Past discussion has shown that there is some confusion about what is meant by A7's language: "…and is a lower standard than notability" (the same appears in A9). There is an ambiguity—and maybe even a contradiction—with that language. It arises from the fact that an assessment of notability turns on whether a topic is notable – which is not limited to the article's content. Indeed, at our main forum for testing notability, AfD, we often explain to people who bring an article there after only looking at the nominated page's content, that they should have checked for the existence of external sources because we are testing the topic and not the existing content of the article. By contrast, A7 and other speedy criteria are all about lines in the sand as to the current content of a nominated page.

Since there are articles that would be deleted when considering A7, that would not be deleted when assessing notability about the topic, on that basis a person could logically argue that notability is actually a lower standard, or the other way around, that A7 is a higher bar to meet. What we really mean to impart when we say A7 presents a lower standard is that: an indication of importance or significance is a lower bar than what is needed to show proof of / to evidence notability. So I suggest we change the language to something like:

"…and is a lower standard than is necessary to prove the notability of the topic."
-or-
some other language formulation conveying that clarified concept.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:07, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I know what you mean. I think your proposed wording would make this section at least a little more clear.- MrX 21:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree. I was confused about this, myself, but that wording makes it clearer. —PC-XT+ 23:02, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Apparently Hullaballoo Wolfowitz objects to this minor revision. Since the intent of the policy has not changed, I'm not sure I understand that objection.- MrX 18:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

What part of "longstanding policy language enjoying substantial consensus should not be materially altered after a brief discussion by a handful of editors" isn't clear to you? The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 18:25, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I spend a lot of time reviewing new articles and I do not enjoy the ambiguous language. Rather than criticize and disrupt the consensus seeking process, why not tell us why you think the previous wording is better than the proposed wording? Thanks.- MrX 18:29, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Your comment was a lot funnier than I expected it to be at first glance, User:MrX. By the way, the page in question has been reported at WP:RFPP. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 18:52, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

@Hullaballoo Wolfowitz: for me the "materially altered" part is unclear - you have not adequately explained why you view this clarification to be a material alteration. Your explanation is otherwise clear, though of course the underlying premise is incorrect. VQuakr (talk) 23:34, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

I just tried really hard to think of a reason to speedy delete an article, but there wasn't one. It was an unreferenced BLP but wasn't negative - rather the contrary. It had a claim of significance: the first or second sentence stated that the person had participated in a series that got X number of views (I'm thinking YouTube). I did a search for reliable sources in case I could radically rewrite it and came up with nothing except YouTube and various social media (and LinkedIn pages for other people of the same name, as often happens these days). I really didn't want to BLP-PROD it because it needed to be gone as a privacy violation. But it did not fit any speedy deletion criterion. Nonetheless, someone nominated it as an A7 and another admin deleted it. It was in a foreign language, but I have seen the same thing happen with English-language articles of this type (and I searched using the specialized search engine for that language after I searched Google). It seems to me that practice has actually shifted away from "The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines." and that A7 is now being used as an IAR category to make non-defamatory but inadvisable BLPs (especially of minors) disappear. This almost certainly overlaps with the above concern, and with the concern still further up the page about explicit statements of notability vs. GNG, but it does not really fully fit, just as such articles don't fit into Ritchie333's set of example situations, and I would like to know whether people agree that this is being quietly done, and what thoughts there are on whether it should be written into the guideline as a BLP exception. Or whether I should just IAR as others are doing and speedy delete the next one I come across. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know the case (drop me an email if you want to point me at a specific), but you say here "because it needed to be gone as a privacy violation". There is at one particular case in which IAR is very appropriate. If the article contains suppressible material about a living person, or, even more so, a minor, it probably should be deleted or revdel'd and sent to Oversight. Our policies on oversight suggest intentional deflection as to why the material is being deleted--a even barely plausible A7 might be fair and pragmatic cover for "hiding this until it is well and truly hidden."

I would not support handwaving away a strict interpretation of A7 without a very serious reason to do so. Most things can wait seven days. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:34, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course, there is always the consideration of how significant getting X views on YouTube really is, and how credible the claim is if not referenced. It seems to be the case that referenced Alexa ratings are not regarded as claims to significance, so why should unsupported claims of YouTube views be? Peridon (talk) 09:16, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

The policy does state that any credible claim of significance disqualifies the article from A7. Which is why I didn't sweep it under the rug myself. And it was not defamatory. I've seen a few of these - often in foreign languages, like this one, because I watchlist WP:Pages needing translation into English and I rarely do new page patrol. I considered that my fellow admins may be deleting them partly because they can't read them, but I'm unwilling to make that assumption. (And I don't think it was suppressible in this case. Just unwise.) I believe our praxis has in fact quietly changed. Or perhaps the issue raised in the preceding section is at work, with some lack of clarity about whether a claim of significance that is inadequate for notability rules out A7? As I say, I actually searched, thinking I might rewrite it (and then selectively revdelete). But I did not attempt to verify the YouTube claim; I looked for 3rd-party coverage. Looking at it again, maybe it was suppressible, but it hasn't been suppressed, so Joe Decker, I'll take you up on that invitation to e-mail you, before I go to bed. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:28, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I checked the article, and I am sympathetic to the A7 As for OS, my first reaction was the same as yours, Yngvadottir, but I'll pass it to OS anyway, emails to OS are cheap, and there is absolutely no shame in an occasional denied OS request. --j⚛e decker^talk 06:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I would say that an unreferenced BLP of someone whose notability is claimed to be in the last decade, but has no coverage in online reliable sources at all is probably okay for an A7. I would go easy on historical figures, who may never have been committed to professional coverage outside of traditional print media, but not for a recent music / TV star. Rather than the specific wording, think of why we have A7s - they are to save wasting everyone's time at AfD. If you're confident that the article is totally and utterly unsalvageable at AfD, you're probably on solid ground speedying it. However, @Yngvadottir:, as you're an admin, I would nominate it first for A7, and only delete something another editor has tagged legitimately for A7. It never hurts to get a second opinion, as if you make a mistake on a straight delete, you run the risk of being lambasted for it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:36, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all. Not oversighted yet - I decided to ask about this kind of instance because it does seem to fall between the cracks. My search for sources was actually above and beyond based on the guidance for A7, and the alternative in this case would have been PROD, but I was rather happy than not that it didn't hang around for a week. I do take deletion seriously - in fact have quite a reputation as an inclusionist - but I doubt I'd have got much flak for deleting this even if it were final; if someone does have lots of fans, it will likely simply be recreated - or they can always ask for it to be undeleted; and I think the best comparison here is with a minor's user page. Still puzzled, frankly, about the cases where there is a claim and there isn't defamation, but I'll remind myself next time about the option of a suppression request. I think I tend to set the bar too high on those where there isn't defamation. Sorry to be vague, anyway. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:28, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

In a situation such as this, I would recommend deleting it per A7 or G6 and immediately handing it off to oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org. If we don't think that suppression is warranted, it's real easy to undelete it for handling elsewhere. I'd rather err on the side of caution than to have a minor's private information sitting out there in public. Thanks ​—DoRD (talk)​ 20:30, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Just to close the loop, I have received word that the information has been suppressed. I'm glad this came up, I've learned something. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:47, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

@Technical 13: In response to this edit:

• In December 2009, Davidwr (talk · contribs) changed G7 to exclude deletion of content pages when there is a talk page having contributions by another author. The change was apparently prompted by a situation where a blanked talk page was G7ed (see [1], [2]).
• In June 2014, I started a discussion about modifying Davidwr's modification so that G7ing an article in response to another user's talk page comment would be permitted. I proposed that, instead, talk pages were not eligible for G7 unless the same user also has the only substantial contributions to the article page. This was opposed for being too complicated for resolving an edge case situation.
• After the discussion started, VQuakr modified G7 to state that blanking any type of talk page should not be construed as a G7 request, which appears to better accomplish what Davidwr intended to fix. This was supported by Jni (who also opposed my proposal on the grounds of being overly complicated). The discussion then closed.

I hope this clears up the intent behind my change of the lede paragraph to reflect the revised G7. RJaguar3 | u | t 02:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

• It clears up your intent; however, by excluding Category:, User:, and all Talk: spaces this would make "G7" no longer apply as a "General" criteria. This means that if this is what the community wants, and since it reduces where it is effective from 26 of the 28 WP:NSes to 12 of them there needs to be a much larger forum than a couple of editors making bold changes. I propose a full RfC to be held for 30 days and properly noted in public places like AN and T:CENT etc, and if the closing of that is to make this criteria only apply to 43% of existing namespaces instead of 93% like it is now (of which it is actually even higher because U1 permits pages blanked on user and user talk pages to be CSDed which counter indicates what G7 disallows), then so-be-it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 05:19, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
  • @Technical 13: The changed wording still allows for G7 deletion to be requested by explicitly adding a tag to the page; it simply makes it so that blanking a talk page is not to be construed as a request for deletion under G7. Also, I overlooked that VQuakr's change was actually proposed by King of Hearts. Davidwr's change was accompanied by a discussion with one reply. RJaguar3 | u | t 16:04, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
    • This makes sense. When do people blank pages? In my experience, either they're vandals (thus Special:AbuseFilter/3), or they're new users attempting to get rid of pages that they just created but don't like. This isn't going to be an issue in most namespaces; categories should be excluded because they work differently, and as talk pages have a completely different purpose, it ought not be an issue there. After all, what's wrong with a blank talk page? Lots of them exist (typically because gibberish was added, and then someone else removed it), and they don't hurt anything. Excluding all talk pages from the blanking portion of this criterion is helpful. Nyttend (talk) 15:27, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
      • I speedily delete a lot of categories under G7, sometimes from veteran editors who create a category and realize there's already a similar one. I don't agree that G7 shouldn't apply to categories. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 16:56, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
        • In which case the creator can tag the category for G7. The point is that blanking shouldn't be considered a G7 request for a category. Nyttend (talk) 17:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Right now, A2's header says "Foreign language articles that exist on another Wikimedia project", but the criterion text doesn't limit itself to foreign-language articles. Should this criterion be applied only to foreign-language articles? Or should it apply to anything that's improperly here and already on a different WMF project where it belongs? I was imagining something such as a travel guide that's on the English Wikivoyage, for example. I don't particularly see why we need separate A2 and A5 criteria (the end result of A5 is an A2 situation), since both are meant to get rid of pages that already exist elsewhere; as a result, I'd like to see A2 expanded to cover all mainspace pages that already appear elsewhere, including ones that have just been transwikied. Nyttend (talk) 01:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Due to the ongoing content dispute this page has been temporarily protected. Please discuss and establish consensus for updating this policy first. (Ping to recent editors: Hullaballoo Wolfowitz; MrX; Dogmaticeclectic; Fuhghettaboutit). Thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 01:10, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I restored the prior protection level, please ensure that contentious policy changes have demonstrated consensus here before updating the policy page. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:25, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

In the section heading G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions please put the words Articles for creation in italics per talk page discussion #G13 - fix capitalisation or use quotation marks or italics.

Articles for creation is itself a distinct name (of WP:AFC, and the section heading is easier to parse with the italics. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:03, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Done I've fixed the first instance in the section. By the way, the second sentence is pretty confusing; I wasn't sure what the "talk" was referring to in "This criterion applies to all drafts in WikiProject Articles for creation project, talk". Can this be improved upon? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:29, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks - but what I was actually asking for was the section heading itself to include the italics: ie change

==== G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions ====

to

==== G13. Abandoned ''Articles for creation'' submissions ====

By the way, the second sentence is pretty confusing
To avoid scope creep (and even more confusion) I suggest that this issue should be raised in a separate section (of WT:CSD). Mitch Ames (talk) 07:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

 Done Ansh666 20:28, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:56, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Is there a criterion (other than G13) to speedy an AfC draft where the creator gets impatient with AfC and creates their article in article space? If not, how about expanding G13 to allow speedy deletion in such a case without a six-month wait. —teb728 t c 09:14, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I think there may be attribution errors with that (e.g. if multiple editors were working on the draft). Ansh666 06:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

If there are multiple authors, a merger will indeed be necessary. Otherwise, G6 is probably fine. WilyD 11:22, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

You can always just move it back into Draft namespace if it clearly is not ready for encyclopedia proper. I see no need to change any of the CSD criteria for this. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 06:09, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

My feeling is that the OP means that the article is surviving, but there's an earlier version still in Draft. The duplicate criterion at CSD is A10 - and applies to articles duplicating an existing topic. It can't apply to Draft space, and the article version is later not previous. How about using G6 if there aren't multiple authors? If the multiples are SPAs with no other edits, it's very likely that they are the same user anyway, and if not, then perhaps the new version (presumably a copy and paste...) should go (possibly under A10?), to be replaced by the fully attributed Draft. Peridon (talk) 09:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in that case a history merge is needed. G6 could be applied to any extra redirects that are left over. Sometimes there is a big mess of multiple, different copies of same draft and redirects between them, userspace sandboxes and mainpage article so some cleanup is needed so the tangle does not confuse new users - irrespective of what exact CSD criteria each and every page in the tangle falls under. I interpreted the original question as about (somehow) extending CSD G13 with a new corner case, but I fail to see how that would be meaningful. Maybe op could clarify, what the exact case is? Note that it is always permissible to move pages from AfC to main namespace without following AfC's Wikiproject specific guidelines. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 11:23, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, the specific article that brought this up was Tushar Atik by User:Tushar Atik. In PRODing the article I noticed on his talk page that he had an AfC rejection at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Tushar Atik. The article has since been speedily deleted; so that instance is moot; and hopefully he now gets that autobiographies are not welcome. But I generally had in mind similar cases where the articles would be successful, leaving abandoned drafts behind for six months until they become eligible for G13. —teb728 t c 10:25, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Thought so. If it's one author, I'd be happy with a G6, as Article space is the priority area. This assumes a copy and paste rather than a move. With a move, there's only a redirect to deal with - and apart from the timing of posts, there's nothing to worry about attribution-wise with a c/p creation. Are there many Drafts that have multiple inputs of content? I mean, the idea behind Draft is that people can go in and help - but apart from the minor gnomish edits, do they? Surely a c/p move from Draft to Article could be counted as a request for deletion in the same way as blanking. If there are multiple real content editors, then perhaps the old Draft should be moved over the new article with a merge back of anything done subsequent to the c/p. Or however the merging is best done to preserve attribution. I don't know anything about merging. I'm just a simple soul with an axe... Peridon (talk) 11:01, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

For abandoned drafts, I use G6, unless there's a need to preserve attribution, in which case the course is to redirect to the article talk page, as we would if it had been accepted into main space in the usual way. DGG ( talk ) 05:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

 – See #Protected edit request on 10 August 2014 below. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

This looks odd to me:

G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions

At first I thought that I should just remove the capitialisation of "Articles", so that it complies with MOS:CAPS, but "Articles for creation" is itself the name of a page. Perhaps one of these would be better:

G13. Abandoned "Articles for creation" submissions

G13. Abandoned Articles for creation submissions

Mitch Ames (talk) 06:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

'Articles for Deletion' has two caps, why not 'Articles for Creation'? Or might some people take them for articles against evolution? Peridon (talk) 16:05, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

'Articles for Deletion' has two caps, why not 'Articles for Creation'?
I don't see any criterion for speedy deletion that includes "Articles for Deletion". Mitch Ames (talk) 13:05, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

The usage is very inconsistent. You can see both on Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation, the barnstar is capitalised but the project invitation is not... The same goes at the AfC (or should it be Afc?) page itself. As to this proposal, I think the italicised version is better. Quote marks can sound unintentionally sarcastic. BethNaught (talk) 16:23, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I just marked Playoffs_series for speedy deletion on grounds of A10, which states that you should only mark something under A10 if it cannot work as a redirect. Ideally, this page would be a redirect to Playoff format, but I'd rather not blank the page and replace it with a redirect because I'd rather err on putting the page through a review process (like that of speedy deletion) instead of making large changes to an article without other editors' input. Is A10 an acceptable tag for this, or is there a better alternative? Upjav (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think marking a page for speedy deletion would constitute an effective review system. AfD may work better, but it would probably be speedy kept for not advocating deletion. However, the example you gave was completely unreferenced and extremely narrow in scope for the title (the term is used for more than just the NBA), so I've redirected it. Ansh666 20:11, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

So in that case it would be cool just to do a redirect (or merge if necessary) and then mark it reviewed? Upjav (talk) 20:44, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

That's what I would do. Hopefully others chime in, though. Ansh666 22:41, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello! I am trying to get my feet wet with CSDs before venturing into AfDs, but I have a question about the importance of municipalities and sports clubs. Are all towns/villages, such as Zafrilla, considered to be important enough? How about sports clubs like VK Banjica? Tina Gasturich (talk) 17:16, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Most inhabited places are considered of sufficient notability to merit an article. Being a municipality (generally an inhabited place that is incorporated in some regions) is not a requirement. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! How about sports clubs and sports people? I see articles about obscure teams and personalities that do not appear to meet WP:GNG. Tina Gasturich (talk) 18:00, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm not as familiar with the guidance there. Try Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports or for a list of projects by specific sport, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Sports. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The relevant guidelines are WP:NGEO (though see WP:NPLACE as well) and WP:NSPORTS. In short, yes, nearly all populated places that can be verified to exist are allowed; athletes generally either have to pass WP:GNG/WP:BASIC, have to have played one official game in a professional or top-level league, or have to have earned special recognition in a major non-professional league (e.g. NCAA leagues) to have a page; I'm not sure about sports clubs and can't find a specific page for them, but I'd imagine they'd need to meet WP:ORG.

However, none of this really has to do with speedy deletion, which does not deal with notability at all. Someone could write a page about a completely non-notable athlete with an unsourced claim that they broke an unofficial record in some obscure sport - which would be a claim of importance, preventing it from being speedy deleted (via A7, the closest criterion). WP:CSD serves a different purpose than the WP:PROD/WP:AfD system, as it's mostly for emergency actions (e.g. attack pages or copyvios) or housekeeping rather than notability; I'd actually suggest you read up on all of the notability guidelines and then start with AfDs. Ansh666 20:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Do articles for deletion first. Then, you will notice that some of them get speedy deleted, so that will give you some guidance. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:18, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't the template which places pages in this category also place the pages in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion? It seems that admins who patrol Category:Candidates for speedy deletion do not patrol Category:AfC submissions declined as copyright violations, and it looks like a big problem if copyright violations remain on Wikipedia until the page satisfies WP:CSD#G13. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:23, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

AFCH (both the old one and the rewrite) has a "nominate the submission for speedy deletion" checkbox when declining a draft as a copyvio. The copyvio criterion itself in AFCH is "cv - Submission is a copyright violation (blank the article, enter links in the box below, and mark for deletion)". Some people might not follow those instructions, but it is required if the whole article is a copyvio (by the AFC instructions).—LucasThoms 01:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes a submission has a section that is a copyright violation, and is declined for that, but can be salvaged by removing or rewriting that paragraph. I remove the problem area and leave a comment asking the editor to fix it up. It would be good to have some kind of process to check these submissions to see whether the infringing material has indeed been removed, but there is always a shortage of personnel at AfC. I don't see this as something affecting the deletion criteria themselves; perhaps some changes to the reviewing instructions are needed. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The important part of this: Copyvio speedy delete only applies if all of the page is a copyright violation. If it's only a certain sentence of paragraph, it's best to decline for an AFC, or to remove if an article. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:20, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Question

Is there a way we can get logs of how often an old implausible redirect is used? If so we can put them all in a category and look up stats for each of them. Then we can add a second category for unused old implausible redirects.

A third category would mark if there is more in the history that may suggest a history merge is needed prior to deletion. I can write a bot to do this once there is a cat for old implausible redirects. These would have to be manually checked. In most cases it will be vandalism and the cat can be removed, in other cases a history merge would be done and the cat removed.

Once we have done this we could use standard deletion discussions to mass delete everything in the unused old implausible redirects without danger or the need to change any policy.

CSD is not the only solution to the problem, with carefully chosen targets we can clean up the old redirects without collateral damage. It may be the implausible redirects are really not used that often.

I expect the deletion debate would support deletion if it clear provisions are made.

Provisions such

• The RfD should last at least 2 weeks to give time for people to come to a consensus on any given redirects talk page on if it is implausible this deciding if the old implausible cat should be added. These discussions should be closed like an RfD, I only recommend the redirect talk page so as no to flood RfD. An Implausibility contested cat can be used to make sure nothing is deleted while discussion continues even after the 2 weeks.
• Has not been used more than X times in the last year. This would to take into account that these redirects need to be viewed in order to tag them. If we could also get referrer tags we could ignore internal linking but that may be considered sensitive information.
• Any admin can delete more that we find at a later if the same criteria in the RfD are met. The admin would refer to the mass deletion RfD in the edit summary.
• Labeled as implausible for X days before deletion and taken to its own RfD if there is objection. Similar to prod.
• Any redirect deletion is if course subject to DRV.

Would love to hear what others think of this solution. I can write some bots for the parts that can be automated but there would need to be some people interested in the serious manual labor that is also needed. I could also handle the deletions via twinkles batch delete function. I think it all comes down to if it is important enough for people to do the work needed to document all of these and get the stats we need. Chillum 20:43, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that a PROD-type deletion for unplausable redirects makes sense. Who's to determine what's plausable and what's not? The stringest claim thast I can possibly come up with is that "It's been tagged as unplausable for X time, and no one has claimed otherwise". עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:20, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

A prod style would be a lot faster. We don't have to be subjective about it though, a tool exists to tell us if a page is being used. If someone can give an example of an old implausible redirect we can try it out.

Something like {{oir-prod|Has not been used in 90 days http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Planet%20Urth}}. If it stands for a week it can be deleted. {{prod}} does not allow use on redirects so we would need an addition to policy. Chillum 19:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

But, placing a tag on it would require at least one pageview, right? Ansh666 20:25, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

If you follow that link, you get day-by-day statistics for 90 days; you can AGF the user's word for that day, and see for yourself the previous 89 days. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

One would only look at the days prior to the addition of the tag. Chillum 17:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I would urge people to think of reasons that these deletions should be done, that relate to the project. I see no actual project reasons, the busywork of deleting implausible typo redirects seems to be an end in itself. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:40, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

It does seem like a lot of work for little benefit, I just like finding solutions to problems. Making the bots will be easy but a lot of manual labor would be needed. Are they doing any harm? Perhaps just not making any new ones it enough. Chillum 17:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Honestly, I think that if a typo is linked to, then it is no longer implausible. However, there isn't really a way to check for off-site linking, is there? Ansh666 17:52, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

No there isn't. The presence of off-site links can be inferred if there is significant traffic to a redirect and few or no links from within Wikipedia, but this is only semi-reliable and tells us nothing at all when there are internal links. There is no method for determining the absence of incoming links that is more reliable than blind guessing - all we can say is that if there are no internal links and no traffic then links from currently high-traffic external web pages are not likely. You need to look at several months worth of page view data though as some topics/search terms are dependent on topicality - for example redirects to and article about a festival that happens on say 15 March may get no views at all in June to December but tens of hits each day for a week in mid-March; redirects to an article about a person may only get hits when that person is in the news. Thryduulf (talk) 23:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I lean toward supporting it being a specific deletion reason (usable in an actual RfD or PROD-like process), but not a speedy deletion reason. It's possible that a redirect could appear implausible, but is actually used by someone looking for the topic. (And I do not include all possible typos of at most one letter per syllable as being plausible, as seems to be implied by certain !voters at RfD.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:13, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

As I argued above, keeping redirects from unusual mistakes is harmful as it serves to reinforce them. OTOH, deletion is inconvenient for readers. Why not convert to a soft redirect with a template notifying readers that the incoming link is deprecated? This would remove the promotional aspect, and add just a single, unambiguous click the navigation path. Paradoctor (talk) 13:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

If it's promotional it should be speedy deleted as advertising anyway, but this is a very little case (the best car ever made->Toyota). I don't see a soft-redirect as much of a benefit to anybody, but some way to tag it as noindex to keep it out of search engines sounds like a good idea. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:29, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A1 may need clarification: Yesterday I encountered a new article, Latvijas Dzelzceļa kauss, which (after translation from Latvian) read, “The Latvian Railways Cup is a traditional international hockey tournament, with the participation of four teams from the KHL.” My interpretation of A1 is that the article provided sufficient context to identify the subject as a traditional international hockey tournament; so that A1 did not apply. Another user, however, said that “an article below a stub-class meet A1 CSD”; and that “WP:A1 is used for article lacking sufficient context. Which means article lacking significant information to acertain its important.” See the discussion here on my talk page.

I would be very confident in my interpretation of A1, except that an admin deleted the article under A1. So which is the correct interpretation? And either way, does WP:CSD need to be clarified? —teb728 t c 05:02, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

It unambiguously meets the standard, even in the earliest version as given above. The standard for A1 is that you can tell what the article is about. To quote from the policy page: " If any information in the title or on the page, including links, allows an editor, possibly with the aid of a web search, to find further information on the subject in an attempt to expand or edit it, there is enough context that A1 is not appropriate"

It is not the case that any article that does not meet the requirement for a stub is an A1. There is no such rule. Nor does it mean "Lacks sufficient information to ascertain its importance" . There is no such rule. In cannot see where anyone would get either ideas except from their own imagination. (If there is a contradictory statement on any help page, that statement needs to be brought in accord with deletion policy.

Incidentally, it would as originally submitted have been eligible for deletion as A2, since it is in the Lativian encyclopedia. Of course, translation took care of that. But it was still deleted; I've notified the admin who deleted it of this discussion. DGG ( talk ) 00:32, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

One minor correction: It couldn't have been tagged A2 because lv:Latvijas Dzelzceļa kauss was created only about 26 hours ago. Ironically, it was translated from en:Latvian Railways Cup. —teb728 t c 06:57, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree that it doesn't meet A1 by any stretch of the imagination. I can definitely tell what the article is about (post-translation, of course; I don't know any Latvian). Ansh666 01:42, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I trouted the deleting administrator. Someone who can get it so wrong has no business speedy-deleting articles. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:30, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Having looked at who the deleting administrator was, I am not at all surprised this has happened as they take a rather dim view on the need to follow deletion policy as written. I don't have time now but it would not be without merit to look through any other A1s they have deleted to see whether they applied the same incorrect standard to them. Thryduulf (talk) 10:02, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm awaiting his comment. In particular, it is not clear whether this is an isolated error or a difference in interpretation. I know I've at very rare intervals made some really weird errors, and I think this is true of all or almost all really active editors. DGG ( talk ) 16:15, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

• I am perfectly satisfied with the present content of Latvijas Dzelzceļa kauss but Latvian Railways Cup to which it now redirects is desperately in need of being converted into a proper article. Is there any point in wasting time discussing how we arrived at this situation? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 17:40, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Discussing how a page came to be incorrectly speedily deleted is not wasting time if it saves one other page from suffering the same fate. Speedy deletion of pages that should not be deleted is possibly the most harmful thing that an administrator can do on Wikipedia. Thryduulf (talk) 07:45, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
  • RHaworth, I notice your statement does not include an apology for getting it wrong. Worse, you response in essentially a "how dare you question me" kind of response. If you don't like your actions being questioned, you probably shouldn't be an administrator. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy: you didn't trout the deleting admin, you trouted the nominator, on someone else's talk page to boot. Ansh666 19:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. Unfortunately, since the page has been re-created, I can't see who the deleter is. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:34, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

One way to see the deleter is to go to the history of the re-created page and click on View logs for this page. —teb728 t c 21:45, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

• I intend to examine a few dozen A1s in the next few days. I will report the results. I think it much better to focus of changing a bad practice than on naming particular individuals. If there are particular people doing this, then once this discussion has been pointed out to them,I assume f that most will change their practices. I would much rather judge by what they actually do in the future, than statements that they will or will not intend to change. I have seen people adamantly defend their deprecated practices, but nonetheless change them for the better. DGG ( talk ) 09:12, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

• While you're doing your review, DGG, you might also want to look to see if there is any pattern to the editors who tag the pages. I've seen a lot of very bad A1s where I don't have to do anything but read it and know what the article is about. Of course, the article may be otherwise crappy, but that's not the issue here.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed text: A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion, or a page recreated under an alternate title in order to evade create-protection ("salting").

This situation comes up regularly if infrequently (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nadiaa Nyce (2nd nomination) for the most recent example), and too often results in wasted time and effort. Proper process calls for review at either DRV or RFPP; going through those routes generally requires a consensus to unsalt. AFD requires a consensus to delete, affording an advantage to an editor who evades the decision to salt. This change would close that loophole. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 23:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

G4 includes the text "having any title"; unless you mean a substantially different page on the same subject with a different title? Ansh666 00:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Nobody responded to my proposal (now in Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 54) to merge A2/A5, so if I remember, I'll be merging them in a few days, unless of course someone objects. Please leave any objections here, not in the archive of course. Nyttend (talk) 12:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Except that transwikis aren't always foreign languages, there's wikitionary and wikinews and wikisource and maybe something I'm forgetting. Even if transwikis were always to other languages, I don't see how this could be worded without being a confusing mess. So I say no - but transwiki is a pretty obvious case of housekeeping and could make sense under G6. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 16:05, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Oppose both mergers. A2 and A5 are different as Oiyarbepsy notes. G6 is already the most overloaded and most misused criterion, the last thing it needs is anything being merged in to it, especially something that requires explanation like A2 and A5 do. Thryduulf (talk) 19:17, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

It's worth noting that A5 is by some margin the least used article speedy deletion criterion. I suspect that if someone proposed it today there would be substantial opposition on the grounds that it doesn't come up frequently enough and/or that it could be included under housekeeping. Hut 8.5 21:18, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

I know that they're different. My point is that a successfully transwikied article, one that qualifies for A5, is an article "having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project", the qualifier for A2. Note that A2 says nothing about language, except in the header, so if we go by the wording of the criterion itself, we can use A2 on State of Missouri Walker v. Walker if someone creates it by doing a text dump of s:State of Missouri Walker v. Walker. Since A5 is basically a special case of A2, why do we need A5? It's like saying that we need a separate criterion for "Attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title", because that would be different from pages with no substantive content — but this kind of argument was rejected when A4, correspondence, was merged into A3, no substantive content. Nyttend (talk) 21:28, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• One thing to beware of is that this could make anything that Simple Wikipedia has an article on liable to deletion here. A2 should be amended to make it clear that language is a prime issue and it should remain as a category in its own right. I can't see any reason for A5 not to be merged with G6. It's removing a left-over, after all. There again, I can't see it doing any great harm by remaining. I don't think I've ever used it myself, but presumably other people have. Peridon (talk) 09:02, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
  • G6 does not encompass A5 because it does not contain the requirements that the page have already been discussed at AfD, properly moved or author information recorded. They could be combined if these requirements were added, but that would gain exactly nothing other than making G6 (and thus the whole of CSD) more complicated and harder for someone looking at a log to find out why the page was deleted. We need to be striving to make CSD simple and transparent, as that makes errors the less likely and easier to detect if they do happen - incorrect speedy deletions are among the most harmful things an admin can do. Thryduulf (talk) 09:44, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Well, if it's usually through deletion discussions, do we really need to have this at all? If there's been a discussion and the consensus was to delete, we just delete. A5 isn't really necessary, just give a deletion summary "delete after transwiki to (link) per (deletion discussion). Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:51, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
      • All speedy deletions must be done in accordance with CSD criteria. This covers the situation where a discussion closes as transwiki but the transwiki doesn't happen immediately and/or is performed by a non-admin who cannot delete the page. Thryduulf (talk) 15:01, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
        • Well, we have the template {{db-xfd}} which is for articles that were voted delete but not deleted for some reason. This is a similar case. If there is a consensus to delete, a speedy delete criteria is not required, even if the page isn't deleted immediately. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:17, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
• I will add my opposition to merging A2 and A5, as they are quite different. Since A5 is used so infrequently, we could instead just remove it from the criteria. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:22, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

• Kindly explain why they're so different that they cannot be merged. In what way does "Articles having essentially the same content as an article on another Wikimedia project" not apply to a properly performed A5 candidate? You may observe that the "Foreign language" part of the A2 header is not supported by the criterion: the text of the criterion doesn't mention language issues, except for discussing pages that don't qualify. Nyttend (talk) 05:49, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Please explain what benefits this proposal will bring. A2 is about pages that don't need transwikiing, A5 is about pages that have been transwikied with all required steps being completed. Any merged criterion will need language for both cases and so will not lead to any simplification only the opposite. It will also make it more difficult to know whether the content has been preserved anywhere or not - at present an A2 deletion means the content has been deleted, an A5 means it has been moved to a different project, a combined criterion could mean either. Thryduulf (talk) 07:38, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Thanks for giving the reason for difference. Transwiki is a specific process. I have notices that some pages that I have written have been transwikied to the German Wikipedia and then translated to German, but leaving he English original. Of course A5 is not used to delete the original. A2 is a duplicate when it is created, and is useless; but the A5 candidate was not a duplicate and is something that has been used. I don't think we need A5, but then again it should not be merged. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:18, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello all,
In my opinion the standard A3 and A3-warn templates are not specific enough and are an "information overload". Thus, I am planning to create new speedy deletion templates and warning messages for the separate subcriteria of A3, similar to how criterion A7 is divided into {{db-a7}}, {{db-person}}, {{db-corp}}, {{db-animal}}, {{db-band}}, {{db-event}} and {{db-club}}. If my proposal is approved, I will create the following templates and accompanying warning messages in my userspace:

• {{db-a3}} will stay the same
• {{db-contact}}: "an attempt to contact the person or group named by its title"
• {{db-question}}: "a question that should have been asked at the help or reference desks"
• {{db-nocontent}}: "an article that contains no content whatsoever, or consists only of external links, category tags, a "see also" section, a rephrasing of the title, chat-like comments, template tags, and/or images"
  

If you approve of the proposal, I will draft the templates and warning messages at the pages linked below, and then post here when I am done so that an admin can move the pages over redirects, and move the current {{db-nocontent-notice}} to {{db-a3-notice}} so that it matches the corresponding "catch-all" template. Thanks, Passengerpigeon (talk) 10:51, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• User:Passengerpigeon/db-contact
• User:Passengerpigeon/db-contact-notice
• User:Passengerpigeon/db-question
• User:Passengerpigeon/db-question-notice
• User:Passengerpigeon/db-nocontent
• User:Passengerpigeon/db-nocontent-notice

Seems like a sensible course of action to me, go for it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:54, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• That seems reasonable and helpful to me. 331dot (talk) 10:55, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
• Sounds reasonable (though right now the last 3 links are red). If it goes through, don't forget to notify the folks at WP:Twinkle and maybe other scripts (WP:Page curation?). Ansh666 19:10, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
• Do we really need anything for attempting to contact the subject? I think I've only seen one or two of those in six years. Otherwise, looks good. Peridon (talk) 19:46, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • That's exactly why we could use a separate one - why burden people who didn't do it with links telling you why not to? Ansh666 20:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
    • I only need to inform the maintainers of Twinkle, which I have already done. CSDH already works with the new templates, and Page Curation only has one template for each criterion as far as I can tell. Passengerpigeon (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

I suggest also making {{db-emptydisambig}} for disambiguation pages with no links to valid articles. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:52, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

• This sounds fair enough, and for a deleting admin, it should work just the same. However I would like to see a bit of boomerang on the db-nocontent if the page is less than an hour old. Some patrollers do not give the writer a chance before placing a notice. Is there something that we can have in the template to give a warning if the page is too new? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:08, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy: "disambiguation pages with no links to valid articles" are already speediable under {{db-disambig}}. And to answer Graeme Bartlett's question, there is already some source code in {{db-a3}} that looks like it would display a warning if the tag was placed within 10 minutes of creation, but I have not seen it in action nor do I know how to get it to show up. This might be worth looking into. Also, should "chat-like comment" be placed under {{db-nocontent}} or {{db-question}}? Passengerpigeon (talk) 11:57, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I just created a test page in my userspace, and then added the a3 tag 5 seconds later, and no warning appeared. It it's supposed to be there, it's not working. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:43, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett, Oiyarbepsy, and Technical 13: The language in the template regarding 10 minutes was at my request, but implemented by another (because I wouldn't have an inkling of a start of a germ of a clue as to how to code it). I kind of dropped the ball because I didn't really follow-up to see whether it was functioning and to take any next steps. But anyway, It results from this request to a tech savvy user.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Well it is sort of under control then. I have also noticed that AFC templates often tell me created 0 minutes ago or even a negative number. There must be some fundamental flaw, perhaps to do with timezones, or perhaps when its rendered in the job queue or something. At leasst the db-question one does not need a time warning. I only saw an attempt to talk to a subject yesterday, but it was stopped by an edit filter. Though it is rare to actually see a page with only an attempt to talk to subject. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:57, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy and Passengerpigeon: I've just created {{db-emptydisambig}} as a redirect to {{db-disambig}} as the former name is hardly illogical. Thryduulf (talk) 17:38, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I have now finished creating the templates and the /doc subpages, but before I request a move, I would like to ask whether I should place "chat-like comment" under {{db-question}} or {{db-nocontent}}. Passengerpigeon (talk) 01:19, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose the entire idea of splitting. There are not enough cases to be worth the trouble. We need to concentrate where there are actually article submissions that need to be removed; there aren't enough here. As mentioned even by one of the supporters above, there are almost no "attempts to communicate"--I cannot in fact remember a single one, and there have never been more than one or 2 chat-type submissions a week. What we do get is no-content, and my guess is about half of them are simply people intending to come back later. DGG ( talk ) 22:36, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sitush/Carol_Moore. Under both "Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion" and "Pages that disparage, threaten, intimidate or harass their subject or some other entity, and serve no other purpose". Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 11:45, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

It's never too late, but in this case speedy deletion is clearly inappropriate. The page in question is written neutrally and is clearly not an attack page. The conversation at the deletion discussion indicates that the author re-wrote the article from scratch, so it is not a re-creation. Speedy delete is only to be used for non-controversial deletions, and your assertions that this is an attack page is dubious at best. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:34, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. If it doesn't get deleted and he doesn't just let it sit there on his talk page to harass me, I'll just add 1000 words of info from a dozen+ mainstream news and book sources to the talk page and I'm sure someone will help me clean it up. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 15:03, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

• Hey admins, sane editors who've been around the block need to weigh in at Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Sitush/Carol_Moore. I can't believe what I'm seeing.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 15:38, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Carolmooredc G4 is definitely not appropriate, as it is not "sufficiently identical and unimproved" and the criteria also specifically excludes drafts. G10 I think is also not going to gain traction, as the article itself is not attacking you in any way. It seems well written, and rather flattering (unless you are embarrassed about your earlier activities, which I see no cause for). That you think Sitush may have bad motives does not transform the content into an attack page. If you think you can make a case for WP:HARASS then have him iBanned, or topic banned, or site banned. But the content of the article seems neutral and sourced to me. (Obviously I don't know what other content is out there that you think may be missing.) Now, all that said, once/if the article is promoted to article space, its possible that it could be deleted for notability or other reasons, but that's an entirely different ball of wax. Gaijin42 (talk) 17:02, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Followup: The MfD was closed as delete on 18 Sept. DGG ( talk ) 18:13, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Good call. When an interaction ban has even been proposed, with a respectable amount of support, such a page is clearly inappropriate. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:31, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

It's quite common to see spammy articles about some guy's latest iOS/Windows Mobile/Andorid flappy bird clone app that technically cannot be deleted under A7 because they are software. As the mobile industry has broadened I believe our speedy criteria has not kept pace with the creation of these types of articles. So I propose that the A7 criteria be broadened from this:

• An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content or organized event that does not indicate...

To this:

• An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization, web content, mobile app or organized event that does not indicate...

Normal desktop software would not be eligible, as before, only applications that are distributed to mobile devices via an app store of some kind. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 08:37, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

What makes mobile apps different than desktop apps - meaning different enough to warrant a different treatments? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:19, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

• IMO we could do with a category for software of any sort that fails to show significance. In the meantime, we could land all of it into AfD so people will see how much of it there is. I'm mainly referring to the 'it's open source so Wikipedia should have an article on it', the obscure software for controlling a boggy podging machine (about which craft there isn't even an article...), the clone of Linux released in beta last week, and possibly anything only referenced to their own site and CrunchBase. (And for my next bright idea, I'll parachute from 25,000 feet with a drum kit and play it all the way down...) Peridon (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

I support the above, but would broaden it to be all software, music, art, or media/work of any kind that doesn't show notablility. We are spammed with it. But thats a drop in the bucket compared to an article about every person whose ever played a game of football or been in an MMA match (not to mention every episode of every tv show) Gaijin42 (talk) 17:36, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

I would oppose broadening it to music and art because I'm not convinced there's a problem in that area. Note we already have A9 for insignificant works by non-notable artists. But I would support adding software to A7 because I agree there is too much NN-software spam; I find it annoying when reaching for CSD but, oh! I can't. BethNaught (talk) 17:43, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

I would support adding software to A7. I do not much like the idea of singling out mobile apps - any software with no claim of significance seems reasonable and in the same spirit as the existing "web content" item. VQuakr (talk) 18:03, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

The problem with adding software in general is that then there is no justification for not adding products in general, which are also not A7 eligible. I don't have a problem with including software, but that's just something to think about. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 18:35, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

One could make a variation of that "slippery slope" argument about any subset deletable by A7. Another argument in favor of software in general instead of just mobile apps is that software is easy to define while "mobile apps" is grayer. VQuakr (talk) 22:20, 16 September 2014‎

We should not use the term "mobile apps" we should say "software" and yes I think it should be included. Anyone can make software and they often think it is special when it is not. Chillum Need help? Type {{ping|Chillum}} 18:57, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Maybe it's an issue with time-of-day or whatnot, but I do a lot of new page patrolling and I don't see a lot of software of any kind. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:51, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Could be - I do a lot of deleting and your name is not one I can recall coming across at all (and it's rather distinctive...). Mind you, there are other names too that post here that I don't see in the actual deletion area as either tagging things or deleting them (depending on granted powers). Peridon (talk) 17:31, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this motion, unless the proposer can supply me with the links to at least recent 10 AfDs for software articles, all of which had no votes other than "Delete" and were ideally all closed per WP:SNOW. Only that is a genuine indication that a new CSD criteria is required. Otherwise we will find articles randomly being CSDed and complaints of "hey, that article that was around for nine years - where's it gone?" Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:43, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I dispute the snow close premise, since participation at AfD is low enough that comments will not necessarily flood in, but here are some examples which are recent and unanimous (barring in one case the creator).

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lead Forensics
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/GNUWin II
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mycroft project
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hobo (software)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PC Optimizer Pro
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deskloops
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Live2support
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/HDFSFileTransfer
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ProcessEdge
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/HighStage

Several of these AfDs specifically mention that the articles made no claim to significance/notability, and in others one or more editors advocated speedy deletion, showing that AfD workload would be lessened by expanding A7. Notice how all these were closed in the past week. I obtained these examples by browsing the history of Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Software where more can be found. BethNaught (talk) 18:46, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I checked out a few of these. Several seemed to have a lack of consensus, and were relisted. A few that did gather "speedy" !votes did so under an existing criteria - G10 or G11. A genuine speedy should be immediately obvious to call - not relisted. In all cases, I feel no harm was done by letting them run a full AfD for 2 - 3 weeks. I don't see any of these being particularly onerous for an AfD closer, with the possible exception of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lead Forensics. AfD is fairer. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:32, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Valid points and opinions. It would be helpful if an admin reviewed these examples to see what state they were actually in and whether a revised A7 would have applied to them. BethNaught (talk) 09:39, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

I have copied the content of each of those deleted articles to User:GB fan/Sandbox. Look at the history of the page, you will see an edit summary with the name of the page. Pull up that revision. The version you will see if the version that the AFD tag was added to. GB fan 10:20, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

@GB fan: Thank you very much, it is helpful to look at them.

2 of them are actually companies and so already covered (Lead Forensics, Live2Support). GNUWin II makes a credible claim of significance, as do HighStage and Hobo to a lesser extent. The remaining 5 are software articles without (IMHO) a credible claim to significance/notability.

In light of this I still believe expanding A7 to software could be helpful, but I sympathise with the slippery slope and rogue speedy deleter arguments which may be made. BethNaught (talk) 11:03, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

• Support if the term "computer software" is used. ViperSnake151  Talk  19:12, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
• Weak supportoppose GB Fan's example pages make no clear claim to importance, and most of the pages just say what the software does. One feature common is the lack of independent references. But the software here could be important and may need more checks. If any change is made it should be "software" and not just mobile apps. Mobile apps are likely to be less notable and more prone to promotion here, but many of the CSD declines I have done are more generic software. Perhaps the article wizard can have support for software, with a requirement for multiple sources. Another check to do is to look whether AFD kept any of these software nominations. After all if AFD keeps them they should not be speedy deleted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:37, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
• Reluctant oppose - mostly on slippery-slope grounds. In this age of self-"publishing", there are analagous examples in print (or at least print on demand and elsewhere; but even a notorious deletionist like myself reluctantly agrees that product spamming not qualifying under G11 and/or G10 is not an unsupportable burden. --Orange Mike | Talk 00:44, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The reasons for including some types of articles in A7 is that no research or specialized understanding of the field is necessary to know that there is no indication of importance. It is almost impossible to tell from the typical article on any product that this is the case--almost all such articles are so dubiously sourced that it is necessary to search for and evaluate sources before deciding. This is certainly true for books, it is often true for artworks. For computer software, the sourcing problem is particularly acute because of the need for judgment whether the sources are essentially PR, as the same publications carry both true software reviews and press releases, including press releases disguised as interviews. It is furthermore difficult in this field to distinguish between spam and valid content: a list of features can be appropriate content, but if too detailed we usually call it promotional. The motivation for this seems to be that it is fairly common for software products articles to not be deleted at afd, whether because of insufficient interest or disagreement. I too sometimes feel frustrated when something I consider a clear delete for a product remains in WP because of lack of interest at afd, but to deal with what afd declines to delete by deleting it in a summary fashion without discussion is an attempt to evade community process. Individual admins should not be dealing with dubious cases, or substituting themselves for the community. As OM says above, this is a slippery slope, and we should not get started. DGG ( talk ) 18:30, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
• Support and broaden to include all software. We should treat software the same way we treat web content, and similar to how we treat musical recordings. The vast majority of software applications/apps will never be notable enough to merit articles. There are more than a million android apps all of which have been created just in the past seven years. As someone who has spent a significant amount of time patrolling new pages, I believe that expanding A7 would reduce the amount of effort to cull new content, and would ultimately improve the encyclopedia. For anyone concerned about slippery slopes, note that there are 6243 unreviewed articles in the queue, the worst I've ever seen it.- MrX 19:00, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
• Conditional support if broadened to include all software; oppose otherwise. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

that would be the wrong direction entirely--it is software articles more than apps that cause problems at AfD. Let me ask--what exactly would be a statement of importance or significance for an app? or for software? as contrasted to an article that did not assert any? We're rushing ahead to do something to remove what we can't define -- that's the opposite of the intent of speedy. DGG ( talk ) 22:40, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose more or less per DGG. In addition, I'd note that one reason A9 works well is that its definition pretty much excludes any article that could likely be redirected to a notable subject. It's not likely that the same could be done for software, or a type of software. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 23:31, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
• Vehemently oppose if expanded to all software. "Show me 10 recent software afds that were snow deletes" is the wrong question to be asking to add a csd criterion. Some of the right ones are, "Can just about everyone agree whether a given article meets this criterion?" and "Show me a total lack of articles that met this criterion but recently survived afd". Does this have a claim of importance or significance? This? This? This? (My answers are "clear no", "no", "not quite, but I'd be surprised if it didn't meet the GNG", and "clear yes", respectively; I'm certain opinions will differ.) All four just survived AFD, three of them definitively so.

  For just mobile apps, I don't think the case has been made yet—there's been hardly any discussion on it, as opposed to the "make it all software!" angle—but my general feeling at the moment is that I wouldn't even know what a claim of importance or significance for a mobile app would look like. —Cryptic 06:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Mobile apps are not more prevalent than any other type of software, which anyone can just go ahead and announce on their website. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:28, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
• Support with (preferably) inclusion of all software, or (less preferably) as proposed. This is a major category of non-notable new pages that can't currently be speedied because they don't quite fit the existing criterion. —Swpb^talk 20:14, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
• Actually, no, I oppose. I personally think that grouping this into A9 (which would also add the requirement that its creator not yet have an article) would be a better option, since as is, given the current opinion, I've realized that the proposed criteria is a bit too wide. ViperSnake151  Talk  15:16, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose pretty much per DGG and Cryptic. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Can a speedy delete tag be used to delete a redirect page to make way for the article? If I just add the text then it won't count towards article creation. I've done it before but I keep getting the tag removed saying it's not a legit reason. LADY LOTUS • TALK 13:15, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• It counts towards article creation for DYK (as a 5X+ expansion), and for adding little stars to your userpage. What else are you looking for? Note that redirects often keep history needed for attribution after a merger, so often they can't be deleted. WilyD 13:56, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I'm not familiar with DYK, what do you mean by 5X+ expansion? LADY LOTUS • TALK 14:11, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
    • DYKs are for new articles and articles that have undergone significant recent expansion. The rule of thumb for DYK is that any article that is expanded over five times - eg, from a stub to a full article, but also short articles expanded to a large, detailed treatise on the subject - qualifies. A redirect, having no article content, is automatically less than one fifth of even a single sentence stub, so making an article out of a former redirect is identical from a DYK perspective as creating a new article from a redlink. VanIsaac_WS^cont 03:51, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
• The page is Christine Shevchenko, which was created as a redirect, so there's really no history worth preserving. @Lady Lotus: create the text in a draft somewhere (userspace or draftspace), and then when you're done mark the redirect with {{db-move}} (I'm not sure but I don't think non-admins can move a page over a redirect?). ansh666 17:22, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• It simply doesn't qualify for speedy deletion. It's not "maintenance", the term used to describes the relevant speedy category, and the rationale presented doesn't resemble any of the G6 examples. It's not necessary to delete the redirect; the new text can simply be substituted by ordinary editing, which is what's usually done in such cases. And there's no good reason to wipe out the article history, even if it's mainly related to categorization. I suspect doing that could be a (hyper)technical copyright-licensing violation, since the same categories would presumably be included in the new article. Better to keep a "bright line" in place -- absent a content policy violation, don't delete simply to create a better page about the same subject. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 17:41, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

How's this for a solution? User:Lady Lotus can create the new article as a draft, and once it's finished, it can be moved to the mainspace. The existing article gets speedy deleted under WP:CSD#G6, and then can be immediately restored as a histmerge. User:Lady Lotus gets credit for creating a new article, and none of the article history is destroyed. Would that satisfy everyone? - Eureka Lott 18:10, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm completely fine with that as long as everyone else is. LADY LOTUS • TALK 18:11, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

That seems like a lot of work, EurekaLott, particularly based on WilyD's comment/question. I also don't really like the precedent it sets.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:28, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• If, hypothetically, the folks at DYK were so petty that they'd reject an article created over a redirect, but accept the same article if you found an admin gullible enough to delete the redirect out-of-process first, then I couldn't imagine wanting their approval in the first place. —Cryptic 23:42, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Agree with most above - deletion is not required here, just edit the redirect and type away. Do You Know is about new articles, not new pages, and they understand that distinction. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:46, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• Based on Lady Lotus' comment above, this does not appear to be about DYK because she said "Sorry, I'm not familiar with DYK" Lady Lotus why are you concerned about article creation? GB fan 23:57, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• Support creation of a CSD criteria "deletion of a redirect with negligible history to make way for a page move", to be split from CSD#G6, because G6 is used to catch so many things, and because G6 is supposed to be for uncontroversial technical deletions, and because page moves over redirects that are not so trivial that a non-admin may do it are so frequently disputable. Ideally, "deletions to make way for a page move" should be easily identifiable in the deletion log. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:22, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

If a redirect deletion could plausibly be contested by a rational editor, it should should not be CSD'd at all regardless of what criterion we name it. That is what MfD is for. G6 works fine as a catchall for technical/housekeeping deletions. We do not need to complicate things by splitting it up. VQuakr (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

G6 deletions of redirects to make way for a page moves happens all the time. It's required if there is more than one version in the redirect's history. These deletions could all be plausibly contested, RM discussions attract all sorts of disparate rationales. As a redirect, it would not go to MfD, but RfD. However, as a contested move, it would be administratively covered by a WP:RM discussion, without need for any XfD. Requested G6 deletions to make way for a page move represent a frequent exception to G6's use for technical/housekeeping deletions, and having this side-step around the RM process lost in the catch-all criterion makes it very complicated to review what is happening and who is doing it. Splitting this CSD criteria by routine verses PageMove applications would simplify things, from a review perspective. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:51, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Well here's the draft Draft:Christine Shevchenko, and yes my main concern was it counting towards article creation. I've done it in the past where I just type over the redirect but then it doesn't count towards creating an article, thus why I tried to speedy delete the redirect. There isn't any history to preserve since it's just the creation of the redirect. LADY LOTUS • TALK 13:38, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

If people are really not counting it as a new article because you typed it over a redirect, you need to slap them with a trout. What group of editors are doing this, because we need to put a stop to this now. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:30, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The concern is probably that the article will not show up an automatically created list of article created. GB fan 14:38, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

In that case, let's slap the bot with a wrench :) Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:26, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Right, like I have created 130 articles but it only says I've created 120 because of me just typing over the redirect. LADY LOTUS • TALK 16:09, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Something the other way round also happens - if you move a page and leave the old title as a redirect, you get credited with creating the redirect. If you're worrying because you're considering taking the mop and have seen the carping about how many articles someone has created, don't worry if you've got 120 or 130. If it's down at the 'is it three or is it five?' level, then move a few things and hope they won't notice.... Peridon (talk) 20:12, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

See also WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. Wikipedia is not a competition nor is it concerned with quantities. The quality of an article is far more important than the number you have created - almost everyone here would rather you created 5 good articles than 500 three-line stubs. Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I suggest adding this situation to the non-criteria. As follows: "Turning a redirect into an article. Speedy deletion does not apply in this case, as it isn't needed. Simply edit the redirect and begin typing your article." This seems to come up often enough that it is worth a mention. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:30, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

• support. This is not infrequently requested at RfD as well. Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
• Question - would this include the currently valid use of G6 for page moves from say a draft to mainspace? The exact template here is {{db-move}}. ansh666 23:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

In the case where a draft has multiple authors, you're going to need to delete the redirect to move the draft and preserve the history for the licence. So, the truth is that it's a "it depends" situation. WilyD 07:36, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't think the intention here is to remove G6 deletions to allow page moves (and I wouldn't support that), but rather to make it clear there will never be consensus for "delete this redirect so I can write an article in its place". Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but then explaining that as well means adding even more unneeded verbiage. Better to keep policies a pleasant read than turn them into UELAs. WilyD 10:29, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

All it needs is to be worded something like "Deleting a redirect to write an article. This does not need deletion as the redirect can be overwitten with the article by normal editing, or a draft written elsewhere first and moved over the redirect when it is ready (see criterion G6). Thryduulf (talk) 10:53, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Unnecessary bloat and not even applicable to the case in question anyhow. The question raised wasn't to write an article, but to move a draft into the place, which does need to be deleted sometimes, and doesn't sometimes. Writing in special cases to a widely used policy is a bad idea unless they come up often (and usually, not even then). Making this page harder to read is not a good idea, especially given there's no benefit. WilyD 09:56, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

This suggestion was generalised from the present case, so special cases are not relevant here. The point is that we do not need a new criterion for converting redirects into articles because either (a) deletion is not required, or (b) deletion to make way for an article draft is already covered by G6. Any other scenarios are so rare that CSD would never be appropriate. Thryduulf (talk) 10:07, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

• Use Thryduulfs wording, with, of course, boldface at the beginning. That covers it. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:25, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose This isn't necessary, and poor wording of it could break necessary db-move (or similar) type deletions. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:22, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why products are not included under criterion A7. It seems like a natural fit, and we certainly get enough new pages for products with no assertion of notability. I assume there's been a discussion on that - where might I find it? —Swpb^talk 20:09, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

There have been many such discussions. I searched the archives for "products", and found Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 45#CSD A7 needs to expand to products which also provides links to some of the previous times it was discussed (see the third comment there). Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 21:08, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

This old proposal was found in Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 39#Products but never got much discussion. It seems like it might be a workable proposal, allowing deletion only if the company article doesn't exist (as A9). Proposed by @Fiftytwo thirty:

A9. No indication of importance (products and musical recordings).

An article about a musical recording or other product that has no corresponding article about its recording artist or company and does not indicate why its subject is important or significant (both conditions must be met). This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability. This criterion does not apply to other forms of creative media, or any other types of articles.

The old proposal has been re-factored to match the current wording of A9. This seems like a workable solution. I'm not stating any opinion at this time. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:42, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

• opppose. "product" is far, far, too general in this context. There are some things where products from non-notable companies are never going to be notable (mobile phones for example), but there are many other situations where non-notable companies or organisations produce notable products - especially as you go further back in time when there will be companies whose existence we only know about because of a product. It also needs defining what "product" actually means - does it include works of art, bridges or economic theories for example? Thryduulf (talk) 13:05, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: too broad. Different types of products may have differing notability probability and so need to be discussed in a more specific fashion, like for software above. BethNaught (talk) 15:06, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose It may work for musical recordings. It doe not necessarily work for other subject fields, where the product may be the more important topic. DGG ( talk ) 02:42, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I have opened a discussion at the village pump to consider a change to our deletion policy with regard to CSD-g7. The input from editors who are regular contributors here is requested to enhance the outcome of that discussion. Thank you.—John Cline (talk) 04:15, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Due to a recent case, admins patrolling files tagged with delayed deletion tags that would normally qualify under CSD F7's allowance should make sure that the file is not also tagged for {{non-free review}}, which should take precedence over the speedy deletion for discussion of the matter. (Of course, one should also check to actually make sure that there is review going on at WP:NFCR, and not just tagged to mask the di one) We had a case where a file was tagged for non-free review, but an editor later added a di tag, and the file was deleted per F7 from that tag while the NFCR was still on going. The situation's resolved, no harm done otherwise, but just a bit of care for future cases would be helpful. --MASEM (t) 17:36, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• F7 is in no way different from other criteria. If there is a discussion about a matter, admins should always consider whether the comments in that discussion makes the file or page fail the speedy deletion criterion. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:04, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I want to make sure I'm getting things right here - I nominated Blue Crest College (now moved to User:Kwameghana/Blue Crest College as a3, no content - I nominated at 2:24, page was created at 1:36 and last edited at 1:52. @Frank: denied the speedy deletion saying the article is a work in progress. The article hasn't been edited in the 11 hours since then (of course, the guy might be sleeping). Who was right - me for nominating or Frank for declining? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 14:37, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• Frank, for declining. I believe we had a long drawn out discussion at one point and decided that new pages were protected from A3. Hence the "Caution is needed when using this tag on newly created articles." If you've ever sat down and created an article or some kind of content, you would know that it can take a few hours to sit there and type it all out (especially, when you are doing a good job and making sure that your references have the correct author, date, etc in them as tabbing back and forth to copy paste info like that can be slow). I'd say the "good practice" 10 minutes mentioned in the footnote is the absolute minimum and 3 hours would be more appropriate. I know I'm not going to watch a page for 3 hours on end though, so what I do is add it to my watchlist and the next day I'll see if it was subsequently edited. If not, I can safely tag it and remove from watchlist (tag it with Twinkle so you can track if it was deleted on your log page). — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:17, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
• I appreciate the nod, but I'd also say that I'm not sure there's a single right answer to the question. I chose that course of action because it looked like a legitimate effort to create an article about a college that exists (I checked) and seems like it could have at least a stub written about it. (Commons can deal with the image.) If I'd seen the article now (as opposed to 1 hour or so after creation) I would probably still have declined but might also have moved it to userspace, which is of course where it now is. This indicates to me that basically the right result has been reached, though we may differ on the route. On a philosophical level, my own opinion is that an incomplete but not otherwise blatently-deleteable article does no harm sticking around for a day or two. BLP vios, vandalism, G11, that sort of stuff, sure - let's get rid of them quickly, but this one wasn't in those categories. I know other folks figure WP:REFUND is cheaper and easier than even thinking about it so they would just go ahead and delete it and move on, and that approach is fine for them. It's just not my own approach.  Frank  |  talk  17:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Do we need to change the warning note? I mean, I was relying on that 10 minutes mentioned in the footnote, and seeing 30 minutes from last edit figured there was no problem. I can definitely see the case for waiting at least a day on this kind of thing. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• The issue is moot in this case, since having an infobox like that is sufficient to pass A1/A3 deletion. However, changing it to a longer time would be a good idea, if there is more than a two-person consensus to do so. Another note, of all the times I've read through the CSDs, I've never really looked at the footnotes - I feel that some of them should not be footnotes, instead integrated into the actual text. ansh666 00:24, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
• Be BOLD and change it if you are so inclined. I certainly don't oppose it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 00:27, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

10 minutes is enough per our current policy. The decline was improper, IMO, and we definitely shouldn't change the minimum requirement without a strong consensus to do so (which I'd be opposed to). Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:28, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

What about making it policy to do what I ended up doing - move to the creator's user space without a redirect? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:07, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

@Jackmcbarn and Oiyarbepsy: the decline was completely proper, since A3 specifically excludes articles that consist entirely of an infobox. ansh666 06:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Declines can't really be improper. The policy is pretty clear that this is a list of reasons admins can delete a page without a discussion, if they think it's a good idea. Apart from G10 & G12, (and perhaps some of the F criteria relating to copyright), admins can still decline if they don't believe deletion is the best approach. Ideally they'd then fix it themselves (e.g., in this case, I'd probably then userfy to avoid further problems), but it's not a requirement. 07:46, 14 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by WilyD (talk • contribs)

I didn't catch the bit about the infobox. That makes the decline proper, but the timing shouldn't have played a role at all. I disagree that we should move instead of deleting, because we'd quickly get a slippery slope where people would want to abolish all of the "A" criteria for speedy deletion and replace them with moves then. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:21, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

That's simply not correct. It's not that we should move instead of deleting, or delete instead of moving; rather, an admin responding to a speedy deletion request can reject the request even if it meets the criterion in question, if they judge deletion is not the best way to address the problem. That speedy deletion isn't always the best approach doesn't mean it's never the best approach, and the idea that it's a slippery slope is silly; as long as this policy has existed it's been an option for admins to reject requests that meet the letter of it if deletion isn't a good idea, and yet the policy has basically just expanded. Sometimes moving to a sandbox is the best idea and there are a bunch of dudes and ladies who'll do it upon request anyways. Sometimes fixing whatever the problem is is the best approach. Sometimes deleting is the best approach. This policy is a tool (among several) to deal with articles that have problems. A3 notes that it should be cautiously applied to new articles; when users need time to develop an article a sandbox is a wise place to do it; when these powers combine, it's often smarter to userfy than delete, get a request for undeletion, undelete and userfy. Something like WP:NOT#BUREAU + WP:BITE if you prefer arguments in all caps ;) WilyD 16:59, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I am hoping that someone who watches this page may be able to assist me with a question I have regarding the R2 speedy deletion criterion, specifically someone who may be familiar with the backstory and/or creation of the criterion. I have posted the question at Template talk:Db-meta#Regarding Template:Db-r2. Thanks in advance! Steel1943 (talk) 00:11, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I had recently tagged quite a few images as lacking evidence of permission - some were old images dating as far back as 2005, while others were fairly recent ones that had {{OTRS pending}} or {{OTRS received}} on their pages for more than 30 days. Quite a few of these speedy deletion tags were deleted by Ronhjones (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) with a couple of rationales he explained here. In summary, Ron said that "old, established images" should be sent to FFD rather than tagged for speedy - and that OTRS "takes ages" so they shouldn't be nominated even if over 30 days. I am not running down Ron and really appreciate his work. But if there are exceptions to the policy for old images, or if the OTRS processing deadline should be extended, that should be reflected in the policy to prevent image patrollers like me from wasting our time. With respect to everyone - Kelly ^hi! 18:44, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I suggested FFD for the old images, as they have not been picked up for many years, and I know that image uploading was rather different then, and did not have the variety of license types we have today - I am guessing that some will need to go, some may be OK, and there are some that could easily be changed to fair-use (deceased subjects) - and FFD will allow those options to be explored fully.

As for the OTRS ones, unless one has OTRS access it rather difficult to know what is going on (or one uses the WP:OTRS/N), and if the permission is going to be actually done. OTRS is not quick, and I have seen examples that take up all the 30 days and more - with many e-mails exchanged between OTRS and the other parties. I have (this year) been clearing out the old OTRS pending images at 60 days, due to an inability to search for urls in OTRS all year, that's now recently fixed and I did make a start on the 30 day category about a week or so ago. I was also thinking that maybe we need a separate F11 template for these images to emphasise that the OTRS is over 30 days - I've made my own {{NoOTRS30}} to put in Twinkle's F11 text box - it would be nice to have that all in one ready to use template. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 19:08, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

In regards to the old images, just as a "best practice" sort of thing, I would suggest that an admin declining a speedy for this reason should themselves send the file to FFD or PUF. Otherwise we risk disseminating images that are copyright or license violations. If the tagger didn't keep the file on their watchlist they would never know the speedy was declined, and their time was wasted in investigating/tagging the file. For OTRS images, can we continue to tag as F11 if the permission has been pending over 30 days? Kelly ^hi! 19:24, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Maybe a change of template? - On commons, I have the choice of

1. Delete the image
2. Remove the tag (and give an edit summary of Not a copyright violation. If you disagree, nominate for deletion.
3. Convert to DR

If commons has the scripts to do that, then why not fix it here as well? For OTRS, if you cannot check the OTRS, then I think it's best to use WP:OTRS/N first to find out the last (if any) e-mail sent/received. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 19:40, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Note that options 2 and 3 also are available to some non-admins (filemovers and/or licence reviewers), so Kelly should see those too. On Wikipedia, there would need to be two "convert to DR" buttons: "convert to PUF" and "convert to FFD". --Stefan2 (talk) 13:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

• If a file has an OTRS template, I think that it is better if an OTRS member lists it at PUF or tags it with {{subst:npd}}. In addition to the 30-day limit, also consider checking c:Commons:OTRS/backlog, which states that there were unhandled OTRS e-mails which were 60 days old as of the latest edit of that page (25 September). It is therefore a good idea to be careful with files tagged with an OTRS template, if the template was added less than 60 days before 25 September, in particular if you don't have access to OTRS. --Stefan2 (talk) 13:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

• I'm reading through this, and have no idea what any of you are really talking about since I'm not an admin or an OTRS volunteer. What I can say about my experience from backlogs at AfC and ACC is that if it is more likely than not that the 30-day guideline won't be met, then the guideline should be changed. If it appears there are some cases where even 60-days isn't enough, then perhaps 75-90 days would be appropriate. Perhaps creation of a new template or argument/parameter that OTRS volunteers can use to indicate that communications are still happening? Maybe even just a parameter that they can edit for "last interaction date" that they can just update (so if it falls off or gets stale, it will be marked as a priority after 30 days or some such? No idea, but I would be happy to help figure out a method to make it easier to know which ones are junk and which may be salvageable. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 14:15, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
  • I think that 30 days is enough if the tagging user has checked that no permission is waiting to be processed in the OTRS system. I think that files with OTRS tags normally only should be tagged by OTRS users, unless the OTRS tag was added more than 60 days before 25 September (cf. the current value of c:Commons:OTRS/backlog, change the limit if that page is changed). --Stefan2 (talk) 14:42, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

There is {{OTRS received}} - not all agents bother to use it - I do add it if I see one has been answered, but I have my own script to change {{OTRS pending}} to {{OTRS received}} at User:Ronhjones/OTRSreceived.js, so it's a one click and paste in the ticket number to do it. As user:Stefan2 will know, when (for almost a whole year) we could not search OTRS e-mails properly, I resorted to just using Category:Items pending OTRS confirmation of permission for over 60 days and blindly tagging every image there as F11. There was the occasional query that resulted from that, but on the whole that did work (and got rid of a lot of files which should not have been there) - I believe that if there is anything appearing in the 60 day category, then it's fair game for anyone to tag. 30 days is more tricky, some permissions are done in a week, some drag on as the uploader has to contact the photographer, then we wait for them to respond, then the photographer does not understand and does not use the consent form, and so it goes on... As for the other idea, I doubt if you will be able to get all the OTRS agents to edit the file page after every e-mail is received. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 18:29, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

• Interesting. Considering it could be done via script (similar to yours), are OTRS agents so lazy on the whole as they won't take the time for a single click or two? I'm not trying to be condescending if it appears that way, I'm just wondering if it would be a complete waste of my time to write such a script that they can click to activate the script, then select an item from a dropdown or click a button and be done until the next correspondence... — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 18:57, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

• @Technical 13: I think that you need to ask elsewhere - I suggest to one of the admins meta:OTRS#Administrators. I very much doubt if they are lazy - they may not even know of the existence of {{OTRS received}} - the OTRS instructions deal mainly with the workings of the OTRS system, and leans slightly to the fact that free images should be on commons (one of the template messages is basically thanks for the image and it's been moved to commons). It's not easy to tell all agents - they don't all subscribe to the e-mail lists, and they don't all declare they are agents on their wiki pages. I suppose the OTRS admins could do a mail shot. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 18:40, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I was wondering if you can delete my new User:D_Eaketts/sandbox page as my original is at User:User:D Eaketts/sandbox so I can move it back to my sandbox. D Eaketts (talk) 11:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

 Done and moved User:User:D Eaketts/sandbox to User:D_Eaketts/sandbox without leaving a redirect behind. GB fan 11:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Also accidently created this one as well Category:2015 BRIT Awards which can be deleted please. D Eaketts (talk) 11:33, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

 Done also GB fan 11:56, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there a problem with T3? Template:Succession has been nominated since 18 Oct (12 days ago). It shows the categories Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as unused redundant templates and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion yet it doesn't show up in either category (and so will wait forever for deletion?). Bazj (talk) 21:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

• Preformed a null edit on the template and it is now in cat... Not sure why you think it should be deleted though. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 21:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete denied by me. Discussion can continue on the talk page. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 22:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Administrators need to do some research, a WP:BEFORE; meaning run a Google search before deleting articles. Let me quote the guideline: "Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases." It should be reserved for cases "with no practical chance of surviving discussion." If there are sources, if the subject is legitimate, there is no excuse to speedy. Furthermore, it is not proper to speedy when there are obviously sources to back up the content. Rewrite is also a solution. We all know novice editors can create some lousy articles, but they can be fixed. By bypassing the standard AfD process, you allow no time for corrections to take place, your lone decision eliminates the normal process. You are getting played by disingenuous deletionists who will lie and cheat in order to win brownie points for deleting content from wikipedia. As responsible administrators of the encyclopedia, it is your job to be responsible. Do some research yourself. Look before you leap. Trackinfo (talk) 09:08, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely investigation needs to be done before speedy deletion. However, what that investigation entails differs by circumstance and that is never as detailed as WP:BEFORE - if you require that much effort to determine whether a speedy deletion criterion applies then it doesn't and the article cannot be correctly speedied. For example U1 just requires verifying that it is being requested by the user and there have been no significant other editors (in most cases just a quick look at the history is enough), A1 you need to read the article to see if you can identify the context (e.g. if context has been added since the tag was placed). G12 you just verify that the page is indeed a copyright violation and that there are no good versions in the history. Some of the criteria - particularly A3, A7, A9 and A11 - need to be very cautiously applied when a page is new, but CSD criteria need to be evaluable by any administrator with no subject knowledge. If something gives a credible assertion of importance or any other content that needs research to assess, then as long as it isn't a copyvio, exclusively promotional, exclusively offensive/harassing or an unchanged recreation of deleted material then it is not eligible for speedy deletion. [[WP:BEFORE}] is mainly about XfDs, in my opinion it should be a requirement to undertake this before a nomination (the last community discussion about it I'm aware of though declined to go further than "recommended"). Thryduulf (talk) 11:51, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• I agree it is up to the nominator to check before nominating, and all of the responsibility should not fall on the administrator. Do you think there would be enough support for a three stage process where people who nominate without checking are 1) Notified of what their responsibility is 2) warned that continued improper usage of the tags may be met with repercussions as their actions are disruptive 3) blocking on a case-by-case basis to prevent further disruption? I'd be happy to set up the lines of template for such notices/warnings and get them included in TW if it would help. I think such a three stage process would make sure that we properly AGF. I'm sure there might be some on the side of thinking it is too lenient, and to those I would say, "It's perfectly all right to skip levels of warnings just like any other warning system. That's the reason for 4im stage, and this set could also have that." — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:03, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I would be happy to see a disciplinary system for misuse. The penalty should be severe enough to stop them from misusing the speedy process. The difficulty will be in catching the culprit. Please realize that editors without administrative tools cannot even see what has occurred. That is the majority of the population. So when an article has been destroyed using speedy, there is no forensic evidence left. No history. here is one I caught in time. It was called for speedy and I managed to post "wait" before it got the whitewash. Now, in less than the length of time of a standard AfD, the article in question Naked Capitalism has 13 sources and is certainly in no jeopardy. Had another few minutes elapsed and an administrator not done due diligence, poof, that would be gone. Another article successfully got the speedy in the length of time it took me to write the "wait" message. Fortunately there was enough time for me to at least identify the admin here (while I wrote the section above). After being deceived enough to delete the article, he gave it back to me in my sandbox and the article was ultimately recreated under a slightly different, more accurate name iHeart Radio Fiesta Latina. Otherwise it would never have been missed (though the OP also did complain, having been appropriately notified). The point is, you as administrators cannot just take the word of even an experienced editor. Some will lie and cheat to achieve the goal of deletion, usually vs a novice editor who does not know what is wrong or how to defend their work. There is no evidence left in their wake, nobody would even know about it. Save speedy for egregious cases and drop anything less than that into the standard AfD process. Trackinfo (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Naked Capitalism was not a speedy, but proposed deletion, a simple process where anyone can object to the nomination and remove the deletion tag. To address another point: In my (admin) opinion, the responsibility for a speedy deletion lies with the admin alone, although bad taggers should be admonished as well. Mistakes do happen, and I am happy to undo mine or have somebody else undelete what I deleted. —Kusma (t·c) 17:31, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
      • Naked Capitalism was vulnerable. All it took was for an administrator to push the button and it would disappear. In this case, I was able to act fast enough to prevent that. Maybe there would then be circuitous routes for us mere editors to re-create it, if or when it was noticed . . . with scary menus that would scare most lesser editors away. Most other editors would not know the procedure or how to trace through the process. Relatively few editors find their way into these back room discussions. I've been editing a long time and I don't know all the nuances of different levels of PRODs. How many people would really understand that? All I am saying is you cannot expect all editors to act with the same high standards. Some people have agendas that are not in the best interests of the encyclopedia (and yes they should be disciplined for their misuse of the process). But all the weight is on you as administrators. You have the power. Before you push the button and take the nuclear option to an article (and its history), spend 5 seconds; type the subject into Google (or the search engine of your choice) and see if there is any substance. Is there hope of making this into a worthwhile article through the editing process? If so, then speedy is not the solution. Remove the offensive content and maybe take it to AfD if necessary. A week is still not much time but it is far superior to *)poof(*. Trackinfo (talk) 18:50, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm seeing a lot of talk here about an article that wasn't speedy tagged anyway, or am I mistaken? As to speedy deletions - there is no need for someone new to find circuitous routes to back rooms. The name and talk page of the deleting admin are there on the red bar, and quite a lot of those that contest too late find the talk page of the tagger. I'm willing to userfy things I've deleted (barring copyvio, spam, hoax and attack pages - those I will not restore). Most of what I delete at speedy has little merit and less hope of becoming an article. If I think more time is needed, I userfy instead of deleting. And, like other admins, I remove tags that are inappropriate. Sometimes, I retag appropriately. In either case, I try to explain to the tagger what was wrong. That's how I learned my trade. If we don't train the taggers like this, we could lose potential admins. Most of us don't just charge through deleting everything simply because someone's tagged it. I even look at things that someone else has just deleted - partly nosiness, and partly checking. With the amount of crap that gets to CSD, it might LOOK like that, but there is thought involved. And experience. And Googling quickly on occasions that merit it. PROD - even when an article lasts the seven days without the author or someone else removing the tag, the admin who goes through the time-expired prods looks carefully at them, and sometimes declines to delete. Peridon (talk) 21:25, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

IHeartRadio Latin Music Festival was speedied. The deleting admin was very cooperative, it was restored after several edits under a more proper name iHeart Radio Fiesta Latina. It was not my article, I wouldn't have noticed it. Once deleted, I would have no way of evaluating if it were worthy of rescue. It was a matter of seconds from my noticing the article being posted for speedy (it was deleted while I wrote the save message). I can't even document the edit history of this sequence because it too was obliterated in the speedy deletion process. How many other articles have been completely washed away? As a mere editor, there is no way to even research the question or evaluate the performance of the admins or editors involved. Trackinfo (talk) 22:18, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

From a philosophical point of view I can understand the wish to save every attempt at an article if it is about a worthy topic. In practice, the amount of advertising (your example article was correctly tagged as a deletion-worthy advertisement, even written in first person) that people attempt to do on Wikipedia means we do not have this luxury. (Wikipedia was a more fun place to be around before it became so powerful and before so many people started regarding it as trustworthy). But really, if there is any article I deleted that you are concerned about, I am happy to restore and userfy it for you if it doesn't violate any core policies, and otherwise explain why it was deleted. You may also ask anyone listed in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles. There is no complete transparency here, but there are good reasons for that (personal attacks, copyright violations etc.) —Kusma (t·c) 10:11, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

How many articles washed away? Thousands. Mostly pure spam, or "joe bloggs is in third grade at stfranciss he is awesommmmeeeee", or about a rock group founded two months previously who are looking for a bass player (but they will be famous one day), or "joe bloggs is not awesome he is a nasty little shit", or duplicates of existing articles under a new title (sometimes the title is kept as a redirect). And so on. No admin is obliged to delete anything. (Some of those that post on this page are not ones I've seen at CSD in over six years of working there on both sides of the mop bucket.) If not sure, we can walk away. Is that article about a footballer a blatant hoax? If he's aged 13 and has scored three goals in the World Cup, yes. If he's aged 19 and playing for Real Madrid, it's not blatant to me 'cos on the whole I know sweet FA about football and footballers. (Pun intended.) To someone else, yes it might be. But I can tell if an article about a footballer is a G4 simply by looking at the previous version. Another point is that admins rarely delete straight off. Attack pages, yes, we will. Otherwise, we tag just like a patroller. Two pairs of eyes (or in the worst case, two single eyes) look at stuff at CSD. Tagger and admin. Same at prod. I even admit to taking some things to AfD in order to get more eyes looking at them - and to give seven days for repairs to be done. In some cases, I will dig for references, or rewrite things. That's if a subject interests me. I'm not a great content creator. I joined Wikipedia to remove rubbish from an article, and I've been removing rubbish for six and a half years since. However inclusionist you are, the awesome Joe Bloggs has to be removed or we'll become another Facebook. Peridon (talk) 10:48, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Granted there is a lot of garbage out there trying to make its way onto wikipedia pages. Yes, that stuff (enumerated by Peridon) needs to get deleted and deserves the speedy treatment. I am not requesting that the speedy process be eliminated. My contention is you cannot just trust the word of potentially disingenuous nominators. Any administrator can determine the potential viability of an article from a 5 second google effort. Go past the Facebook crap and the wiki mirrors on the first page, is there legitimate reporting? Are there potential reliable sources? If yes, then this is not a case for a speedy. If there is copyvio, advertising, personal attacks, delete all that crap, keep the article and take it through the AfD process, where over the course of a week, other eyes can either fix the article to the point that it can be saved or it will suffer its fate due to inattention. Wikipedia is supposed to be a collaborative body. When one administrator blindly detonates, it removes the potential for collaboration. Very, very few people on earth understand how to initiate the correction process, you have to get it right the first time by your actions. Trackinfo (talk) 18:52, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Can I suggest that if you find a deletion you think is wrong, that you contact the admin responsible? and if you get the brush off, contact another for review - or take it to WP:DRV or WP:REFUND as appropriate? We don't just trust the word of taggers. Even if I see something tagged by DGG (no deletionist by any stretch of the imagination), I read it carefully. Have you evidence of wrong deletion, or is this just thoughts that there could be something there? You are welcome to examine the stuff at CSD and to rescue anything rescueable. I think you'll find that we do all you are asking already. Peridon (talk) 19:57, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I do have one particular editor with a lengthy history of disingenuous noms. If I name names, I'll get in trouble. The fact that he has gotten some speedies through already suggests that he successfully buffaloed some admins, but I can't prove it, I can't read the history and would cause a lot of trouble trying to investigate. The point is it should be an administrative procedure to do a WP:BEFORE. Then when you find editors with a pattern of disingenuity, you can take action, rather than it being me, a lone editor making similar accusations. My accusations make me look like the bad guy . . . until a decision is made. You are the guys with the decision making powers. You can decide if an article has hope, that's all that is required is hope, so a speedy is not justified. You can log names of bad noms. You can see the pattern developing rather than me violating some spirit of AGF to track it for you. And you can take appropriate disciplinary action, rather than threatening me for some narrow view of my actions while trying to prove a much bigger problem. Everything else on wikipedia has a history. Even a deleted article has a discussion about it. A successful speedy disappears completely, burying the evidence with the article. And this is not about me going back to restore one article. I've been here a while, 40K edits, I kind of know my way around. I've never had one of my articles speedied, I know how to prevent it. I'm trying to speak up for the little guys who don't know. Your administrative hidden decision crushes their article and probably their interest in contributing. We are not talking about garbage articles, we are talking about selectively keeping legitimate content that might have issues that can be solved. There is a difference. Trackinfo (talk) 22:32, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE is (a) for AFDs, not speedies, and (b) not a policy. Stifle (talk) 10:15, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

That in a nutshell is the issue. Without due diligence from an admin (which you say is NOT required) that effectively means a disingenuous speedy could get deleted, blindly with no review process. Trackinfo (talk) 18:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

@Trackinfo: It's very hard to respond to you when you complain using generalisations from specifics while not giving any indication of what those specifics are. Deletion logs are public. Every admin can review every other admins actions - and almost all admins are willing to check any specific action if asked, and most will provide the evidence for non-admins to review too where possible (this isn't possible for copyvios or libellous material for example). However you need to accept that there are so many admin actions made by so many users that we cannot review all of them on vague comments like "I have concerns about one particular admin".

If you have concerns about an admin's actions, the first step is to discuss your concerns with them. If that doesn't alleviate your concerns then ask another admin for their opinions, and/or take it to WP:AN/I, WP:DRV, etc. You will get into trouble if you make unsubstantiated allegations. However, if you have specific concerns, present reasons for those concerns and have consulted with the person involved (or, in exceptional cases, explain why this can't or shouldn't be done) and raise the problem in an appropriate venue (WP:HD will always be able to advise on the correct venue if you are unsure and give them enough information to understand what you are wanting to discuss) then no you will not get into trouble. Even if you are wrong then you wont get into trouble unless you do it repeatedly or maliciously.

On the other hand, if you just continue to make general comments about how something is harmful without listening to the responses you get, then do not be surprised if people start ignoring you and, if you repeatedly keep doing it, treat you as a troll. We need good feedback, we need people checking what we do (admins are only human after all) but it needs to be constructive feedback. Thryduulf (talk) 12:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Maybe the simple solution is to mandate a WP:BEFORE on all speedy nominations. At least that will make a requirement for review by administrators. I don't have a problem with any administrator, however I am unable to review your work to be sure. I would think most people who rise through the ranks to become an admin are caring people. The problem is in the case of misuse of the speedy process by disingenuous nominators. If the admin just takes the word of the nominator and does not do the due diligence of a BEFORE, it turns speedy into a sneaky tool to delete articles by EVADING the AfD review. Instead of a week's review process and discussion by a few (still too few) eyeballs, it is literally a matter of minutes, even just seconds. Poof the article is gone, there is no review, there is no record other than the deletion log THAT SAYS NOTHING. It is just words of the title. So how would I, as a mere editor, be able to see what was deleted? How could I make a determination if this subject has any hope of being rescued? Or if my help could get it over the hump? How could I review the administrators actions? How would I know to appeal the decision? Speedy should be there to remove junk, fraud, personal attacks. At an extreme level; a legitimate article about mass murderer would be a personal attack without sources. You have to look BEFORE knowing the answer. I was not aware BEFORE was not required for a speedy, that's even more serious as a policy omission. In the case I enumerated, my complaint was from the context that I thought BEFORE had been omitted, otherwise the article in question should have been taken to AfD at worst. Instead it was successfully deleted AS I WAS WRITING the hold on message. Literally seconds between me noticing the situation and its total annihilation. The admin was good about restoring it, no problem there. But two things had to have happened for it to get deleted. 1) poorly researched nom 2) admin deleting the article with no BEFORE. BEFORE is the final line of defense. I cited a couple of examples, but I'm deliberately trying to stay away for the diversion of nit picking one specific example. BEFORE needs to be part of the procedure every time. And ultimately, if the nominator is a serial nominator (one that does not know the difference between speedy and AFD or is deliberately evading proper AfD in order to get a successful deletion); each example of many disingenuous noms would turn into a pattern that your system should detect, catalog and then cause you to initiate disciplinary action. Trackinfo (talk) 19:10, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

As has been pointed out, BEFORE is not a requirement for speedy deletion. Yes, nominators should do some research beforehand but speedy deletion is only for clear-cut cases. If it doesn't meet the criteria then it does not get speedy deleted, and no amount of BEFORE will change whether it meets the criteria or not. Going though the criteria one-by one:

• G1 Patent nonsense: "Pages consisting entirely of incoherent text or gibberish with no meaningful content or history." Explicitly excluding anything that might be something to work from. "In short, if you can understand it, G1 does not apply.". No amount of research will change gibberish into useful text or vice versa.
• G2 Test pages: This one is self-explanatory - these are not attempts at articles, and so there is nothing to research.
• G3 Vandalism and blatant hoaxes: Again these are not articles and never can be. If something needs research to determine whether it is hoax or not it is not blatant and so is not eligible for speedy deletion.
• G4 Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion: "A sufficiently identical and unimproved copy, having any title, of a page deleted via its most recent deletion discussion." Very, very, very occasionally these might be accidentally created in good faith by a different user but in >99% of cases anything created by a different user that is not a copy will be sufficiently different that it is not eligible for speedy deletion. If it has been deleted once then unless the article changes it will always be deleted. If the subject changes then the article will change to include the new information and so not be eligible.
• G5 Creations by banned or blocked users: We don't block or ban people without good reason, and this criterion exists so to limit the disruption they can cause (and lots of people do). If a blocked or banned user creates something that is a significant improvement to the encyclopaedia while still blocked or banned, many admins will not enforce this criteria, but banned means you cannot contribute to the encyclopaedia.
• G6 Technical deletions and uncontroversial cleanup: Articles and potential articles are not eligible for this, unless the deletion is only temporary (e.g. for a history merge) so WP:BEFORE is irrelevant here.
• G7 Author requests deletion: The author of the page doesn't want it, WP:BEFORE will not change that. If they are not the only significant author then it isn't eligible and so this one is uncontroversial.
• G8 Pages dependent on a deleted or non-existent page: This is entirely internal to Wikipedia and examining anything else wont change the fact that this is the talk page of a deleted page, or a redirect to a deleted page.
• G9 Office actions. Admins cannot use this criterion, only authorised WMF staff can and they only use it when there is a very good reason to, often legal reasons.
• G10 Attack pages. These are again not articles and there is no chance that any discussion about them would result in anything other than deletion.
• G11 Unambiguous advertising or promotion. It doesn't matter how notable or otherwise the subject of the article is, if it is exclusively promotional then it is so far from NPOV that it is better (and easier) to start from a blank page than from what we have. If there is anything that is or might be salvageable by a neutral article then this does not apply.
• G12 Unambiguous copyright infringement. Something is either a copyvio or it isn't. If it is we cannot host it, regardless of what the subject is or how good the article is. The nominator should supply evidence of where it is a copyvio from. Such pages can be undeleted once copyright permission is received but not until then.
• G13 Abandoned AFC drafts: These are drafts of articles that have been sitting without a single edit for 6 months or more - way, way more time than the week an AfD would give you.
• A1 No context: "Articles lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article". If WP:BEFORE is possible then the article is not eligible for this criterion.
• A2 Foreign language articles that exist on another project. This is the English Wikipedia we need content in English. This criterion applies only if the article already exists on the relevant language Wikipedia, if it doesn't we transwiki it.
• A3 no content: There is nothing here to base an article on. Mostly they are not even attempts at articles.
• A5 Transwikied articles. These pages belong on other projects and have been transferred there. There is nothing more than en.wp can do.
• A7 no indication of importance: This is possibly where your concerns lie, but again WP:BEFORE is not relevant. An article needs to make an assertion of importance - say why we should have an article on this subject. If there is a plausible claim in the article, then this criterion doesn't apply. WP:BEFORE is irrelevant because all that matters is the text of the article. WP:BEFORE applies if it is sent to AfD, but that is not speedy deletion. This criterion only applies to specifically listed topics, because these are the only ones which meet the frequency, objectivity and consistency requirements of CSD.
• A9 no indication of importance (musical recordings): Similar to A7 but more strict - in addition to not claiming importance for the recording, there must also be no article about the artist.
• A10 Recently created duplicates: We already have an article on this topic and the new one has nothing that can be merged AND has a title that would not make a good redirect. WP:BEFORE is essentially built in to this criterion.
• A11 Obviously invented: The article text says that it is made up AND doesn't indicate why it significant. If something is made up, then there is nothing BEFORE can achieve.

So while BEFORE should be done before an AfD it is irrelevant to CSD. Thryduulf (talk) 23:14, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Looking at this in as nit picky way as possible: G3 In order to determine hoax from truth, you might need to be an expert in the subject in question. If you are not, research is required. Administrators cannot have omnibus knowledge. G10 as mentioned above, you need to do a moment of research to determine fact from fiction. A11 the same. One person's obvious might not be reality until you look at sources. G4 actually requires looking at the previously deleted page to see. G12 requires looking at the copyvio sources. This is frequently a case where novice editors might not know wikipedia policy. Yes the offending content must be deleted, but in order to rescue the subject a little editing (usually massive cutting) can pare the article down to a basic statement. rather than leaving the novice editor with no explanation or understanding of what just happened. Novice editors will also leave some badly written articles that might qualify for A1, A3, A7 or A9 (the nominator's choice). The favorite tool to use is G11. New phenomenon become popular on the internet literally overnight. Wikipedia is always behind the times, because we depend on sources. So the sources need to exist first. No administrator can possibly be that hip; that informed. You have to look at sources to determine if this is just one guy trying to sell something, or a developing phenomenon that affects a lot of people that we should be reporting on. I watch thousands of articles and have to make these same decisions all the time in regards to content that could be considered vandalism. Yes I pull the trigger a lot, there is a lot of junk out there. But it is not 100%. That is why we allow anybody to edit wikipedia. When I do a google check, I've been surprised to discover some IP edits that look like absolute junk, turn out to be true. I've had an IP edit that a person I wrote an article about was accused of murder. Hey, google proved it true. This guy didn't have a social media presence so reliable sources reporting the arrest on the first page (if they do have a social media presence you have to go a couple of pages past the bullshit). It turned into several sections in the article following the murder trial and conviction. The point is, YOU DON'T KNOW UNTIL YOU LOOK. And by the way, my work is not hidden, there is a history trail. I get held accountable for my edits. Speedy eliminates the discussion and masks the history. No outsider can determine the legitimacy of either the administrator's or the nominator's argument. I've looked at the speedy deletion logs. Yes the rule is cited, maybe 75% of the time. That other 25%, there is no explanation for why the article was speedied, and nothing else. So how did that article get deleted? Trackinfo (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Your attempts to nitpick here are wide of the mark. If you have to do research or be an expert in a certain topic area to know that something is a hoax then it is not a G3 candidate. G3 only applies to blatant, obvious hoaxes where this isn't necessary. WP:BEFORE is about checking for sources to determine whether something is notable, not checking the source of a copyright violation to verify that it really is a copyright violation or checking a recreated article to see that it corresponds to a deleted version. Someone looking at a deleted article is presented with the deletion log, which virtually always contains at least the code of the speedy deletion criterion in question. If a copyright violation can be salvaged without stripping out all or virtually all of the content then it isn't a G12 candidate. G10 and A11 have nothing to do with factual accuracy: a completely accurate attack page or negative unsourced BLP still qualifies for speedy deletion, and if I write an article about a board game I invented last night then the fact I really did invent it last night doesn't mean it isn't an A11 candidate. G11 applies both to "one guy trying to sell something" and to "a developing phenomenon... we should be reporting on" (although the former is almost always the case). If something is a G11 candidate then, as Thryduulf said above, we would have to completely or almost completely rewrite it to make it compliant with a core policy, and this is all but indistinguishable from deleting it and starting again. Hut 8.5 07:56, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Does G7 apply to articles in draft space? The current criterion only makes exception for pages in userspace, category, or talk page. What's the consensus on this? KJ ^Discuss? 06:27, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see why it wouldn't apply. ansh666 06:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

To clarify, user, category and talk pages can be deleted on sole editor's request, but should not be deleted if the sole editor simply blanks it. For any other page, blanking equals deletion request. Pretty much anything can be deleted if the only editor requests it, maybe even user talk pages if no one else has posted there. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:48, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I think you are misreading the criterion. G7 applies in all namespaces as long as the other criteria are met (must be an author request where no other editor has contributed to the page (directly or indirectly)). The note about those namespaces are that if the author blanks the page in those namespaces it can be considered a G7 request by an administrator. I'd be very opposed to this extending to other namespaces, and as easy as it is to tag a page with {{Db-g7}}, I'm not sure why that "page blanking is assumed to be a deletion request" for those namespaces. I'd rather see that go away all together. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 06:52, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

It's easy to add G7 when you know about G7. A lot of people create an article about themselves or their company, it gets (properly) tagged speedy, and they decide to delete it themselves. And they can't. They want rid (possibly being embarrassed about it...). So they do the next best thing - they blank it. It's a sure sign that the author doesn't want the article at least as it stood. So it should go. If they merely blanked before rewriting, there's no loss. They were intending to start afresh anyway. There's no reason why this should not apply in Draft space. I can see possible reasons for not applying it to Template space where problems can arise through a template vanishing suddenly (although this isn't really likely to apply to that sort of template). User space - could just be a desire to hide something. Could be an idea to ask them if they want their page deleted under U1 or just left blank. (I change G7 to U1 when deleting unblanked but tagged user pages.) Peridon (talk) 11:37, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• I don't think that we should be assuming that because a user blanked a page they worked on, that automatically means they want it deleted. If they aren't familiar enough to know how to change the content of the page to just {{Db-g7}}, then it is hard for me to believe they know that blanking will result in it's deletion if an admin happens upon the page. I think that if blanking is going to continue to imply deletion, the administrator should be required to ask the author if they want it deleted and getting a yes back rather than just going ahead and deleting it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:56, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

  They don't blank it as a way to request an administrator to come along and finish deleting it for them. They blank it because they think that the act of blanking itself deletes the article.

  Administrators who speedy delete articles in any quantity quickly become used to a high volume of angry "Hey, why'd you delete my article?" complaints. But I'll think you'll have a very hard time finding even one such complaint about an article that the author had blanked. —Cryptic 16:12, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

  Agree completely with Cryptic and Peridon. My experience is that new users assume blanking is deletion.--Mojo Hand (talk) 16:45, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

  • Very bad assumption. Despite what new users assume, administrators should not assume anything. CSD is suppose to be only for clear cut, non-opposable cases. If the problem is that new user's are assuming that blanking will delete the page, it is simple to add a note to the namespace edit notice for user talk pages saying that blanking is not the same as deleting and if they want it deleted they can replace the content with G7 template if they are the only editor. I'd prefer to instruct new users than have administrator's assume things that may not be the case. If these new editors are so nieve as to think blanking is deletion, and they don't know how to properly tag the page for deletion, how can anyone say that they would know how to ask for a refund or take it to DRV if they didn't in fact want it deleted. It's just another one of those little things driving new users away that don't know what they are suppose to be doing. This is a real problem, and we, as experienced users and administrators need to stop doing it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 18:34, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

    I sort of implied it above, but I'll spell it out explicitly. There have been, conservatively, tens of thousands of G7 speedies as a result of page blanking. If you can dredge up even one case where that's been objected to by the article author, you'll maybe have a leg to stand on. —Cryptic 18:46, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

    • I sort of implied it above, but I'll spell it out explicitly. There have been, conservatively, tens of thousands of G7 speedies as a result of page blanking. I'm not going to dig through all of them to look for a DRV/REFUND to satisfy your query; however, if there isn't, it actually strengthens my comment about If these new editors are so nieve as to think blanking is deletion, and they don't know how to properly tag the page for deletion, how can anyone say that they would know how to ask for a refund or take it to DRV if they didn't in fact want it deleted. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 19:10, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• Technical 13 - I think you may be misreading the criterion. G7 says that blanking is the presumption of a deletion request, except when blanking is applied to "userspace page, a category page, or any type of talk page". Let's not make this a bigger deal than it is.--Mojo Hand (talk) 20:21, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

As I said above, they were dissatisfied (or embarrassed) by their article. If they were really clearing the decks for a new start, they'll see a red bar with a message telling them that it was deleted because the author requested or blanked the page. All they need do, is make their new start. As is said above by Cryptic, you don't get complaints about G7 deletions. I even get thanks on occasion. Most often, the article that is blanked had been tagged (rightly) for speedy and is pretty new. It was going to get the chop anyway. And wasn't worth saving. The other cases are the longer standing articles that authors for some reason best known to themselves want rid of. Possibly they said something they shouldn't, or found out their info was wrong. Sometimes the author blanks, and a zealous patroller reverts. Then the author blanks again. That says to me they really want rid. It's a perfectly valid assumption to make - and in most cases they were an SPA and won't be back to answer a message on their user page anyway. Peridon (talk) 21:11, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• I don't expect change, I just don't like that our administrators are deleting things based on an assumption that violates Administrators should take care not to speedy delete pages or media except in the most obvious cases. and I don't consider a user blanking a page to be the most obvious case. There's no reason we can't add a note to the edit notice saying that if they wish to have it deleted they can replace the entire contents of the page with the appropriate template. Only when explicitly asked for is it the most obvious case. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 22:04, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

• If you spent much time cleaning up after new page creations you would see that people rarely read the edit notice and often blank the page and leave when they give up. The page blanking rule is important. Remember we can always undelete.

  Where it says the most obvious cases. it means obviously meeting the CSD criteria as in it is obvious there was only 1 author and they blanked the page. Chillum 23:23, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Just to clarify, then should pages like Draft:FOCUS T25, which has been blanked by its only substantial contributor, be nominated for speedy deletion under G7? KJ ^Discuss? 00:38, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is so clear-cut. Maybe just start the AfC timer, we can wait 6 months. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

• Or send it to MfD would be okay too (only a 7 day wait that way). Either way. I've amended the edit notice on draft pages to enrich new editor's knowledge about G7 and inform them that blanking may not be noticed and is not the best way to request a deletion and where to go to request an undeletion (WP:REFUND) if it was deleted and that wasn't what they wanted. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 01:24, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
• Per the language of G7, Draft:FOCUS T25 was correctly tagged and speedy deleted.--Mojo Hand (talk) 14:56, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

So you want us to send blank pages to MfD? Mind you, I agree with adding a mention of G7 (you can take a horse to the library, but you cannot make him read...), but generally this thread looks like an undefined answer desperately looking for a problem. Peridon (talk) 19:05, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

You're not responding to me, I hope? I am not advocating for MfDs - I believe current practice and language of G7 support the speedy deletion of draft templates that have been blanked by the only substantial author.--Mojo Hand (talk) 04:52, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

No, to T13. MfD's got enough to cope with already. Peridon (talk) 14:51, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not advocating MfD's, I'm just saying it is a better alternative than it sitting around for 6 months waiting for a G13 deletion. Even better in my opinion is to just tag it as G7. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 18:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

• Very few new users understand about G7 unless someone explicitly tells them about it. Deleting a blanked page in user space or draft space is safe, because if by any chance they didn't intend it, it can and should be restored. (posted by DGG)
  • That's like saying it is okay to delete any page on Wikipedia. Very poor attitude. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 18:04, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

You're not calling User:DGG a deletionist, are you? 8-) Peridon (talk) 10:21, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

maybe I am, for blank pages. It's pages with content that are another matter DGG ( talk ) 11:46, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Pshh, like content is so important. Blank pages need love too. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:19, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Go on then - collect them in your user space and appreciate them. ;) Peridon (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Some of the category criteria were changed to encompass both renames and merges. The edit summary says there was consensus under "Opposed nominations", whatever that means. @Fayenatic london: could you please clarify this? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 19:57, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Good point, thanks for asking, so that it can be documented here. I opened the criteria from the WP:CFDS page and forgot that in fact they are transcluded into that page from this CSD page. Here is a permalink to the discussion in the Opposed nominations section on the Speedy CFD page.

Note that the heading was always "C2. Renaming or merging", as opposed to C1 which is for deletion of empty cats. Although "renaming" was then used in the summary title for four of the detailed criteria, most participants in the above discussion understood these to apply equally to merging. – Fayenatic London 21:30, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That's not what I would call a consensus in the slightest. Mind you, I don't object, and I won't revert, but speedy deletion, being one of the most destructive processes when misused, should generally have discussion of even minor changes, and the discussion needs to happen here. The folks here are pretty good at spotting unintended consequences that can be caused by a poor choice of words. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

That's actually a pretty good consensus when it comes to category issues! If you have a gander at the full discussions at WP:CFD, they often attract fewer comments than this speedy issue did. And this one wasn't really like a speedy deletion of an article or other content—no content was lost, because it's a category merge. It's simply taking an article which was categorized in an improperly named article and merging it to the pre-existing category which is properly named per the naming guidelines. Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of these category renames/merges are processed each week with simply a nomination and then zero follow-up discussion, simply because none is necessary. There's probably no need to make a federal case out of this one. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

It was 4:1, although the opposer is also an experienced hand at CFD. I have no objection to reverting it for consultation here, if anyone thinks that should happen. My apologies for skipping that. – Fayenatic London 22:10, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

To everyone who contributed to the consensus to expand A7 to cover events: thank you! —Swpb^talk 15:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I've dug through the archives and this comes up every few years, but no one ever seems to be willing to work with the idea. Some new pages are created that are flagrant, bright, middle-finger-to-the-project violations of WP:NOT. I've seen articles that were simply fanfiction written by the author. I've seen articles that were clearly invented by the author but don't explicitly say so, thus flaunting A11. I've seen pages that were simply the lyrics to some song. I just saw Holt economic quiz answers in AfD that was just what the title implies: a list of answers for a high school quiz. @NawlinWiki deleted the article immediately after it was posted, but had to settle for NOTHOST and SNOW as rationale for a not-yet-replied-to AfD entry (no criticism on my part for his actions, textbook IAR). If admins don't IAR and delete it, they get prodded or sent to AfD, wasting everyone's time for a full week (unless snowed) before finally being disposed of. From what I've seen from the discussion archives, people seemed generally in support of an umbrella criterion that would allow for the speedy deletion of such articles, but cringed at the prospect of a criterion that simply allowed for the deletion of "unencyclopedic" articles as being open to abuse and misinterpretation.

So I propose we define a new criterion A12 that either (a) allows for the deletion of such articles with such careful, precise wording that it would be impossible to misapply or abuse it (would not include the word "unencyclopedic"; instead, would delineate it), or (b) enumerate such candidate articles à la A7, but for encyclopedic-ness instead of notability. As with A7, the bar would be much lower than GNG or similar that would send the article to AfD; it would have to be so uncontroversial as to be considered to be a technical deletion, and it would only apply for the list of such articles maintained by the criterion.

Would there be any support to attempt to develop such a criterion? Like I said, from what I've seen it seems as though people believe such a criterion should exist, but hesitate to attempt to create one for fear of an excessively liberal wording. I simply don't believe fear of criterion vagueness should be the only thing barring such technical deletions. Deadbeef 03:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposal withdrawn in favor of Jehochman's A3 method and the wp:snowing objections below. I'll leave the discussion open in lieu of putting an archive template on it in case anyone wants to expand on it (or pile on) but I have no interest in furthering my proposal. Deadbeef 01:08, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, how about this? A12: Page is not an encyclopedia article and a complete rewrite would be required to make it into one. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:30, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Pretty much what I was thinking, but I would guess the brevity would be a turnoff for some people. Deadbeef 03:38, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Not a good idea. It is too elastic and would be abused. The example you cited could have the unencyclopedic content blanked, and then you tag it with A3, "no content", or if you are an admin, just hit it with A3 straight away. Basically, if you have an egregious violation of WP:NOT you can make one of the existing criteria fit. Jehochman ^Talk 03:45, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

That actually works; I hadn't considered that option. I had thought that A3 only applied if there was no content in the article and in the article's history; that isn't the case so your method works. I'll withdraw my proposal unless anyone else has a better idea. Deadbeef 04:08, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

If there's something in the article history, the page has been vandalized and needs to be reverted, so should not be deleted. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:09, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Removing content that is against policy is not vandalism. Deadbeef 06:30, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Right, but I think Oiyarbezpy might be saying if an article looks like junk because it has been vandalized, it should be fixed not deleted. Before tagging, check the history. Jehochman ^Talk 12:02, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

I support an instance of expansion as described. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 12:05, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

There is a reason we don't include WP:NOT reasons for CSD. They require subjective interpretation of the community. CSD should be things an admin can objectively determine on their own. Chillum 12:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

• strong oppose any criterion based on WP:NOT as being unredeemably subjective. If something has been rejected time and again there is going to be a good reason for doing so, and any one proposing it again would do well to understand that reason and explain why it is either not now relevant or how this proposal deals with that reason. This proposal seems to do neither. Thryduulf (talk) 16:21, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
• Comment While in principle I like the idea, and on other Wikipedias see 'not encyclopaedic' as a deletion reason, the setting up of criteria would probably rival the homoiousia controversies (see Homoiousian if not familiar with this load of high flying nit-picking crossed with proof reading). Yes, I know when something is not encyclopaedic. And I'm sure Thryduulf, NawlinWiki, Tokyogirl79 and Jimfbleak know too. (Naming names for no relevant reason.) But do we all agree on what is not encyclopaedic? "Shawn is awesome!!!!!!!!" - anyone disagree? That can go under context or A7 anyway - or even G11... Lyrics are usually copyright - if they're public domain, there's no problem in prod there. I don't like the 'blank it then no content' one. I'll revert there and then consider the future (or substitute an appropriate criterion). On the whole, I could see this one running to rival Cats. Peridon (talk) 20:24, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Apart from G10 (and perhaps G12), there's no problem with PROD anywhere. WilyD 12:16, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per Chillum. NOT is too subjective to be a CSD. Hobit (talk) 18:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose since most of these can be moved to other projects. That's why we have tags like {{Copy to Wiktionary}}, {{Copy to Wikiquote}}, {{Copy to Wikisource}}, etc. Lyrics in public domain, for example, can be moved to Wikisource. So, it's not really needed, and often the wrong thing to do. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:53, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. Agree with others that this doesn't seem to be a good candidate. Also, even without blanking, this seems in line with A3, and a slight expansion of A3 to "Article lacks encyclopedic content" would cover almost any reasonable proposed A12 scenario. VanIsaac_WS^cont 23:47, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Please see discussion at MediaWiki talk:Deletereason-dropdown#A7. This issue is whether the automatically filled in deletion edit summary admins are provided on tagged A7's should or should not include the word "credible", like the db templates for A7 do. See also last five edit summaries and/or diffs at the interface's page history.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:03, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

In case of articles created by WP:AfC, can the editor who approve the article and moved it to mainspace, contest speedy deletion?--Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 07:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• It depends. Is that user an experienced user that has no other relation to the article other than approving it as an AfC draft or is that user a new editor who's appears to be a WP:SPA for the purpose of approving that article? There is a guideline at AfC that says drafts should have at least a 50% chance of surviving an AfD before it can be approved and if the user is an established AfC editor, then by all means they have a reasonable justification to contest a speedy delete. In those cases, it is probably better to just send it to AfD if you feel strongly it should be deleted and doesn't belong. There, of course, are exceptions such as the possibility of a G12 that the reviewer may have missed (it's really hard to catch them all). Hope this helps. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 07:45, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I will send the article to AfD. --Vigyani_talk^{ਯੋਗਦਾਨ} 07:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I usually leave it to somebody else, but that's not really necessary . True, if I approved it , I thought it was likely to pass afd. But it is very difficult to get expert opinion at afd, and it 's perfectly reasonable to say something like I just can't tell, what do others thing? I've been doing that at nPP since my first year here, and afc is similar. DGG ( talk ) 08:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

HI, I didn't find A6, is it removed or merged or what ? --Ibrahim.ID »» 23:57, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

• @Ibrahim.ID: See Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#Deprecated criteria. Steel1943 (talk) 02:20, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

@Steel1943: thanks --Ibrahim.ID »» 02:47, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

I am proposing for a new deletion log under WP:ACSD. Similar to both WP:A7 and WP:A9, this deletion log will clarify topics such as (item/items/object/objects, product/products, ideal/ideals, phrase/phrases such as slang words, popular sayings, etc.) via "Unremarkable thing" — JudeccaXIII (talk) 18:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

My original ideal was to have two separate proposals, but I think both combined under "Unremarkable thing" would be better:

• Unremarkable thing (item/items/object/objects, product/products, ideal/ideals)
• Unremarkable phrase (phrase/phrases such as slang words, popular sayings, etc.)

— JudeccaXIII (talk) 20:07, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Umm, what? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:56, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Did you mean a new speedy deletion criterion? I oppose the suggestion as many things are unremarkable and yet notable. – Fayenatic London 22:00, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

If you are proposing a new speedy deletion criterion, please read the box at the top of this page first and ensure that your proposal is all of objective, uncontestable, frequent and non-redundant. Unless the proposal clearly addresses all four points (and at present it doesn't address any of them) then there is not a snowball's chance in hell of it gaining consensus. Thryduulf (talk) 22:08, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose this proposal is far tpo broad.--69.157.253.160 (talk) 03:07, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The reason we do not have these criteria is that no single admin is really qualified to judge whether there is sufficient significance to provide the possibility of an article. Judging phrases requires a wide understanding of the field, and none of us have a wide understanding of all fields. Products also--it is very difficult to tell if a product is likely to be significant outside one's specialty.
  The existing A7 limitations are to things that usually anyoen can judge, for at least some submissions. Fior everythign else, there's PROD and AFD, bith of which work very nicely. DGG ( talk ) 08:38, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
• Would the proposer please clarify exactly what is being proposed? Stifle (talk) 09:04, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Side comment: DGG's quote, with a couple of word changes to broaden the scope, makes the exact point I have been trying to emphasize for years here:

"no single admin is really qualified to judge whether there is sufficient significance to provide the possibility of an article. Judging (anything) requires a wide understanding of the field, and none of us have a wide understanding of all fields. . . .It is very difficult to tell if (anything) is likely to be significant outside one's specialty.

— ' DGG

In other words, if you don't know what you are talking about, butt out. Trackinfo (talk) 16:26, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes and no. There are exceptions, such as those detailed in criteria A7 and A9, where it is possible for a non-specialist to determine whether a claim of significance has been made, and the comment does not apply at all to most AfDs. Thryduulf (talk) 11:07, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 114 § Creation of the "Special talk:" namespace

I briefly saw the article Suneris, Inc. yesterday. I did not realize it was on the chopping block, or I would have looked at it closer. I am just wondering what was the hurry in removing it from Wikipedia -- shouldn't a deletion tag be allowed to be posted for enough time to allow objectors to see it? Just my $.02 Ottawahitech (talk) 14:31, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, you can always pester someone in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles. The A7 is obviously invalid, and G11 is probably not applicable either, so one might consider DRV. WilyD 15:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know why the headlined template, which appears specific to F4, provides an automatic two-day window for deletion after tagging if the file has a fair use rationale but the source field is blank (invoked in the template by placing |non-free=yes), and only provides the seven-day window F4 requires when it has no FUR (invoked in the template by placing |non-free=no)? I don't do much image tagging and deletion. This relates specifically to File:LudwigLogo.jpg. You can see my puzzlement in my edit summaries.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:33, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The only two-day window for file deletion is F7's third bullet: "Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image and tagged with {{rfu}}", which is not the same as the conditions that you have discovered produce it, which are indeed F4 candidates and so require seven days tagging. I can't help with why this is the case, but pinging @Stefan2: who I know does a lot of image work and @Magog the Ogre: whose name appears several times in the template's history. Thryduulf (talk) 13:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• There appears to be a discrepancy between WP:NFCCE, WP:CSD and deletion templates.

WP:NFCCE

• A file which violates WP:NFCC should be deleted after 48 hours, unless the violation is fixed before then. If the file was uploaded a long time ago, this is extended to a whole week. This is regardless of which NFCC criterion the file violates.
• A file which is not in use is to be deleted after one week. This contradicts the above as a file which violates any NFCC criterion (such as WP:NFCC#7) apparently already is to be deleted after 48 hours.

WP:CSD

• Files which violate WP:NFCC#1 are to be deleded after 48 hours. No separate number of hours is given for old uploads, implying that they also are to be deleted after 48 hours.
• Files which violate other criteria are subject to other delays, for example no delay for WP:NFCC#2 violations (under WP:CSD#F7) or seven days for WP:NFCC#10a violations (under WP:CSD#F4). Note that WP:CSD#F4 also may be used for free files.

Deletion templates

• {{Di-replaceable fair use}} has an old image=yes parameter for files uploaded a long time ago. Depending on whether this is used, the term is set to two or seven days, according to the rules given at WP:NFCCE.
• {{Di-no source}}, {{di-no source no license}} and {{di-dw no source}} have a non-free=yes parameter. Interestingly, {{di-dw no source no license}} doesn't have this parameter. If the non-free=yes parameter is used, then the delay is set to two days instead of seven. It is unclear if the non-free=yes parameter only is to be used for recent uploads according to the rules at WP:NFCCE, or if it can be used for any uploads.
• Other templates, such as {{db-f7}} and {{di-no fair use rationale}}, do not use the two-day rule at WP:NFCCE. All of these templates seem to follow the rules given at WP:CSD.
• In practice, many violations are tagged with {{ffd}} instead of a speedy deletion template. The default minimum period at FFD is one week.

I think that these discrepancies should be fixed by changing policies and/or deletion templates. Files tagged with {{subst:rfu}} and {{db-f7}} can typically not be repaired, so deleting them quickly should typically not be a problem. Files tagged with {{subst:nsd}} and {{subst:orfud}} can often be repaired by simply providing a source or by adding the file to an article, so it makes sense to give people a bit extra time to fix this. The WP:CSD policy seems to take these points into account, so I suggest that we update WP:NFCCE and deletion templates to be consistent with this, but maybe the old image=yes part from WP:NFCCE should be preseved. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:11, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Yes, some type of round up to address contradictions seems needed. I often volunteer to do what's necessary but as I said, this is really not my area. Anyway, the internal contradiction in this template, at least, is plain to me. It provides a two-day window for deletion, then places a link to delete it at expiration of that time period with an automatic edit summary that points only to F4, when that criterion says expressly that the required time period after nomination is seven days.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

If someone can provide me with the tl;dr, I will happily fix it. Pardon me if this sounds lazy, but I am astoundingly slow reader, and I have an astoundingly low amount of free time. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 22:40, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Short summary: WP:NFCCE and some deletion templates state that certain unsourced unfree files are to be deleted after two days whereas WP:CSD#F4 states that they should be deleted after seven days. WP:NFCCE also disagrees with WP:CSD in some other situations. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Is it appropriate for an admin to delete a page directly, without the page having been CSD tagged by another user and without the admin in question CSD tagging the page first? If yes, does the deleting admin still need to specify in the deletion log under which CSD criterion the page is being deleted? My own opinion is that the answer to the first question is "no", and that the deleting admin must always specify under which CSD provision a page is being deleted (if it is being deleted on CSD grounds), but I'd like to know what others think. The reason I am asking is because there is a particular admin who, as far as I can tell, deletes a large number of pages without these pages having been CSD tagged by this admin or anybody else, without the pages in question being prodded or XfDed and without specifying under which Wikipedia:Deletion process rubric the page is being deleted. Nsk92 (talk) 00:12, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the deleting admin only needs to provide enough information to show that the deletion rationale is valid. This information could either be provided in the text on the page, or in the deletion log summary. That said, if the person who created the page isn't notified, then this person might be confused and might not understand what is going on and might not realise that there is a deletion process which the user might wish to object to, in particular if the user is a new user who doesn't know how the deletion process or user's watchlist work.

For example, if the deleting admin uses the log summary G12: some url, then I see no need in also putting a {{db-g12}} template on the page. However, if it only says G12 in the log summary, then I think that the URL needs to be provided somewhere else, for example in the {{db-g12}} template. --Stefan2 (talk) 00:37, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• Yes as to self-deleting (I've seen the argument a few times that deleting ourselves bypasses a first review, and think that's mostly nonsense); no, it's never appropriate to delete a page without supplying a clear basis, unless it's something like an office action that needs suppression to avoid a BLP outing, or similar, where the deletion is being hidden intentionally. And it's always good practice to inform the user as well using the "basis-warn-deletion" template series (e.g. {{nothanks-warn-deletion}}, {{spam-warn-deletion}}, etc.) which are directed at the situation where you have deleted where a tagging never occurred.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:43, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
  • Setting aside for the moment the issues of self-deleting and of notifications, what would constitute a sufficiently clear deletion summary? In particular, should the deletion summary expressly specify that the deletion is being made under WP:CSD (as apposed under some other deletion process rubric, such as PROD or XfD) and mention the specific CSD criterion being applies (such as A7, G12, etc)? The admin in question usually uses pretty semantic deletion summaries, such as "notability not asserted", "overly promotional", "inappropriate use of userpage", "unverifiable", "for user's own good", "regrettably, this is not an appropriate use of a userpage. Wikipedia is not a free webhost for your organization", etc. As far as I can tell, all of these are sort-of-kind-of WP:CSD deletions (because the pages in question do not seem to have been PRODDed or XfDed and there was no notification of the pages' creators), but the deletion summaries almost never mention WP:CSD at all. This seems problematic to me, particularly in terms of trying to contest the deletion at DRV and in terms of trying to understand which WP:CSD criterion, if any, was applied and if it was applied correctly. Nsk92 (talk) 01:25, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
    • To me (as an experienced user), some of those rationales sound like A7/A9 and U3/U5. However, I think that the rationales would be more clear if the CSD criterion were explicitly stated (e.g. "U3: inappropriate use of userpage" or "U5: inappropriate use of userpage"). An unexperienced user might not understand what is going on and would not be able to identify the CSD criterion, and I think that the administrator should be extra careful to ascertain that an unexperienced user understands why the user's page has been deleted. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:45, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• The tag is to get the attention or an admin, an admin can delete anything that meets CSD on sight. Chillum 00:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
• I'd argue that an administrator that deletes something outright without notifying the creator of the page or having had the page tagged by another editor is seen by many as a bad faith attempt to avoid having any accountability and I would say classifies that particular admin as a senior member of the cabal of rouge admins. There are certain obvious cases where there can be no contest to the deletion, but I believe that there can be absolutely zero chance that a reasonable objection can be made for such deletions to be valid. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 01:36, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• I could imagine performing rouge bulk speedy deletions of multiple vandalism only-pages, and there is no way the "creator" would get a notification for each. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:08, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

A rationale should always be provided, but otherwise tagging isn't necessary, but may be a good idea, or a bad idea. A G10 page should always be killed on sight, waiting for discussion is a bad idea. A biography of a soldier who died 100+ years ago, even if A7, tagging and a bit of time to show that it can be improved to meet WP:N. A new user whose article gets speedy deleted is probably lost to the project forever - if they just don't understand our customs, losing them rather than teaching them is a bad idea. WilyD 12:41, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• Some of the rationales are problematic in themselves. "notability not asserted" clearly suggests WP:CSD#A7 or WP:CSD#A9 (and the deletions may be valid under one of these criteria) but the misstatement of the criterion may mislead the person who created the article and may suggest to other people that the deletion has been inappropriate. Thincat (talk) 17:26, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
• Notability is NOT a criterion for speedy deletion. Lack of credible indicated significance is. To judge by the admin tagged things I see, most of the admins I see around (including myself here) do not delete without tagging first. Other than mass deletes of banned users' work, exceptions can be unmistakable attack pages, or user pages that is a straight copy of something else that has been tagged and deleted as spam or copyvio. There is no reason for any of those to survive. Other things should be tagged as they are not direct threats to the encyclopaedia. Having said that, an admin does have the power to delete untagged material, but the reason for deletion should always be given to safeguard the admin concerned. If an admin is deleting masses of stuff without reasons given, or deleting untagged material incorrectly (with inappropriate reasons), this should be looked into. (Sometimes it's possible to forget to set the reason when deleting the talk page of a deleted page, but that's minor.) Peridon (talk) 19:21, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
• Generally speaking, I prefer to tag, but it's not required. If it's something like an A1 or A7, I would like to give the article creator at least a bit of time to address the concern or note that they intend to. Something like G10 or G12, on the other hand (BLP attack/copyvio), I shoot on sight, tagged or not. That's especially true when one article has been tagged G12, and on going to look I find that the author has put in copypasta all over the place. (Similar occurrences happen with G11, you find that they've put ads at a whole bunch of slightly different titles, etc.). I'm not going to tag all those and write individual warnings, I'm going to write one saying "The pages you wrote were deleted, for this reason. Here's why it's not acceptable, here's what you can do to correct it." Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:37, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, thank you all for the responses above. My initial posted was promoted by looking at the deletion log of the admin User:DragonflySixtyseven, whom I will notify about this discussion thread shortly. I did discuss the issue of deletion summaries with him in the past, see User talk:Nsk92#Explanations, but I did not seem to have been able to get my point across. I find most of DragonflySixtyseven's deletion summaries inadequate because they do not (with rare exceptions) mention at all that a page was deleted under the WP:CSD deletion process. In his response at my user talk page, DF67 summarizes his position as follows: "I'm always willing to explain any of my deletion rationales upon request. I use plain language rather than cryptic codes because they're easier for people to understand without learning a full set of cryptic codes. (G4! A6! C11! Bingo!)". That's all well and good but I think it is also necessary, in addition to providing a plain language deletion rationale, to explicitly specify that the WP:CSD rubric of the deletion process was used to delete a page. Otherwise, a user (especially an inexperienced user), will be very confused as to what exactly happened and where and how the user may appeal the deletion in question. Many of DF67's deletions, while certainly well-intentioned and probably necessary, appear to me to be procedurally problematic in other respects as well. For example, one of DF67's frequently used deletion summaries is "notability not asserted". Even if construed as a CSD A7 deletion, "notability not asserted" is NEVER a sufficient rationale for an A7 deletion. All that an article need do to survive A7 is to provide a plausible evidence of notability. It is not necessary for the page to actually assert notability by saying that the subject is a well-known/prominent/famous artist/music group/writer/singer/organization/etc. Also, DF67 frequently deletes user pages with rationales like "inappropriate use of user page", "for user's own good", etc. Some of these probably qualify as G11 deletions, while others are motivated by the desire to protect the user's privacy and to delete some overly sensitive personal information. However, WP:UP provides a significant degree of latitude to users in terms of what they can put on their webpage, and I feel that less drastic options such as a warning at the user's talk page, blanking of the user page, rev-del-ing the user page, or listing it at WP:MFD, are often preferable to an outright deletion without prior warning. In fact, it is not clear to me that a summary deletiion (without an MfD) of a user page on the grounds that it is done "for user's own good" can be justified by our current deletion policy, except perhaps in rare cases on IAR grounds. At least I don't see any current CSD criteria that allow for such summary deletions. In any case, I'd like for other users, preferably admins, to take a look at DF67's deletion log and see what's going on there and if some of the recently deleted pages perhaps deserve to be listed at WP:DRV for a more extended review. I also hope that somebody other than myself can convince DF67 to use more precise deletion summaries and to include both an informal verbal explanation AND an explicit reference to WP:CSD in these summaries (as seems to be the norm for other admins). Nsk92 (talk) 20:39, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Without commenting on the specifics above, in some cases it's best to be oblique about deletion reasons. The most obvious cases are those of minors who have revealed identifying information about themselves, we obviously don't want to broadcast that in a deletion summary. There's also some other really bizarre stuff you find that simply needs to be deleted without a trace, especially in userspace (I'm not going to give examples per WP:BEANS, but I'm pretty sure every admin has seen such things). Sometimes WP:DENY applies as well, on a couple occasions I've deleted articles copying attack sites that are better off not linked to. So yes, in some specific instances less clarity is better. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:30, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Granted that there are occasional situations where it is best to be oblique in the deletion summary, that can't be the norm. In DF67's deletion log, for the last 500 deletion entries (since November 20, 2014), only about 15 mention that they are being made under WP:CSD provisions. Of the remaining entries in the log, the overwhelming majority (I'd say well over 400) appear to be CSD-like deletions that don't actually mention CSD (or any other rubric of the deletion process) as the deletion process being applied. That seems rather problematic to me. Nsk92 (talk) 17:55, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

DragonflySixtyseven has deleted close to 66,000 articles pages and is number 21 on the list of admins with most deletions, counting through the entire history of Wikipedia. This is 66000 more deletions than you have performed. DragonflySixtyseven clearly knows how to delete stuff, you perhaps don't. May I kindly suggest you perform at least 1000 speedy deletions, to get some real-life experience, how does it actually feel to apply the rules day in, day out? There has never been a requirement to use the cryptic codes for the deletion log entry. It should be self-evident for everyone, that "notability not asserted" is A7. And for "inappropriate use of user page", what difference does it make, if it is U5, G3, G10 or G11 (or something else)? Also, using a wrong code does not anyhow make the deletion invalid, as long as it satisfies some of the criteria. I have reviewed few of DF67's recent deletions, and did not spot anything problematic there. Some examples:

(del/undel) 18:54, 25 December 2014 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs | block) deleted page User:Richardcrawshay (for user's own good) (view/restore)

This was an inane attack page, disparaging the user himself (we don't know this vandal-only account holder's real name of course, it likely is not the one implicated by username.)

(del/undel) 16:39, 24 December 2014 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs | block) deleted page User:JesusGodSmacker/sandbox (strongly, strongly inappropriate) (view/restore)

Like it says in deletion log, this was extremely racist hate speech (and blasphemy, if you are offended by such thing).

(del/undel) 19:08, 25 December 2014 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs | block) deleted page User:Ladys fashion inappropriate use of userpage) (view/restore)

This was a single spammy external link, no real content at all.

(del/undel) 16:31, 25 December 2014 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs | block) deleted page NSQ (software) (notability not asserted) (view/restore)

Like it says, non-notable software product.

(del/undel) 18:57, 25 December 2014 DragonflySixtyseven (talk | contribs | block) deleted page User:Ilovenudebabes (inappropriate use of userpage) (view/restore)

This is not as clear-cut as the rest and I leave it to others to argue, what cryptic code this falls under, but IMHO we don't need this kind of useless drivel in userspace. Full text:

This is a lesson on how to get those breasts ready for that big date.

1. buy a victory secret bra one size smaller than you would normally use.

2. oil up those breasts with what ever works for you.

3. put on a dress that highlights your breasts.

there you go you're ready for that big date.

I reviewed ramdon sample of 10 deletions from his last 100, and did not find anything even borderline worthy of taking to DRV. Especially the userpage deletions look ok. Maybe some of the A7s could be salvaged, if anyone puts enough effort for sifting through the crap to find the few ones that can be improved after undeletion. Someone else could perhaps check the remaining 65965 deletions :) jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 19:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

"May I kindly suggest you perform at least 1000 speedy deletions, to get some real-life experience, how does it actually feel to apply the rules day in, day out?" Really? You know full well that I am not an admin and that I can't delete pages and can't view deleted content. But that does not disqualify me from questioning the actions of users who do have the admin bit. The fact that someone performed over 66000 deletions does not and should not make them immune from scrutiny. There are good reasons to insist that deletion summaries make a clear reference to which rubric of the deletion process (CSD, prod, AfD, whatever) is being used, especially when a page is deleted with no prior warning and without any notifications. For one thing, a more precise deletion summary makes it much easier for inexperienced users to understand what happened and where and how to appeal the deletion if they want to do so. Also, having to give a reasonably precise deletion summary serves as a necessary self-check for the deleting admin to make sure that there does indeed exist a provision of the deletion process that allows the page to be deleted with no discussion. Admins are given substantial power here, but this power is not absolute and does not include the right to delete a page unilaterally whenever they feel that it deserves to be deleted (even if they page does in fact absolutely deserve to be deleted). We have a WP:CSD process for a reason, and it specifies a fairly limited and precisely defined set of circumstances under which a page can be deleted by an admin without listing it for XfD. It is an often repeated during RfAs that CSD is a high precision process, requiring clarity and transparency. It is not too much to ask to expect an admin, especially one who is routinely deleting large numbers of pages, to indicate in his deletion summaries that he is actually using the WP:CSD process rather than, say, applying IAR en masse (as admins did in the Wild West days of Wikipedia about 10-12 years ago). Nsk92 (talk) 20:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I noticed you don't have the bit, but that does not mean anything. Simply put, anyone who hasn't performed at least some speedy deletions, irregardless of reason like not having the technical ability to do so in this very wiki, is someone who does not know how to do the job. You are not merely "questioning the actions of users", you are trying to tell users who know how the job is done, and who have done it for years, how the job should be done in your uninformed opinion. This is like telling Muhammad Ali how to box, but never step in the ring yourself. It is very easy to see if CSD process was used: if there is no mention of expired PROD or any XfD, then it is CSD (or CSD+IAR really in some cases). It was not really Wild West about a decade ago, but in many ways a more pleasant and much smaller wiki. Less stupid rules to limit reasonable editors, therefore less need for IAR. CSD was well established 10 years ago but the cryptic codes were a new thing. I was there then and opposed introduction of the CSD codes. Still not convinced that they are a good idea. I certainly had no problems understanding DF67's plain and clear deletion log entries. Deletion is not about rigid adherance to arbitrary, detailed rules (often made by people who don't know how to actually do the job). Deletion is about consensus. If consensus says something does not belong here, then deleted it shall be. The processes are really just scaffolding and teaching tool for new admins. Once you can gauge what the consensus is, then you can (carefully) start cutting the corners, perhaps first showball closing XfD's were the outcome is obvious, then adding small dozes or IAR here and there. There are other sources of leeway than IAR; for example G6 leaves its applicability domain to admin's discretion, then there is the fact that DRV does not deal with technicalities (does not restore articles, if some rule was broken, but the outcome was otherwise good). In Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, "rigid adherence to taught rules or plans" and "no exercise of discretionary judgment" are characteristics of a novice, not master. Someone who is on DF67's skill level, can immediately recognize without much conscious thought, how a given article should be processed simply because they have done it thousands of time before ("intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding [of what the consensus is]"). And only way to achieve that kind of advanced skill level, is via sufficient firsthand practice. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 21:38, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I totally concur with jni. I've only deleted a paltry 5,600 pages (but there have never been any comebacks). I probably delete 10 - 15% summariy on sight, but I do a lot of NPP so there is little point in not doing so. Nevertheless, with exception of the more egregious rubbish and COPYVIO, I generally tag for another admin to do the rest. Apart from being a fail-safe, it's an unwritten customary courtesy which most admins observe. When summarily deleting it is of course essential to manually inform the creator. Several appropriate template messages exist. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

First, I'd like to apologize for not having responded sooner; I was away all weekend. Second, many points have already been addressed by other users, but I'd like to clarify that I don't think it's really useful to leave a templated "SORRY I DELETED YOUR USERPAGE" notice for someone whose only edits were to create a blatantly inappropriate userpage / promo spam stub a month earlier. (Yes, I usually patrol pages when they're a month old, if not older. I know, I know; the backlog is huge.) I'll leave a note if someone is still active. I've also got a personal policy that if someone asks me why I deleted their page, I will respond and explain (or I'll get another admin to do it for me); that's only right. DS (talk) 02:17, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but why not at least indicate in the deletion summary that a page is being deleted via the WP:CSD process? As far as I can tell, all other admins generally include this info in their deletion summaries. Why don't you? I hope you do understand that an admin (including yourself) does not have an authority to summarily delete a non-notable article on notability grounds, without a prod or an AfD, unless the article satisfies the A7 criterion of CSD. And that, similarly, an admin does not have the authority to summarily delete a user page on the grounds of it being promotional (even if it is in fact promotional and would probably not survive an MfD), unless that user page clearly satisfies the G11 criterion of CSD. Nsk92 (talk) 03:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

• I agree with most above that any admin can delete a page without it first having a CSD tag. I do think it is best practice for pages which are non-urgent deletions (eg not attack pages) and not totally obvious deletion candidates to be tagged to allow a second opinion. That DragonflySixtyseven appears to have a low rate of challenges at DRV indicates that he is sufficiently cautious with his speedy deletions.

It seems rather bizarre to criticise someone for using plain English rather than acronyms. I suppose this might be a problem for someone with limited understanding of English, but Nsk92 seems to have excellent comprehension of English otherwise.-gadfium 01:15, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

While I personally prefer to use a link to the relevant section of deletion policy such as "WP:CSD#G10 attack page" there is nothing wrong with using plain english to describe the rational for a deletion as long as that rational is consistent with our deletion standards. We are not a bureaucracy and we don't need to quote the specific policy every time we act, we just need to act consistently with the expectations of the community.

I have looked through the deletion logs of D67 and I see reasoning that has a basis in policy. I am sure this admin will respond to anyone seeking clarification. Chillum 01:33, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

About A7 deletions in particular, this discussion seems relevant. I've been meaning to bring it here anyway but now seems a good time to point out that there is some disagreement over whether "no assertion of notability" is better or worse than "no credible assertion of notability". ekips39 01:40, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• I consider it more than best practice: I think it should be required for all actions that are not utterly routine or emergencies. For some sorts of file delete (e.g. after moving to commons) or cleanup after moves or removing duplicates there's no reason to have the extra step--there's nothing to judge. And really clear sorts of defamation or the like should be hidden immediately, but I would't make a blanket exception of G10, because there're some things that fall there which are not truly emergencies. In any case, the CSD list is very actively monitored by many admins, and for years now all such really problem material are removed very quickly.

I myself confess I have sometimes in exasperation removed the most blatant advertisements or the like unilaterally, but frankly, I've been affected by other people's bad examples. It should be prohibited absolutely for A7 or G11, at least, because they both take judgment. I have learned over the years to absolutely trust nobody's judgement here, including my own. (There are a few people whose judgment I tentatively trust, but I have noticed they never use it unilaterally. Anyone with good judgment will be aware of their limitations.) Without reflecting on anyone, I have indeed seen a very few unilateral deletions or deletions without specified reason that may have been done as such in order to stretch the limits a little. I've seen many more of them in the past--practice has been steadily improving for the last 5 or 6 years at least.

As for giving reasons, sometimes it's simpler to use English. There is sometimes a short phrase that is more exactly descriptive.

I don't want to comment here about individual examples. but I will take a look at anything anyone asked me to. I gave as my primary reason for becoming an admin 7 years ago to examine deleted articles to see which should not have been deleted. I've been doing that on and off ever since. There are some technical improvements in the deletion log that would make it easier--it is not possible to automatically limit to article space as distinct from file or user space. (I've done the filtering off line, but it would be easy to include the capability directly). DGG ( talk ) 06:17, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

My take: User:DragonflySixtyseven is absolutely right that plain English explanation are a very good thing. But, you gotta provide a link in the deletion summary so new users can see that it's based on a clear rule and fair, and so they understand how to avoid this a second time. Also, the plain English explanations need to match the criteria. No indication of notability is unacceptable, since the real standard is significance, which has nothing to do with notability. Finally, delete-on-sight should only be applied to something that puts us at serious risk, meaning copyright violations and attack pages. Everything else can wait for a second administrator. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:08, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Disclaimer: DS67 has asked me to comment on this issue, so here is my $0.02. This whole debate strikes me as something excessively process-oriented, something that always raises a red flag for me. The OP's comment feels suggestive that anything can only be deleted outright iff it meets a clear-cut CSD rationale. This is simply not the case - after reflecting on WP:DEL#REASON for a bit, I embrace the idea that admins are trusted to make decisions on what is worth including in a free encyclopedia and what is not. In other words, this discussion would have more merit if someone was able to point out actual questionable judgement (something I fail to see in this thread), for other admins to review. Being meticulous with deletion summaries is also a matter of choice (do now vs. explain later, I personally prefer a brief summary in English rather than cryptic letters and number) - like it was said above, application of wrong CSD doesn't make the deletion invalid, and if you're confused by a particular deletion, I encourage you to raise that particular case with the admin who, I'm sure, will be responsive to a reasonable query. —Миша13 21:13, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

My opinion is that if pages are deleted this way (without tagging) and the delete is then challenged, another administrator can use their judgement to restore. I do this sometimes based on WP:REFUND requests, and it is pretty unlikely that any one objects. I myself will delete pages produced by spambots without notification or tagging, or even a nice delete reason. And very occasionally the confirm button gets pressed without a reason. Protection of people for their own good does not seem to be a CSD reason, but probably should be. DS67 certainly does not stand out in my memory as someone that I reverse deletes on. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 14:11, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Criterion F3 states that Files licensed under versions of the GFDL prior to 1.3, without allowing for later versions, may be deleted. My reading of this is that 1.3-only is permitted. However, given that 1.3 is basically the same as 1.2 now the relicensing period has expired, shouldn't we be either allowing 1.2-only or disallowing 1.3-only uploads for consistency? Is there another important difference someone can explain? Thanks, BethNaught (talk) 09:57, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

My reading is that you cannot import anything only under GFDL anymore - see Wikipedia:Licensing update, anything pre May 2009 at GFDL1.2 that could be upgraded can stay. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:33, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I can see how that applies to text, but All media licenses existing before the transition remain valid and acceptable to the Foundation. Has the community officially banned 1.3-only media uploads? In which case F3 should be updated. BethNaught (talk) 12:59, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

The community has officially banned 1.2-only files somewhere, but other version numbers are permitted. This seems inconsistent. Also, 1.2-only files are perfectly acceptable on Commons, so a GFDL-1.2-only file could be moved there instead of being deleted here. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:54, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Stefan2, for the clarification. There now seems to be a paradox where GFDL 1.2-only images can only be hosted on Commons, but they can only be made Featured Pictures on Wikipedia. Interesting... BethNaught (talk) 19:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to be correct. A GFDL 1.2-only file can't become a featured picture on Commons, but the file may be hosted there. On the other hand, the file may become a featured picture here (unless I have missed something), but it may not be hosted here. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Between us and the Commons on this, it's like that scene in Five Easy Pieces where Jack Nicholson tries to order toast.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:02, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Looking at criteria F7 there are several bullets, each with different requirements, different templates and different tagging periods. I think this could be meaningfully and usefully simplified by splitting into sub-criteria F7a, etc. similar to how criterion C2 is organised.

My proposed organisation would be (criteria abbreviated for clarity):

• F7a Non-free images or media with a clearly invalid fair-use tag [immediate deletion]
• F7b Non-free images or media from a commercial source, where the file itself is not the subject of sourced commentary [immediate deletion]
• F7c Non-free images or media that have been identified as being replaceable by a free image [deletion after 2 days]
• F7d Invalid fair-use claims [deletion after 7 days]

Note that I am not proposing to change any of the criteria, only clarify the presentation of them so that they are easier to refer to and easier for people to understand what requirements apply to which images. Particularly it should make it clearer to uploaders why their image has been tagged for deletion.

I will link to this proposal from the talk pages of the relevant image deletion pages. Thryduulf (talk) 13:43, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• When a file is tagged for deletion under "F7a" and "F7b", the same deletion template is used in both cases. Also, "F7a", "F7b" and "F7d" all tend to get the same deletion summary in the log message. I think that it would be a good idea to use separate templates and different variations of the default deletion summaries. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:14, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
• Separating them to give more concrete reasons is completely fair. --MASEM (t) 16:47, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Given the lack of opposition here, I will make the reorganisation in a day or so unless objections are raised now. Reorganisation of templates is a good idea, but I don't think that needs to happen before the reorganisation? Thryduulf (talk) 01:56, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

How will Twinkle handle this change? With the "generic" version still be acceptable until twinkle can be upgraded? Gaijin42 (talk) 02:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I didn't actually think about tools (I don't use any), but as this is just clarification of presentation rather than a change in any criteria I don't think that tagging with the "generic" version for a while would a problem. A year down the line might be a different matter though. Thryduulf (talk) 03:07, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Bbb23: There wasn't any discussion about this change that got reverted, I did it boldly. I'm willing to request the template be deleted if people here thinks it's harmful. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:51, 16 January 2015 (UTC) The template in question is {{db-error}}. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:52, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't see how it's harmful in any way. You use it when you come across something that was obviously created in error. I think I might've used it a couple times before. VanIsaac_WS^cont 04:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Probably not, since I made it two days ago. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's not that it's "harmful". It just seems odd to add a new template without discussion. I don't use G6 very often. I'd like to hear from other administrators if any has a view on the subject.--Bbb23 (talk) 05:40, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps a little hasty, but I can't see any problem with the template. It's covering a situation that can often be tagged by the 'only author' as G7, but sometimes gets a db-reason with an explanation. Sometimes the re°direct may be considered to be of use, or the page (I assume this is where the creator has realised the error and done a copy&paste new version) may become a redirect - but that's the case anyway. I rarely tag G6, but often delete them. I can see this being easy to remember for taggers and useful if added to the excellent Twinkle and the horrible Page Curation thing. Peridon (talk) 10:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

(Irrelevancy) Can anyone tell me how that ° got into redirect in my post above? I didn't have Special Characters selected and hadn't got a ° copied either. Strange... Peridon (talk) 13:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Deleting pages obviously created in error isn't controversial, it's been explicitedly mentioned on this page for at least a decade. WilyD 11:19, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

It is useful template; thanks for creating! Now, how about if I propose that we revert this page to version linked to by WilyD in above comment? The rules actually made some sense decade ago, before speedy deletions become excessively bureaucratized. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 15:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion, we've had quite a lot of mojibake redirects (here is an example). Do these qualify as patent nonsense (G1)? Some have been deleted as such (like Josi?1/2 Ramos-Horta) while others have gone thru the whole RfD process, and all got deleted. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:20, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

While one could wikilawyer over whether they are protected as "poorly translated material", I agree that such redirects should be speedily deleted, being often harder to type than their target. Whether under G1 or a new R criterion, whatever, provided that genuine redirects (such as with diacritics removed) aren't caught in the trap. BethNaught (talk) 08:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the need for speedy deletion. They do not happen very frequently, sometimes mangled transliterations do get use and, as noted, it is not always easy to determine what is mojibake and what is simply uncommon transliterations, etc. There is no harm having them nominated at RfD for a week - they aren't actually harmful. Thryduulf (talk) 15:46, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm mainly talking about obvious mojibake, like Josi?1/2 Ramos-Horta and NIИ, that no human could ever think was a human error. Those examples are obviously not translated at all. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

The proposal should apply only to unambiguous mojibake. Perhaps it should list examples so the deleting admin knows what counts as unambiguous: ⟨é⟩ → ⟨é⟩ (UTF-8 bytes as Windows-1252), ⟨é⟩ → ⟨\xC3\xA9⟩ (escaped UTF-8 bytes), ⟨é⟩ → ⟨A(c)⟩ (ASCIIfied mojibake). I don’t think G1 applies: if you can understand it, G1 does not apply. It should not be used to delete purposeful mojibake like Ï»¿. Gorobay (talk) 18:29, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• I agree with this proposal. In general that these mojibakes are useless. @Gorobay: you do RfD a good service by bringing them there for discussion, and I agree they should be a candidate for CSD. Most need no discussion, but a few do, so it is fair to bring them to discussion, also fair that it can have a CSD route and that only those in doubt are brought to RfD. Some are doubtful, but I would trust GB's judgment as one of the few who bothers with them, to decide if there is any doubt not to take to CSD but to RfD. This is hardly a mainstream thing, we can't ask others to compete, and I for one think Gorobay has the expert opinion. If nothing else, G's openness by bringing it here, and to RfD in the listings, tends to show it.

1. May I first propose a simple change in the wording from "unambiguous" to "obvious". I say that as someone who would have to reconstruct it to kana, kanji etc then if successful would have to translate it back to English with a tool, to find it unambiguous. Seems unlikely. Hungarian for roast is ambiguous enough in English (chargrilled, stew, Pörkölt , roasted peanuts) and the other way about; there is no 1-1 correspondence for a simple, literal term like that.

1. My Japanese is not as good as it once was, which was not great to start with (a long time ago). The idea of transliterating, in mojibake, for an English-reading audience, must be absurd. WP:RFD#D8 "redirects from a foreign language title to a page whose subject is unrelated to that language (or a culture that speaks that language) should generally not be created. Implausible typos or misnomers are potential candidates for speedy deletion, if recently created." is the sticking point here, which Thryduulf has argued about, on being "not recently created".
2. Second and more important the current RfD rules do not admit deletion of an RfD because it is useless. The test is more, is it harmful? Since mojibake is not harmful, I think it fails on that score and the default at RfD is delete, if there are no comments; but a single comment queers the pitch and so it would likely go keep as harmless. (Twinkle and others notwithstanding, it is "Re#irects for Discussion", not "for Deletion".)
   1. have argued at WT:RFD#WP:RFD#DELETE #8 - replace "not be created" with "be deleted" that the wording in that particular section is too strong, since no other section leans on that side for that point, but (as above User:Thryduulf responded essentially to keep the status quo. I see Thryduulf is doing the same again. Much as I respect Thryduulf, we often have battles about a particular R for D because (in my opinion) Thryduulf is more conservative than I, and prefers to see things stay as they are whereas I prefer sometimes to change them. Both are valid views and I hope, certainly from my side I see, we express our views honestly, with intelligence, and with only opinions not for ourselves but the better thing for WP. Si Trew (talk) 22:53, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I should add in case of any doubt, sometimes Thryduulf agrees with me at RfD. There is no point scoring there on Thryduulf's part, and certainly not on mine. Si Trew (talk) 23:00, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Most of Gorobay's go delete (I think) by a silent majority of regulars at RfD expressing a vote by silence and so going delete by default. But that is no way to solve the problem long-term (and possibly makes Gorobay wonder why to bother; the silence is deliberate but must be frustrating); we do need a positive statement, and "Mojibake is harmful, and obvious mojibake is a candidate for CSD" (I put it deliberately crudely) I assume we are aiming at.

But why is it harmful? Who types it? Do we have any stats on hits through these Rs? Si Trew (talk) 22:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

• 95% of admins would have no idea what is a "purposeful" redirect and what isn't – Ï»¿ looks just as nonsensical as é to most people. These redirects aren't very common either. Therefore, it is a poor candidate for a speedy deletion criteria. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

• I agree with the comment above the collapse by ThaddeusB. For me, and I imagine for many users (perhaps not most but a high percentage anyway) these redirects that are genuine nonsense (mojibake) are impossible to discern from those that are actual transliterations, which are useful. I think bringing them to RfD is the acceptable solution. There, users who know what they're doing should be able to point out that the title qualifies as a genuine G1 (mojibake = patent nonsense) and propose speedy deletion, or point out that the title is actually valid and allow the discussion to go on. I think we would find that the discussions are either quickly closing under G1, or else being quickly withdrawn as valid titles. For the record, I'm one of the silent majority conscientous abstainees who don't comment on those nominations because I have no idea what is and isn't valid, and wouldn't be helping. Ivanvector (talk) 21:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

"Now, how about if I propose that we revert this page to version linked to by WilyD in above comment? The rules actually made some sense decade ago, before speedy deletions become excessively bureaucratized. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 15:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)"

Not a horrible idea, but that old revision is outdated. I'd say use that general formatting with our current criteria and sectioning, which also means getting rid of that A5/R2/F7 crap. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

• Support. Most of the junk that's created is one-off stuff that could be handled with additional prodding. Nyttend (talk) 06:41, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
• What is this bureaucracy that you speak of, and what lack of sense do you see? I know what the criteria say, and it's not hard at all for anyone to; they make sense just fine. Used to tag under them, deleted about 13,000 pages using them once becoming an admin; there's little red tape involved. Every part of the process has been developed so that we provide fairly tailored transparency without engaging in much need for jumping through hoops (if anything it was more difficult back when these criteria were current: templates weren't tailored and didn't provide the user page warnings in them, we didn't have Twinkle, the deletion dropdown didn't exist or was incomplete, etc.) What's the problem?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 08:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Let's get real here. Each of the criteria were established through a consensus driven process. If it is seriously being proposed that the vast majority of them be eliminated, that is not something that can just be decided by regulars on this talk page. It would require a major policy RFC, advertised on WP:CENT and running at least thirty days, and it would almost certainly fail unless specific reasons were laid out why each individual criterion is no longer needed. Unless something like that is being prepared this conversation is just a lot of hot air. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Where is your sense of humour? Of course my tongue-in-cheek suggestion has as good chance to pass than WP:PRIMO. (note that I didn't create this section, but was merely quoted) We could not survive with some form of A7, for instance, as AfD would be filled with junk that we currently speedy delete. You are right by the way that any major, and also minor, changes need a major policy RFC, WP:CENT, discussion on Meta, WP:BYRO, WP:CABAL, WMF approval, and other heavy processes with endless discussions (with people who typically have only little clue how that area of Wikipedia operates) that take forever to complete. But everyone, please take a look how simple and readable this page was a decade ago! Add a decade's worth of political compromises about the rules and you get the incoherent bunch that we have today. It seems that nothing can stop the instruction creep in Wikipedia. Even the CAT:CSD category has two full pages of mostly useless instructions and boilerplate before one can even scroll down to see what the CSD candidates are. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 22:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

It's true that there is great bureaucracy in changing this page. As well that we see swaths of people who have little understanding of how it works in practice commenting to little end. That's as to the policy page. You've totally lost me as to the rest.

It seem to me you're looking at this from a strange vantage point. When you want to change out your car's blinker light you open the glove box and look at the 90-page manual. It's 90 pages because it needs to cover blinker lights in one discrete logical section that provides all the information you need on that issue, among numerous others. You, the driver, don't read the whole manual, you go to the table of contents look at just what you need and are grateful its 90 pages so it covers your issue. A three page manual would never cover what you need. If it even addressed your issue it would be meager. On the other end though, for the people who create the manual, that process involves many drafts, wrangling over language, scope – much bureaucracy. But the manual is there primarily for the driver, not the people who create the manual. We don't consider the the problems of bureaucracy affecting car manual editorial department when deciding what the manual should say, but what would best serve the driver

Rather than being an "incoherent bunch", I find this page to be mostly a wonder of order and logic that serves its purpose amazingly well considering all the territory and many concerns it needs to address that the prior page did not. From the vantage of a newbie who wants to get in on the administrative side of matters (an aspiring car manual editor), yes, it takes some real time and application to grasp the whole. From the standpoint of everyone else, the tightness we have here translates to a vast decrease in bureaucracy. A person whose page gets deleted understands exactly why. The deletion log, the warning message they get, the speedy template they see – everything points them to one discrete, named, explained section with links to further material if they should choose to explore further. The vagueness and constant need for IAR is gone. The need for sprawling discussion about many deletions are avoided. The remit of deletion review is many times clearer.

Bureaucracy is not found by looking at the length of the page or its complexity as an integrated document. Bureaucracy is red tape to get things done. What red tape do you see from the actual application of the speedy criteria (as opposed to making changes to the policy page), that wouldn't be there or wouldn't be multiplied if we reverted to the 3-page manual?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:10, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

That simply isn't true. Bureaucracy is also making hard as all hell to understand what's happening and take action. This page is an impenetrable fog to all but the most experienced users. We could easily cut 50% of the text from this page, make it more new editor friendly, and not dump any criteria. A shrine to the bureaucrat-kings of Byzantium that new editors stare hopelessly at in non-comprehension while the page they worked hard to create is destroyed is not doing us any favours. As noted, the category is likewise borked - and the user information templates are (such as template:nn-warn) are also awful in this regard. "It's just one checkbox on one form" doesn't mean it ain't bureaucratic if it's an eleven hundred page form. WilyD 11:41, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• I do have to agree that CAT:CSD is bloated with material that is not particularly helpful. That's why I don't use it. I navigate directly to [[Category:Speedy deletion]], which is a much simpler interface when reviewing CSD noms. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

What about getting rid of the numbers (g2/a10/u3)? This would not at all represent a change in policy, merely a slight change in wording, and it would make speedy deletion more accessible to the frequently new users who encounter it. The change is easy, remove the letter-number combination and keep everything else the same. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:57, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

There are many reasons why that change is incredibly difficult rather than easy (e.g. They are linked 100s of thousands of times in thousands of places) but let's put that aside. All I've heard above is that there is bureaucracy and no substance of what it is. Here you say it makes it less accessible and no substance of why, as if it's self evident that it is so. Why would that make it more accessible? What is it about their assignment that makes anything inaccessible? They are the table of contents. "A" stands for article (only applies to articles), "G" stands for general (applies generally), the number tells us where on the list they appear. They order the page and provide the hook for us to refer to them and link directly to the applicable section.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 05:29, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

We can keep the shortcuts and put in anchors, obviously, so none of those old links would break, so that is a non-problem. Every criteria has its own subsection, that appears in the real table of contents, that we can easily link to, and that wouldn't change. We can call it a test page without calling it G2 and there is no problem with doing that in the slightest. None of your claimed problems with getting rid of them actually exist. Yes, the numbers order the page, in the completely arbitrary order that someone put it in 10 years ago, and basically lock us into that order, when it might makes sense to use a different order. For example, the rarely-used office actions would make sense to go last, but the G9 freezes it in its current position. Normally if you change orders the table of contents changes with it, but not when you have hard-coded numbers in the policy itself.

Finally, speedy deletion is often new users first exposure to our processes, and often that first exposure is a deletion log that says "G2". For new users who don't know any of the stuff you mentioned above, it creates the impression of bureaucracy, resembling a government code-book. Whether the bureaucracy is real or not, we are showing new users that it is there. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the numbers are actually helpful. Having a number makes it easier to look up the more detailed reason a page was deleted; also, looking at the deletion log, most deletions come with both a written and numbered reason, so the reason for deletion is already accessible without even having to navigate to WP:CSD. I find your "government code book" idea hard to believe: if CSD reasons were referred to like legislation the code would be something like "WP:CSD. s. II, § 1, cl. G2". Two or three letters is not bureaucratic. BethNaught (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The deletion link also gives a summary of the reason. It's rarely a bare G2 or A7. There's a link to the talk page of the deleting admin, so they can (and often do) query why their simple information about a company was deleted (and get the explanation that it was pure PR Dept jargon...). I can't see any problem with the numbers. What is more of a problem is new patrollers (and ones who should know better too...) using the wrong ones. I mean like tagging a perfectly neutrally worded article about a company as spam, when it's just an A7 being a backroom business started last December and only 20 ghits (10 of which are for something else altogether, and the rest Facebook etc pages). If you use the Page Curation names, you'll have 'significance'. But - it only applies to certain things. Not soap powders or green-tailed gulls. Or software. There could be a case for G9 being taken out of the main list as it is not a criterion than anybody is likely to be using - and if they see it they can't reverse it anyway. But it will (I presume - never seen one) carry a summary to the effect of 'Office action - do NOT touch'. It does no harm, as it can't be used by anyone other than the office staff. It's not in my Twinkle. Leave the numbers alone. They work. Peridon (talk) 17:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I am a newbie at CSD:Talk so excuse if I am not following protocol. Seems to me these work. They are jargon, and I can see that they would be confusing to newcomers. But (and I with others are welcoming a WP:NEWBIE into the art of editing) they are useful shorthand. On the other side I can see my usual hangout, WP:RFD, has shortcuts such as WP:RFD#R7 (note the section link), not just a plain WP:G7. So I can see it would be useful to have WP:CSD#G1, or whatever, but not to require people to spell it in full when listing, which is an awful lot of typing, and gains nothing for those in the know, and a little for those not, since they can click through the link to the guideline.

My recommendation is thus make sure you link them to allow people to look up the full text of the guideline. This is in editor space, not reader space. (For my definitions of why these are not WP namespaces, see Template_talk:This_is_a_redirect#Visually_confusing this at RfD). I should do a WP:ESSAY on the distinction, it is not the same as namespaces, but what editors versus readers expect to see. Often one is both and change which hat one wears. Si Trew (talk) 09:59, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, it would be nonsense to expect for G1 for people to subst as Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Patent_nonsense, and wouldn't even be a decent link since G1 is the anchor and if consensus was to change to say "obvious nonsense" hen the anchor would stay but the longhand link would break, without {{anchor|Patent nonsense}} and notwat which just adds to the WP:BUREAUCRACY, not remove it. Or have I missed the point? Si Trew (talk) 10:06, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I am right in that WP:R7 goes not go to WP:RFD#D7 nor WP:RFD#K7. Surprised it doesn't go anywhere, but glad it don't. Si Trew (talk) 10:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me that drafts like these should fall under U5 (or something like it). Unfortunately as codified it only applies to userspace pages. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 21:44, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Hmm... maybe it should be reclassified as G14 ... I see what you mean ... Steel1943 (talk) 22:10, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

For the benefit of those that can't see it, a version with the name changed is at User:Peridon/sample. (I changed the name to avoid search engine pickup of the original.) (Remind me to delete it when this is finished...) FRF has a point. This is a total no-hoper as an article, but I don't think U5 can be extended outside user space. I would also make a point that some patrollers are misunderstanding U5 by applying it to things that are obviously intended to be articles at some time and not as attempts to use WP as a free host (CVs, rants and fantasy charts). It's the freeloaders U5 is aimed at, not the newbie creating his/her/its first article. (User:BloggsCo posting about BloggsCo has other issues usually...) Making a G14 would open this to all spaces - could this lead to problems? Another objection is that this would be equivalent to applying A7 to drafts (or at least the bio part of A7) and things would be tagged before they had a chance to develop. Sorry for rambling on - typing as I think. What we need to do is tighten up on the taggers using U5 before anything is done here so that they won't tag every bio in sight within a few minutes of the draft appearing if G14 comes in. Peridon (talk) 11:26, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

This would be something like "G14: Draft page with no hope of becoming an encyclopedia article". The danger is that it would be over-enthusiastically applied - draft space is intended for people to flail about and take time to get things right. That danger could be lessened by restricting it to drafts at least a month old; but I'm not convinced this is a widespread enough problem to need a new CSD. At present, if the author gives up, a hopeless draft will get swept up by G13; if they persist in re-submitting without improvement, the page can be sent to MfD. JohnCD (talk) 11:54, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@Peridon and JohnCD: I don't know how widespread this is. I have no idea how many articles there are in the draft namespace that are not submitted to AFC. I don't believe A7 should ever apply to drafts - that's obviously contrary to the spirit of what a draft is (can't tell if the subject is important if the draft is not done, etc). But this to me looks like a perfect test case for a version of U5 that applies outside of userspace. It's something that we definitely do not want, but there's no easy way to remove it. What if the G11 hadn't been applicable in this case? Do we swamp MFD with things like these? I'm not sure if I'm trying to find a problem for my solution, because again I have no idea how widespread this is. But I'm fairly sure that the draft namespace wasn't thought out very well if there isn't a way to tell what's down there. For all we know there could be a half million pieces of crap, or maybe not. But without that AFC or sandbox tag... do we know? Perhaps that's the larger problem. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 05:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Just a thought about the draft. I read it and I suspect she saved it to the wrong place by mistake, and meant for it to go on her user page. So, rather than deletion, it might have made more sense to move it. As far as a new criteria, it seems rare, but I'm willing to accept evidence otherwise. We don't need speedy deletion for rare events. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

It's pretty difficult to save to a namespace instead of, say, your userpage (where most of these seem to exist). I'm not sure I agree it was an accident, but I don't think there was an eeevil motive behind it either. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 05:14, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I think this one was a GF attempt at an article. People have the idea that anyone can have a page on Wikipedia - and I've heard that some Indian students have been told that they SHOULD have a page here to help their career. It's probably because of time zones that I see far more of those than American ones. But as to this one belonging on a user page - no. Not unless she was editing other things. Editors like @Rankersbo: seem to spend a lot of time down there - perhaps they can help in telling us what does lurk in the depths. I do think, however, that there'd be a hell of a fight put up by those who never seem to delete anything or tag anything. (They are entitled to their opinions and their say, but I believe that if you've got trouble with a drain that you get better advice from an overall-clad plumber with dirty hands than from a very clean philosopher.) Peridon (talk) 11:59, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I just busy myself (too much) with tidying to see the bigger picture, marking blank and insustantial pages for G12, G13 or G2. I just had a message about not being sufficiently alarmed by the presese of copyvio, so I think a lot of what you want to know about passes me by. If it doesn't have an AfC template on it, I'm unlikely to touch it.

I do see a lot of pages from schoolkids, which get reported to WP:OVERSIGHT, profiles of students and junior researchers who seem to think this wikipedia is just like linkedin or crunchbase. If there's an AfC template on they get swept up after about 7 months. If not, I don't know what the mechanism is for checking. Rankersbo (talk) 12:41, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• There are probably thousands of user pages that have been created by newly registered accounts who have never returned to make a single edit. The most effective exercise would be to compile a list of those that are older than, say, 12 months and then decide under what category to batch delete them. I'm thinking of something like G14 - abandoned user page by user who has made no edits to any other namespace (a bit like G13, in fact, with a U5 flavour).

For Draft:Kelly Bieksa, which may be either a gf user page in the wrong namespace, or a gf autobio by someon who hasn't read the rules, I dont think there is a current CSD criterion that actually applies, so while it's not a U5, although G11 might just possibly be applicable, MfD might be the solution - it obviously wouldn't survive there, On the other hand, in creating a Draft, Kelly has obviously seen some instructions or advice somewhere and it appears she may have deiberately chosen to igore what she read. One possible immediate solution would be to userfy the Draft to User:Kelly Bieksa (draft), inform her of the move and leave it at that until it gets tagged U5 (anyone not 100% familiar with WP:UP may not be aware that user space drafts are not allowed to linger, unused, indefinitely), or we create the G14 I suggested above, or something like it. As Oiyarbepsy states however: We don't need speedy deletion for rare events. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:29, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

• I was going to suggest something like this as an addendum to G13, which only applies to articles which are tagged with AfC templates. Personally I think that's silly - abandoned is abandoned, and there should be one criteria for it. G13 should at least apply to stale pages in Draft: space. Ivanvector (talk) 17:24, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Does Speedy R2 apply to a redirect to a foreign language article? I'm sure this must have come up before but I can't find it. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. Meters (talk) 05:41, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

This has come up before and the consensus was that it doesn't apply. See Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 48#Soft redirects to foreign-language Wikipedias for a February 2013 discussion about making them speedy deletable as a new R4 (as it would not apply to all namespaces, soft redirects to a foreign language user page are fine for example). From memory (I don't have time to reread it now) the discussion didn't really reach consensus, but allowing redlinks to have interlanguage links would mean it would have passed. This is something that is at least theoretically possible with Wikidata, but I don't know whether it is actuall possible yet in practice and if not whether it is being worked on. Even if it isn't possible yet, I would not be averse to resurrecting the proposal and seeing if consensus has changed. See the "R4 proposal" subsection of that discussion for the proposed wording if you do want to restart discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 13:43, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Meters (talk) 20:53, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@Meters:If the goal is to have links to a foreign language article when there is none in English, take a look at {{Interlanguage link}}. This will show a redlink, followed by a link to a foreign language, but if an English article is created, the foreign language link automatically disappears. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:07, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

@Oiyarbepsy:That makes more sense than having a normal blue link show up that takes you to a foreign wiki. I don't know if the editor creating these has any intention of actually creating the English articles. He was populating List of Algerians with links to bios on the French Wikipedia, sach as Mohamed Chabani. It seemed an odd thing to do, but I wasn't sure if that was acceptable, or if not if they should go to speedy, to RfD, or even to pages for translation. Is there any standard procedure for handling such redirects? Meters (talk) 23:34, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Can I please ask you, whoever is constantly deleting the wikipedia ad, what is your reason of doing so? LeoLi1234 (talk) 01:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Such 'advertisement-like' images are appropriate for individual userpages. This is not an individual userpage. Okay? DS (talk) 01:40, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, that particular ad is advertising WP:SPEEDY, which redirects to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, so ultimately it doesn't add anything. ekips39 01:43, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

• The ad wasn't created by the WMF for this page. It was created by User:AzaToth, User:Qxz, and User:Master of Puppets. It was last updated 01:02, September 24, 2008 (UTC). There was never any discussion or consensus to add it to the page though, and it shouldn't be added unless there is such a consensus formed at a discussion here. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 01:52, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll add here that the user is currently blocked for this action. Lor^Talk 02:04, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

• Even if we did decide to put an ad up I don't think it should be this one since it implies that notability is a speedy deletion criteria when if fact it's not. A7 is the closest we have but that specifically states that it's a lower bar.--65.94.255.73 (talk) 03:55, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
• The Wikipedia ads are silly and should not be posted on random project pages. Stifle (talk) 11:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)