration discussion from the deletedpage talk page to DRV and then re-delete the talk page - that's what I'd vote for. —Wknight94 (talk

) 12:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• DRV would be a better forum, if only because asking for an article's undeletion on its talk page is unlikely to get any useful response. (Radiant) 12:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• I thought the point was to encourage people to colaboratively collect information that they will present at DRV, especially since it is very hard to get a salted page undeleted at DRV, and we don't want people to ask for undeletion there very frequently. If DRV is the only forum we present, we should be nicer to people asking for undeletion of salted articles. Kusma (討論) 12:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
  • While it might be a good idea to collaboratively collect info there, I am unaware of that actually happening. Generally pages are salted because we really don't want them and have determined that from three or four debates already. We should definitely be nice to people who ask for that on DRV, but such requests tend to be spurious. At any rate, I don't particularly mind people putting such stuff on that talk page, but I think we shouldn't encourage it since it doesn't actually accomplish anything. (Radiant) 12:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • If you're unaware of that actually happening, I'm wondering as to what talk pages you've been monitoring for it. And even if it's not happening now, we should be actively encouraging it as opposed to encouraging such users to spam administrative talk pages instead. As long as the talk pages are being used for things that may end up resulting in an improved encyclopedia, this shouldn't even be an issue. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Obviously I do not monitor the talk page of every {{deletedpage}}'s talk page. And, I might add, neither does anybody else, which is why putting undeletion requests there is ultimately pointless. Since you seem to be sure that it is actually happening, I'm sure you could give us some links of that? (Radiant) 13:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
        • Undeletion requests on protected deleted pages do happen and I have seen them get the attention of administrators via the {{
          editprotected}} template. Of course, usually all that is to do for the admin is to tell the people on the talk page to go to DRV and whether they have an actual chance there. Kusma (討論)
          15:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Users who bureaucratically abuse the intent of the clause should be politely corrected. And perhaps the clause could be clarified to more clearly describe those older pages where the deletion discussion itself was archived on the Talk page. But removing the clause completely would risk doing more harm than good. We still need some of those old discussions from time to time. Rossami (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly support this clause; it came up recently on

IAR. --ais523 17:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC

)

Well here is one example that clinched it for me: Talk:GraalOnline. That talk page had two archives and 450 edits, the last 400 or so of which were a ridiculous edit war which involved User:BradPatrick and at least one near WikiSuicide (a guy getting so angry, he did a few things which later cost him an easy adminship) ---- all leading up to the article's deletion. How was it determined that all of that activity was deletable under G8 if this deletion clause were adhered to? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if it is of any relevance or not to this discussion, but I thought I'd stop by and mention the category and template I created for using talk pages to request articles: Category:Wikipedia articles requested through talk page creation and {{User:BigNate37/TM/Future article talk page}}. It is, at least somewhat, relevant to CSD G8. BigNate37_(T) 18:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone want to save me a trip in the archives and explain the rationale behind G5? Is there a reason we should be deleting otherwise good contributions from banned users? Is it a GFDL issue or something else? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Generally, if a banned user makes constructive contributions without pushing whichever buttons got them banned in the first place, we never know it, right? I've seen G5 used to stop banned users from gaming their ban by interspersing constructive edits with a sort of "you can't make me go away" flaunting of the fact that they're still editing, and still displaying the stalking behavior for which they were banned. When even their constructive edits are removed, and redone by whoever removes it if necessary, it seems to send the right message; at least it seemed pretty effective where I saw it used. Feel free to email me for details, per I'd rather not discuss that person publicly.

I guess G5 is a trump card for whatever kind of ban-gaming someone tries to do. It only really comes up in cases of people gaming a ban - otherwise, how would you know to apply it? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Same as above.

WP:BAN ---- I've seen it work quite well. —Wknight94 (talk

) 20:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Though in cases where someone is gaming the system, G5 can disrupt things quite badly when this is not realised until later. An example is when a discussion is started that looks OK, and then a few hours, days, weeks, later, the initiator of the discussion (say, a proposed policy) is exposed as a sockpuppet. G5 deletion can then disrupt good-faith discussion of the proposal, and a dispute can break out over whether to calmly finish the discussion with the new information (that the person who started it was a banned user), or to hysterically scream "we've been trolled" and delete everything. The latter behaviour seems, to me, to play into the hands of the trolls, who probably get a kick out of seeing other people's commeents deleted along with theirs. Which brings me to another point - I've never been clear at what point you can assess whether a troll is a "major" author of a page, or whether it is even productive to try this. Deletion of only the troll's edits I can understand, but not other people's edits as well. And policy pages and article pages edits yes, but don't disrupt talk page discussion by deleting the trolling edits. Just add a template, or something. Carcharoth 23:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It really varies from case to case, as you indicate. Dealing with trolls effectively, just like lots of activities at Wikipedia, requires a diplomatic touch, and it's hard to get it right in every case. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Can there be a policy that we can speedy delete dictionary articles? A db template is desperately needed on these "dictionary" articles.

Absolutely not. Discussion is necessary to judge the possibility of expansion, and a db template would result in a lot of stubs being deleted erroneously. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you are looking for Template:Copy to Wiktionary. Jkelly 19:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Too subjective, failing the first criterion for speedy deletion proposals. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 23:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• We can already speedily delete dictionary articles after it was decided on AFD that they should be transwikied and the transwikefaction is done. That seems sufficient; many dicdefs can be expanded, those that cannot tend to be "lacking in context" or PRODdable. (Radiant) 10:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
• It's worth noting that Wiktionary, as a project, sometimes won't take transwikis if they don't think they're ... dictionaric? It would probably be a good idea, once such entries have been offered to Wiktionary and they refuse, to allow for speedying of content that consists of a concise definition of a term. --Improv 18:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
  • This seems a sensible restriction on such a criterion. Of course, a fair number of the junk dicdefs that turn up usually qualify under some other criterion, such as {{
    empty}} or hints of A7, so I don't see a need for a more general criterion. That said, expanding the proposed criterion to anything that rightly should be transwikied and is refused by the target would seem reasonable. I've seen this come up in AfDs rather more frequently than you might expect. Ultimately, a decision to transwiki is taken on the basis that we don't want the article (otherwise we wouldn't be shifting it somewhere else) - if we don't want it, and they don't want it, there's no reason to keep it. Chris talk back
    18:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Dictdefs should either be expanded or transwikied. Whether or not Wiktionary deletes or rejects it, I would consider A5 to still apply. If they wish to contest the deletion, they should go contest it at Wiktionary, not here. Deco 18:25, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This came up at

Images that constitute child pornography in accordance with Florida and/or United States law.

Hopefully this is a no-brainer, and hopefully we can be mature enough as a community to understand the difference between child pornography and, say, questionable images from a studio film (see Child Bride for an example of something that shouldn't fall under this criteria, but would obviously be a bit controversial). --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:44, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. Could it perhaps be even expanded to include any illegal pornography? --Robdurbar 15:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

While I understand the issue here, and sympathise completely, I don't want to rehash the whole Protecting children's privacy thing here but how does this impact on

Wikipedia is not censored for the protection of minors? Chris talk back

17:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I think US Law trumps stuff written on Wikipedia: pages :-) --W.marsh 17:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't answer the question. Will we need to essentially rethink and rewrite that entire section? Chris talk back 17:52, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

No... the section already says "provided they do not violate any of our existing policies (especially Neutral point of view), nor the law of the U.S. state of Florida, where Wikipedia's servers are hosted." --W.marsh 17:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

So it does. Excuse my stupidity :) Chris talk back 17:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm actually sort of against this. The definition of child pronography has a lot of international variation. For example, drawings of children involved in sex acts or photos of nude children engaged in ordinary, non-sexualized behavior are both usually legal in the US but can be illegal in other major industrialized countries. There is also a lot of subjectivity at the borderline when it comes to deciding what is or is not lascivious or artistic. I don't think any of us are bothered about nuking personal porn collections, but the more borderline cases where an image is being used to illustrate a legitimate encyclopedic topic do benefit from discussion at places like ANI. I'm worried that having a short CSD like this, that doesn't elaborate on what the child pornography laws actually are, will encourage certain people in the community to aggresively apply their own interpretation. Child pornography comes up so infrequently, that I'm somewhat inclined to say that relying on the current combination of NOT, IFD, ANI, and common sense are probably adequate without the need of an explicit CSD. Dragons flight 18:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I oppose the suggestion on the following grounds:

1. Patently obvious cases are already speedy-deletable as a clear form of vandalism - contributions made with no intent to advance the purposes of the encyclopedia.
2. Less obvious cases are too subjective to make good speedy-deletion criteria. In the original description of the case, even Jeff is describing scenarios that are on the border and where reasonable admins could disagree. A good speedy-deletion criterion is one where every responsible admin viewing the page will reach the same conclusion.
3. Admins are not lawyers. Most especially, we are not lawyers trained in the community standards as expressed in Florida. We can not and should not be expected to divine the intent of the law in a specific jurisdiction. That is a function of
   WP:OFFICE
   and the Foundation's official counsel.
4. Finally, as Dragons flight says, this just doesn't come up frequently enough to justify the
   WP:IAR
   ) are sufficient.

Rossami (talk) 21:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur entirely, and think that Rossami's #2 above, plus the rarity of occurrence, are the most signficant points against the proposal. --MCB 22:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Because illegal material is not permitted (AFAIK) nor is it needed in writing an encyclopedia, and because we don't get much if any child pornography, this would be unnecessary instruction creep. It does two things: belittles other rarely occuring but seriously illegal content (i.e. see Official Secrets) and it suggests to people that we have a child porn problem. Copyright violations are illegal and would be instruction creep, but those do come up and we do often have copyright problems. BigNate37_(T) 22:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the proposal on the grounds that this is simply not a problem. People aren't uploading child pornography. CSD is for diminishing load on other deletion channels, not eliminating legal problems. Let the legal people deal with such things - we're not qualified to interpret the pertinent laws. Deco 00:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• I'd agree with Rossami, especially the first point. (Radiant) 14:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• As a general comment, if we don't need it, I'm glad to not have to expand CSD any further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Responding to one of Rossami's points -- Admins aren't lawyers... but if I saw an image and wasn't sure if it was child porn or not, I would delete is RIGHT AWAY and indefinitely block the uploader right away. Then, I would write to Wikimedia's legal department and let them decide how to proceed -- I know I'm not a lawyer, but I think we can all understand how to play it safe. Though, I suppose, I would do this whether or not there was a criterion on CSD for it.
    WP:IAR and all that. Mangojuice^talk
    15:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I concur that this is unnecessary. Any cases that do occur can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. We already forbid illegal activity as a blanket statement, right? -- nae'blis 23:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd rather that kiddie porn get lumped into the catch-all "illegal stuff" category than have each and every one be singled out, especially since doing so allows us a certain amount of latitude that an overly-explicit policy would not. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we should have a speedy deletion clause that states that anything that is illegal in the country at which the Wikipedia survers currently reside (isn't that the U.S.?) is speedily deleted. This would include child pornography and any other time of information. However, this clause would also need a notification board and a list of black-listed users who use it (cause isn't it like against the law to not report a crime and WP or the admins who delete could get fined if not...). Maybe Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Illegal activity? Cbrown1023 00:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Just a further statement, for deletion debates are totally out of the question for these type of things because it makes it so that more people see the illegal material. Cbrown1023 00:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

A special category of speedy delete will act as a stimulus to a certain kind of vandal. I agree that too much instruction creep can be counter-productive. Just use a general {{delete|Brief reason}} tag. If the image is clearly a violation, it will speedily get deleted. Hu 01:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

However, how often are speedys backlogged. If there was a speedy tag for something such as child pronography, as stated, a legal matter could take priority attention for deletions.Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 01:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that allegedly illegal material should not be resolved via a deletion debate but it also shouldn't be dealt with via this process. Illegal material should be dealt with via

But we decide whether things are illegal everyday: Copyright violations. Cbrown1023 01:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Different animal. Copyright violations can be identified in a binary fashion. It's either a copy or it's not. The source version either has a GFDL compatible license or it does not. There's essentially no judgment or interpretation necessary in the identification of a copyright violation. (Okay, actually there is some judgment when we have to decide if our use qualifies as "fair use" but that's well established precedent that is remarkably consistent around the world. Untrained non-lawyers have a shot at getting that right.) As Jeff described even in his first suggestion, that's not true for this law. This law depends on community standards, etc. and is often considerably more subjective. We have Foundation Counsel for a reason. Let them do their jobs. Rossami (talk) 03:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

No no no, this is a terrible idea. We don't need rules creep, especially ridiculous rules creep like this. We all know that child porn can be deleted on sight; we don't need it encoded into a rule. Doing so just makes us look extremely bad. Others will point to us and say, "They have such a child pornography problem that they need a rule to be able to delete it." --Cyde Weys 04:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I think having the rule could make Wikipedia better as in we have strict policy against child pornography. Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 12:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

• Besides, we don't want to lump all "illegal stuff" together. This has in the past been used to argue for the deletion of e.g. articles or media on arson, since we all know arson is illegal. (Radiant) 10:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't child porn already fall under CSD G3 (vandalism)? Jesse Viviano 17:19, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Not necessarily. A well-respected user could upload a picture from the internet to illustrate something like the Child pornography article. That is not vandalism, it is just uploading of something illegal. Cbrown1023 18:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey guys, this issue was argued to death for 2 years straight on the lolicon article. It's one of Wikipedia's more legendary debates actually. The outcome of that debate was no consensus. It's too much of a gray area. Consider for example, Image:BlindFaithBlindFaith.jpg or Image:Virgin_Killer.jpg, or the previously mentioned Image:Childbride.jpeg. This has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, blatant child porn is going to be deleted on sight. Having a policy about it, however, is only going to reignite old flame wars and won't accomplish anything productive, IMO. Kaldari 02:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I feel like I being daft here but aren't G12 and I6 contradictory? G12 says you can immediately delete any image which has no fair use claim. I6 says you can delete any image which has no fair use claim "seven days after it was uploaded" and are in

Too dumb of a question to bother with or did I stump everyone?  ;) —Wknight94 (talk) 03:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• For G12, it must meet all the parameters instead of only one of them. We should probably reword and simplify it, though. (Radiant) 09:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The biggest difference in the parameters appears to be G12's "The infringement was introduced at once by a single person rather than created organically on wiki and then copied by another website such as one of the many Wikipedia mirrors". So then all these new images appearing on
    CAT:CSD are good to delete - that's the way I'm reading it anyway. —Wknight94 (talk
    ) 14:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how many seventh grade students program entire projects in VB in addition to editing at Wikipedia, but I'm guessing those of them that are that vain to post the stuff here are rare enough that a change to CSD would be more overhead than is worth it. Instruction creep is inherently bad, and should only be propogated for good reason. That's why we have the criteria at the top of this page: objective, uncontestable, arises frequently, and non-redundant. I don't think AfD is unduely burdened by software vanity pages. BigNate37_(T) 04:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that was an exaggerated example. There are countless non-notable open and closed source projects out there, though, and articles about them periodically pop up on AfD.

talk/_contribs

) 04:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it seems objective and non-redundant, depending of course on how it is worded. What it probably comes down to is how many of them usually hit AfD each month/week/whatever and what amount of those are kept? BigNate37_(T) 13:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are the software AfD results for the month of October:

• October 31: BBCalls [delete]
• October 30: Olitext [delete], The World of Torr [delete], Vaestro [delete]
• October 29: Anti-Lamenessing Engine [no consensus]
• October 28: Elfdust [delete]
• October 27: Ark 22 [delete], Mario War [delete], Super Mario War [delete], Might and Magic Tribute: Book of Ceth [delete], Super Mario: Blue Twilight DX [no consensus], Metroid Prime 2D [delete], Street Fighter Special Operations [delete], Heroes of Might and Magic 3½: In the Wake of Gods [delete], Swords of Xeen [no consensus], Mario Forever [delete], Jumper (video game) [delete], Hover Tank 3D (redirect), Squarez [delete], Within a Deep Forest [delete], Mmbot [delete], Password Magic [delete]
• October 26: NitroTracker [delete]
• October 25: Crash Bandicoot Energon [delete], DEKAF [delete]
• October 24: Sonic Robo Blast 2 delete), Sonic: Time Attacked [delete], Chibot Ultra Battle [delete]
• October 23: Mirage Source [delete], Mirage Online [delete], Secrets of Mirage [delete], RPG Toolkit [delete], RPG World Online [delete], RhyDin [delete]
• October 22: Everyone's A Wally [keep]
• October 21: Alien Swarm [no consensus], Corpsemania [delete], Oz Deathmatch [delete]
• October 20: Playerworlds [delete], VbGORE [delete], Tibia (computer game) [nomination withdrawn]
• October 19:
• October 18: Creature World [delete], Bookbuddi [delete], AdventureQuest [keep]
• October 17: BaboViolent 2 [delete], AegeanLinux [delete], ObjectStore [keep]
• October 16: The Specialists [keep], StarKingdoms [delete]
• October 15: Twister MP3 [delete], LyricsEMOTION [delete], Pirate King Online [delete]
• October 14: Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations [no consensus]
• October 13: Movie Battles [keep], Gloom (game mod) [delete]
• October 12: CorVision [keep], Voodoo_Chat [delete], Aetolia the Midnight Age [delete], Uskaarj [delete], Tamriel Rebuilt [delete]
• October 11: Combatant (game) [delete], Percleus [delete]
• October 10: AEGIS (Ragnarok Online) [keep], Extreme phpBB [delete], Multi Theft Auto [keep], PHPAjaxTags [delete], DisplayConfigX [delete], Hobix [delete]
• October 9: FCE Ultra [nomination withdrawn], Pivotal eRelationship [delete]
• October 8: Winchart [delete]
• October 7: InfiltrationMod [keep], Toba (computing) [delete], AquaZone [delete], Sven Co-op [delete]
• October 6: Smokeping [delete], Jurabib [delete]
• October 5: Illarion [delete], Earthsim [delete], Magestorm [keep]
• October 4: ScWiki [delete], Dwarf Fortress [no consensus]
• October 3: Zarafa Outlook Sharing [delete], Battalion online [delete]
• October 2: Basic4gl [delete], ZX2C4 Instant Messenger [delete], Missing Information (Half-Life 2 mod) [delete], Conflict of Arda [delete], Linderdaum Engine [delete]
• October 1: Rocket Arena [nomination withdrawn], Senuti [keep], Business Desktop Deployment [delete]

All these nominations were for allegedly failing notability criteria. I count 71 deletes, 11 keeps, 6 no consensuses, and 3 nominations withdrawn for a total of 91 nominations.

Well that's certainly enough (in my books) to justify an addition to the criteria; how do you think it can be worded to avoid deleting those 11 in 71 that merit keeping? BigNate37_(T) 02:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is the current A7:

Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of its subject. If the assertion is controversial or there has been a previous AfD, the article should be nominated for AfD instead. Note: Avoid the word "vanity" in deletion summaries since it may be considered insulting.

Simply adding the word "software" to the list seems sufficient. The likelihood of getting false positives would seem minimal and certainly no more than the other listed article types. With all the articles on the above list that were kept, notability was asserted or, at the very least, suggested. The nominator in each case simply regarded the notability asserted as insufficient for inclusion in Wikipedia, and those involved in the discussion overwhelmingly disagreed.

talk/_contribs

) 03:04, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

What about some sort of catch-all term to replace web content with? One that includes include web content and software? BigNate37_(T) 04:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of one at the moment, but I'm still pondering. I see the benefit of avoiding enlarging the list beyond necessity.

talk/_contribs

) 05:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

"digital content" could be applied to both websites and software. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, the more I stare at A7, the less I like it. Web "content" isn't really clearly defined and doesn't fit in with this otherwise people-oriented criterion. Thinking about it more, digital content would apply to software and in my opinion, be no worse than A7 as it is now, however I'm kinda hung up on the word "content" now... maybe it should just be changed to read "an article on an obscure topic which makes no assertion of the topic's notability". But that's getting off-topic. I see no reason why it shouldn't read "digital content". BigNate37_(T) 06:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Web content and software are really two different things. Btw it used to say "webpage" but was expanded a bit to also include things on the web that aren't pages per se. (Radiant) 11:56, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't really have a sense of what most people would think, but "digital content" seems more ambiguous than "web content." If we go with "digital content," should have have a superscripted note for clarification (the note would say something amounting to "defined as any web content or software")? If that is the case, then would it be simpler to just have web content and software listed seperately?

talk/_contribs

) 19:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Strongly oppose. No need to expand it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That depends on your definition of "need". We don't need any of the individual CSD criteria, however they all help reduce the load on AfD incrementally and if they were not there AfD would be packed with nominations. Jeff, do you think that this would not help reduce AfD loads, or that the benefits are not great enough to outweigh the potential for mistaken deletion of articles worthy of keeping, or something else? BigNate37_(T) 16:28, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it should matter if it reduces AfD load or not. I'd rather have 50 extra AfDs to save 5 articles, honestly. The benefits of A7 as is is hardly beneficial enough, this addition shows no need to extend that further. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, Badlydrawnjeff's

I think this needs a lot more discussion, your language about my rationale for opposition notwithstanding. You nominated this on a major American holiday, and I don't know if this made the Pumps. Give it some time, there's obviously no rush. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that's right. Happy Thanksgiving then, I think. BigNate37_(T) 20:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

You nailed it. I was only gone for 2 days, there are people who won't be checking WP all weekend. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wait, you mean there are actually people out there that would rather spend time with their family than work on a website with a bunch of total strangers? Pffft, weirdos... EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Scanning the sample above, it looks like 1-2 per day. That's not a tremendous burden on the current discussion-based system. If the rates in the sample above stay true, I'd say that a new speedy-deletion criterion (or expansion of the existing criterion) is not yet necessary. Instruction creep is to be avoided whenever possible. Rossami (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

• Looking over the list above, it seems to me people should spend some more time examining the option to "merge/redirect". (Radiant) 22:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, and we can ask Cyde to rename it to Articles for Discussion :) BigNate37_(T) 22:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
• This proposal seems reasonable, provided people use good judgement. --Improv 07:22, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
• I am also forced to oppose this, not on the grounds that software does not deserve a CSD, but on the grounds that A7 is still far too vague and subjective. Expanding it expands the problem. I've been through the issues before:
  • How explicit does a claim of notability have to be?
  • Should the deleter make a nominal effort to verify lack of notability?
  • Why would an article author with no familiarity with our policies include a claim of notability? Shouldn't they be given an opportunity to do so before their article is deleted?
• And so on. Deco 12:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to some of the concerns given above, especially avoiding instruction creep. My main motivation for wanting to see this added to the A7 criteria is an appeal to the virtue of consistency: If John Q. Programmer writes an article on himself and his gem of a software project (call it John's Amazing Browser Plugin), it is absurd that John's autobiography will get uncontroversially speedied, but the article on his plugin requires discussion prior to deletion. Instruction creep is somewhat avoidable by merging criteria (in this case, finding a term that captures both "web content" and "software"). As for those who are opposed to A7 (or speedy deletion) in general, I find it problematic that these voices only pop up in discussions having nothing to do with the merits or lack of merits of A7 (or speedy deletion) as such. It seems akin to

Re thread hijacking: my hope is that the people who wish to expand A7 will, as a compromise, be willing to discuss repairing it first, in order to garner additional support. Deco 18:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Some people might not be notable for anything other than their little piece of software. In this case it makes sense to keep the piece of software but not the biography. --WikiSlasher 07:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Talk pages of articles that do not exist can sometimes be useful. For example, I attempted to start a discussion about redirecting at

If it is a concern that the talk page may be speedy-deleted, you may find {{futureart}} of use. BigNate37_(T) 02:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. --

Gray Porpoise

11:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad the actual template is at {{future article talk page}}, because my first reaction was "What, is that the opposite of prior art? -- nae'blis 20:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone object if I add explicitly the text "This criteria does not apply to redirects in other languages (such as Japanese and Chinese, or any redirect in the category