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Don't know how to deal with this. Shoudiemarzan ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has three times today posted a glowing puff piece about himself under different titles, which have all been speedied. Now he has uploaded "Image:Shoudie.jpg", with the puff piece tacked on as text. How to get rid of it? Can one speedy an image? JohnCD ( talk) 16:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I seem to remember that at some time in the past there was a statement included in the introduction of this policy that indicated something like "if the deletion is potentially controversial, speedy deletion should not be invoked". Am I remembering correctly? The closest thing to this in the current policy statement is:
These criteria are worded narrowly, so that in most cases reasonable editors will agree what does and does not meet a given criterion. Where reasonable doubt exists, discussion using another method under the deletion policy should occur instead.
This statement refers to the applicability of a CSD criterion to article content and not to a judgment about the perception of the deletion by editors. I can understand not wanting to include a statement that relies heavily on the individual judgment of editors, as this would amount to making the policy more ambiguous. In practice, however, "potential controversy" as a non-criterion is used; for instance, schools are generally not subjected to speedy deletion due to consistent controversy over their deletion. This particular question here arises from a question at WP:AN ( see permalink). --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 14:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Could I request that the following condition be added to the list in I8 (Images available on Commons):
This is common courtesy, but does not always take place. – Tivedshambo (talk) 08:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Just thought I'd let people know that I've added a small script to MediaWiki:Sysop.js which will replace any autogenerated deletion summaries for articles tagged with {{ db-attack}} or related templates with a boilerplate summary that doesn't include any part of the article's content. This should reduce the chance of offensive or libelous content ending up in the deletion log by accident. Please let me know if you observe any problems. (I've also fixed the code already in Sysop.js so that it should now work on IE again.) — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 02:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone else think that 2005 Rose Bowl and several similar articles fits WP:CSD#A3 or another WP:SPEEDY reason? -- Jreferee t/ c 06:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
At any rate, I have added a prose intro. It's an academic point now, but perhaps we should decide whether A3 does or does not include articles with only an infobox, and no prose to speak of. These are surprisingly common when doing newpage patrol... I usually add {{ intromissing}} and move on, but I've seen them get deleted to little controversy sometimes. -- W.marsh 16:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I have restored the original wording of CSD A3, with one modification, for two reasons. First, I think it's important to emphasise that being a stub does not automatically qualify an article for deletion per CSD A3. Second, we should avoid phrasing CSD criteria in such a way that requires interpretation and application of Wikipedia:Notability. Such evaluations are rarely uncontroversial enough for a speedy deletion, in large part because access to sources and willingness to conduct research plays a big role in proving notability.
As for the discussion above ... CSD A3 applies to articles that consist "only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments, and/or images". An article that includes even a semi-complete infobox generally contains enough context (A1) to identify the subject and enough content (A3) to write a one-sentence lead. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 19:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that it's a matter of context more than content: the version Jrenfree cites [1] didn't have enough context for me to be able to understand what the article was supposed to be about, beyond guessing that it was probably an American football game of some sort. (In my defence, I'm a Brit for whom terms like "Rose Bowl" mean nothing). So if anything I'd see the question as being whether it fitted A1. However, it's easy enough to follow the links or do a quick Google, work out what a Rose Bowl is and add a sentence of introduction to give it some context, so whether it technically fits A1 or not, deletion isn't the best way to deal with it. There's also {{ context}} for cases where there's insufficient context, but still some potentially useful content. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 23:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
All of a sudden, this new policy-creep had become mandatory when considering A3 deletions. Unfortunately, policy cannot effectively mandate particular edits. So I took that out, and returned A3 to its form of long-standing usefulness (even if someone has edited it into near-unparseability at some point). Splash - tk 14:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I created a page at talk:list of triangle topics informing people of the prototype page at user:DavidCBryant/List of triangle topics. There is an obvious reason why I did that. I propose that this sort of thing be made an exception, for the same reason there's an exception for "deletion discussions not logged elsewhere". Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Surnames and given names pages aren't disambig-pages. there are very short articles with little statements. However, in English Wikipedia they look like not targets of speedy deletion. Could you tell me thats reason?-- Ræv ( talk) 22:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
{{
hndis}}
tag, marking them as disambig pages, however.
Splash -
tk 23:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)I foresee a massive, uphill, bloody battle, but they always begin with one proposal. If I were to try to get WP to adopt an objective standard for television episode articles, where would I start? Ideally, I'd like to end up with a new speedy criterion: "Article serves to summarize a television episode, and does not assert that the episode was a premiere, a finale, or nominated for a widely-recognized award such as an Emmy or a Hugo." Kww ( talk) 12:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Does this page really need this new paragraph?. It just seems to me a cumbersome IAR-based disclaimer. If it's felt that this is really needed, I think it should just be replaced with something more straightforward like: Speedy deletions may be declined by administrators if doing so could undermine the goal of improving Wikipedia. Please consider this possibility, and ignore this rule if necessary. Someguy1221 21:12, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, this should never be a criteria for speedy deletion. It's used much too liberally, especially considering that what is considered important is highly subjective. I don't think you can provide encyclopedic content if you go around deleting information that is considered unimportant without a second thought. If articles like this were nominated for deletion in the non speedy way (lol) there would be a realistic opportunity for somebody to defend the article or, where possible, merge the information into another article. -- Karlww ( contribs| talk) 15:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that A1 and A7 should be removed as speedy deletion criteria, because their non-objectivity means there's just too much potential for misuse – and we are seeing a lot of misuse. But I think it would be okay to use them as justification for a WP:PROD template. Sarsaparilla ( talk) 21:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure where the best place to put it...but I'm a new admin, and I could use some guidance. I denied speedy requests on How to Break Up a Band and The Fisher/McDonald Hydrogen theory on the basis that they did not meet A7 criteria – they were not a person, band, group, corporation, or web content. Were these rightfully deleted and I was incorrect? hbdragon88 08:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
When an article is deleted under A7, the explanation currently displays as "CSD A7: Article does does not indicate why its subject is important or significant..." The word "does" is repeated. Could someone who knows how please fix this? Thanks. -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Seems to me that A1 is frequently quoted as a reason for speedy deletion, even when it doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps it should be specified to cover a narrower category of articles, because this is reaching the point of abuse. Frequently authors stub a new page after creating it, and it is Speedied for this reason. Maybe this guideline needs some editing or we need a new one to cover these articles. Just throwing that out there. Wikilost 02:10, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Over on this island of mine, we have pub-quizzes. You go along, pay £1 each, form a team with friends and then (fail to) answer the rather obscure questions the publican asks. The team with either (a) the best obscure knowledge or (b) the least scruples in using Wikipedia to cheat wins. So for me 'A1' is asking "could you, if given the text of the article phrased as a question in a pub quiz, reply with the title as the answer". The pub-quiz test. Disclaimer: I have never been on the winning team in a pub quiz. Splash - tk 23:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I've only been an admin for about 31 hours, and already I've denied at least three articles tagged for A1. I tried that devious trick a few months ago to get a Days of Our Lives actor biography deleted, though. hbdragon88 04:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Another "test" might be the basic journalism questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If you're asking any of these questions after reading an article, the article needs a lot of work. If the reader is asking most or all of those questions, it's probably an A1 deletion. -- W.marsh 15:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
That's the point I was attempting to make, a stub is not a SD. However, many admins seem to treat this as if it were so. At the very least, we ought to add a line somewhere to the policy. I don't know why, but while some pages are garbage or irrelevant, some are stubs, and should be given the chance to expand. Nearly every new page that is not requested must be run through the gauntlet of a deletion challenge. New editors often don't know the rules or style on Wikipedia, and subsequently lose the argument, even if the article could be expanded or edited to be comply with guidelines. Just flat deleting an article with can really turn people off of Wikipedia. Wikilost ( talk) 05:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This post is, perhaps, a kind of branch-off of a post a few threads back, but anyway, I'll get on with it. Currently, the topic matters which are formally encompassed by this criterion are very specific and relatively limited, when one considers the fact that "A7" is pretty much the most-used and predominant CSD criterion relating to notability, and lack thereof. I propose that we need to add "...or subject matter" to the A7 description, and formally broaden the scope of this criterion in order to, and in an attempt to, embrace and recognise both the large number of possibly non-notable subject matters that
and the fact that A7 is pretty much the only notability criterion, for the article namespace, that allows speedy removal of non-notable articles, and how this affects, and frequently impairs, an admin's ability to speedily delete articles while conforming to the corresponding criteria or sub-criteria. -- Anonymous Dissident Talk 08:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
It's been discussed many times before and always rejected; see, for example,
here. The problem is that there are a large number of areas, such as scientific concepts, for which a claim of notability may not be obvious to the non specialist, and a number of other areas, such as countries, for which a specifit assertion of importance is unnecessary, as all subjects of that class are notable. However, there's no clear consensus on exactly where these boundaries lie, and allowing individual admins to make too many individual judgements is a recipie for a great deal of aggravation at DRV. For example, which of the following contain a claim of importance?
None of the above contain an explicit assertion of notability, yet I would venture that all are notable to a greater or lesser extent, all are encyclopaedic, and certainly none of them would be good speedy candidates.
By contrast, the currently speediable subject areas have a few things in common: (a) there are a large number of obviously non-notable examples of these subjects, so an article on one of these subjects needs to indicate why it is more important than a generic person, band, company or website, (b) many users create articles on obviously non-notable people, companies, bands and websites anyway, either because they confuse Wikipedia with MySpace, or just out of shameless self-promotion and (c) it should be reasonably obvious to the average person what is the difference between a completely unimportant example of one of these subjects (Joe Bloggs is a pupil at Somewhere High School) and one which is at least potentially encyclopaedic (Joe Bloggs is a professor of economics at Harvard). I think that any new classes of articles to be added to A7 should also meet these criteria. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 10:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
No, there are a good many things that notability does not apply to. There is no meaningful, unified scale of the concept on which everything can be judged, viz. Iain99's examples. The word 'notable' is overmisabused rather in that respect. We don't have an article on sodium because it's 'notable' per se. We have an article because the topic is of encyclopedic relevance. Otoh, we have an article on Facebook because it has emerged from the mass of websites to become notable among them. Since there is no universal scale against which to judge whether a particular statement is an indication of notability or not, not all articles can be subject to this speedy deletion criterion. Furthermore, this really would make deletion-through-ignorance significantly more likely as in the plant example above. Splash - tk 19:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Many articles fit multiple speedy deletion criteria. Pages tagged with G10 would also fit A7 in most cases, and possibly A3.
But I was thinking, what could be the greatest number of speedy criteria that could be validly applied to a single page at once?
I came up with
as an example of a page, in the article namespace, that could fit the following criteria:
This extreme example just goes to show how often these overlap. G1 often overlaps with G3 and/or A1, and G10 often overlaps with G3 and A7. G11 often overlaps with G12. It just goes to show that we probably don't need any more speedy deletion criteria right now given the wide applicability of these. The only one that I think could be added is an extension of A7 towards WP:NFT things that don't precisely fit it - what are your thoughts on that last idea?-- h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 16:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I came across The Pasture, which should be deleted as it is a copy of the poem available on wikisource. I was going to speedy delete it per A5 (transiki'd articles), but that says that it is only appropriate for transwikis to wiktionary, not wikisource (except for AFD discussions). Am I right that there is no CSD criterion that would apply for this? Rigadoun (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I think it's worth reminding people that G3 (vandalism) covers insertion of clear and obvious misinformation as well. Comments on the following wordings?
I'm hoping to see a good balance, since we want to neither give WP:BEANS, nor encourage deletion of possibly valid articles and notable hoaxes by accident. But clarifying that articles which are basically just obvious misinformation do count as vandalism, and can be speedied, would probably be useful.
Thoughts? FT2 ( Talk | email) 14:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
"Articles which are vandalistic in nature" was just added to G3. I kind of don't like this, because "vandalistic" is not a real word, and we should really restrain ourselves from using quasi-words in policy, lest policy gradually becomes incomprehensible to outsiders who don't understand our dialect. Moreover, I think I have better wording:
"Articles which consist purely of content which, if added to an existing article, a reasonable editor could revert as vandalism without further explanation"
That's always been my understanding of the rule... if I'd rollback the content if it were added to an existing article, then a G3 deletion will be equally uncontroversial. Does this help explain the rule, or just add unneeded verbiage? -- W.marsh 15:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I actually opose the explicit addition of hoaxes to G3 unless it is made clear that blatent and obvious we mean things that physically or logically impossible. I have no problem with deleting as vandalism articles that claim overlordship of earth, conquerors of Venus, winning the Indy 500 in 1864 and the like. However I would not like to see an article that reads Tom Sutterbach was an American singer who had a top twenty hit Oh, My Baby in 1957 speedy deleted. (I just made Tom up.) An editor who thinks that they know fifties pop music well may think that is obvious vandalism, but a well respected editor though this was an obvious hoax. In cases like this we can't trust the judgement of a single admin. Dsmdgold ( talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I guess someone else has to fix even the little things on such an important page... Under 1.2 Articles #1 the last sentence says: "Care should be take to ensure..." and should of course be: "Care should be taken to ensure..."
This edit has taken me well over an hour. UnRheal ( talk) 00:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Until and unless A7 is expanded, I'd like to propose adding enough to make it absolutely clear that A7 does not cover such things as books, albums, singles or products, maybe with a simple parenthetical note:
“ | No indication of importance/significance. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, organisation, or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. Unless the article is obviously for an non-notable organization, consider doing at least a web search for the organization. If controversial, list the article at Articles for deletion instead. (Note that the products of people and groups, such as books or albums, are not deletable by this criterion.) | ” |
Any takers? Any hearty objections? I presume I can't be the only admin addressing speedies who has noticed how often such articles are tagged for this...or, indeed, deleted. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) Yep, and no complaints about clarification stuff. I'm just seeking to make sure I understand the concern that's arisen. As I understand it, what you're seeing is that A7 should apply just to the people and organizations, but is being mis-used to tag other things too, that it strictly shouldn't. Is that about it? Or is there more to it than that? (And I'm also guessing the aim of A7 as a whole is that for articles likely to be created for promotional purposes, we require some claim of "why this person/group is significant/important", to make it easier to speed up removal of non-notable promotion.) FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
How about this:
Any use? It puts the "things this can apply to" right up front, so it's clear that it is a criteria only about those things. (And should A7 say "indication of significance/importance", or "evidence of significance/importance", anyhow? "Evidence" might be stronger...?) FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) Try these:
The only changes are the title now explains what it applies to up front (important), and a note to clarify what it doesn't apply to. Feedback as you say will be needed either way, but I think a big part of the problem is the title of the criterion simply stated "No indication of importance" but left till later the crucial information this only applies to certain kinds of article. FT2 ( Talk | email) 16:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
<reset>Well, I've given it a go. We'll see. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 presently claims that its "importance/signficance" idea is somehow distinguishable from notability. I dispute this claim, and suggest that the word "notability" should actually be used here, as I'm almost dead certain it was a while back. One of the most common ways to refer to A7 is to note that an article "does not assert notability", so this change to A7 is pretty nonsensical. We have a mountain of past history, at Wikipedia:Notability/Historical, demonstrating that subjective ideas like "fame", "importance" and "significance" were directly abandoned by the WP community in favor of a "notability" concept rooted in the objective primary notability criterion (signficant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources), so we can't suddenly reverse ourselves on this, willy-nilly. A7's wording needs to return to a criterion that articles that do not make a notability claim for their subjects are speedily deletable. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Historic note - I wasn't around when A7 was added, but I think I can see it's reasoning. It's specifically intended to lower the barrier for speedying items of a kind likely to be self-promotional, without going through AFD on each occasion. The requirement for an article is indeed notability. A7 adds that if an article is on a very tight range of subjects of the kind where promotion is very common (eg, people, groups of people, bands, businesses, websites), and the article doesnt give any reason why that person, band, website is important, then it can be deleted. It's to make it easier to delete new pages of the form:
That's I'm fairly sure why A7 exists. Previous wordings:
The criterion "unremarkable" was used historically all the way back, but A7 has been around in the above form or similar, for a long time (2006).
What might work is unless there is some other reason I'm not seeing, merge this into G11, "Blatent advertising, including promotion of a person, group, band or website with no indication of grounds for notability"? But we really do need to check why A7 exists in case there's more to it. Shouldn't be hard to do.
Thoughts? FT2 ( Talk | email) 05:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 is fundamentally different. G11 often contains claims of importance... but for whatever reason they're just hollow advertising. "We're your leading IT solutions provider, customers agree we're the finest in our field!" is a claim of importance, yet it's purely promotional language. Articles that don't assert importance are different than articles that contain only promotional material.
There is something to saying "non-notable" articles are probably advertising in some way or another... but I think most people who do speedy deletions a lot will tell you, it's easy to explain an A7 deletion and what people need to do to fix the article. Explaining how someone can fix an article deleted for G11 can be very rough... usually the only real suggestion is "stop writing about your startup company! Wait till someone without a COI cares!" I find that a lot of A7 deletions, at least where the person sincerely wants to fix the problem, actually aren't vanity at all, more often it's just an enthusiastic new editor. -- W.marsh 07:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Though I left them in there, I don't see any actual consensus for the recent(?) additions, e.g. that A7 only applies to individuals, organizations and web sites, and that A7 cannot be applied to books, software, albums, etc. (which are also redundant verbiage to begin with). I'm not going to go edit them out just yet, having already made a couple of changes and not being a regular on this page, but I think that those qualifications do need to be removed. While I cannot speak as to the motive for adding them, it appears to me that the effect of them is simply to weaken A7 in a way that will lead to the survival of a whole lot of junk wannabe-articles on the technicality that they are about an album or whatever instead of the person(s) responsible for the album. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of importance/significance.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7 is distinct from questions of [[Wikipedia:Notability|notability]], [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliability of sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] instead. of speedily deleting.
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of notability.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is [[Wikipedia:Notability|notable]]. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7's requirement for an ''assertion'' of notability is distinct from [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] questions of ''establishing'' notability and [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] with [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliabile sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|AfD]] instead of speedily deleting.
I wonder whether we would not do better keeping "notability" out of it, considering that we have ever successfully defined it, as the incessant debates at WP:N and subpages makes evident. DGG ( talk) 06:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I've seen many Elementary and middle schools at AfD (some I've put up myself) that assert zero notability whatsoever. I'm not against having certain school pages here, but maybe we could extend A7 to include these school pages that don't assert notability. I've heard some rationalize that schools fall under organizations, but if CSD applies to certain schools, it should be explicitly stated. J-ſtan Contribs User page 03:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
There are thousands of geography stubs for many small towns in various countries that consist of little more than one line of text. I feel these are suitable for being weed wacked with extreme prejudice considering that almost none of them have any sources or references, but am unsure how to categorize them-- A7 would seem to be the obvious one, but it does not say anything about locations. Jtrainor ( talk) 13:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) They're not speedy candidates. You could try AfD if you like, but the consensus there has always been that even small towns are inherently notable ( WP:OUTCOMES), and indeed virtually all of them pass the general notability guideline as well, as even small towns and villages have had lots written about them over the years. Just as an example, British History Online has detailed articles on the local history of every village in Britain. By all means remove inappropriate material (like spammy lists of local shops and pubs) from them, but all these articles can be turned into good ones, and there's nothing wrong with having short stubs in the meantime. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 14:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
<Reset indent>I understood you to say, Satori Son, that the majority of unsourced geo stubs are legitimate and that effort should be put into researching them, only following failure of which efforts should the articles be considered for deletion. I agree. I have seen geographical articles deleted after AfD when sourcing could not be produced. I wonder if you are thinking of the provision in WP:N, specifically in the section on "notability requires objective evidence" and subsequent, which suggest that deletion may be appropriate for an article that "fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject" and for which "appropriate sources cannot be found". W.Marsh, I almost left you a note this morning about the point you made about geographical articles at VP about geographical articles: "people tend to write about geography, as it's important". Simply but persuasively written. They do. (And I didn't—leave a note that is—because I couldn't find a way to phrase it without sounding stupid. I had nothing more to add to the conversation than a "well said".) Hence, if nothing has been written about geography, the information may be questionable. Personally, unless I was completely sure that a geo article was a hoax, I'd go for the broader purview of AfD. (Given my abysmal geography scores when I was a kid, this is only right and just. :D I would feel reasonably confident, for instance, to PROD articles on continents which I've never heard of...after googling them, anyway. ;)) These kinds of articles benefit from additional searchers, I think. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Per an ArbCom decision, "Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy." I have added this as a new criteria because it is already a valid reason to speedily delete an article. - Jehochman Talk 19:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
<reset indent>Your most recent change stripped some of the scope of G10 (I keep calling it A, attack gets stuck in my head :)). An article on a company could be an attack page. An article on an album could be an attack page. I've attempted to restore that without removing your concerns. We'll see how I did. :) -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The current wording of G10 is more recent than the ArbComm decision in that atrocity of a case. (The ArbComm violated their usual rules for handling disputed cases there, and the outcome reflects the fact that they didn't arbitrate, they especially some members who thankfully will not be members in a couple weeks, advocated instead.) ArbComm does not make policy, the community does, and a well run ArbComm case only attempts to reflect the policy the community has formed, and the policies reflected in their principles even when accurate are subject to revision. As has been explicitly referenced above in this discussion, the current wording of G10 is a result of what the community was willing to agree upon after having seen that decision. There are differences, and the wording of G10 prior to this recent attempt at revision is a better reflection of policy on speedy deletion than that old, obsolete ArbComm decision is. So we should not revise G10 to reflect that decision, we should revise that text to reflect actual policy written into G10.
Additionally, these are the speedy deletion criteria. Instructions about recreating pages do not belong here in any form. So I have removed that inappropriate content again. Jehochman's suggestion of bolding the link to BLP is not unreasonable, so I went ahead and did it. GRBerry 17:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I've restored some wording by User:FT2 that reflects the fact that we don't want people going around restoring articles that breach the Biographies of living persons policy. [15] This has been a severe problem in the not-so-distant past, and we need a bright-line policy here.
The wording reads:
-- Tony Sidaway 23:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I have to oppose the addition of ", and if the page is an article about a living person it should not be restored or recreated by any editor until it meets biographical article standards". I'm sad to see so much editwarring over it that the page has become protected. Let's discuss the matter out, instead.
My take is that this passage is a) redundant, and b) off-topic. This is not an article creation guideline, as someone noted in an edit summary recently, and if we've already said on what basis an article can be speedily deleted, we do not need to reiterate that it shouldn't be re-created again in that form, since obviously if it was speedily deletable in that form once it will remain so. Let's not be silly. Wikipedia editors are generally not brain-damaged, so we needn't treat them like halfwits. :-) — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: This is also redundant per G4: "re-creation of previously deleted material". No new policy wording is needed, especially not to address a weird case, namely of POV-pushing in the creation of attack articles; this is already completely adequately covered by WP:NPA, WP:NPOV, and WP:VANDAL. To be as clear as possible, my point is basically that WP:CSD is not a one-stop-shop for "don't do these bad things on Wikipedia" advice; it is, and only is, our criteria for speedy deletion, so verbiage about what kinds of articles to not (re-)create doesn't belong here. That's what WP:NOT is for. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The material Tony added for the third time in under 24 hours is completely unsuitable for the speedy deletion policy, and should just be deleted from this page. As Satori Son linked above, the inclusion of anything the BDJ farce has already been discussed and rejected here twice previously, and the discussions are archived at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 20#CSD-A9: BLP CSD-G10 rewrite and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 21#G10 "or fails to comply fully with the relevant policy in any other way" where the community has already twice rejected the notion of writing that finding into the speedy deletion policy. In addition, we've since had Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 25#Proposed new criterion. The wording that was in G10 has been accepted by the community. GRBerry 04:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I've already stated my opinion in the edit summary: this policy page outlines criteria for speedy deletion; instructions for undeletion or recreation belong at Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Moreover, since (as Wikidemo notes) it's always wrong to write an article in violation to BLP, stating that a BLP-violating article should not be recreated is redundant. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 21:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Criterion G8, for orphaned talk pages of no particular use, strikes me as the sort of thing that could be reasonably merged with G6, for general housekeeping. Not a matter of importance, of course, but if there is ever a drive to cut down on the large, occasionally redundant, number of criteria we have, an expanded G6 could probably supersede G8. Any reasons why this wouldn't work? Picaroon (t) 01:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think keeping these criteria separate is best. I'd also note that due to keeping the numbering the same for historical reasons, all a merger would achieve is leaving a blank space (or note) where G8 is at the moment. You can't do renumberings because lots of old deletion logs refer to the CSD by numbers alone (though they shouldn't for precisely this reason). Carcharoth ( talk) 18:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Could someone advise me on the following? We have Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg on Wikipedia. I recently fixed the license tag, but as it needed cropping, I went back to the original, cropped it and uploaded it Commons, ending up with Image:04293v cropped.JPG. My question is whether Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg now falls under any of the image CSDs? It feels like I1 or I8, but doesn't quite fit the criteria. Can it be deleted under G6 (housekeeping)? Should this kind of thing be specifically covered in the image CSDs? I know a common process on Commons is to upload the original and the cropped version. Maybe I should just tag the uncropped version for transfer to Commons? Carcharoth ( talk) 18:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to remove this line from A1: "Care should be taken to ensure that valid articles in progress are not deleted."
Rational: Long tradition of keeping advice like this out as it constitutes instruction creep and is not very useful anyway. Snippets like this are usually added after a specific bad deletion, and if we did that every time there was a bad deletion, CSD would be 500 pages long with reactionary advice. Ultimately, if A1 is applied correctly, nothing useful towards a "valid article" will be deleted. An article "lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article", which is what A1 calls for, will require a total rewrite anyway to be useful. Bad deletions should be dealt with by explaining the issue to the deleting admin and then taking it to DRV if necessary... we shouldn't be tacking stuff on to policy every time someone makes a bad deletion. It doesn't work anyway.
I'll make the change eventually if there are no objections, but just want to propose it here first since the page is full-protected right now. -- W.marsh 16:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I crazy, or doesn't this qualify for G6, housekeeping? When I added a speedy delete notice to the page, an admin removed it, citing the MFD that gave the indication that it was speedyable. -- Ned Scott 06:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest an new category, articles that appear to be about living persons but provide no sources. WP:BLP says such material "must adhere strictly" to our policies, including WP:V. A7 candidate articles frequently make notability claims that require subjective evaluation (is "best high school soccer player in Nebraska" notable enough?). The criterion I am proposing is clear-cut and automatic: about a person, no source, no death date or other indication the subject is no longer alive --> gone. It would add teeth to BLP and sharply reduce the number of situations where we are, in effect, telling people they aren't important enough to be in Wikipedia.-- agr ( talk) 11:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Please forgive me if this has been suggested before:
T3-TEXT
CSD-T3: Templates which are not used in any articles and which provide no information that could not be easily provided by another template; that is, they are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template.
This covers the two most common snowball issues I've recently seen at TfD: clones or similar copies of an existing template (often POV forks), and instances where someone has copied an existing template (usually an infobox) and replaced the parameters with hardcoded values (as opposed to creating a subsidiary infobox, which of course is completely different). Both of these cases are entirely uncontroversial. Comments? Happy‑ melon 15:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Does this mean {{ Policy}} gets speedied? It's not used in any article. O:-) -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 19:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC) just checking
:P
. I assume you know what I mean though - perhaps replace "used in any articles" for "used in any useful context".
Happy‑
melon 12:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)Perhaps it's a question of semantics, but I feel uncomfortable about classing these as G6. It's stretching G6 quite a bit to cover these, and that worries me that people will try and stretch it in other ways. I don't think it's at all controversial to delete something like {{ Vocal classification}} as a duplication of {{ vocal range}}, or {{ Infobox LBS}} as a hard-coded instance of {{ infobox university}}. In this case adding a new criterion is not instruction creep, but just an easy clarification which removes ambiguity. Essentially I'm saying "there's a hell of a lot of different 'housekeeping' tasks, some of which are controversial, some of which aren't. Why don't we split this uncontroversial (but common) task off to reduce ambiguity and potential confusion?" Happy‑ melon 18:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
T3-TEXT
I saw this issue quite some time ago and created WP:DOT. Its been a little inactive lately, but essentially has a procedure that marks the template for two weeks to ensure that it is truly not used (newly-created, subst'd, etc.) and then the templates are deleted under WP:CSD#G6. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I'll be able to do some more work with that page. Cheers. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 20:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
:D
Happy‑
melon 13:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
:D
.
Happy‑
melon 18:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)Ugh. The reason WP:DOT was created was so that we wouldn't have to list these unused, largely forgotten templates on TfD and there wouldn't be a need for long, drawn out debates about a new deletion process or a new CSD criterion. Well here we are, facing walls of text. Ugh. While it hasn't been shouted on every talk page and village pump, WP:DOT linked from the WP:TFD main page, not that anyone bothers to read that. It was also discussed on WT:TFD before being created with a handful of editors weighing in.
While WP:CSD#G6 probably could be applied to a lot of these templates without further discussion, I've edited and looked at a lot of these templates, and while I try to avoid ones that are always substituted or are intentionally without transclusions, I've screwed up. That's exactly why a two-week waiting period was given: so that people could see the template was marked for deletion on their watchlist and notice any screwed up substitutions over the course of the two weeks. When this was previously discussed, everyone was in agreement that a waiting period was better than an abrupt deletion.
WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal, esp. the addition of new criteria. Frankly, it might be nice to have a new criterion, but it simply isn't necessary. To have instant deletion of templates, much like how CSD#G1 or CSD#G3 currently operate would be a terrible idea. As for your assertion that WP:DOT-rejected templates get sent to WP:CSD, that is simply incorrect, and I have no idea where you got that impression. As I said, WP:DOT has been pretty inactive lately; hopefully some admins will be able to rectify that shortly enough. If I can quote the preface to WP:DOT: "Listing all unused templates at Templates for deletion would unnecessarily burden that process. Instead, this page has been established to coordinate efforts to maintain the template namespace by removing unneeded templates in an orderly and systematic manner." That seems pretty clear to me. As for the suggestion that users be forced to go to WP:DRV when an admin screws up, that is entirely the wrong approach regarding deletions altogether. Unequivocally. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 03:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
MZMcBride brought up a good point when saying " WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal". That implies that our agreement here might not be sufficient to adopt the change officially. What is the path forward to make the policy change? Is there a change control board that needs to consider it, for instance? Thanks for spelling it out ... though I've been here quite a while, I have not engaged in policy revision discussions up to now. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 04:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
{{
db-t3}}
) to go with it, I think it's time to open this up to a wider audience. Does anyone have any suggestion as to the order of events? I am inclined to go: RFC, then VPP, Signpost and/or community bulletin board. Objections?
Happy‑
melon 19:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)There's a potential problem with the new T-3 criterion as far as standard stub-sorting practice is concerned. Often it is useful to create a batch of stub templates to completely split an overgrown type consistently, and occasionally this will result in a template which is necessary for potential use but is not actually used.
For example, if Category:Football (soccer) biography stubs were very large, the best way to manage it would be to split the biographies byusing different templates for different decade of birth. Any templates which got sufficient usage would get their own categories, others would have their articles remain in the main stub category. Thus, {{ 1920s-footy-bio-stub}}, {{ 1930s-footy-bio-stub}} etc would all be created at the same time, back to the dawn of the professional era. Sometimes, such a split results in an unused template (there may be no current football biography stubs for players born in the 1890s, for instance). It could be argued that this stub template would be speediable, as it is unused and - given that the template would be upmerged into a larger category - does nothing that the plain {{ footy-bio-stub}} does not.
I know of several current cases where this situation exists - for example, every country in the world has its own geo-stub template for geographical articles, but the one for the Vatican City is currently not used on any articles. I'd hate to see this new criterion being used as a means of removing valid stub templates that complete a set.
Might I suggest the wording be amended slightly to Templates that are deprecated and orphaned and which are not part of an established series - that is... ? I doubt it would interfere with many of the templates which are mentioned as being the sort that T-3 is aimed at, and it would reduce the chances of potentially useful stub templates suddenly disappearing. Grutness... wha? 04:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The suggested text says, in part, "Templates that ... are no longer used ... may be deleted after seven days". I presume what we're after here is, "If the template seems like a dead idea, and nobody has used it for seven days, just delete it". I don't have a problem with that in concept; sounds good to me. But how would one check that? To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to see a usage history for a template. That is, there's nothing that will show you when a page used to transclude it, or the last time it was substituted. (If there's some MediaWiki feature I've missed, just hit me over the head with a cluebat about it.) — DragonHawk ( talk| hist) 03:45, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | → | Archive 30 |
Don't know how to deal with this. Shoudiemarzan ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has three times today posted a glowing puff piece about himself under different titles, which have all been speedied. Now he has uploaded "Image:Shoudie.jpg", with the puff piece tacked on as text. How to get rid of it? Can one speedy an image? JohnCD ( talk) 16:38, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I seem to remember that at some time in the past there was a statement included in the introduction of this policy that indicated something like "if the deletion is potentially controversial, speedy deletion should not be invoked". Am I remembering correctly? The closest thing to this in the current policy statement is:
These criteria are worded narrowly, so that in most cases reasonable editors will agree what does and does not meet a given criterion. Where reasonable doubt exists, discussion using another method under the deletion policy should occur instead.
This statement refers to the applicability of a CSD criterion to article content and not to a judgment about the perception of the deletion by editors. I can understand not wanting to include a statement that relies heavily on the individual judgment of editors, as this would amount to making the policy more ambiguous. In practice, however, "potential controversy" as a non-criterion is used; for instance, schools are generally not subjected to speedy deletion due to consistent controversy over their deletion. This particular question here arises from a question at WP:AN ( see permalink). --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 14:27, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Could I request that the following condition be added to the list in I8 (Images available on Commons):
This is common courtesy, but does not always take place. – Tivedshambo (talk) 08:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Just thought I'd let people know that I've added a small script to MediaWiki:Sysop.js which will replace any autogenerated deletion summaries for articles tagged with {{ db-attack}} or related templates with a boilerplate summary that doesn't include any part of the article's content. This should reduce the chance of offensive or libelous content ending up in the deletion log by accident. Please let me know if you observe any problems. (I've also fixed the code already in Sysop.js so that it should now work on IE again.) — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 02:39, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone else think that 2005 Rose Bowl and several similar articles fits WP:CSD#A3 or another WP:SPEEDY reason? -- Jreferee t/ c 06:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
At any rate, I have added a prose intro. It's an academic point now, but perhaps we should decide whether A3 does or does not include articles with only an infobox, and no prose to speak of. These are surprisingly common when doing newpage patrol... I usually add {{ intromissing}} and move on, but I've seen them get deleted to little controversy sometimes. -- W.marsh 16:09, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I have restored the original wording of CSD A3, with one modification, for two reasons. First, I think it's important to emphasise that being a stub does not automatically qualify an article for deletion per CSD A3. Second, we should avoid phrasing CSD criteria in such a way that requires interpretation and application of Wikipedia:Notability. Such evaluations are rarely uncontroversial enough for a speedy deletion, in large part because access to sources and willingness to conduct research plays a big role in proving notability.
As for the discussion above ... CSD A3 applies to articles that consist "only of external links, category tags and "see also" sections, rephrasing of the title, attempts to correspond with the person or group named by its title, chat-like comments, and/or images". An article that includes even a semi-complete infobox generally contains enough context (A1) to identify the subject and enough content (A3) to write a one-sentence lead. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 19:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that it's a matter of context more than content: the version Jrenfree cites [1] didn't have enough context for me to be able to understand what the article was supposed to be about, beyond guessing that it was probably an American football game of some sort. (In my defence, I'm a Brit for whom terms like "Rose Bowl" mean nothing). So if anything I'd see the question as being whether it fitted A1. However, it's easy enough to follow the links or do a quick Google, work out what a Rose Bowl is and add a sentence of introduction to give it some context, so whether it technically fits A1 or not, deletion isn't the best way to deal with it. There's also {{ context}} for cases where there's insufficient context, but still some potentially useful content. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 23:36, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
All of a sudden, this new policy-creep had become mandatory when considering A3 deletions. Unfortunately, policy cannot effectively mandate particular edits. So I took that out, and returned A3 to its form of long-standing usefulness (even if someone has edited it into near-unparseability at some point). Splash - tk 14:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I created a page at talk:list of triangle topics informing people of the prototype page at user:DavidCBryant/List of triangle topics. There is an obvious reason why I did that. I propose that this sort of thing be made an exception, for the same reason there's an exception for "deletion discussions not logged elsewhere". Michael Hardy ( talk) 03:53, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Surnames and given names pages aren't disambig-pages. there are very short articles with little statements. However, in English Wikipedia they look like not targets of speedy deletion. Could you tell me thats reason?-- Ræv ( talk) 22:18, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
{{
hndis}}
tag, marking them as disambig pages, however.
Splash -
tk 23:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC)I foresee a massive, uphill, bloody battle, but they always begin with one proposal. If I were to try to get WP to adopt an objective standard for television episode articles, where would I start? Ideally, I'd like to end up with a new speedy criterion: "Article serves to summarize a television episode, and does not assert that the episode was a premiere, a finale, or nominated for a widely-recognized award such as an Emmy or a Hugo." Kww ( talk) 12:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Does this page really need this new paragraph?. It just seems to me a cumbersome IAR-based disclaimer. If it's felt that this is really needed, I think it should just be replaced with something more straightforward like: Speedy deletions may be declined by administrators if doing so could undermine the goal of improving Wikipedia. Please consider this possibility, and ignore this rule if necessary. Someguy1221 21:12, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion, this should never be a criteria for speedy deletion. It's used much too liberally, especially considering that what is considered important is highly subjective. I don't think you can provide encyclopedic content if you go around deleting information that is considered unimportant without a second thought. If articles like this were nominated for deletion in the non speedy way (lol) there would be a realistic opportunity for somebody to defend the article or, where possible, merge the information into another article. -- Karlww ( contribs| talk) 15:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that A1 and A7 should be removed as speedy deletion criteria, because their non-objectivity means there's just too much potential for misuse – and we are seeing a lot of misuse. But I think it would be okay to use them as justification for a WP:PROD template. Sarsaparilla ( talk) 21:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure where the best place to put it...but I'm a new admin, and I could use some guidance. I denied speedy requests on How to Break Up a Band and The Fisher/McDonald Hydrogen theory on the basis that they did not meet A7 criteria – they were not a person, band, group, corporation, or web content. Were these rightfully deleted and I was incorrect? hbdragon88 08:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
When an article is deleted under A7, the explanation currently displays as "CSD A7: Article does does not indicate why its subject is important or significant..." The word "does" is repeated. Could someone who knows how please fix this? Thanks. -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Seems to me that A1 is frequently quoted as a reason for speedy deletion, even when it doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps it should be specified to cover a narrower category of articles, because this is reaching the point of abuse. Frequently authors stub a new page after creating it, and it is Speedied for this reason. Maybe this guideline needs some editing or we need a new one to cover these articles. Just throwing that out there. Wikilost 02:10, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Over on this island of mine, we have pub-quizzes. You go along, pay £1 each, form a team with friends and then (fail to) answer the rather obscure questions the publican asks. The team with either (a) the best obscure knowledge or (b) the least scruples in using Wikipedia to cheat wins. So for me 'A1' is asking "could you, if given the text of the article phrased as a question in a pub quiz, reply with the title as the answer". The pub-quiz test. Disclaimer: I have never been on the winning team in a pub quiz. Splash - tk 23:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I've only been an admin for about 31 hours, and already I've denied at least three articles tagged for A1. I tried that devious trick a few months ago to get a Days of Our Lives actor biography deleted, though. hbdragon88 04:16, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Another "test" might be the basic journalism questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If you're asking any of these questions after reading an article, the article needs a lot of work. If the reader is asking most or all of those questions, it's probably an A1 deletion. -- W.marsh 15:22, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
That's the point I was attempting to make, a stub is not a SD. However, many admins seem to treat this as if it were so. At the very least, we ought to add a line somewhere to the policy. I don't know why, but while some pages are garbage or irrelevant, some are stubs, and should be given the chance to expand. Nearly every new page that is not requested must be run through the gauntlet of a deletion challenge. New editors often don't know the rules or style on Wikipedia, and subsequently lose the argument, even if the article could be expanded or edited to be comply with guidelines. Just flat deleting an article with can really turn people off of Wikipedia. Wikilost ( talk) 05:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
This post is, perhaps, a kind of branch-off of a post a few threads back, but anyway, I'll get on with it. Currently, the topic matters which are formally encompassed by this criterion are very specific and relatively limited, when one considers the fact that "A7" is pretty much the most-used and predominant CSD criterion relating to notability, and lack thereof. I propose that we need to add "...or subject matter" to the A7 description, and formally broaden the scope of this criterion in order to, and in an attempt to, embrace and recognise both the large number of possibly non-notable subject matters that
and the fact that A7 is pretty much the only notability criterion, for the article namespace, that allows speedy removal of non-notable articles, and how this affects, and frequently impairs, an admin's ability to speedily delete articles while conforming to the corresponding criteria or sub-criteria. -- Anonymous Dissident Talk 08:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
It's been discussed many times before and always rejected; see, for example,
here. The problem is that there are a large number of areas, such as scientific concepts, for which a claim of notability may not be obvious to the non specialist, and a number of other areas, such as countries, for which a specifit assertion of importance is unnecessary, as all subjects of that class are notable. However, there's no clear consensus on exactly where these boundaries lie, and allowing individual admins to make too many individual judgements is a recipie for a great deal of aggravation at DRV. For example, which of the following contain a claim of importance?
None of the above contain an explicit assertion of notability, yet I would venture that all are notable to a greater or lesser extent, all are encyclopaedic, and certainly none of them would be good speedy candidates.
By contrast, the currently speediable subject areas have a few things in common: (a) there are a large number of obviously non-notable examples of these subjects, so an article on one of these subjects needs to indicate why it is more important than a generic person, band, company or website, (b) many users create articles on obviously non-notable people, companies, bands and websites anyway, either because they confuse Wikipedia with MySpace, or just out of shameless self-promotion and (c) it should be reasonably obvious to the average person what is the difference between a completely unimportant example of one of these subjects (Joe Bloggs is a pupil at Somewhere High School) and one which is at least potentially encyclopaedic (Joe Bloggs is a professor of economics at Harvard). I think that any new classes of articles to be added to A7 should also meet these criteria. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 10:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
No, there are a good many things that notability does not apply to. There is no meaningful, unified scale of the concept on which everything can be judged, viz. Iain99's examples. The word 'notable' is overmisabused rather in that respect. We don't have an article on sodium because it's 'notable' per se. We have an article because the topic is of encyclopedic relevance. Otoh, we have an article on Facebook because it has emerged from the mass of websites to become notable among them. Since there is no universal scale against which to judge whether a particular statement is an indication of notability or not, not all articles can be subject to this speedy deletion criterion. Furthermore, this really would make deletion-through-ignorance significantly more likely as in the plant example above. Splash - tk 19:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Many articles fit multiple speedy deletion criteria. Pages tagged with G10 would also fit A7 in most cases, and possibly A3.
But I was thinking, what could be the greatest number of speedy criteria that could be validly applied to a single page at once?
I came up with
as an example of a page, in the article namespace, that could fit the following criteria:
This extreme example just goes to show how often these overlap. G1 often overlaps with G3 and/or A1, and G10 often overlaps with G3 and A7. G11 often overlaps with G12. It just goes to show that we probably don't need any more speedy deletion criteria right now given the wide applicability of these. The only one that I think could be added is an extension of A7 towards WP:NFT things that don't precisely fit it - what are your thoughts on that last idea?-- h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 16:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I came across The Pasture, which should be deleted as it is a copy of the poem available on wikisource. I was going to speedy delete it per A5 (transiki'd articles), but that says that it is only appropriate for transwikis to wiktionary, not wikisource (except for AFD discussions). Am I right that there is no CSD criterion that would apply for this? Rigadoun (talk) 20:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I think it's worth reminding people that G3 (vandalism) covers insertion of clear and obvious misinformation as well. Comments on the following wordings?
I'm hoping to see a good balance, since we want to neither give WP:BEANS, nor encourage deletion of possibly valid articles and notable hoaxes by accident. But clarifying that articles which are basically just obvious misinformation do count as vandalism, and can be speedied, would probably be useful.
Thoughts? FT2 ( Talk | email) 14:28, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
"Articles which are vandalistic in nature" was just added to G3. I kind of don't like this, because "vandalistic" is not a real word, and we should really restrain ourselves from using quasi-words in policy, lest policy gradually becomes incomprehensible to outsiders who don't understand our dialect. Moreover, I think I have better wording:
"Articles which consist purely of content which, if added to an existing article, a reasonable editor could revert as vandalism without further explanation"
That's always been my understanding of the rule... if I'd rollback the content if it were added to an existing article, then a G3 deletion will be equally uncontroversial. Does this help explain the rule, or just add unneeded verbiage? -- W.marsh 15:35, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I actually opose the explicit addition of hoaxes to G3 unless it is made clear that blatent and obvious we mean things that physically or logically impossible. I have no problem with deleting as vandalism articles that claim overlordship of earth, conquerors of Venus, winning the Indy 500 in 1864 and the like. However I would not like to see an article that reads Tom Sutterbach was an American singer who had a top twenty hit Oh, My Baby in 1957 speedy deleted. (I just made Tom up.) An editor who thinks that they know fifties pop music well may think that is obvious vandalism, but a well respected editor though this was an obvious hoax. In cases like this we can't trust the judgement of a single admin. Dsmdgold ( talk) 17:56, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I guess someone else has to fix even the little things on such an important page... Under 1.2 Articles #1 the last sentence says: "Care should be take to ensure..." and should of course be: "Care should be taken to ensure..."
This edit has taken me well over an hour. UnRheal ( talk) 00:28, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Until and unless A7 is expanded, I'd like to propose adding enough to make it absolutely clear that A7 does not cover such things as books, albums, singles or products, maybe with a simple parenthetical note:
“ | No indication of importance/significance. An article about a real person, group of people, band, club, company, organisation, or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources. Unless the article is obviously for an non-notable organization, consider doing at least a web search for the organization. If controversial, list the article at Articles for deletion instead. (Note that the products of people and groups, such as books or albums, are not deletable by this criterion.) | ” |
Any takers? Any hearty objections? I presume I can't be the only admin addressing speedies who has noticed how often such articles are tagged for this...or, indeed, deleted. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:55, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) Yep, and no complaints about clarification stuff. I'm just seeking to make sure I understand the concern that's arisen. As I understand it, what you're seeing is that A7 should apply just to the people and organizations, but is being mis-used to tag other things too, that it strictly shouldn't. Is that about it? Or is there more to it than that? (And I'm also guessing the aim of A7 as a whole is that for articles likely to be created for promotional purposes, we require some claim of "why this person/group is significant/important", to make it easier to speed up removal of non-notable promotion.) FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
How about this:
Any use? It puts the "things this can apply to" right up front, so it's clear that it is a criteria only about those things. (And should A7 say "indication of significance/importance", or "evidence of significance/importance", anyhow? "Evidence" might be stronger...?) FT2 ( Talk | email) 15:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) Try these:
The only changes are the title now explains what it applies to up front (important), and a note to clarify what it doesn't apply to. Feedback as you say will be needed either way, but I think a big part of the problem is the title of the criterion simply stated "No indication of importance" but left till later the crucial information this only applies to certain kinds of article. FT2 ( Talk | email) 16:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
<reset>Well, I've given it a go. We'll see. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 presently claims that its "importance/signficance" idea is somehow distinguishable from notability. I dispute this claim, and suggest that the word "notability" should actually be used here, as I'm almost dead certain it was a while back. One of the most common ways to refer to A7 is to note that an article "does not assert notability", so this change to A7 is pretty nonsensical. We have a mountain of past history, at Wikipedia:Notability/Historical, demonstrating that subjective ideas like "fame", "importance" and "significance" were directly abandoned by the WP community in favor of a "notability" concept rooted in the objective primary notability criterion (signficant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources), so we can't suddenly reverse ourselves on this, willy-nilly. A7's wording needs to return to a criterion that articles that do not make a notability claim for their subjects are speedily deletable. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Historic note - I wasn't around when A7 was added, but I think I can see it's reasoning. It's specifically intended to lower the barrier for speedying items of a kind likely to be self-promotional, without going through AFD on each occasion. The requirement for an article is indeed notability. A7 adds that if an article is on a very tight range of subjects of the kind where promotion is very common (eg, people, groups of people, bands, businesses, websites), and the article doesnt give any reason why that person, band, website is important, then it can be deleted. It's to make it easier to delete new pages of the form:
That's I'm fairly sure why A7 exists. Previous wordings:
The criterion "unremarkable" was used historically all the way back, but A7 has been around in the above form or similar, for a long time (2006).
What might work is unless there is some other reason I'm not seeing, merge this into G11, "Blatent advertising, including promotion of a person, group, band or website with no indication of grounds for notability"? But we really do need to check why A7 exists in case there's more to it. Shouldn't be hard to do.
Thoughts? FT2 ( Talk | email) 05:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
A7 is fundamentally different. G11 often contains claims of importance... but for whatever reason they're just hollow advertising. "We're your leading IT solutions provider, customers agree we're the finest in our field!" is a claim of importance, yet it's purely promotional language. Articles that don't assert importance are different than articles that contain only promotional material.
There is something to saying "non-notable" articles are probably advertising in some way or another... but I think most people who do speedy deletions a lot will tell you, it's easy to explain an A7 deletion and what people need to do to fix the article. Explaining how someone can fix an article deleted for G11 can be very rough... usually the only real suggestion is "stop writing about your startup company! Wait till someone without a COI cares!" I find that a lot of A7 deletions, at least where the person sincerely wants to fix the problem, actually aren't vanity at all, more often it's just an enthusiastic new editor. -- W.marsh 07:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Though I left them in there, I don't see any actual consensus for the recent(?) additions, e.g. that A7 only applies to individuals, organizations and web sites, and that A7 cannot be applied to books, software, albums, etc. (which are also redundant verbiage to begin with). I'm not going to go edit them out just yet, having already made a couple of changes and not being a regular on this page, but I think that those qualifications do need to be removed. While I cannot speak as to the motive for adding them, it appears to me that the effect of them is simply to weaken A7 in a way that will lead to the survival of a whole lot of junk wannabe-articles on the technicality that they are about an album or whatever instead of the person(s) responsible for the album. —
SMcCandlish [
talk] [
cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of importance/significance.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7 is distinct from questions of [[Wikipedia:Notability|notability]], [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliability of sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] instead. of speedily deleting.
#<span id="A7"/><span id="a7"/><span id="bio"/><span id="corp"/><span id="band"/><span id="club"/><span id="group"/><span id="web"/>'''No indication of notability.''' An article about a real person or organization (band, club, company, website, etc.) that does not indicate why its subject is [[Wikipedia:Notability|notable]]. While web content is covered by A7, other creations, such as books, albums, software, etc., are not eligible for deletion under this criterion. A7's requirement for an ''assertion'' of notability is distinct from [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|Articles for deletion]] questions of ''establishing'' notability and [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] with [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliabile sources]]. If controversial, as with schools, list the article at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion|AfD]] instead of speedily deleting.
I wonder whether we would not do better keeping "notability" out of it, considering that we have ever successfully defined it, as the incessant debates at WP:N and subpages makes evident. DGG ( talk) 06:22, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I've seen many Elementary and middle schools at AfD (some I've put up myself) that assert zero notability whatsoever. I'm not against having certain school pages here, but maybe we could extend A7 to include these school pages that don't assert notability. I've heard some rationalize that schools fall under organizations, but if CSD applies to certain schools, it should be explicitly stated. J-ſtan Contribs User page 03:44, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
There are thousands of geography stubs for many small towns in various countries that consist of little more than one line of text. I feel these are suitable for being weed wacked with extreme prejudice considering that almost none of them have any sources or references, but am unsure how to categorize them-- A7 would seem to be the obvious one, but it does not say anything about locations. Jtrainor ( talk) 13:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) They're not speedy candidates. You could try AfD if you like, but the consensus there has always been that even small towns are inherently notable ( WP:OUTCOMES), and indeed virtually all of them pass the general notability guideline as well, as even small towns and villages have had lots written about them over the years. Just as an example, British History Online has detailed articles on the local history of every village in Britain. By all means remove inappropriate material (like spammy lists of local shops and pubs) from them, but all these articles can be turned into good ones, and there's nothing wrong with having short stubs in the meantime. Iain99 Balderdash and piffle 14:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
<Reset indent>I understood you to say, Satori Son, that the majority of unsourced geo stubs are legitimate and that effort should be put into researching them, only following failure of which efforts should the articles be considered for deletion. I agree. I have seen geographical articles deleted after AfD when sourcing could not be produced. I wonder if you are thinking of the provision in WP:N, specifically in the section on "notability requires objective evidence" and subsequent, which suggest that deletion may be appropriate for an article that "fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject" and for which "appropriate sources cannot be found". W.Marsh, I almost left you a note this morning about the point you made about geographical articles at VP about geographical articles: "people tend to write about geography, as it's important". Simply but persuasively written. They do. (And I didn't—leave a note that is—because I couldn't find a way to phrase it without sounding stupid. I had nothing more to add to the conversation than a "well said".) Hence, if nothing has been written about geography, the information may be questionable. Personally, unless I was completely sure that a geo article was a hoax, I'd go for the broader purview of AfD. (Given my abysmal geography scores when I was a kid, this is only right and just. :D I would feel reasonably confident, for instance, to PROD articles on continents which I've never heard of...after googling them, anyway. ;)) These kinds of articles benefit from additional searchers, I think. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Per an ArbCom decision, "Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy." I have added this as a new criteria because it is already a valid reason to speedily delete an article. - Jehochman Talk 19:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
<reset indent>Your most recent change stripped some of the scope of G10 (I keep calling it A, attack gets stuck in my head :)). An article on a company could be an attack page. An article on an album could be an attack page. I've attempted to restore that without removing your concerns. We'll see how I did. :) -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The current wording of G10 is more recent than the ArbComm decision in that atrocity of a case. (The ArbComm violated their usual rules for handling disputed cases there, and the outcome reflects the fact that they didn't arbitrate, they especially some members who thankfully will not be members in a couple weeks, advocated instead.) ArbComm does not make policy, the community does, and a well run ArbComm case only attempts to reflect the policy the community has formed, and the policies reflected in their principles even when accurate are subject to revision. As has been explicitly referenced above in this discussion, the current wording of G10 is a result of what the community was willing to agree upon after having seen that decision. There are differences, and the wording of G10 prior to this recent attempt at revision is a better reflection of policy on speedy deletion than that old, obsolete ArbComm decision is. So we should not revise G10 to reflect that decision, we should revise that text to reflect actual policy written into G10.
Additionally, these are the speedy deletion criteria. Instructions about recreating pages do not belong here in any form. So I have removed that inappropriate content again. Jehochman's suggestion of bolding the link to BLP is not unreasonable, so I went ahead and did it. GRBerry 17:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I've restored some wording by User:FT2 that reflects the fact that we don't want people going around restoring articles that breach the Biographies of living persons policy. [15] This has been a severe problem in the not-so-distant past, and we need a bright-line policy here.
The wording reads:
-- Tony Sidaway 23:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I have to oppose the addition of ", and if the page is an article about a living person it should not be restored or recreated by any editor until it meets biographical article standards". I'm sad to see so much editwarring over it that the page has become protected. Let's discuss the matter out, instead.
My take is that this passage is a) redundant, and b) off-topic. This is not an article creation guideline, as someone noted in an edit summary recently, and if we've already said on what basis an article can be speedily deleted, we do not need to reiterate that it shouldn't be re-created again in that form, since obviously if it was speedily deletable in that form once it will remain so. Let's not be silly. Wikipedia editors are generally not brain-damaged, so we needn't treat them like halfwits. :-) — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
PS: This is also redundant per G4: "re-creation of previously deleted material". No new policy wording is needed, especially not to address a weird case, namely of POV-pushing in the creation of attack articles; this is already completely adequately covered by WP:NPA, WP:NPOV, and WP:VANDAL. To be as clear as possible, my point is basically that WP:CSD is not a one-stop-shop for "don't do these bad things on Wikipedia" advice; it is, and only is, our criteria for speedy deletion, so verbiage about what kinds of articles to not (re-)create doesn't belong here. That's what WP:NOT is for. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
The material Tony added for the third time in under 24 hours is completely unsuitable for the speedy deletion policy, and should just be deleted from this page. As Satori Son linked above, the inclusion of anything the BDJ farce has already been discussed and rejected here twice previously, and the discussions are archived at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 20#CSD-A9: BLP CSD-G10 rewrite and Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 21#G10 "or fails to comply fully with the relevant policy in any other way" where the community has already twice rejected the notion of writing that finding into the speedy deletion policy. In addition, we've since had Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Archive 25#Proposed new criterion. The wording that was in G10 has been accepted by the community. GRBerry 04:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I've already stated my opinion in the edit summary: this policy page outlines criteria for speedy deletion; instructions for undeletion or recreation belong at Wikipedia:Deletion policy and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Moreover, since (as Wikidemo notes) it's always wrong to write an article in violation to BLP, stating that a BLP-violating article should not be recreated is redundant. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 21:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Criterion G8, for orphaned talk pages of no particular use, strikes me as the sort of thing that could be reasonably merged with G6, for general housekeeping. Not a matter of importance, of course, but if there is ever a drive to cut down on the large, occasionally redundant, number of criteria we have, an expanded G6 could probably supersede G8. Any reasons why this wouldn't work? Picaroon (t) 01:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think keeping these criteria separate is best. I'd also note that due to keeping the numbering the same for historical reasons, all a merger would achieve is leaving a blank space (or note) where G8 is at the moment. You can't do renumberings because lots of old deletion logs refer to the CSD by numbers alone (though they shouldn't for precisely this reason). Carcharoth ( talk) 18:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Could someone advise me on the following? We have Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg on Wikipedia. I recently fixed the license tag, but as it needed cropping, I went back to the original, cropped it and uploaded it Commons, ending up with Image:04293v cropped.JPG. My question is whether Image:Gaston motel 1963.jpg now falls under any of the image CSDs? It feels like I1 or I8, but doesn't quite fit the criteria. Can it be deleted under G6 (housekeeping)? Should this kind of thing be specifically covered in the image CSDs? I know a common process on Commons is to upload the original and the cropped version. Maybe I should just tag the uncropped version for transfer to Commons? Carcharoth ( talk) 18:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to remove this line from A1: "Care should be taken to ensure that valid articles in progress are not deleted."
Rational: Long tradition of keeping advice like this out as it constitutes instruction creep and is not very useful anyway. Snippets like this are usually added after a specific bad deletion, and if we did that every time there was a bad deletion, CSD would be 500 pages long with reactionary advice. Ultimately, if A1 is applied correctly, nothing useful towards a "valid article" will be deleted. An article "lacking sufficient context to identify the subject of the article", which is what A1 calls for, will require a total rewrite anyway to be useful. Bad deletions should be dealt with by explaining the issue to the deleting admin and then taking it to DRV if necessary... we shouldn't be tacking stuff on to policy every time someone makes a bad deletion. It doesn't work anyway.
I'll make the change eventually if there are no objections, but just want to propose it here first since the page is full-protected right now. -- W.marsh 16:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
Am I crazy, or doesn't this qualify for G6, housekeeping? When I added a speedy delete notice to the page, an admin removed it, citing the MFD that gave the indication that it was speedyable. -- Ned Scott 06:24, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to suggest an new category, articles that appear to be about living persons but provide no sources. WP:BLP says such material "must adhere strictly" to our policies, including WP:V. A7 candidate articles frequently make notability claims that require subjective evaluation (is "best high school soccer player in Nebraska" notable enough?). The criterion I am proposing is clear-cut and automatic: about a person, no source, no death date or other indication the subject is no longer alive --> gone. It would add teeth to BLP and sharply reduce the number of situations where we are, in effect, telling people they aren't important enough to be in Wikipedia.-- agr ( talk) 11:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Please forgive me if this has been suggested before:
T3-TEXT
CSD-T3: Templates which are not used in any articles and which provide no information that could not be easily provided by another template; that is, they are substantial duplications of another template, or hardcoded instances of another template where the same functionality could be provided by that other template.
This covers the two most common snowball issues I've recently seen at TfD: clones or similar copies of an existing template (often POV forks), and instances where someone has copied an existing template (usually an infobox) and replaced the parameters with hardcoded values (as opposed to creating a subsidiary infobox, which of course is completely different). Both of these cases are entirely uncontroversial. Comments? Happy‑ melon 15:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Does this mean {{ Policy}} gets speedied? It's not used in any article. O:-) -- Kim Bruning ( talk) 19:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC) just checking
:P
. I assume you know what I mean though - perhaps replace "used in any articles" for "used in any useful context".
Happy‑
melon 12:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)Perhaps it's a question of semantics, but I feel uncomfortable about classing these as G6. It's stretching G6 quite a bit to cover these, and that worries me that people will try and stretch it in other ways. I don't think it's at all controversial to delete something like {{ Vocal classification}} as a duplication of {{ vocal range}}, or {{ Infobox LBS}} as a hard-coded instance of {{ infobox university}}. In this case adding a new criterion is not instruction creep, but just an easy clarification which removes ambiguity. Essentially I'm saying "there's a hell of a lot of different 'housekeeping' tasks, some of which are controversial, some of which aren't. Why don't we split this uncontroversial (but common) task off to reduce ambiguity and potential confusion?" Happy‑ melon 18:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
T3-TEXT
I saw this issue quite some time ago and created WP:DOT. Its been a little inactive lately, but essentially has a procedure that marks the template for two weeks to ensure that it is truly not used (newly-created, subst'd, etc.) and then the templates are deleted under WP:CSD#G6. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I'll be able to do some more work with that page. Cheers. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 20:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
:D
Happy‑
melon 13:47, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
:D
.
Happy‑
melon 18:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)Ugh. The reason WP:DOT was created was so that we wouldn't have to list these unused, largely forgotten templates on TfD and there wouldn't be a need for long, drawn out debates about a new deletion process or a new CSD criterion. Well here we are, facing walls of text. Ugh. While it hasn't been shouted on every talk page and village pump, WP:DOT linked from the WP:TFD main page, not that anyone bothers to read that. It was also discussed on WT:TFD before being created with a handful of editors weighing in.
While WP:CSD#G6 probably could be applied to a lot of these templates without further discussion, I've edited and looked at a lot of these templates, and while I try to avoid ones that are always substituted or are intentionally without transclusions, I've screwed up. That's exactly why a two-week waiting period was given: so that people could see the template was marked for deletion on their watchlist and notice any screwed up substitutions over the course of the two weeks. When this was previously discussed, everyone was in agreement that a waiting period was better than an abrupt deletion.
WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal, esp. the addition of new criteria. Frankly, it might be nice to have a new criterion, but it simply isn't necessary. To have instant deletion of templates, much like how CSD#G1 or CSD#G3 currently operate would be a terrible idea. As for your assertion that WP:DOT-rejected templates get sent to WP:CSD, that is simply incorrect, and I have no idea where you got that impression. As I said, WP:DOT has been pretty inactive lately; hopefully some admins will be able to rectify that shortly enough. If I can quote the preface to WP:DOT: "Listing all unused templates at Templates for deletion would unnecessarily burden that process. Instead, this page has been established to coordinate efforts to maintain the template namespace by removing unneeded templates in an orderly and systematic manner." That seems pretty clear to me. As for the suggestion that users be forced to go to WP:DRV when an admin screws up, that is entirely the wrong approach regarding deletions altogether. Unequivocally. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 03:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
MZMcBride brought up a good point when saying " WP:CSD is official policy; changes to it are a big deal". That implies that our agreement here might not be sufficient to adopt the change officially. What is the path forward to make the policy change? Is there a change control board that needs to consider it, for instance? Thanks for spelling it out ... though I've been here quite a while, I have not engaged in policy revision discussions up to now. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 04:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
{{
db-t3}}
) to go with it, I think it's time to open this up to a wider audience. Does anyone have any suggestion as to the order of events? I am inclined to go: RFC, then VPP, Signpost and/or community bulletin board. Objections?
Happy‑
melon 19:48, 5 January 2008 (UTC)There's a potential problem with the new T-3 criterion as far as standard stub-sorting practice is concerned. Often it is useful to create a batch of stub templates to completely split an overgrown type consistently, and occasionally this will result in a template which is necessary for potential use but is not actually used.
For example, if Category:Football (soccer) biography stubs were very large, the best way to manage it would be to split the biographies byusing different templates for different decade of birth. Any templates which got sufficient usage would get their own categories, others would have their articles remain in the main stub category. Thus, {{ 1920s-footy-bio-stub}}, {{ 1930s-footy-bio-stub}} etc would all be created at the same time, back to the dawn of the professional era. Sometimes, such a split results in an unused template (there may be no current football biography stubs for players born in the 1890s, for instance). It could be argued that this stub template would be speediable, as it is unused and - given that the template would be upmerged into a larger category - does nothing that the plain {{ footy-bio-stub}} does not.
I know of several current cases where this situation exists - for example, every country in the world has its own geo-stub template for geographical articles, but the one for the Vatican City is currently not used on any articles. I'd hate to see this new criterion being used as a means of removing valid stub templates that complete a set.
Might I suggest the wording be amended slightly to Templates that are deprecated and orphaned and which are not part of an established series - that is... ? I doubt it would interfere with many of the templates which are mentioned as being the sort that T-3 is aimed at, and it would reduce the chances of potentially useful stub templates suddenly disappearing. Grutness... wha? 04:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
The suggested text says, in part, "Templates that ... are no longer used ... may be deleted after seven days". I presume what we're after here is, "If the template seems like a dead idea, and nobody has used it for seven days, just delete it". I don't have a problem with that in concept; sounds good to me. But how would one check that? To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to see a usage history for a template. That is, there's nothing that will show you when a page used to transclude it, or the last time it was substituted. (If there's some MediaWiki feature I've missed, just hit me over the head with a cluebat about it.) — DragonHawk ( talk| hist) 03:45, 4 January 2008 (UTC)