Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 68

I agree it's ludicrous Jclemens, but not all admins do and some have pointed out that the current guidelines don't say they must check. Where might a policy that talks about this be? Egaoblai (talk) 21:21, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

It's right there in

WP:DELPOL, by name. Jclemens (talk

) 21:40, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

For G13, that burden has fallen onto the nominator. I believe that admins accepting G13 tag requests should do some spot checks and have confidence in the taggers. The threshold is lower because there is so much hopeless stuff there. I am disappointed that the suggested {{Promising draft}} tag, which will forever mark a draft as G13-ineligible, has not been implemented. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:01, 18 December 2017 (UTC) Well there your go,thank you User:Calliopejen1. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:03, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

It's not like drafts that are deleted are wiped from Wikipedia forever. They can always request a refund on the page, just as easily as it is requested to be deleted, per

WP:G13. Boomer Vial^{Happy Holidays! • Contribs}

07:02, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. The technical process might be comparable but once it's deleted, no non-admin can assess whether a draft should be restored and thus cannot make an informed request. That's why it's important to be careful when deleting things - once they are deleted, they are most likely to stay deleted. Regards SoWhy 09:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

"once they are deleted, they are most likely to stay deleted" I've seen enough draft restorations that I know this isn't true. I think it would be best if all G13'ed articles are checked by the nominator, and double-checked by the reviewing administrator. Considering the enormous workload that G13 nominators face, it's only fair to split the work up. Unfortunately, G13'ed articles could never go unchecked. Boomer Vial^{Happy Holidays! • Contribs} 00:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, the numbers say something else. 11,727,658 log entries are deletions, while only 286,265 entries are restores, which - based on these numbers - means only 2.44% of all deletions are reversed. This sounds more realistic. Personally, for example, I have 11,601 deletions and 171 restores (1.47%) and even the most active(!) admins at

Tokyogirl79 have only a ratio of 17.3%, 13.6% and 3.5% respectively. Regards SoWhy

14:14, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure there was a community decision that led us to the current state of affairs, but regardless of that, I feel that a bot should handle all G13 nominations, notifications, and deletion of drafts older than 6 months. I don't see the need for either nominators or admins to be involved, except to handle restoration requests as needed. Wikipedia has grown too fast for the population of admins to keep up, so we really need to automate things that are, for the most part, non-controversial actions. ~Anachronist (talk) 22:33, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

@Anachronist: There is a bot that goes through and does a 5 months unedited "Your page XYZZY could be nominated for G13 in the near future" notification process, and used to do a nomination process one month after the page was notified on (and does meet the 6 months unedited) to procedurally execute the G13 nomination and let the author know it's been nominated. Automated bot deletions are very contraversial and require Adminbot privileges. There might have been a case for them when we were deleting 2000 G13 nominations a day, but we've significantly reduced the backlog (I believe). Hasteur (talk) 02:13, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

• This is an open unresolved problem, since I personally know of four administrators who have continued to defend G13 deletions even after being notified that they were in violation of CSD, and after either having policy explicitly cited or being told to read the policy: [1] [2]

In the later case, [3], the deleting administrator went on to assert that G13 could also be applied to an article in mainspace that survived AfD and had not been edited for six months diff.  Notifying @Sphilbrick, Kudpung, Anthony Bradbury, and Primefac:  As for the editors who added the CSD tags, the talk page indicates that User:Hasteur added the tag in the first case, and in the second case I have no records and no access to the edit.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:58, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

I realise that getting a bot to do the whole thing is a very appealing solution, but as DGG has repeatedly demonstrated, there is occasionally a salvagable gem among all the rubbish. Of couse, nothing is undoable, but if we can cope with the quantity (which is now hopefully reduced since ACTRIAL and the Wizard) I do feel a set of human eyes would be best before consigning to the bin. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:10, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

If you would care to re-read the diff you quote, I do not say that an article-space edit can be deleted as G13 after surviving AfD, just that it can be speedy-deleted in rare circumstances. I concede that my meaning could be misinterpreted, G13, of course, only applies to draft; this is implicit in the wording of the relevant template.--

^"talk"

22:55, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, but when I examined the post earlier I concluded that the ambiguity was resolved by the context of the second sentence.  Anyway, I haven't looked at the templates, as I am relying on what the policy states, which gives the exact applicable post-AfD set: G5, G6, G8, G9, G12, A2, A5, F8, F9, U1; which as I read it applies equally to mainspace and draftspace without allowance for G13 as an exception.

FYI, today, I cited a passage at WT:N that refers to a post at WT:Verifiability/Archive 64#Minimum third-party sources in an article, below which the content fails WP:DEL7.  Just below that section is the subsection WT:Verifiability/Archive 64#Suggestion for new DEL-REASON, which states, "See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2015–16 Alaska Anchorage Seawolves men's basketball team for an article with no sources that survived AfD.  I've made a subsequent bold move to draft space."  Editors right now cannot look at that article.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:49, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@

text of G13. G13 is a very simple test to determine if it's valid to be nominated: Is the page unedited in more than 6 months? Is the page in Draft namespace or submitted to Articles for Creation? If both of these are yes, nominate for G13. If not conduct a more through content evaluation to see if other CSD may be appropriate. In the case of the Bot, it only looks at the G13 rule as that's something that a bot can do (i.e. straight facts instead of judgement calls). Hasteur (talk

) 12:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

User:Hasteur, Your edit comment reads, "Raking Unscintillating over the coals for the double standard of 'accuracy' expected of admins, but not of themselves."  I'm sorry that you think my posts have been inaccurate and are willful misreading, but in fact the two ideas contradict themselves, and along with the word "raking" your viewpoint comes across as venting for the sake of venting.  And what is there here to vent about?  If your bot made a mistake, that is called a bug, and so you need to own it to stop it from happening again.

Your post was unclear about why you mention "HasteurBot".  Are you saying that it was User:HasteurBot that applied the CSD tag to one or both of the drafts being discussed here?  I've already explained that I lack the resources to verify the editor or editors who added the CSD tag.  I had hoped that an administrator would volunteer to provide that level of detail, but that has yet to happen.

You want people including myself to read the G13 text, so I have posted it below, but if you read it yourself you should note that it is not directly relevant to the discussion at hand; for example it does not say, "Do not use G13 out of context with disregard for the remainder of WP:CSD."  Unscintillating (talk) 14:38, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

In my experience, when I've restored articles (several per week) a couple years ago I was restoring many articles that had been nominated for CSD 13 deletion by HasteurBot. Now when I restore one, it's rarely one that HasteurBot nominated. I thought maybe HasteurBot had been shut off because I'm not seeing much from it anymore. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:26, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

• The following quote is from WP:Criteria for speedy deletion, oldid=820375694.

==== G13. Abandoned Drafts and Articles for creation submissions ==== Shortcut WP:G13 Further information: Wikipedia:Articles for creation This applies to any pages in the userspace, that have not been edited (excluding bot edits and maintenance actions such as tagging) in over six months. Redirects are excluded from G13 deletion. Drafts deleted in this manner may be restored upon request by following the procedure at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion/G13 . {{ Db-afc }}

• The following quote is an extract from the policy template used in oldid=820375694.

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy. It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow.

• The following quotes are from WP:Criteria for speedy deletion, oldid=820375694.  The first quote is from the lede:

...Speedy deletion is intended to reduce the time spent on deletion discussions for pages or media with no practical chance of surviving discussion.[1] Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases. If a page has survived its most recent deletion discussion, it should not be speedy deleted except for newly discovered copyright violations and pages that meet specific uncontroversial criteria; these criteria are noted below. Contributors sometimes create pages over several edits, so administrators should avoid deleting a page that appears incomplete too soon after its creation. Anyone can request speedy deletion by adding one of the speedy deletion templates. Before nominating a page for speedy deletion, consider whether it could be improved, reduced to a stub, merged or redirected elsewhere, reverted to a better previous revision, or handled in some other way. A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its revisions are also eligible. Users nominating a page for speedy deletion should specify which criterion/criteria the page meets, and should notify the page creator and any major contributors. . . .

== Footnotes == ^ In this context, "speedy" refers to the simple decision-making process, not the length of time since the article was created.

== Introduction to criteria == . . . Use common sense when applying a speedy deletion request to a page: review the page history to make sure that all prior revisions of the page meet the speedy deletion criterion, because a single editor can replace an article with material that appears to cause the page to meet one or more of the criteria.

=== Pages that have survived deletion discussions === When applicable, the following criteria may be used to delete pages that have survived their most recent deletion discussions: G5, creation by banned or blocked users, subject to the strict condition that the AfD participants were unaware that the article would have met the criterion and/or that the article creator's blocked or banned status was not known to the participants of the AfD discussion. G6, technical deletions G8, pages dependent on nonexistent pages G9, office actions G12, unambiguous copyright violations A2, foreign language articles on other Wikimedia projects A5, transwikied pages F8, images on Commons F9, unambiguous copyright infringement U1, user requests deletion within their own userspace These criteria may only be used in such cases when no controversy exists; in the event of a dispute, start a new deletion discussion. However, newly discovered copyright violations should be tagged for G12 if the violation existed in all previous revisions of the article. G5 may be also used at discretion subject to meeting the criterion outlined above.

== Procedure for administrators == See also: Wikipedia:Deletion process Make sure to specify the reason for deletion in the deletion summary. Also, in general the article's creator and major contributors should have been notified. Before deleting a page, check the cut-and-paste move involved. Also: The initial edit summary may have information about the source of or reason for the page. The talk page may refer to previous deletion discussions or have ongoing discussion relevant to including the page. The SALTing the page or keeping it on good reason. What links here may show that the page is an oft-referred part of the encyclopedia, or may show other similar pages that warrant deletion. For pages that should not be re-created, incoming links in other pages (except in discussions, archives and tracking pages) should be removed.

Posted by Unscintillating (talk) 14:38, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

@Unscintillating: The bot takes the more conservative view that any edit (even a bot edit) resets the clock on G13. I believe the AfC submission template doesn't have exceptions for bots so while the text of G13 may grant an exception for minor edits and bot edits, the two largest sources (the AfC template and HasteurBot) of notice adhere to the more conservative interpretation. Having taken some time out this morning to poke at the Nominate for Deletion script, I discovered a strange oddity in that pages that were edited within a few hours of being notified on were blocking the potential list of nominations HasteurBot could process. I've added a bit of code to fix that if the page is edited after the notification goes out, the bot drops the future potential and lets the page go around for another cycle of 6 month aging. Bot should start doing nominations as usual (up to 50 nominations in the G13 category (so that admins aren't flooded with nominations), every half hour 24/7 if the 6 month and 5 months + 1 month of notify are both valid). In the next few days it should be taking the mantle back up. Hasteur (talk) 15:36, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I assume you agree here that your bot is not compliant with policy.  Unscintillating (talk) 15:59, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

WP:BOTN, not debated here. This particular task was approved (and then re-approved, if I remember correctly) so if you feel light fighting that battle it should be done over thataway. Primefac (talk

)

I do not agree with that assertion and question if you're out looking for a fight. Hasteur (talk) 16:11, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello all. I recently moved a newly created page from user space to articles, and it was flagged for speedy deletion. I responded to this quickly, but (as far as I can tell from the logs) the page was then quickly deleted by another admin as I tried to take the page out of the article space. I wrote a message on the users talk pages, but so far haven't heard back (admitted just under 24 hours). However, it did make me think that perhaps some a guideline could be added somewhere, that where pages are speedily deleted without discussion, the deleting admin should be available for comment for a reasonable time of the deletion, e.g. via their talk page?

In my case, I think there's a good case to be made that the speedy deletion nomination and actual deletion were perhaps applied hastily (see User_talk:RHaworth, User talk:Diannaa), and I now have to wait for a response. I am sure that the actions by the admins were in good faith and this is ABSOLUTELY NOT A COMPLAINT to those admins. I'd just like to put forward the contributors perspective: For myself, as contributor to Wikipedia (with a fair understanding of Creative Commons and promoting open equitable processes), it feels frustrating that the page has been pulled without a copy, and my agency in improving the page, or at least discussing the page in proximity to the nomination/deletion, has been removed.

This post IS NOT about arguing whether the page should have been deleted or not, but whether there a community guideline somewhere might be useful that says: "If you speedy delete a page, then (if at all possible) please be available for comment to discuss the issue with the page editors. If you are speedily deleting a new page or a recently edited page, please take into account the reasons for the deletion and opportunities for amendment, and consider forwarding the page content to the last editor of the page."

What do others think? Bjohas (talk) 15:23, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Per our

admin accountabiity policy, "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed." I typically interpret this as giving an administrator 24 hours after their first edit that postdates your query on their talk page to respond substantively, but that part is just my opinion. Tazerdadog (talk

) 16:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

• Hello Bjohas. Assuming your query is only about wanting to know about the community guideline, I'll keep this to the point. What Tazer says is correct. However, does it apply in this case? Not at all. Not that administrators need to be available every waking second, but you posted on Dianaa's page at 11.00 and 11:46, 14 January 2018 (UTC) and Dianaa responded at 12:44, 14 January 2018 (UTC). In all probability, you missed it. And RHaworth hasn't edited Wikipedia since 13 January. Additionally, you've been instructed by Dianna on why we're extremely strict about copyright violations – which is what you posted. So my suggestion would be, be careful about such copyright violations in the future. And try to give editors reasonable time to respond (1-2 days is quite reasonable). Thanks, Lourdes 16:37, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

That's very helpful thanks. (Btw. have now responded to Dianaa's answer, which I hadn't seen. Dianna hadn't actually deleted the page, but RHaworth.)

In any case, my suggestion "If you speedy delete a page, then (if at all possible) please be available for comment to discuss the issue with the page editors." is taken care of. by existing guidelines as Tazerdadog points out.

What about the recommendation: "If you are speedily deleting a new page or a recently edited page, please take into account the reasons for the deletion and opportunities for amendment, and consider forwarding the page content to the last editor of the page." - I had added a section to the page that was my own, creating links to other articles, free of copyright infringement. Sure, that wouldn't have left a feasible article, but if I'd been sent what I had done, then I could have built on this by removing the copyrighted elements. What do you think? Bjohas (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Admins are under no obligation to send problematic material to an editor before they delete a speedy delete a page. If a user wants an old copy of a page, all they have to do is ask the deleting admin. Primefac (talk) 17:10, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I guess my proposal is to consider this as an additional guide (not before deletion, but after deletion). In my case, I had set time aside to work on the page, but after deletion the admin wasn't available (though I messaged minutes after the deletion). So I'd like to put this forward as an additional consideration, but it's jsut an idea Bjohas (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Here's a second idea. How about recommending posting to the last editors talk page, at least saying that the page was deleted? This happened with the speedy deletion notice, but not with he actual page deletion. I think that would be helpful too. Bjohas (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I think it's a reasonably nice suggestion to inform the creator of the page (not the last editor) that their page has been deleted (something akin to, for example, how article authors are informed before a

GA review starts and then again once the review ends). I say nice, because I understand the perspective that you have. But I don't think there will be consensus to include this, even as a suggestion. I myself would consider it an additional unnecessary step to put into the deletion process, specially when the author of the article has already been informed of a pending deletion in advance. Lourdes

14:52, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, yes, that sounds fair. Bjohas (talk) 20:56, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I made F7 into a bullet list because of the subcriterion identification at

• WP:F7a
• WP:F7b
• WP:F7c
• WP:F7d

LaundryPizza03 (talk) 00:17, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

They're all about duplication of existing pages. Just name the new category G14 and put

This can apply to a article that is part of a content fork, a lower-quality or different-extension version of a file, a template that duplicates functionality, and more.

in the section. Care to differ or discuss with me? The N^th User 18:40, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Ultimately, those four criteria each have quite a bit of subtlety, and mashing them into one would create a monster kludge of a criterion. My best attempt is below, where I sacrifice a good bit of information to minimize this kludge.:

G14. Duplicate pages

Pages that substantially duplicate the functionality of another page on English Wikipedia or Wikipedia Commons may be deleted subject to the following conditions:

• The page to be deleted does not improve on, or provide functionality in addition to, the page to be retained in any way (more information, higher resolution, etc)

• There is no relevant contribution history in the page to be deleted.

• For articles, consider the possibility of converting the page to a redirect instead of deleting.

• For all files, ensure that the file format is the same, and the resolution is the same or lower prior to deletion.

• For files that duplicate a file on Commons, ensure that the page is not protected, has a solid license and source status so that it is not at risk of deletion at commons, and is not marked with {{Do not move to Commons}} or {{Keep local}}.

• Templates should be tagged for 7 days prior to deletion

Ensure that all pages that link to or use the page being deleted are updated to use the remaining copy of the page.

Cheers, Tazerdadog (talk) 02:06, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

• No. No. Please no. These criteria are only superficially similar, and their merger substantially broadens all of them. —
  Cryptic
  02:43, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Who says that that's a bad thing? If someone makes a category titled Category:North Atlantic tropical cyclones, moves all of the subcategories of Category:Atlantic hurricanes to it, then makes it a subcategory of Category:Tropical cyclones by basin, that's a duplicate category of Category:Atlantic hurricanes that could be covered under G14, but there's currently no category-specific criterion for deleting duplicate categories. Care to differ or discuss with me? The N^th User 03:18, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

• There are plenty of cases where two pages have duplicate functionality which are absolutely fine. For instance if I decide to work on an article I can start by copying the article to a draft version. That draft version is a duplicate of the article and would qualify for speedy deletion under this criterion. We have portals which consist of text from articles, the portal could be deleted as a duplicate of the articles. I'm sure there are others. The idea is good but in practice I don't think it would help. Hut 8.5 07:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
• New criteria should be both "objective" and "uncontestable". The proposal is, as mentioned above, neither. Regards SoWhy 14:20, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I recently encountered a situation in draft space where an author had created two copies of drafts on the same person. Creating two or more drafts on the same subject is common, as any of various sorts of good faith errors. Most commonly it happens because the author creates the draft in a sandbox, and a reviewer moves it to draft space, and the author then creates it again in the sandbox in good faith. Anyway, in this case one of the drafts was accepted, and I tagged the other one for

If a draft is a direct copy of an existing article, and no attribution is provided, it should be

G12'd as a copyvio. With attribution, I suppose it could just be redirected back to the article as a duplicate. If it's merely "this draft already exists as an article" then the creator should be notified (there's a very good chance they're "sandboxing" changes they want to make). In other words, at the moment I don't see a need for a specific "duplicate draft" speedy criteria. Primefac (talk

) 02:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

What's wrong with having two drafts on the same topic? Maybe two editors want to work on the article separately, or somebody wants to try out two different ideas. We don't allow that in mainspace but it's fine in draftspace. There's nothing wrong with having a draft which duplicates a mainspace article either, people use it when they want to work on the article without having their changes go live immediately. I don't see any need for this and it would get in the way of people doing useful work. Hut 8.5 07:44, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with duplicate drafts (I don't think my above post made that clear) but we should at the very least notify the duplicate-draft creator(s) about it; a lot of the time they don't realize they've made a duplicate (hell, I had one person request the creation of a draft that was already an article!). Primefac (talk) 12:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I tend to request a

WP:HISTMERGE where the sandbox is created around the same time the draft was and the editor hasn't reappeared, or appears to have moved on to other things. --Izno (talk

) 15:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I will ask another question. Should we define a set of speedy deletion criteria, beginning with D1, for drafts, where D1 would be the current G13, which is draft-specific? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Other than extending "D1" to the user space (because "old abandoned drafts" that are submitted via the AFC process can be G13'd) I see nothing wrong with this, but what other speedy criteria would we have? The only thing I can think of is "no way no how this will ever be an article" but for that we have MFD and (if it's abandoned) G13. Primefac (talk) 02:51, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

+1 Tazerdadog (talk) 03:07, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, MfD is too slow for the deletion of obvious trash, and G13 is it's own set of problems, in my opinion. Support for Draft criteria.

• I think we need a set of D* criteria, largely matching a few of the A* criteria. However, duplicating an existing article? Why delete it? Why not redirect? Redirecting preserves the authors presumably small edit history and will be less confusing if they come back to look for what they previously did. In the first instance, a redirect will send the author, and any similarly thinking authors, straight to the mainspace page which is the page they should be improving of they are interested in the topic. Why require an admin action for something that can be done by any editor? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:13, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  Genuinely out of curiosity, which A* criteria would we duplicate? I could maybe see an

  A7). Primefac (talk

  ) 12:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  • • True, the CSD#G* criteria cover most of what could be Speedy deleted from DraftSpace, although the time allowed in mainspace, ~ hours, would correspond to a week in draftspace. G1, G2, G3 can be applied more liberally that people think, but allow the editor at least a week to return. G10, G11 and G12 should be applied immediately. With G11, if a draft is started using unsuitable sources, it is better to delete immediately and tell the author to start again with only independent sources, as per
      WP:TNT.
      CSD#A* criteria? Arguably, A1 when old, A3 when old, A7&A9 to loosen application of G11, this would cover a lot of definitely hopeless stuff. A11, yes. A2 in draftspace calls for a soft redirect. A10 should *always* be immediately redirected. Forking in draftspace only causes problems, and redirecting is always a sufficient answer, there’s never a need to suppress the history from its author. —SmokeyJoe (talk
      ) 22:03, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
• If the article was copy-pasted then the draft should be histmerged. If there are two copies of the draft and only one was moved to article space, the other will become eligible for G13 after six months. If there is an actual problem to fix (e.g. POV fork) then it can be XfDd. What cases are not covered by these three existing outcomes please? Guy (Help!) 10:50, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I am aware of the massive numbers of drafts and all the trash in the draft namespace. However, those would be better eliminated with DraftPRODs, draft-specific CSD, and Drafts for Discussion/Deletion. The fact is, G13 as a deletion criterion is extremely arbitrary. 6 months is not by any means a sign of quality or lack of it. I am aware of the G13 refunds, but the fact that the drafts are invisible to normal users in the meantime, and the fact that the original author is most likely gone, means that much useful or salvageable ideas and content are deleted. It is for this reason that I propose we eliminate G13 as it is used now. Opinions?

• A. Work the cream An alternative approach, of identifying the drafts that should not be deleted, is more oriented towards productivity. Template:Promising draft exists for doing this. I think this templating of the better stuff could be improved by categorising, and sub-categorising by a quality and topic. This would provide a reservoir of drafts more tempting for editors to look at. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Also not a bad idea.

talk

) 07:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• B. CSD#D* DraftPROD is no good because the pages are not watched. If you collect the worst of the draft pages, why would anyone want to read them? It would be a de facto CSD, and as such, it would, de facto, need to satisfy the CSD new criterium criteria. Let's just talk about CSD#D* criteria. I suggest D* criteria can be drafted from the following A* criteria:

2.2.1 A1. No context

2.2.3 A3. No content

2.2.5 A7. No indication of importance (people, animals, organizations, web content, events)

2.2.6 A9. No indication of importance (musical recordings)

2.2.7 A10. Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic

2.2.8 A11. Obviously invented

All should be required to be applicable to old pages, say > 4 weeks. A7 and A9 would want to be much tighter for drafts, and I suspect the community won't accept it. A10 in draftspace, just redirect to the mainspace article. A11 definitely. Also, be more liberal in using G2 (tests)(if old) and G11 (unusable promotion)(tag immediately). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that's a pretty good idea.

talk

) 07:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

It's an old idea, and I don't hope much hope for it, except maybe "Obviously invented", which be better fitted into G3. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:14, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

• C. Empower the reviewers I also suggest a new CSD#D criteria: "Agreed to be hopeless by any two Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Reviewers". Both reviewers must have the permission, and carry the responsibility for what they tag. NPReviewers who misuse this function make lose the permission. I believe that all AfC reviewers should be NPR qualified. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:15, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

  Well, some drafts look pretty bad in their early stages, to be fair.

  talk

  ) 07:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

  Agreed. I've seen a draft start out as a hopeless mess of promotional fluff and evolve into a nice neutral article that got accepted into main space. And the editor who started out as a company PR rep ends up working productively in non-COI areas. It happens. Rarely, but it happens. ~Anachronist (talk) 08:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

  • You pointed at the new criterion criteria just above, in the very same edit. How is this at all objective or uncontestable? —
    Cryptic
    08:22, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Sure, some drafts start off pretty poor, but as long as someone works on them they rarely are deleted. G13 covers Abandoned drafts.

I've tagged many blank Drafts as G2 Test Page and never had an Admin reject the tag.

Tagging drafts as no indication of significance will be controversial.

There is already G3? For Hoaxes. I'd like to see that expanded to cover "obviously invented".

Currently we tend to redirect topics that duplicate mainspace topics. Some people like to use a Draft copy to rework or experiment with a mainspace page, so getting a CSD for that will be tough.  :::Legacypac (talk) 08:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Has there been discussion on whether G13 should apply to drafts which were previously moved from mainspace? Many valid stubs are unilaterally draftified without anyone noticing, and G13 tagging would result in them being deleted without going through the due process of AfD. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:59, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that is a valid problem, that has been mentioned before by other editors (including myself). Unfortunately, consensus back then was that we should just trust editors and admins not to tag/delete such articles. I'd be happy if G13 was amended to exclude such drafts. Regards SoWhy 08:21, 19 January 2018 (UTC)\

As a note, all G13 pages can be immediately refunded, for any reason. Thus, if for some reason an "incubated" article-turned-draft is deleted improperly, all that's required is to ask for it back. Primefac (talk) 12:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe we need a radical rethink of G13. How about moving all G13 eligible drafts into mainspace and then triaging them again just like any new mainspace page? Anything speedily deletable under an A criterion could be speedily deleted, other things could be

WP:PRODded, and any page that doesn't meet AFC reviewer's criteria but doesn't clearly need to be deleted could either be left alone or at least qualify for AFD instead of MFD. —Kusma (t·c

) 12:10, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

This is a genuine question (not trying to be an ass) but do you know how many pages are G13-deleted every day? If instead of deleting garbage pages in the draft spaces, we move them to the article space and then delete them, we might as well just get rid of the draft space altogether. Primefac (talk) 12:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Not sure how much you remember pre-2013 Wikipedia, but interesting enough, Wikipedia worked well enough without Draft-space for ten years, so basically we'd just go back to how things were before. As for the question, give me a minute and I'll see if I can whip up a database query to answer it. Regards SoWhy 13:03, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

No need for a d-base, it was asking if they knew the numbers. Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions currently has 906 pages in it. Hasteur could confirm, but I seem to recall that the bot only puts up something like 30 per day to avoid flooding. Either way, if we dumped all 900 pages into Article space, TonyBallioni would have my hide. Primefac (talk) 13:10, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

the

User:MusikBot/StaleDrafts/Report and the report does not list Userspace pages tagged AfC and stale. This category [4] has 4100 pages but does not break out by age of the draft. Legacypac (talk

) 18:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To put some further numbers through - about 250 drafts are submitted for review each day. Of those about 50 are accepted, (the following are very rough numbers) so even assuming a 75% resubmission rate (after initial decline) we're talking about at least 50 pages per day being G13-eligible (and I suspect the resub rate is a lot lower, probably around 50% for 100 new G13-able pages per day). Primefac (talk) 13:10, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, according to this, there were 1649 G13 deletions in 2018 so far (or approx. 87 each day). I think NPP could handle an additional 87 pages a day. Regards SoWhy 13:13, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Huh, I was actually pretty close. Neat. Primefac (talk) 13:17, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Mind you though, those 87 are all deletions, not just pages that were previously moved to draft-space without discussion. That number is still likely quite high but not as high as that one (when I last ran that query in August, it gave us 20,700 moves to draftspace in approx. 4 years or ~14 moves per day. Those are the pages the OP doesn't want to see G13'd and I think we could agree that those 14 pages are day can really be handled by MFD or by moving them back to article space. Also, as a concession of sorts, I could imagine that we can agree that in return the A-criteria can be allowed to be applied if the page could have been deleted under them while in mainspace. Regards SoWhy 13:37, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia worked well enough without Draft-space for ten years No it didn't, it was dysfunctional and utterly shit. Nick (talk) 13:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@Nick: Do you think it is less dysfunctional now, and if yes, how is that connected to the existence of draft space? —Kusma (t·c) 15:04, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

• I think in all the discussions that have been had about draftifying I can recall, G13 was seen as a positive less bitey alternative to PROD or AfD (where if we are honest, most of these drafts would end up), and it was explictly discussed as a feature of draftifying by many supporting the practice (and on the flip side, was one of the main objections of those opposing). Based on the current monthly averages, an extra 87 pages would still have us under the pre-ACTRIAL levels. We've currently been reducing the backlog at about 1900 a week for the last two weeks, but as a project we are in a backlog drive, so I'm not sure how long that will last. I'd oppose simply dumping the G13s from mainspace back into mainspace as a matter of course (we can assume that at least some new page reviewers have sense about them and that they were draftified for a reason). At the same time, I don't think that anything should be G13'd as a matter of course: as with all deletions, admins need to actually read the content and look at the history. If it was a draft with potential that someone (incorrectly) sent to draft space only because of formatting, the G13 at the very least should be declined. I also think that admins shouldn't be G13ing things they have sent to draft space on their own, as it would amount to a unilateral deletion.
  tl;dr: I don't think there is consensus to exempt draftified articles from G13, but I also think that admins need to look at the content before deleting. I also think that wholesale moving back to mainspace after 6 months is a bad idea. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, I just re-read the suggestion: from an entirely unrelated to the NPP backlog perspective, I strongly oppose mainspacing all G13 eligible drafts. The amount of undetected copyvio passing the NOINDEX threshold alone is enough to make that idea bad. TonyBallioni (talk) 13:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  Yeaaaah, but that's not how it works, is it? If I'm reading the query I posted above right, Fastily alone has deleted 30 such drafts within 2 minutes, which would mean they had ~4 seconds per page to "actually read the content and look at the history". I'm happy to assume good faith that they read all them before and then just deleted them in one go but somehow I doubt that. Regards SoWhy 14:16, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  Well, the thing is, they're not required to "actually read the content and look at the history", because we talked about it at length and decided that "a draft that's six months stale" is a universal and uncontroversial criterion for immediate deletion. And as you all keep pointing out, it's no big deal because G13'd drafts can be automatically REFUNDed. So what's the problem? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:24, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  Well the policy does say ".A page is eligible for speedy deletion only if all of its revisions are also eligible." (emphasis added) and only by checking the history can an admin ensure that this was actually a draft for six months, no? Also, when we discussed this last, I distinctly remember people arguing that we should not worry about semi-automated bot-like G13 deletions because admins will still check whether

  alternatives to deletion (which still is a policy last I checked) exist. Not sure how you can check for alternatives without considering the whole history. Regards SoWhy

  14:45, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

  To address (once again) the high-speed-deletion fallacy - there's nothing inherently "wrong" with deleting multiple pages in a short span of time. Now, in this particular instance I cannot comment, but it is possible (and I've done it myself) that all of the pages were checked first, and then deleted in rapid succession. Primefac (talk) 15:00, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac: (your 13:10, 19 January 2018 comment): The bot runs every two hours and nominates pages that it has warned on at least one month prior that are still eligible for G13 until Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned drafts or AfC submissions is at 50 members. Wanting to be crystal clear for you. Hasteur (talk) 01:16, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Facepalm not this bullshit again. G13 is explicitly simple and makes ZERO judgements about the content of the page. It's the single most objective criterion out there: Is the page in Draft namespace or has the {{

• I agree with Hasteur. G13 was implemented to deal with backlog so large it was unprocessable. As for draftified mainspace articles, see the restrictions at Wikipedia:Drafts#Draftification_of_pages_from_Article_Space. Basically, articles can only be speediable if: mainspace speediable; or recognized as inadequate during NPP by a New Page Reviewer. Authors have a right to refuse draftification, which means AfD instead. There is a fear that draftification can be used as a back door deletion process. There have been few examples of poor draftification moves, I think it is largely a theoretical fear. The documentation at Wikipedia:Drafts#Draftification_of_pages_from_Article_Space is intended to give recourse should someone find someone draftifying unreasonably. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:50, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

It is interesting how editors with no evident history dealing with the mountain of crap in Draft space come trying to restrict how these Drafts get cleaned up by attempting to layer on extra criteria to G13. For example, Several editors wanted a promising draft template and made a lot of noise about it. Template exists and would respected if those editors ever used it. In the end it was obstructionist backseat driving from users with no real interest in doing the work of sorting abandoned drafts for gems (or maybe the imagined gems could not be found?).

From the abandoned Drafts moved from mainspace I've seen that hit G13 nomination, they are no better or special than other abandoned drafts. The fact some inexperienced editor started the page in mainspace instead of draft does not give the page any halo. Therefore this is a very unnecessary restriction. Legacypac (talk) 14:11, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Legacypac, if you are replying to Hasteur or me, you are very unclear. We are defending the simply applicability of G13. Do you have an issue with the template {{tl:Promising Draft}}? Do you have a problem with restrictions on unilateral draftification of old mainspace pages, as opposed to their G13 deletions if left abandoned? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:50, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

I was commenting on the original proposal to add a carve out on G13 for pages that started in mainspace. I strongly oppose that as unhelpful and unnecessary. I have no issue with "promosing draft" but note the people that made a lot of noise about that proposed restriction on G13 have not implemented it except in a few example pages. While opinions are of course free to give, some actual experience dealing with a meaningful number of drafts leads to more informed opinions. Legacypac (talk) 21:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

• Hasteur, there are always alternatives to deletion. For G13 there are quite a few: some common ones are that the admin can decide to:

1. accept the article.

2. fix the article and accept it.

3. accept it as a redirect

4 accept it for merging some or all of the contents

5 say it needs further time to see if it is fixable, and postpone it

6 fix it partially, thus defeating the G13 by having made an edit.

7. delete it under another criterion that is applicable. (which has the effect of preventing automatic restoration on request)

8. delete it under both G13 and another criterion (which also has the effect of preventing automatic restoration on request)

I have personally done every one of these options when I think it warranted,some of them many dozens of times. In each case, the decision about what might be done is a matter of judgment and will vary between different admins, just as with other speedy criteria.

I'm not objecting to G13. We need this criterion, because about 90% of the G13s should simply be deleted, and that's what I do with them. (my actual % is lower, because I try to work on only the possibly disputable cases, not monopolizing the process)

What we need most is a way to index materialthat has been deleted by G13, so people can see if there is a potentially useful draft. without that it is not just a choice, but a unambiguously bad choice directly contrary to fundamental principles to delete without consideration, because the goal is to make an encyclopedia , not to expeditiously remove material for technical reasons that could be used to improve the encyclopedia.

We do not permit deletion by bots. We therefore should not permit deletion by admins acting as bots. Since this is apparently not completely understood, we may have to adjust the wording of G13. DGG ( talk ) 19:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

All true, which is why I check every page I nominate to see if it is worth saving. Legacypac (talk) 19:14, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

@DGG: Your entire thesis is predicated on someone doing work on the page before it gets to G13. If you were doing items 1-4 before it even got to G13, this wouldn't have been a problem. 5 and 6 are kicking the issue down the road 6 months in which we get to ask the question "Was there any real improvement in the last 6 months when someone decided to dodge the question?". and finally Items 7 and 8 are really the same thing, only that you're suggesting that people look for other CSD (which should have been addressed before it got to 6 months). In short: G13 is an easy tool to reach for because it requires little effort that by the nature of being eligible makes the criterion incontravertable. Hasteur (talk) 21:42, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

the only people notified are the ones who have worked on it before. The listing at CSD exposes it a several hundred people who att least occasionally patrol there. When I say I have rescued dozens in each category, I indeed meant dozens that had already been tagged G13. And this is only among the ones I look at--there are manThere have probably been at least 50 thousand G13s--I have checked perhaps 1/10 of them, and rescued 1/10 of those. There are many subject areas where I do not look, those where I am not competent to either fix or know what is worth fixing. DGG ( talk ) 01:37, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

DGG, Legacypac, is there an easy to find log of your rescued G13-eligible pages? User:DGG/CSD log and User:Legacypac/CSD log are both impressive records of your work getting things deleted, what about things saved? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Disagree that "G13 is fine just the way it is". No, it's not fine, it is an unhappy necessity, and it only continues because we cannot think of any viable alternative. Well, I can think of a possible alternative, it is extending WP:ACTRIAL to draftspace. Stop all non-autoconfirmed accounts from creating *any* page. The one in a million cases where a newcomer has a valid new topic that should be created immediately, can't wait a few days, they can use {{help me}} or any number of other ways of asking for help. But let's wait for the ACTRIAL in mainspace results.
Agree with Hasteur that DGG is presuming the implausible. There are far too many to-be abandoned drafts for the limited community of editors to realistically review, especially considering the extremely low average value of the abandoned drafts compared to other project work that is waiting. The best we can do is encourage editors to glance at them while G13-tagging them. A necessary part of the encouragement is the empowerment that comes from trusting their effort and decision. In this task, Legacypac is doing an extremely valuable task and deserves considerable thanks. Legacypac glancing at each draft before tagging G13 is far better that Hasteur's bot's taggings, but if Legacypac weren't doing it, then it would have to fall to the bot, or some other bot, because we all agreed that the old drafts can't be left to pile up endlessly. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:25, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

@User:SmokeyJoe I use the AFCH Comment tool to "save" some seeming valid topics. There must be way to track that. I also submit pages to AfC so some show up as "accepted" on my talkpage. My move log used to show pages I found and promoted but Some ____ users managed to ban me from moves to mainspace - which is utterly stupid because any user with 10 edits in 4 days can start any garbage in mainspace, yet a skilled user like me working in draft space is restricted.

I'd wholeheartedly support expanding ACTRIAL to all spaces, or at least draft space. It is rare indeed random brand new users find topics that demand a new page right now. Heck in my coin forum you need your acount confirmed by email, approved by an Admin and 10 posts before you can do very much includimg starting a new thread. We cut out nearly all our spam that way. It's pretty absurd that the threshhold to start a page is SO LOW on such a big site. It shows Wikipedia does not value existing volunteers very much because we have to clean up after the random new users. Legacypac (talk) 03:52, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

You do realize that there are plenty of articles that are accepted at AfC that were created by non-AC users right? Even the occasional IP. You don't have to dig through Wikipedia:Articles for creation/recent for very long to determine that fully restricting article creation to only the "worthy" people who have gotten their first flag is a horrible idea that will put off an huge amount of people. Sure there is crap but there will always be crap regardless of what you do. At what point does this end? Why don't we just require registration and a user right to create pages? That would solve all our (perceived) problems. --Majora (talk) 04:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The problem is very real. It broke New Page Patrol and AfC can't keep up with the flood if crap. 4 days/10 edits is a userright called auto confirmed, is VERY easy to get, and it is working wonders in reducing the flood of pages we have to delete. Legacypac (talk) 04:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Not even going to address the entire first part huh? The part about non-autoconfirmed and even IPs creating numerous acceptable drafts that would be lost? No? Ok. As for the user right that was sarcasm (reductio ad absurdum if you will by proposing that only those editors with a specific user right can create articles, not just confirmed people). Should have included some sort of indicator. My mistake. And AfC is doing fine. Always has been. There was a time pre-ACTRIAL where it was sitting permanently at 3,000 articles waiting to be reviewed. It waxes and wanes like anything. --Majora (talk) 04:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Majora, new accounts and IPs can and do write acceptable pages in their first 4 days. These are the exceptions. I suggest that they are capable of understanding the restriction and using the {{help me}} tool if they don't want to wait. Why don't we just require registration and a user right to create pages? I support that. Register and autoconfirmed to create pages. Anyone can edit, but four days and ten edits to create pages. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

It's fairly common for people in education programs to do the composition of the article offline, and only add it to WP when finished. (I'm not sure that's the best way, but it seems now to be the usual way.). There has to be some way of allowing for this. There also has to be some way of allowing for editathons, where people write simple but acceptable articles ( that isn;t the only way to run an editathon, but it's one of the ways used.) I further think it perfectly feasible for any reasonably competent editor to study the basic rules, and write a straightforward biographical article using as a model existing articles--and it was possible even before the visual editor for a WP beginner with any knowledge of html. Not all WP beginners are beginners at accurate writing. Not all are promotional. Many, probably most, are promotional or less than adequately skilled, of course, but it would discourage any competent beginner to not be able to write immediately. It's a balance; we have to allow for both sides.

To see what I've done with drafts other than delete, look at by contributions in draft space. The ones that remove a small number of characters (e.g, -37) are likely to have been removals of G13. I don't usually do that via AFCH. My acceptances can be seen most easily in my move log, and are done with AFCH except those in the past when it wasn't working fast enough. DGG ( talk ) 05:27, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

DGG, I think that doesn't work, because your edits to draftspace pages now in mainspace now look like mainspace edits. Am I wrong? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:47, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

From the Draft space contributions, you can see where I removed the G13 tags for deletion but left the article in draft space; from the moves you can see those I accepted. You ar eright it may not show the edits where I removed the G13 tags, and someone else moved them to mainspace. (You can also see the edits to Draftspace talk--almost all of these will be moves to mainspace). But all these will leave out a lot, and if anyone wants to set up something that will get them all together, I would be grateful. Looking at these all, I am a little startled--I thought I was primarily trying to save, and I am primarily trying to save, but there is nonetheless much more that needs to be deleted than rescued. This is a well-known class of problem: anything that reduces the errors made by not deleting inappropriate articles will increase the errors made by deleting inappropriate ones. We cannot reach perfection in either direction without making many errors in the other. It's a matter of balance, which is why all deletion activities here must be carried out with judgment. Our judgment may be inadequate, but it offers the opportunity to improve on automatic operations. (to be fair, it also offers the opportunity to do worse than a well-constructed automatic rule). There's an addition I would suggest to the basic pillars: WP cannot not be expected to be perfect. DGG ( talk ) 09:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The balance shown in the stats worked up was roughly 80% of new pages created by non-autoconfirmed users get deleted vs about 20% deleted for auto-conformed users. Anything is possible but a little bar to jump keeps out massive amount of junk. Legacypac (talk) 06:21, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Someone organised enough to write up a full draft, with references, surely they can manage to get autoconfirmed, or ask for help? Four days to get autoconfirmed compares very well with months to get a draft reviewed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:45, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• To address the original question, drafts that were originally in mainspace can and should be treated exactly the same as drafts that weren't, IMO. Moving to draft space is a common thing where an article is headed for deletion, and leaving them in draft space indefinitely is basically an end-run around deletion. G13 is a housekeeping thing, predicated, I think, on the view that we're not a web host. Moving to draft space is fine if peple are going to fix the article, but it's not indefinite leave to remain. Most G13 articles I have seen are adverts or resumes. That's the plain truth of it. Guy (Help!) 11:14, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Drafts that were not previously articles

I think the issue is not specific to drafts that were previously articles (given that they weren't submitted via AfC, are they even eligible for G13 anyway?). True, a lot of garbabe gets created via AfC and it's probably nice to have an easy fix like G13 that enables the easy disposal of that garbage, but with the way this process works, what gets thrown away isn't only the garbage.

The trouble is that it's in effect an automated process: the tagging is accomplished by a bot, and the deletion itself comes with no strings attached: even though an admin can review what they delete, there's no requirement to do so and the overwhelming majority of G13 deletions I've seen are performed by one admin who doesn't seem to look at what they delete (I arrive at that conclusion because of their speed – several dozen deletions per minute – and the fact that they don't otherwise have edits to the draft namespace which would have attested to them ever having taken an action different from deletion).

Now, there wouldn't be anything wrong with such automatic deletions if there existed some process of filtering out the good stuff. There is no such thing. Let's start with the review itself: most reviewers are doing their job well, but their decisions are made based on the state of the draft and not on the notability of the topic (they aren't required to do

Another issue is that the occasional

After that, a month before a draft becomes G13 eligible, it's added to a category and so theoretically, people could trawl for anything worth keeping. I've seen some people do that, but I've also seen that all of the mainspace-worthy declined drafts I had on my watchlist were deleted – the coverage is sketchy and again, there's no systematic process.

In short: from the moment a draft is declined to the time it's deleted, there are several things that could in principle stop good content from being thrown away, but in practice none do. The deletion of a draft is virtually decided the moment it's declined. – Uanfala (talk) 22:56, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

@

WP:ABF position that the nominators are willy nilly nominating things. I'm fairly certain that the nominators are doing their due diligence on the page prior to nomination including trying to avoid a G13 as it's annoying to see it come back. Hasteur (talk

) 01:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't aware of G13's extended applicability: I've only ever looked at drafts that were created via the AfC process. Still, this is beside the point. Apologies for making my post unclear: I wasn't suggesting that reviewers were failing in their required duty of doing BEFORE, my point was that the very absence of such a requirement (combined with everything else I'm trying to draw attention to) leads to a situation where acceptable texts on notable topics get deleted on a large scale. I'm not sure what nominations you're referring to. – Uanfala (talk) 01:32, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Your whole post is based on assuming reviewers are incompetant and don't accept good topics, CSD nominators are just looking for edit count and Admins are too dumb to postpone deletion or recognize worthy content. There is a process that saves the gems from the garbage. It works. Join in reviewing drafts and promoting the good ones rather than backseat driving from a position of ignorance. There is NO situation with G13 where "acceptable texts on notable topics get deleted on a large scale" Legacypac (talk) 08:45, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Again, I'm sorry for not making myself clear enough, but I encourage you to read my post: I'm not asserting any of the things you allege I'm asserting. My whole point was that with the current system, the collective outcome of well-intentioned and acceptably competent AfC activity is that an unacceptably large amount of good content gets thrown down the drain. I welcome criticism of individual points of what I had written above (and will be happy to provide further details and examples), but I don't think the overall attitude of outright refusal to acknowledge the existence of a problem is serving the community well. – Uanfala (talk) 19:54, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I take issue with your unsubstantiated assertion that an "unacceptably large amount of good quality content gets thrown down the drain". Too many incorrect assumptions posted and I disagree with your conclusion. Legacypac (talk) 06:42, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Exactly, G13 is just far too broad. Too much quality-ish workable content is trashed.

talk

) 07:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

We had strong support to expand G13 not too long ago, and I see no evidence good content is being trashed. I suggest reviewing the discussion on that. If abandoned marginal pages keep piling up it gets harder and harder to identify and eliminate the try problematic pages There is strong support for the idea Drafts are temporary pages and need to either be improved to mainspace or be removed after a period of inactivity. Legacypac (talk) 07:34, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Under R3, redirects from page moves are not eligible unless the moved page was also recently created. Shouldn't there also be an exemption for pages that were recently moved, since sometimes a redirect might need to be deleted after a page move aimed at fixing unambiguous errors in a page name? ToThAc (talk) 16:06, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Some selected previous conversations showing how we got here. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

The issue is that if a page was at some title for a significant amount of time then there may be other people on the internet who have linked to that article at the former title. If we move it to another title and delete the redirect then we break their links and contribute to link rot. If the moved page wasn't at that title for very long then this problem doesn't arise. Hut 8.5 20:43, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi, let's say a page is taken to XfD, someone comes along and !votes Keep, then the creator of the page !votes Delete. Does G7 apply here as the creator now wants the page deleted, or should the XfD run to closure as someone wants to keep it? Iffy★Chat -- 09:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

• Note that G7 requires the tagged to be the sole author, ignoring bot edits, usually ignoring minor edits, including gnoming. Adding categories doesn’t make an author. If these conditions are met, there is usually a good reason to let it be deleted, such as a COI and inclusion of private information. I would ping the keep !voter and EnquiriesNZ as to whether they might change their mind given the new information of the sole author !voting delete. If the keep !voter intends to recreate following G7 deletion, do not G7 delete as it will lead to copyright non-compliance. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
• In my view, the moment someone says to keep at AfD, G7 is done with. There's no harm in letting the AfD finish its seven days.
  talk
  ) 02:03, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
• G7 is a speedy deletion criterion and those usually require that deletion is not controversial (G10 and G12 excepted to a limited amount). If someone argues to keep an article, G7 is moot because now the deletion is controversial. If there are other reasons for deletion, like private information, these can usually be handled by revision deletion without deleting the whole article if the subject itself is found worthy of inclusion and the information was removed by editing, so I have to disagree with SmokeyJoe on that. Regards SoWhy 07:56, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
• This just happened with 'Murica. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 31#'Murica was closed earlier today with a "retarget" close even though the creator supported deletion. A couple hours later, a random IP slaps a a {{db-g7}} tag on it and RHaworth deleted it. -- Tavix ^(talk) 22:12, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

  Yes, but that's an issue with the patrolling admin not actually looking into the situation and simply clicking "delete". I've had a number of G12s deleted out from under me when (I assume) they just looked at the copyvios report, saw a high number, and didn't investigate further. Also, for what it's worth, it's only happened once since I made this change, which is why I haven't said anything to RH directly. Primefac (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

  To wit, I've restored it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

• Agree with all the above. G7 should be halted once someone even starts asking if should be kept. As SoWhy points out, "non-controversial" is the operative phrase. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, I tagged an article in draft space for