Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 66

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My proposal is just an extension of that, and would be governed by the same metrics as before. As for the illustrious editor turning into paid editor scenario. This is the same as before and can be refuted by an addition. Suppose an illustrious editor decides to become a paid editor one fine day and is found out and blocked. He cannot live without editing Wikipedia, and decides to form another account, and continues to edit while trying not to leave traces linking him to his former account. He ends up writing much better articles (with many FA's to his credit) than before while not indulging in any paid editing this time. I am a sockpuppet hunter and initiate an SPI in which he is identified as a sock and blocked. Would it be okay if I tagged all his new creations as G5. Do you think any admin would accept that, if the FA's were like the ones you had mentioned earlier.

The answer in both the above cases would normally be that the admin removes the tag and chides the person who tagged or advises to go for an AfD.

The problem is not about the 7 days it would be on AfD. I personally don't think that even matters if it were deleted and the 7 day publicity would be anything but desirable for the company concerned. That is however not the case as many a times Wikipedia is part of the package of paid editing, and is accompanied by news articles. Take the case of Nathan M. Farrugia. This is an article created by a paid editor, who brags about it and has listed in his portfolio on Upwork (Source). This was created by a G5 eligible editor and I have tagged it as such now. However do you think the same article would have been deleted had it been taken to AfD. I don't think so as many well meaning editors would have jumped to its defence citing the good references present. This user was dumb enough to list the article in his portfolio and I was able to tag it. What about the thousands of other paid editors who are not so dumb. This was created by a single purpose account which was blocked for sockpuppetry. A look at all his confirmed sockpuppets is mind-boggling Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of LogAntiLog and this is not including the many sockpuppets that may have been yet to be identified. When we are facing a problem of such magnitude, it is pertinent that we employ harsher measures. I am off to sleep now. Probably the G5 is accepted by the time I wake up. Jupitus Smart 19:32, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that you want to make "delete them unless the reviewing admin likes them" Wikipedia policy. I reiterate my opposition to this, which is so counter to the spirit of CSD that it beggars belief that anyone is supporting it. If the article is promotional, we have

Iridescent

19:42, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose don't punish the reader by withholding notable topics from them. Inappropriate promotional content is already well served by G11. feminist 13:42, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose As someone who's spent a lot of time working
  WP:COIN issues, I don't think a speedy deletion for paid editing is unambiguous enough. If we make deletion too speedy, we'll just end up with more articles at deletion review. I'll sometimes use proposed deletion, or "prod". In a week, the article is gone. It might be useful to require that you have to have achieved, say, autoconfirm level to remove "prod" tags. I'll sometimes start an AfD for an article that probably came from paid editing and just isn't about something notable enough. Sometimes there's argument, but it usually ends up being one paid editor vs. the world, and the paid editor loses. If they win, so be it; that's consensus. Sometimes you need more eyes on the problem. See, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nelson De La Nuez, an eBay art seller with heavy self-promotion. The harder we looked, the less notable they got. John Nagle (talk
  ) 22:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, but support further community discussion of serious countermeasures against paid editing. I came in hoping to support, and while I am sympathetic to the underlying idea, I agree with Jclemens. The proposal would only generate drama, and is rather duplicative of G5 and G11. I work extensively in filing and clerking SPI cases involving paid editing, and can attest to the urgent need to find a workable solution to this very problem. GAB^gab 22:34, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose speedy deletion, but I would definitely support a middle ground of automatically throwing a PROD tag on everything that appeared to be paid. bd2412 T 23:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  @BD2412: My experience with this is that another sock always comes along and removes the tag. It has to go through AFD to be safe. —Guanaco 23:31, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Then we can easily identify who is removing PROD tags from paid editing articles. bd2412 T 23:38, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  Sounds good. Support a special category of PRODs of articles by undisclosed paid editors, and creation of a log of paid editors and dePRODders of their articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:45, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  We need to look at getting approval to run a CU on all brand new accounts dePRODing a spammy article created by another brand new account. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  Sounds, good, Doc James. New accounts dePRODing a spammy article, CU them. CU is very restrictive about discovering personal information on old editors, it could be way more lax on combating paid editor new account rings. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:17, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose because it would include articles with substantial changes by legitimate users. I would support a change to G5 to explicitly include pages whose only substantial edits are by sock farms. —Guanaco 23:33, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

  User:Guanaco Agree this is likely a better way to go. How should we define farm? Three or more? Four or more? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support if and article was created by a sockfarm and/or looks COI-like but has no edits by legit users who improve the article and remove promotional language (just slapping {{
  coi}} or {{advert}} on there doesn't count). KMF (talk
  ) 00:22, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Moral support, practical oppose, largely per Jclemens, Iridescent, and John Nagle. I'm strongly in favor of rapidly nuking this sort of deceptive spam. I hear the proposer's request for constructive suggestions for how to improve the proposal. So: it seems to me that we do not need to have a G14 to put on those pages, because the process as envisioned must follow the sequence of, first, identifying the violation of policy or TOU, and then, second, requesting rapid deletion. We can accomplish that pretty well with existing policy, so long as the administrators who deal with the policy violation then go on to nuke the non-notable pages that had been created. We don't need a CSD for that to happen, and it's better to depend on human evaluation of each page anyway. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:44, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• WP:DRV. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs}
  01:16, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• You raise an interesting point, one that I had not thought of. To some degree, I was simply getting, shall we say, overly enthusiastic when I talked about "nuking". As I think about your comment, I find myself asking whether, in fact, the deletion has to be that urgent, anyway.
  WP:PROD, we could make another special PROD category for cases like this. --Tryptofish (talk
  ) 01:23, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Looking back here, I see that the PROD idea has already been proposed in the discussion section below. Woops. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Great minds think alike? Or just we are both looking over the same small toolbox to try and find the least inappropriate tool? :-) Jclemens (talk) 01:46, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• Moral Oppose, Practical Oppose - as
  WP:BAN. I think the TOU clearly does not mean to throw out items not paid for or perhaps written before they were ever paid. Also practically, it is just easier to judge the content -- the motives of all editors are for something invisible and from some POV unknown and we do not care, but that they follow guidelines and give RS cites and goodness in content is visible and what we care about. Finally, for some topics the reality is that info is largely from press releases or captive reporters. Sony releases the film info that they want to; Microsoft coverage gets preview-packages (and if you write too off-script you get cut off); war coverage is by daily press briefing to controlled press pool. Markbassett (talk
  ) 04:31, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support. Endorsing Tony's comment wholeheartedly. As others have mentioned, G11 as currently construed is not dealing well enough with UPE. I've some experience with UPE in relation to
  academic boosterism; and based on that experience UPE content should be removed with prejudice. It is the only way of dealing with this. James (^talk/_contribs
  ) 07:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support. I understand the opposes, I really do, and I even partially agree with most of them. But existing channels simply are not working well enough for this, and as Jytdog has mentioned, it is good to have a clear and unequivocal message on this to send to the world. Double sharp (talk) 08:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Delete all the articles! Chris Troutman (talk) 16:03, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • I think "Delete all TOU violating submissions" is far superior to TOU sticky prod removalable arbitrarily by an admin. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:25, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. I've long held that we need to set up a proper incentive structure to dissuade paid editing. Immediate deletion is as strong a disincentive we can provide for breaking our rules. This is necessary. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:34, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • As an aside, this is already somewhat common practice. When we find a large sock ring that is making paid articles, I delete G5, whether or not I can identify a master that was blocked at the time of article creation. There was some discussion of this at one point and the gist is that, in the cases of large sock rings at least, we can be reasonably sure they've been blocked before even if they can't be tied to a specific farm. Or, alternatively, they are so behaviorally similar to any number of existing sock farms so as to meet the technical definition of sockpuppetry whether or not they're "really" the same farm. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 07:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! Statement of actual practice like this is very helpful. Based on what you are saying, this criteria is not actually new policy, but rather is just putting in writing the policy that is already consensus practice. It is not uncommon that written policy needs to updated to catch up with consensus-based practice. It is too bad this was not part of the original proposal as people would have reacted differently, most likely. Jytdog (talk) 07:43, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Agree with User:BU Rob13. When we find a large family of socks, none of which look new, who are writing promotional content. We can be certain they have prior blocked accounts so I also feel comfortable applying G5. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:57, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@

Kijiji Canada, All Assam Minorities Students’ Union, Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad or Buljit Buragohain. These were created by a large sockfarm and around 10 of their sockpuppets were found out in one go. And they continue unabated with new sockpuppets even now per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Raju Adhikari. Jupitus Smart

18:57, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Yup would apply as none of the socks were ever a new account per their editing and thus we can assume that their are prior blocked socks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support We have to dissuade
  paid editing companies and this is definitely a good way of doing so and getting them to declare properly. Currently, they have no incentive unless they are behaviorally obvious enough or make a small slip (e.g. mixing up of accounts)- this would add a 'stick' that incentivises them to declare, or get their articles deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcc (talk • contribs
  ) 12:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Sorry, this looks like a solution trying to find a problem. If paid editors create spam, our existing deletion policies can cope with it. If paid editors create articles on people who turn out to be notable per our guidelines, then what's the issue? I got "paid" to write Bullets and Daffodils, it just wasn't in cash. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:38, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose One would think a truly professional content producer would be smart enough to avoid being detected through checkuser and other methods of detection by following all the other policies outside of
  WP:COI. This proposed policy wouldn't likely be able to help with those people, which is what I assume the problem is - everybody else can already be dealt with through current policies. South Nashua (talk
  ) 23:02, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Many pages (not just articles, since we're talking general criteria here) written in violation of the TOU already fall under
  WP:RD1 or Rev-Del it yourself (for admins). — Gestrid (talk
  ) 03:11, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support The proposal is equivalent to "Should our Terms of Use" be enforced, and the prevailing answer appears to be "No, not really". Mind boggling. Rentier (talk) 10:38, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support (in the absence of a better alternative). ToU needs enforcing, the challenge is getting consensus on how, so hopefully those opposing can get behind something? Widefox; talk 18:13, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support per arguments by TonyBallioni, Jytdog, Legacypac, BU Rob13 and others. CSD is already overly complicated, but if this would even slightly dissuade spammers, then I see it as a net positive.- MrX 20:03, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose A7, G5 and G11 adequately cover this ground. I can't see why we would want to delete okay articles based solely on who the author is (especially when it can be sometimes difficult to know for certain whether the author was paid). If there are other, related instances they can be sent to AfD. If this means a significantly greater load at AfD which almost always results in consensus for deletion this can be reconsidered/proposed at a later date. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:47, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose As many others already said, it should be about the content, insted of the author. But maybe making it easier to delete it the normal way, would be a solution. --Info-Screen::Talk 12:11, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. It's important to discourage people from using Wikipedia for advertising; given the impact of mirrors, search engines, and other things advertisers target by adding things here, this requires a way to get rid of advertising that violates foundation policies quickly. Allowing undisclosed paid editors to hold the hope that the adds they spam here could stick around long enough to generate profits will cause trouble for us down the road. Additionally, the foundation policy on paid advertising is extremely important to Wikipedia's reputation and function as an encyclopedia; it is absolutely our duty to enforce it and to try and minimize any circumventions of it. Even when the text itself is good (which I feel is rare), it's important to underline that undisclosed paid editing hurts Wikipedia as a whole and leads to major scandals that damage our entire reputation every time it comes to light. Occasionally sacrificing potentially-usable stubs is an entirely reasonable price to pay for preventing that (and is no different than what we do with banned editors; I see no difference between this and that.) Anyone above who argues that we should not delete articles purely because of their creator or purely to enforce some broader goal of protecting Wikipedia needs to take a look at G5, which does exactly that, and which has been an uncontroversial part of CSD for years. Some people above have expressed concerns about identifying paid editors; however, this is nonsensical, since the CSD would only apply in cases where it was clear. --Aquillion (talk) 01:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support very strongly. Quality is now more important than quantity. It’s al very well to boast that we are getting on for 6 million articles, but already in my estimation anything up to 20% shouldn’t be here anyway. It’s gone beyond the point where we would ever be able to address even all the tagged BLPs. We won’t be able to discover all the paid-for articles either, but paid editing is growing exponentially, and the opposers here are possibly not aware that according to some claims there are even admins and New Page Reviewers taking on paid work.

This is not a solution looking for a problem. It’s defeatist to say that solutions are unworkable. it’s a very big problem that needs constant discussion and intelligent brainstorming until something is found that can be made to work. Too many people are opposing here who are not New Page Reviewers and have no idea of the magnitude of the spam, artspam, and devious articles that arrive here for which someone has obviously been paid and/or will increase their turnover as a result of their commercial exposure in Wikipedia. Never say we can’t delete per G14 without concrete proof - we delete per G5 all the time based on loud quacking. While a lot of it is very subtle and needs careful research, some paid editing is so blatantly obvious that if it weren't such a serious issue it would be a howling joke.

Wikipedia is organic and needs to adapt to new situations. Stifling progress by of rigidly adhering to every syllable of policy like a jurist's inflexible attention to every letter of the law will stifle our attempts to maintain a good reputation for the encyclopedia by changing our Wikilaws.

Wadsworth Jarrell is absolutely not the kind of article we're talking about, so we can do without red herrings and strawman arguments. As Beyond My Ken says, The "oppose" rationales are weak and unconvincing. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:10, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support The problem to address here is the time sink of good volunteer labor into providing service to organizations which are vandalizing Wikipedia. If we feel strongly enough to block an account for bad behavior then we should not further invest volunteer attention in preserving the vandal activity. CSD is the right place to start, then undeletion and AfD can be next steps if anyone objects. When dealing with accounts which are deemed in violation of the terms of service we should default to permit anyone to delete their work. This is a big issue consuming 100s of hours of volunteer labor and harming the reputation of Wikipedia. While there are theoretical other solutions which others might develop in the future, this one is practical, easy to implement, works now, and seems likely to prevent 10 times more problems than it could cause. I hear lots of volunteers burdened with promotional editing. I am not sure that I have ever heard a sympathetic story of any editor who behaved in a way that got them blocked, and yet posted content which I thought was obviously worth keeping. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:30, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose Here's why this policy is a bad idea. An editor who was later identified as part of a sockfarm created an article about someone named Bruce Flatt. Flatt is apparently a well known Canadian businessman and one of the richest people in Canada. There is an abundance of relaible third-party reportage about Flatt. The article
  WP:G5, despite not having identified the article creator as a previously blocked or banned user. Now Wikipedia doesn't have an article on Flatt. Does this harm or help our readers? World's Lamest Critic (talk
  ) 17:09, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

That, World's Lamest Critic, is a bad faith vote in vengeance of the comments and concerns that have been raised and expressed over your own editing pattern here. Serious users such as Doc James have commented. 17:27, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

If by "bad faith" you mean that we have different opinions, then yes, it is. If you mean I am opposing this because you support it, then I can assure you that you are wrong. Your deletion of Bruce Flatt is an excellent and timely example of what will happen if this proposal were adopted. I also believe it was an out of process deletion, but we agree to disagree on that. As for your comments about my editing, I'm not bothered so there's really nothing for me to avenge. World's Lamest Critic (talk) 17:51, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

World's Lamest Critic first edit was to JW's talk page. The subsequent edits show they are unlikely to be a new user. Bruce Flatt was created by User:AnalyticCat who is part of this family of socks.[2]. As it was a TOU violation and this family obviously has prior blocked socks not seeing an issue. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:50, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:G5 Creations by banned or blocked users says: "To qualify, the edit or article must have been made while the user was actually banned or blocked. A page created before the ban or block was imposed or after it was lifted will not qualify under this criterion." wbm1058 (talk

) 13:00, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 August 4. I'm a little confused about the rationale. wbm1058 (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Wbm1058 there is a general consensus that for very large farms with VPNs and where CU is a mess, we can safely assume that at some point there has been an original blocked account. In the case above, as Doc James pointed out, the user was part of a huge sock family that dated back with active accounts to 2015, and with stale accounts, likely had them dating back to 2009 that were stale. The odds of a sock farm like that not having been banned at one point is effectively zero. This is distinct from a sock family with one of two socks that is likely just a freelancer doing a one off. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:52, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't get it. Per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tomwsulcer, the author of Bruce Flatt is a sockpuppet of Tomwsulcer, yet the sockmaster himself, a user who identifies himself on his user page, has a clean block log?? wbm1058 (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

No. CU did not find a connection to him, he is not the sockmaster: the clerks have yet to sort out what to move the page to: we don't know who the original account was there. GeneralizationsAreBad, could you look into getting that case resolved so that we don't have any additional confusion about a named master? TonyBallioni (talk) 15:23, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. In most cases, these articles are spam to a significant extent; the worse ones can be G11-tagged immediately, and a borderline case should easily be pushed over the edge if you can demonstrate that the author's been blocked for paid editing or sockpuppetry. If it's not a borderline case in this way (i.e. it's a decent article as far as lack-of-promotion is concerned), and if it doesn't have other significant problems, deletion might well hurt the encyclopedia, so we mustn't delete such a page without giving a chance for objection (PROD) or discussion (AFD). Nyttend (talk) 01:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Very strong oppose. G5 and G10 are the only criteria currently that are about who created the page rather than its content. G10 is uncontroversial as it only relates to someone requesting deletion of their own work. G5 is frequently controversial in application, and has been throughout the 12 years I've been an admin, but the blocking and banning policy are not at all controversial in themselves. The moral panic about undisclosed paid editing does not enjoy full community support so basing a speedy deletion criterion on it cannot possibly be a good idea. Per Nyttend and others, it also fails the requirement for a speedy deletion criterion that everything that could be deleted should be deleted. TL;DR this will harm not improve the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 07:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support. This is absolutely essential and long overdue. We are already suffocating under the weight of paid editing, and we can only expect it to get worse. G11 is only available for articles that are overtly promotional in tone, but any article created for pay is, by its nature, an advertisement – it is a publication created for financial reward for the sole purpose of promoting a person or entity. Undeclared paid editing is not allowed under our terms of use, without any exception, and we are under an obligation to ensure that any such edits are summarily removed. This would be a good first step in that direction. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:53, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't want to raise Richard Stallman levels of pedantry, but what you're describing is paid advocacy. As I've said before, the WMF could pay me to go through nearly 2,700 articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs and add a reliable source to each one (a tedious job that obviously nobody wants to do) - it would be "paid editing" but wouldn't be advertising. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support in theory (although extending G5 could also work). If we disallow undisclosed paid contributions, we need to have a tool to delete them. I am sceptical about the burden of proof, though. Perhaps decisions should be made at COIN or SPI? —Kusma (t·c) 12:15, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. As alluded to by Thryduulf above, I don't really understand the moral panic Wikipedia has with paid editors. Paid editing is against the terms of service specifically because paid editors are more likely to produce articles which are partisan and/or promotional, but we already have the tools to deal with that and I don't think there's any sign these existing mechanisms are failing. G5 is, I suppose, intended to try to improve compliance with bans and discourage socking in the same vein as
  _berate
  13:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, does not come up sufficiently often. Stifle (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. If an article is written by a paid editor and is blatantly promotional, it will be deleted via
  G11. If the article is written by a paid editor and it is a well-written and neutral article, it should be kept. Deleting well-written articles on principle simply gets rid of well-written articles. In a practical sense, G11 covers every scenario under paid editing that would warrant a speedy deletion. This is both bad in principle and superfluous in practice. Malinaccier (talk
  ) 16:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support, as a measure to dissuade organized paid editing, and as an effective tool to save valuable time of good-faith editors and admins. Many of the previous "oppose" arguments have 2 basic flaws: 1) Non-promotional well-sourced articles by organized sockfarms are, with a few extremely rare exceptions, a myth. The whole purpose of sockfarms as commercial enterprises is to make as much money as quickly as possible by advancing the goals of their customers - both of these goals are diametrically opposite to Wikipedia's principles and goals. So the risk of loosing suitable content is relatively small, and vastly overstated by previous statements. 2) "Judge articles by their content" is a noble idealistic view. But in rough and dirty daily practise regarding paid editing this view is upheld on the backs of dozens of fellow good-faith editors and admins, who have to waste hundreds of hours of their time cleaning up these messes - just to see the next sockfarm popping up a few weeks later. Talking about fair article assessment, how about we try to be "fair" towards these regular maintenance contributors and don't waste any more of their time than absolutely necessary? GermanJoe (talk) 17:02, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support If paid editors unlawfully create an article and we keep it anyway, they're incentivized to continue socking. Delete everything they do and they'll learn a lesson. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:19, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
  • Chris troutman, I do believe you !voted above to delete all the articles!. Just noting it for you because I wouldn't want to strike a double vote of an established editor without letting them know. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:18, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Having a coherent, community-support policy (like this) is better than tacitly encouraging expansion of scope of other existing criteria. Sophisticated editors who are deliberately undermining the integrity of the project for financial gain are a serious ongoing problem, deserving of a policy response. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 13:56, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support underlining concept. Paid editors usually write promotional articles. That's what they are paid to do. QuackGuru (talk) 21:18, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Judge the article by content, not source. ++Lar: t/c 04:21, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support -- having paid articles in the mainspace is disruptive; this is the best way to deal with this issue. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:19, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• strongly Oppose I think that adding something like this as a criteria for deletion would be reasonable. Would likely overcome some of the inclusionist arguments (including my own) for keeping such stuff. But this is a horrid idea. Imagine someone gets blocked as a sock. Maybe incorrectly (it has happened). And someone else goes through and speedy tags every single article they've created that no one else has really touched. Or even if they do get blocked for socking in a way that has nothing to do with paid editing. Then all their work is deleted for one bad decisions made 5 years later. Or someone hacks their account after they've quit the project. They never even know they were blocked as a sock. But all their work gets deleted. This doesn't belong as a speedy. Way too overreaching and subject to abuse. Hobit (talk) 15:58, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose but support as a revision deletion criterion. When a user saves an edit, they agree both to the ToU and to the CC license release simultaneously. If they're flagrantly and knowingly ignoring one of those things, they have a case to argue that their contribution is not subject to the license agreement. The license also requires that the contribution is original content or that the contributor has the right to contribute that material, which if they've been paid under some contract we don't know the content of (which likely includes trademarks and intellectual property protection) to reproduce what is probably PR copy from the organization paying them, they very likely do not own a compatible copyright to their contribution. In these cases, every undisclosed paid edit is a potential copyright violation. A contract is implied if remuneration is received; paid editors' contributions ought therefore to be removed as soon as they are identified. That's a case for
  WP:REVDEL, which may leave pages with no contributions in which case other criteria apply. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits
  ) 17:11, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, per User:Jclemens. That being said, I'd be happy to see it harder to get a page back under G5, since there's usually another sock or a gullible inclusionist around to resurrect paid for articles and give them another go. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:27, 14 August 2017 (UTC).
• Oppose - We have adequate community-inclusive mechanisms for deleting craptervising and for challenging lame articles of dubious notability. We don't need an handful of fanatics riding around on white chargers and serving as judge, jury, and executioner without evidence as to an editor's financial relationship to a subject. Carrite (talk) 05:13, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Reluctant oppose- I don't think this is the best way to go about combating paid advertisements. I mostly agree with the above posters who argue that determining who is or is not a paid editor is inherently controversial. That said, I agree that Wikipedia is not very good at defending itself from being used as a billboard and I worry that opposing this proposal will be seized on as opposition to doing anything about it. I would not want that. Reyk _YO! 06:52, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - What is the difference between
  WP:G5 then there is no need for the redundant G14. See #Flatt discussion above. wbm1058 (talk) 14:14, 16 August 2017 (UTC) See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 August 4, which raises more questions in my mind. Again, if G5 already de facto covers G14 situations, why do we need G14? If someone without a COI "rewrites" the article in a neutral and acceptable manner, based on references used in the deleted version, do we need to restore the deleted revisions to restore attribution? wbm1058 (talk
  ) 14:31, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support: I understand the concerns about ambiguity, but like other CSD criteria (hoaxes are a good parallel) this will only be used in clear cut circumstances. As long as the criterion says that this is for clear-cut situations, I have no problems with the practicality. The implications of this are not without precedent; as before, the hoax CSD could be called ambiguous and open to discretion but is largely a success. We must remember that tagging for CSD is only half the story. A qualified admin also needs to agree. This is a sensible solution to a problem that needs addressing, and I can't see any implementation issues. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 15:27, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as more trouble than its worth. Use G5 more creatively.L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 13:06, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. As
  ^talk
  13:48, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose As User:Feminist points out, we are punishing our readers by deleting an article that is properly sourced and notable. If article is unworthy, take it to AfD. Find another way to punish the author of such articles, but don't punish the people who we are trying to serve. First Light (talk) 11:31, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support As is evident from cases such as
  Carl Fredrik ^talk
  14:44, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support Paid articles in violation of created in violation of Wikipedia terms of use need to be deleted.Allowing Wikipedia to fill up full of paid for promotional material has a very significant risk of harming our reputation and credibility.Firstly deletion is done in
  WP:G5 Creations by banned or blocked users is removed this is similar to that.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk
  ) 16:21, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support per WP:Deletion review#3.1.1 Ball and Chain (restaurant) and FlightNetwork and other deleted articles. Thanks Cunard for demonstrating conclusively that only with this new rule in place can massive ToU violations, in this case hundreds of paid articles by a single sockfarm, be effectively addressed. ☆ Bri (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Wheather an article was created by a paid editor is irrelevant. Deleting articles should always be determine through AfD process, not by the merits of the editor. —
  talk
  ) 07:54, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
• Support Some of the topics created by the paid editing rings may be "notable" by our current definitions. But so are many other topics that no-one will pay to insert into Wikipedia, and so are the topics of the existing articles most of which need further expansion and improvement. If we are all spending our time processing, reviewing, fixing and checking the paid editors' creations – including checking and evaluating every reference, because there can be no trust – then we are neglecting all those other topics, and WP will tilt towards becoming a commercial directory: Noyster (talk), 09:22, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Sticky PROD alternative

• How about a new "TOU sticky PROD" like we started for the BLP unsourced cleanup of a few years back? I hear not a whole lot of objection to leaving things around for a week, and we have time-based CSD-F? criteria that trigger after seven days. If we can get 1) eyes on the public process vs. having to ask for DRV 2) time for input, and 3) opportunities for objection or rescue if anyone really wants to. Ideally, this would still be reasonably expeditious, but available for more community review and input. Jclemens (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • BLPPROD has a (mostly) unambiguous and uncontentious path to removal: add a reliable source, and you can remove the template. When can a sticky-TOU prod be removed? When an editor in good standing says so - then when is a new editor's standing good enough? When an "unpaid" editor rewrites it, or says it's good enough - then how do you tell the difference between an include-all-subjects idealist and the 20,000-edit good-hand sockpuppet of the editor who created the article? —
    Cryptic
    02:35, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • Hmm. Here's my first draft of how it would go:

      1) Any user in good standing (autoconfirmed) tags an article

      2) Article banner appears, category added, article added to list of tagged, etc. to notify community for one week of the issue.

      3) Any administrator can remove the tag at any time, either because the tagging was in error OR the article has been sufficiently cleaned up and neutral-ized, and such removal is logged in the file history and maybe somewhere else, too

      4) If no administrator has removed the tag after 168 hours, the article becomes deletion-eligible, and an admin can STILL review it and remove the tag... or delete it outright.

Note : The consensus is probably towards allowing Extended Confirmed users to remove the tag and therefore voters are requested not to hold this up in case administrator tag removal is what bothers you. And articles can only be tagged so if they were created and mostly edited by sockpuppet(s) who have been confirmed by checkuser evidence to have used multiple accounts or by editors who were explicitly blocked for paid editing. Jupitus Smart 16:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• • • So, yeah, still a rough draft/work in progress. Jclemens (talk) 03:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Oh, and nothing about this process would make an article immune to other CSD criteria (G5, G11, G12, etc.) or prevent it from being AfD'ed per normal process if it "fell out" of the process. Jclemens (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem with autoconfirmed is that 7 days is more than the 4 days required to become an autoconfirmed user. So even if an editor decides to form an account after it is PRODed, he will be eligible to remove the tag, and many a times editors simply don't care enough to take it to AfD, ultimately defeating the cause. Jupitus Smart 03:38, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Jclemens' proposal above is to have autoconfirmed+ able to tag, but only admin+ to untag. —

Cryptic

03:55, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I am really sorry as it probably skipped my eyes. That is an even better proposal than mine. Jupitus Smart 03:59, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• I am all for any proposal that does not entail going to AfD. AfD is a strenuous process, and if you go through some of the upwork jobs, there are companies willing to pay you to vote keep. It becomes harsh on the nominator who files the AfD's when well healed socks pile on logical votes, and you have to take the pains to research on all of them before refuting them. I am not sure why the 7 day period is an issue. Remaining for 7 days was not the issue when I created this CSD criteria, it was the surety (or the lack of it) of deletion. The 7 day period is okay with me if socks are not allowed to remove the tag. 20K edit sockpuppets are few, so we may set an arbitrary barrier equivalent to an Extended Confirmed user. All the well meaning people who would want to preserve well written articles (and have written such articles themselves) will fall under this. Jupitus Smart 03:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • On a related note, I was looking at all the creations of the sock I mentioned above. One of his socks have made large edits to Sunny Li. This was created by another sockpuppet editor (probably not related to him), and the only other major contributor is an IP. This is technically not eligible for G5 and I am not knowledgeable enough about Chinese pianists and would not want to take it to AfD where somebody might say that she satisfies WP:NPIANO and therefore this should be kept. Jupitus Smart 03:38, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Here is another example of what I want to avoid - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Mooradian. This was created by one of the socks of this guy, and the AfD ended up getting support votes from 2 editors in standing. The amount of man hours wasted by the editors who inadvertently voted keep assuming good faith and those by the ones who voted delete is simply not worth the effort according to me. Jupitus Smart 04:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Less few than you might think. We've banned admins for paid editing, more for generalized sockpuppetry, and 100k-edit users for (unspecified) TOU violations. The 500 edits it takes to get extendedconfirmed on a primary account isn't just too flimsy a barrier for a minimally-savvy paid editor; it's no barrier at all. —
    Cryptic
    04:14, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I would wholeheartedly support a move that would allow only admins to DePROD. I would not want to be pessimistic already, so let me hope that there would be a consensus towards it. Jupitus Smart 04:41, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • A PROD that can only be removed by admins is a huge step above CSD in terms of the power of the deletion tag (a CSD may be removed by any uninvolved editor) and, as the first process in which uninvolved editors could not participate, would be an unprecedented change in Wikipedia deletion processes. A2soup (talk) 04:52, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Oh, but they could. They can edit the article during the tagged week, argue for or against deletion on... well, the talk page, I guess. The entire point is to make it public and participatory, even if it is to be administrator-closed when all is said and done. Jclemens (talk) 05:12, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
          • Can Extended Confirmed be agreed as the middle ground @A2soup: and @Jclemens:. Bad EC users are expected to be few, and can be monitored for suspicious de-taggings (and/or Sockpuppetry). Jupitus Smart 05:33, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
            • I'd also support EC over admin being able to remove. An admin-only process invites this to be turned into a battleground between admins who have different views on what our inclusion standards should be for paid editing. Allowing more users to participate in the detagging I think would actually make it more likely for the bad content to be removed and would decrease the pressure on an admin as the final call because they would know that other users have had the practical chance to remove it as well. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
            • I went with admin on purpose. I don't expect it to be a tug-of-war, because I expected that once a TOU-sticky-prod was removed, the full AfD process would be invoked by anyone. I also expect admins to not do stupid things like mass-remove everything because "freedom!" or something like that: I have no such hope no EC user would do such a thing. The community can take my proposal any which way it wants--like everything else on Wikipedia, all I 'own' are my own contributions. I don't want it to be EASY to undo a good-faith TOU tagging; I want it to be hard, but transparent and with some time to fix problems that a speedy process doesn't allow. Jclemens (talk) 05:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
              • You don't do you? I wouldn't quite mass-remove such prods, but I would expect to patrol the list regularly, and probably remove a good many, if this were to be enacted. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  I find User:Jupitus Smart's argument, wanting to avoid AfD because in the past it has been strenuous to convince others, highly unsatisfactory.
  In that AfD cited, User:Carrite, a respectable Wikipedian was unpersuaded by User:Bearcat's nomination and !voted "Keep". In the name of "consensus decision making", that demands more discussion demanding more mutual education by editors through that discussion. PROD and CSD are for objective things for which there is no point in discussion. If respectable Wikipedians can disagree, a discussion is necessary. If the discussion draws out sockpuppets and meatpuppets and members of rings of undisclosed paid editors, that is a good thing. It sounds like an essay on the merits of deleting undisclosed paid editor product is required, not an authority-heavy non-consensus deletion process. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  I edit conflicted with SmokeyJoe in replying to Jclemens. SmokeyJoe's comment solidified the belief I was going to post: the problem stems from WP:DEL15: violations of the terms of use being a redlink. It is not seen by some as a valid deletion rationale, even if it is legally a prerequisite before we even get to local policy on en.wiki. If we could get that added, I think it would make the conversations on the technical means to enforce the terms of use much easier. TonyBallioni (talk) 06:21, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

  • The alternative of a PROD was suggested because it allows editors who disagree and who are in standing to remove the tag. The arguments for Keep were made by Carrite in good faith, and did not have much substance which was the reason why the article was ultimately deleted. The watered down proposal is in itself better than the current scenario, because it makes the drama at AfD required for only strictly essential cases. So even though I would not AfD Sunny Li (or other such articles) because I don't want to waste my time arguing in a field where I am not knowledgeable about the different WP:NWHATEVER, I can always do the new PROD, and wait for Carrite or other such good users to remove the tag with a valid reason. This gives me an idea about the suitability of taking it to AfD if I still disagree, which would not be available if a new user removes the PROD tag without any explanation (and since PRODs can only be done once, I am realistically left with only AfD). Jupitus Smart 06:28, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• I hope something can be done about ToU violations so would prefer not to be raising difficulties. I'm unhappy at the idea that a ToU tag could be placed so easily (autoconfirmed+).
  WP:G4 tags are frequently placed with no evidence and such tagging seems not to be deprecated.[3] Placing such a tag should be regarded as disruptive unless there is some adequate basis. For example, shills of the firm's/person's opponents shouldn't get an easy ride. Thincat (talk
  ) 07:53, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • From what I understand, the PROD follows the criteria for nomination, as the CSD above. It is possible only when the creator of the article is blocked for confirmed sockpuppetry/paid editing, which would mean that frivolous nominations would not be possible. Jupitus Smart 08:11, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • OK, I hadn't understood then. If the criterion is definite then my objection doesn't apply. Thank you. Thincat (talk) 09:17, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Jupitus Smart, Exactly who confirms that "paid editing" has taken place? In any case i do not trust our current SPI system to identify sockpuppets with a reasonable level of assurance, unless by "confirmed" you mean "confirmed by checkuser evidence" and if you do the proposal should say that. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:19, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes that is exactly what I intended @DESiegel: as can be gauged from the example of KuwarOnline that I presented. But I suppose its better to be more technically correct and I will append your words as is. Jupitus Smart 16:26, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support User:Jclemens suggestion. Would also be good to get the notice of concerns fully visible on mobile. But that will likely require a different process. Admin involvement is key to prevent interference from further socks such as we so often see at AfD. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:27, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support Jclemens but with conditions. A guideline is drawn up explaining how the tag can placed legitimately (autoconfirmed user, creator blocked for paid editing, article still "spam") explaining misuse is disruptive. Also, the deleting admin must look at state of article, talk page and history (in case no admin has previously done so), i.e. no speedy deletion of articles with unremoved tags. Question: what procedure for undeletion:
  WP:REFUND? Thincat (talk
  ) 11:00, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - So in the Jclemens proposal (and per their clarifications in the above discussion), the article is tagged by anyone, editors argue for and against deletion on the talk page for a week, the article may be improved/fixed during this week, and then an administrator makes an assessment and close at the end. Pardon me if I'm being dense, but that's just a poorly-organized AfD, no? Just send the article to AfD and the process is literally identical. Am I missing something? A2soup (talk) 14:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • AfD defaults to keep and involves other sorts of arguments (notability, etc.) while what I'm proposing has some of the safeguards, but defaults to delete unless rationale is demonstrably false OR the article is rewritten, possibly as much by "from scratch" in the interim. I admit it's not hugely far, but AfD looks at different things and considers different possibilities rather than "Is this COI article rewritable, or shall we just nuke it?" Jclemens (talk) 14:47, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • AfD does look at different things, but isn't "Is this COI article rewritable, or shall we just nuke it?" definitely within the current scope of AfD? I'm far from a regular there, but I feel like there are often discussions along those very lines. And if the article isn't notable, might as well figure that out at the same time you hash out the COI issues. No sense having a weeklong discussion about an article and keeping it at the end if it isn't notable. A2soup (talk) 14:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • PROD's generally do not involve any discussion. We PROD, and if it is notable somebody improves it, and an EC user or the reviewing admin who evaluates it at the end of 7 days removes the tag, if they feel notability has been achieved. This defaults to keep as well, but removes the need for unnecessary long drawn out discussions at AfD. In the end the encyclopedia probably gains, as the editors can use the time wasted at AfD improving articles.Jupitus Smart 15:10, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • My experience with AFD for COI or promotion issues can, almost without exception, be summarized as "keep, has sources, afd is not cleanup". Once in a great while, an article can be deleted on
    Cryptic
    15:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • That is because, under current policy, COI is not a reason to delete, and promotion is not a reason either if the article has been edited to be neutral in content, is supported by reliable sources, and the topic is notable. This was a good keep.This proposal would change those policies, i suppose (which may mean that discussion here would only be a first step. However, i have seen quite a few articles brought to AfD largely for COI/Promotion deleted on the grounds of notability. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nancy Ruth (singer) was a recent case in point. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:15, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
    • As is so often the case the account fighting for keep turns out to be a sock[4]. This is not so much about is COI a reason for deletion but should content that is promotional and created by an army of socks be deleted? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:09, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Promotional content can be removed from articles now, and it is all the time, by normal editing. Wholly promotional articles that cannot be cured by copy editing can be and often are deleted under CSD G11, in both cases with no regard to who created or edited the article. So far as I can see the only effect of this proposal would be to authorize the deletion of valid, neutral articles because of who created them. (If they aren't valid neutral articles, they can be deleted without this proposal). DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 16:41, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
      • Before we go any further, would you agree that the same thing is valid for G5 as well @DESiegel: (that it also involves deletion based on who created it instead of the content). And if the answer is Yes, should we abolish that as well. Jupitus Smart 16:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
        • Yes it does, Jupitus Smart, and if you look up to the G5 section on this very page, you will find me arguing to abolish G5 on exactly those grounds. I am consistent. As it stands, G5 has consensus, but I will never delete anything so tagged. I won't remove such tags, but i don't choose to act on them. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 17:48, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
          • Then we should agree to disagree. G5 has its share of proponents and I am one of the editors treading the fine line between
            WP:PRESERVE and G5. It means that I would tag for G5 only if I personally feel that the article was made in bad faith and we can do without the article (This is just my personal opinion). This is the reason why I have been flexible enough to write into the draft, most of the fail safe mechanisms that were presented above to prevent abuse. Best. Jupitus Smart
            18:03, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support despite what has been argued above, promotion is a actually a reason to delete under current policy beyond just G11, as
  WP:DEL14 make clear and this can be argued in an AfD even if G11 has been declined or as is more often the case, the nom feels it isn't overtly G11. Some closers don't like the argument, others do, but pretending that it isn't a valid reading of policy isn't helpful to the conversation. Violations of the TOU are almost always promotional in intent and as has been mentioned above, since we aren't a startup anymore, simply having a listing here can be promotion. Creating a sticky PROD for undeclared paid editing makes sense from local policy as it stands now, and terms of use are above any local policy anyway barring consensus to explicitly make an exception to this, which does not exist. Support this as a compromise between AfD and CSD. TonyBallioni (talk
  ) 17:49, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• I sad that promotion is not a reason either if the article has been edited to be neutral in content, is supported by reliable sources, and the topic is notable. I don't think any of the policies you mention authorizes deletion when the article has been edited to be
  neutral. If one does, please quote the wording. Promotion can be a reason to delete beyond G11, but not beyond editing for a factual, neutral article, even if its existence has some promotional effect. Otherwise we would need to delete all articles on fortune-500 companies. They all have some promotional effect. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs}
  17:56, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • The proposed draft addresses that, in it allows the PROD to be rejected if it is edited to become
    neutral (albeit the removal can only be done by an EC user). The only realistic goal of the draft PROD now is to reduce the number of AfDs besides provide an avenue for deleting many promotional articles created by blocked users. If these articles can be improved after tagging it is ultimately the encyclopedia that wins, otherwise they end up deleted. Cheers. Jupitus Smart
    18:13, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. [...] Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. Contributors must disclose any payments they receive for editing Wikipedia. per
    WP:N. We aren't talking about Fortune 500s here. We're talking about startups and local restaurants where Wikipedia would be more high profile coverage than anything they had every received before. If an editor feels that there are enough factors on another side that might warrant keeping, they can remove the PROD and an AfD will happen to resolve the tension in our policies and find consensus. TonyBallioni (talk
    ) 18:30, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• Comment The proposed deletion template is useful, but too easy to remove. One approach would be to have a template which proposed deletion, and a 'bot which, when it detected deletion of a PROD template, would check who deleted it. If it was the article creator, a new editor, or an editor with an SPA editing pattern, it would automatically start an AfD and send out the appropriate notifications. John Nagle (talk) 20:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
  • My original proposal had an admin-only removal clause, but adding something like this with appropriate automated support would clearly serve a similar purpose. Jclemens (talk) 22:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Traits of any solution.

Here's some things I think I want to see in any solution:

• Public I don't like insta-speedy because it could be more abusable than an open process. Public has the benefit of also providing negative reinforcement to correctly identified TOU violations, but also has the possibility of improper visibility to falsely named articles and their subjects, which leads to...
• Thresholded (was that a word before? It is now) that is to say that we don't accept nominations/accusations from new accounts or IPs, because it's a serious allegation and we don't want people using this when G11 is really what they should be using. Likewise, I propose a high threshold for clearing an accused article for continued existence, thus...
• Inevitable while not automatic, I want things that really are TOU violations to be deleted unless there's a clear indication (not necessarily 'consensus', but admin judgment) that the article should stay.

If what I've proposed above doesn't meet these goals ideally, or if there are other goals you want to see added or substituted, by all means, let's improve the ideas... Jclemens (talk) 22:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

• • "TOU violations to be deleted ... not necessarily 'consensus', but admin judgment". This sounds very much like "admins know best, let admins make the decisions". It implies acknowledgement that the community is not behind "TOU violations to be deleted", and so the community is to be removed from the decision making process. No. Admins do not get this power. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The old "let the community decide" mentality worked when Wikipedia (and even the internet) was new. But it is a failed ideology now that these things are ingrained in society. WP needs a hierarchy. The community, when it grows to this size, does not know best. Kellymoat (talk) 02:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

The internet was not new when Wikipedia was born. And Wikipedia was larger, in terms of the number of active editors, 5 years ago. Any such hierarchy is in violation of fundamental policy here. It would require Foundation approval, and if approved, would doom the project by driving away the second-class editors (as designated by such a change), who do the vast majority of the work. Indeed IP editors make a substantial part o the productive edits in article space. Indeed to enact such a rule would IMO violate the current policy

WP:ADMIN which says: Stated simply, while the correct use of the tools and appropriate conduct should be considered important, merely "being an administrator" should not be. Simply not acceptable. A threshold of ECU might possibly be acceptable, although i still oppose the whole idea. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs}

03:52, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• SmokeyJoe, no more than administrators are needed to delete any other process, be it XfD, PROD, or CSD. The idea is to have more public input than CSD, but not as ambiguous an outcome as XfD. Jclemens (talk) 04:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• XfD is about consensus decision making, and is the process required of there is a history of disagreement. PROD is deliberately very soft, anyone can remove the PROD for any reason or no reason, meaning and XfD is required. BLPPROD, OK, adding a single reference is a pretty low requirement, nowhere near as complicated as paid articles that are more likely to be reference bombed. Admins are not supposed to be there to make executive decisions. The way to do this, I think, is on every TOU block, to initiate a group listing AfD on every article created by that account. Then see how community consensus develops. Isolated AfDs are too isolated. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:22, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support We have to enforce the terms of use. jcc (tea and biscuits) 12:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

jcc - I see your 'support' at the top section and at the PROD alternative so is there a preference or just a desire for something and either will do or what  ? Markbassett (talk) 19:22, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Markbassett: I would prefer the top proposal, but yes, I think something should be done so I'm happy if either of proposals get enacted. jcc (tea and biscuits) 21:13, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• So there are a class of articles (created with a COI) that do NOT get regularly deleted at AfD and thus we are discussing if they should be speedied or PRODed? Shouldn't it be the other way around? We should Speedy/PROD something that is a obvios AfD deletion? (I admit I only read here and there, the discussion is already long, so if I missed some explanation on that please just point that'away) - Nabla (talk) 23:10, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Nabla: I am not sure I comprehended the question correctly, but I will attempt an answer on what I understood. The question probably is should the article revert to Keep in an AfD, can it be allowed to be PRODed/CSDed. The existing rules should probably apply in this case. In case of a PROD, as with all PRODs, once an AfD has been done, the new PROD should not be applicable. In case of a CSD, there are no restrictions, and recently I saw an AfD which was about to be closed as Keep, but just before that it was identified as G5 material and deleted (it was probably re-created by an admin later). The other aspect of how your question can be construed is probably what was really asked - should we delete as a PROD/CSD if it is bound to pass AfD. As with the example I mentioned, even if an article reverts to keep, we would not hesitate to delete it as G5 (even though the said article was re-created, it was probably because it was about something very obviously notable like a Congressional district - I don't seem to remember who the involved admin was else I would have presented the link). The same should apply here probably. Best. Jupitus Smart 08:55, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jupitus Smart:, I think I understood your point. It does not mean that I agree (or not), but at least it now makes sense to me, Thank you! Iy would be interesting to know if the equivalent of G5 was already commonly deleted at AfD, before the creation of that speedy deletion criterion. But I admit I will not take the trouble to find it out, so I am _not_ asking anyone to do it either. - Nabla (talk) 19:00, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support in general, the broad idea of a modified PROD. It seems to me that more discussion will be needed to flesh out the details, so I'm supporting the general idea, rather than any specific proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose What I'm seeing is that a TOU violation gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week. While, yes, it could possibly be edited and changed to fall within the TOU, it still essentially gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week, during which time the page, for starters, could be archived by the Internet Archive or Archive.is or something like that. In my time of editing here, I haven't yet seen someone create an make an undisclosed paid contribution that wasn't obvious advertising, which falls under
  WP:G5 as a creation by a banned or blocked user. Many of the things I put up in my oppose to the first proposal apply here as well, so forgive me if I left out a couple things here. — Gestrid (talk
  ) 03:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Staying for 7 days is better than staying forever. Though a great many articles will fall under G11/12/5, with experience many paid editors have become better at their trade and their articles would not fall under any of the above criteria. Many examples of such cases have been presented above and you could read through to note them. The most recent case I encountered is

WP:NPROF, both of which fall in areas where I am not really sure about how the criteria are usually applied. That's one of the reasons why the new criteria might be required. Jupitus Smart

08:44, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Another example of an amusing G5 rejection. Gestrid, you said "What I'm seeing is that a TOU violation gets to stay on Wikipedia for a week." Articles eligible for speedy deletion would still be eligible. The proposal is to merely supplement the existing tools by making the remaining articles (which usually violate the core policies in subtle ways) deleted by default after 7 days unless someone takes the responsibility for removing the PROD. It's a small step, but a step in the right direction. Rentier (talk) 10:52, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

User:Rentier That article also contained outing. The person's birthdate was published without a reliable source. Have removed this from Jaimie Hilfiger but likely needs oversight. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:55, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose the specific proposal, Draftify (or AfC) is better (and can Salt if admin only lockout needed) would be a better method without inventing new PROD : the criteria for removing the stickyPROD is? The reasoning for keeping such content created in violation of ToU in articlespace for an extra week is? My new analysis at
  WP:BOGOF is that we want to put the burden back on the paid editors (to do the work, and disclose etc) and the crucial aspect is it has to be easy for editors, not a burden to admins (or fall foul of a lack of consensus across inclusionist-deletionist admin spectrum) to move the content out of articlespace immediately, and then can deliberate on the fate? Gestrid is right. Widefox; talk
  18:54, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support in clear-cut cases especially when there is considerably outweighing advertising or when it would clearly be for the encyclopedia's benefit. Our deletions policies are clear about this so this would be adding on it; Our pillars themselves make clear we will not accept webhosted advertising. I would support the exception of Drafting improvable contents. I certainly wouldn't support moving all of then in Draftspace in lieu of deletion since that would be aiding their policy violations. SwisterTwister talk 07:42, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose It is not a responsibility of our administrators to enforce TOU. It is a responsibility of WMF which has its own staff. Ruslik_Zero 18:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Well, as nice as it would be to have the WMF devote paid staff time to things like their legal obligation to not host copyrighted content, that isn't the case. Copyvio is first and foremost a legal issue/TOU issue. We have empowered our volunteer administrators to do this task via local policy. Saying that something is the job of the WMF does not preclude our enforcing something locally. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
    • It also assumes that the WMF will get round to doing that. In my relatively short experience here I've seen that the WMF, usually, not always, is about as useful as a trapdoor in a canoe. DrStrauss talk 18:58, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It is absolutely and unquestionably the responsibility of our administrators to enforce the TOU when (as in this case) violations potentially endanger the reputation and value of Wikipedia as a whole. However, I strongly prefer a more broadly-worded "burn it with fire without even looking at it" approach to all contributions from undisclosed paid editors. Undisclosed paid editors are a threat to the entire project; every edit they make, without exception, hurts and endangers the project as a whole and should be instantly excised without regard for content on discovery. The slim benefits of allowing some edits to remain do not come anywhere close to the serious threat to the project as a whole that every single paid edit, without exception, is inevitably a part of. This suggestion would fall short of that and is therefore insufficient, but it would be at least a step in the right direction. --Aquillion (talk) 01:34, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support largely per Kudpung, above. I was going to oppose on the grounds that G12 and G5 can take care of everything, but after a little thought realized that is not the case. Consider the following: a paid editor, who is not a sock, creates a string of articles. They fall short of G12, but are promotional in nature. PROD is tried, and removed by the creator. The creator is then discovered, and blocked. Even if PROD was not tried before, a PROD tag applied after could be removed by an IP or drive-by editor, and such an edit would not be enough to revert on the suspicion of socking. Their creations are no longer eligible for PROD or CSD. In my experience (involving some guesswork, of course) this is a not-uncommon scenario; there are numerous articles that are clearly promotional in intent but whose language is borderline. Of course this criterion will only help deal with a small subset of those, but every little bit helps. Vanamonde (talk) 05:01, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. Identification of who is and who is not an undisclosed paid editor has far too high a rate of false positives (and maybe false negatives also), especially as disclosure may be retroactive. The rules for this are complicated, will attach stigma to content based on its author not its reliability and unlike some others in this discussion I see that as a Very Bad Thing as that stigma will rapidly transfer to all editors of a page, regardless of whether they are suspected of being undisclosed paid editors or not. And anyway, much of what this could apply to will be speedy deletable under criterion G5 anyway. Thryduulf (talk) 07:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Paid articles introduce promotional bias. The bias is rarely fully removed by editing despite huge effort expended on verifying and attempting to fix these generally non-notable and borderline-notable articles. An effort, I must add, that encourages paid editors to insert even more promotional content into Wikipedia. One undisclosed paid editing company boasts: "Our Wikipedia veterans create or correct it in a way that it conforms to all Wikipedia policies and sticks on the wiki, even gets updated for free by the Wikipedia volunteers later on." Just take a look at the sockfarms discovered in the last week here, here, here, here, and here. Hundreds of articles. One false positive that was promptly identified. A "sticky prod" is too little too late, but it's better than nothing. Rentier (talk) 11:31, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support as less-controversial alternative, only if the more consequent and efficient proposal about speedy deletions fails. GermanJoe (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose-- Try and imagine a perfect world in which volunteer editors and paid editors created articles that were virtually indistinguishable from one another. They were equally about notable subjects, written equally from a neutral point of view, had excellent third party sources. For what possible reason would you still oppose articles created by paid editors? Except for this one area which is against TOU, these articles unquestionably enhance the encyclopedia. Cant those who voted Support understand this logic? I know this is not a perfect world, and the chances of paid articles being written about non-notable subjects in a promotional style are much higher, and therefore there exist many rules on Wikipedia to control those kinds of articles. Summarily deleting well-written articles about notable subjects solely because a suspected paid editor wrote them seems like shooting ourselves in the foot. I believe very strongly that articles should be judged on their own merit, just like people. It was not so long ago that people were judged based on their origins, and not on their own merits. Society suffered from this behavior, since fantastic people from "problematic" backgrounds were not allowed to succeed. Oh wait, did I use the past tense? Hmmm, I think this kind of mentality is still rampant in the greater society, and exists even more so in the mini-universe of the subculture called Wikipedia. The conclusion? It is all about power: who has it, who doesn't, and how can the ones in power assert their power over those that don't. The longer I spend on Wikipedia the more I see this place as the farthest thing from a libertarian, egalitarian, meritocracy as can be imagined. Have you ever wondered why about 10% of editors are women? If you would like to learn more abut that you can go here, here, and here. There is also a problem with content about women on the encyclopedia. Look here, and here. I for one, would not care if more excellent articles went up on Wikipedia about women, even if paid editors wrote them or even sock puppets. I know that is a radical view here, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary methods. DaringDonna (talk) 21:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
• Very strongly support for the following reasons:

1. Paid editing goes against the spirit of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a form of promotion.
2. The amount of absolute guff that comes into the New Pages Feed which is clearly from COI editors that can’t be speedied because it doesn’t fit G11 is astounding as Kudpung says.
3. The future of Wikipedia has to be taken into account. ACTRIAL is now underway and it is something that I believe to be essential to the survival of Wikipedia. Once upon a time, if you said “I read it on Wikipedia” you would be laughed at. In recent years, Wikipedia has been allowed by some exam boards in the UK as a citeable source. If this influx of junk continues, that will no longer be the case. This proposal is similarly important for the same reason.
4. It sends a message. “If you violate our Terms of Use, your gubbins gets deleted.” Not “you can degrade an extraordinary work of collaboration into a soapbox because we want to hang on to some anarchistic ideology.”
5. It’s perfectly plausible. We can still retain
   WP:DUCK test. It requires no software changes. DrStrauss talk
   19:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

• Strong support - oh what a blessing it will be for NPP and AfD - much needed!! Atsme📞📧 02:15, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support -- having paid articles in the mainspace is disruptive; this is the best way to deal with this issue. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:17, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
• weak oppose on a procedural basis. This too would be a major change and consensus for this shouldn't be found without its own RfC. That said, I certainly like this better and might even support it on it's own (I'd need to think on it more). Hobit (talk) 16:02, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
• Strong support as it seems the above proposal won't pass. We need a more proactive approach to undeclared paid editing, and we need to make sure our terms of use aren't just a dead letter. Daß Wölf 02:25, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose - We already have adequate mechanisms to challenge pure advertising or material of dubious notability. Carrite (talk) 05:13, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support - as long as there is mechanism whereby the PROD can be contested by anybody but the creator, so that we can start an AfD discussion in case there is a consensus to keep the article. Otherwise, how would we know if there is consensus against deletion? RileyBugz^会話_投稿記録 15:16, 21 August 2017 (UTC)